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Stephanie Cooper

Six Trends That Will Change Workplace Learning Forever - 2010 - ASTD - 1 views

  • “Historically, the learning community has stayed away from informal learning and social learning, and that is where most of the learning is taking place,” ASTD CEO Tony Bingham said during an interview promoting his new book, The New Social Learning, with co-author Marcia Conner. “We now have the tools, and the catalysts, to engage [employees] with that kind of learning. I think that is going to help the learning community take it to the next level.”  
  • An ASTD and Institute for Corporate Productivity study made a strong business case for using social media to enhance productivity. Millennials found social media tools more helpful in terms of learning and getting work done than Generation X workers or Baby Boomers. More organizations dabbled in social media during 2010, using shared workspaces, social networks, and wikis to deliver learning and development.   “The next generation of workers coming into organizations will demand the ability to work in ways they’ve already found to enable success,” wrote Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd in a July 2010 T+D article. “If the learning function does not step up to the task, some other department in the organization will, and the learning function will become irrelevant.”
  • As Daniel Pink wrote in The New Social Learning foreword, social learning will not replace training and employee development, “but it can accomplish what traditional approaches often cannot … [It] can supplement instruction with collaboration and co-creation, and in doing so, blur the boundary between the instructor and the instructed. … It can bring far-flung employees together into new communities in which they can not only learn from one another, but also fashion new offerings for customers. In short, social media can change the way your company works.”  
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  • The greatest technology growth of 2010 came with mobile devices, and thus, one of the biggest changes in workplace learning came via smartphones. Mobile phones have become an extension of the workplace and have made the world of work a 24/7 reality, but how have they changed learning?  
  • An IBM study, published in the January 2010 issue of T+D, highlighted two main purposes for mobile phone use: in-field performance support and access to current, just-in-time information that is relevant to a specific project or task. But an even more important reason to venture into the world of mobile learning is that newer workers in the workforce, the Millennials, are demanding it.  
  • The need to make social media and mobile learning a part of the workplace to attract, engage, and retain the younger generations is forcing learning professionals to explore new and innovative ways to deliver learning on these inexpensive devices, anytime and anywhere.  
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      This also applies to professors.  Since mobile learning is becoming a reality in the workplace, students need to be prepared for it.  
  • Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2015, more users will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than by desktop PC. “Our world,” Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd wrote in a July T+D article, “will turn into three-minute learning vignettes.” GPS sensitivity, according to Meister and Willyerd, will help new hires find checkpoints so they can learn the company and its history, and could alert us when we are near an expert in a topic of our choice. “Perhaps the future role of learning is to find, organize, and enable the experts,” Meister and Willyerd wrote.   Learning is trending toward the user and the moment of need. Workplace learning and performance professionals need to redefine the role that mobile learning will play in their learning initiatives because if they don’t, they risk being left behind in this new workplace paradigm.  
Stephanie Cooper

May, 1998, From Now On - 1 views

  • it is reckless and irresponsible to continue requiring topical "go find out about" research projects in this new electronic context. To do so extends an invitation (perhaps even a demand) to "binge" on information.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      I agree that too many research assignments encourage plagiarism. Stopping plagiarism begins with crafting better research assignments.
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      True. This definitely needs to be addressed at the beginning of our workshop as a "what not to do."
  • Little thinking is required. This is information gathering at its crudest and simplest level.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      An assignment that requires little thinking will encourage plagiarism.
  • Students become producers of insight and ideas rather than mere consumers.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This is the key to avoiding plagiarism: providing students with a real situation (writer's role, reader's need, real-world problem) that demands the student be a producer of information rather than a repackager and redistributor of information.
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  • questions worth asking
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Questions are never automatically worth asking; rather, they are always worth asking for someone specifically. Questions should be have value for the students.
  • While some claim that "There are no new ideas under the sun," our students must learn how to apply some extra color or tone it down. They must learn to see the underlying structure and then construct or deconstruct the original until it shimmers with originality.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Even if there are no new ideas to express, there are new ideas to express to a given audience. Our research assignments too often leave out audience-always to the detriment.
  • We show students how to take notes with a database program.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Evernote is a useful online note-taking tool.
  • we keep an eye on the note-taking and idea development as they evolve.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Too many teachers ignore this phase because of the administrative overhead suggested; however, it is much easier & less burdensome to do this online than on paper.
  • We build our programs around what I called The Prime Questions in the October, 1997 issue of From Now On, "The Question is the Answer:" http://fno.org/oct97/question.html Why How Which is best? We transform topical research into projects which demand that students move past mere gathering of information to the construction of new meanings and insight. Example: Instead of asking why events turned out particular ways in our past (a question fraught with plagiaristic opportunities since historians have probably already offered answers), we might ask students to hypothesize why various outcomes did not occur. Example: Instead of asking how we might protect an endangered species whose chances have already been improved (the bald eagle), we might focus on one which no one has managed to protect (various Australian marsupials, for example). Example: Instead of asking students to study a single country or city, we might ask them to decide which is best for various purposes (the Winter Olympics, a university degree, the building of a theme park, etc.).
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    Under the old system of "go find out about" topical research, it took students a huge amount of time to move words from the encyclopedia pages onto white index cards. The New Plagiarism requires little effort and is geometrically more powerful.
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    Under the old system of "go find out about" topical research, it took students a huge amount of time to move words from the encyclopedia pages onto white index cards. The New Plagiarism requires little effort and is geometrically more powerful.
Keith Hamon

Toddlers Understand Complex Grammar, Study Shows | FoxNews.com - 0 views

  • new research suggests that even before 2-year-olds speak in full sentences, they are able to understand grammatical construction and use it to make sense of what they hear.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      To my mind, this suggests a fairly universal principle about how we learn any new language: we first immerse ourselves in it, attune ourselves to its structure and content and social rules, and only after this do we begin to create our own utterances in the group, using the language of the group to discuss the topics of the group.
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    New research suggests that even before 2-year-olds speak in full sentences, they are able to understand grammatical construction and use it to make sense of what they hear.
Keith Hamon

5 Tools To Compare Typefaces & Choose The Right Font For Your Work - 0 views

  •  
    when we attempt to select a font, we do quite a lot of comparing between the different fonts available to us. Here are seven tools which might help you to pick the right font for your work.
Keith Hamon

Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: 5 Steps to Digitizing the Writing Workshop #edchat #writing - 3 views

  • Expecting students to write in our classrooms for hit-or-miss praise is criminal. Their nimble fingers can text an entire piece of writing via their mobile device to a relevant audience online at the same time they publish to a worldwide network. For them, the pay is in the joy of publication, in the act of making their work known, and of partaking of the work of others.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This is a big part of the intrinsic, and fun, motivation for writing online.
  • Take advantage of over 20 digital tools for students (Sidebar #2 - Digital Tools for Students).
  • You can easily transition from notes and highlights kept in Diigo.com social bookmarking tool to a written piece that appropriately cites content. Check Sidebar #3 for Electronic Citation Resources.
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  • reflect on the teacher's role in the writing workshop, and the technology available to organize the writing workshop.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      One of our tasks in QEP is to devise tools and strategies to make the instructor's job easier, not more difficult. Technology can help, and we want to explore how.
  • Create a Self-Editing checklist that is actually a GoogleForm or the Questionnaire Module in Moodle so you can quickly see class progress in graphs. Students complete this information via a web-based form that allows you to quantitatively track progress in class. Create a bank of online mini-lessons that students can watch and listen to again and again in an archive. Build that in your GoogleSites Wiki or Moodle. Facilitate sharing using recording tools in a discussion forum or Sites wiki. When doing the Group Share during a Writing Workshop, you can either play the students' presentation of the audio (which they recorded when they were ready) or record the feedback students get so that it can be added to the written piece/recording shared. That way, students can come back and reflect on the advice provided by their peers.
  • Using a Moodle or wiki, you can create a reference point that can house your mini-lesson content, including audio and/or video recordings.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Perhaps we could build a mini-lesson space on the Writing Labs wiki?
  • VoiceThread.com - Enables teachers to create an enhanced podcast about the MiniLesson content, but also allow students to contribute audio, text, or video content as comments. This enables many to many interactions.
  • GoogleDocs Presentation Tool - Enables teachers to create a slideshow that students can participate in chat, as well as contribute slides to.
  • As wonderful as a writing workshop teacher may be, s/he cannot offer the feedback that ALL students may need. However, online discussion forums through Moodle, attached to wikis, or with blog postings and comments CAN facilitate student to student interaction independent of the teacher. While many fear these kinds of interactions, in online learning, these interactions make or break an online course...or a face to face one.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Fostering this kind of online conversation is key to QEP. It's what we are about, but we recognize that most of our students are unaccustomed to conversing about academic issues among themselves. We want to teach them to talk college.
  • Collaborative word processors can also serve as a way for students in groups to interact with ONE text online.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This is an excellent entry point into many different kinds of exercises: group editing, group writing, group brainstorming, group illumination (adding images and video). I like this.
  • Shelly Blake-Pollock, the teacher and author of the TeachPaperless blog (http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com), encourages his students to publish online. Beyond that step, though, he offers feedback on their writing online as well via screencasts, or video recording of his computer screen. Screencasts, or "JingCrits," that he creates are short, less than 5-minute video clips where he highlights student work on screen and offers feedback (View an example - http://bit.ly/bsgVQQ).
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This could be a wonderful strategy for moving our QEP Writing Labs into the online world, enabling writing specialists to engage student writing, and offer useful feedback, online.
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    This article is about 5 steps you can take, as a writing teacher, to digitize your writing workshop. There are many more, though, so "stay tuned" for future articles!
Stephanie Cooper

JOLT - Journal of Online Learning and Teaching - 1 views

  • The use of web logs (“blogs”) has become a popular addition to many college courses as faculty try to find new ways to integrate this popular technology into the classroom. (Beeson, 2005; Quible, 2005; Ducate, 2005, Glogoff, 2005).   By the end of 2004, 32 million Americans said they had read a blog, eight million Americans had created blogs, and almost half were created by people under age 30 (Reine, 2005).   In fact, Huffaker (2005) cites several studies that reveal that a significant number of blog authors are younger than 20.  Lenhart (2006) notes that by 2006, these numbers had increased to 12 million American adults who keep a blog, and 57 million American adults who say they read them. Thus, students come to the classroom with a facility for maintaining and communicating through blogs.  Beeson (2005) argues that it is an approach that is more in keeping with their way of thinking (29).  With the increased popularity of blogs, faculty members have been integrating them into their courses to enhance class discussion.  Past research has summarized findings from case studies involving the use of blogs in a single course (Glogoff, 2003; Quible, 2005; Ducate, 2005).  The authors of this study, conducted at a business university, assigned a similar blogging exercise in three different courses—expository writing, e-commerce, and government--in order to introduce students to the use of blogs in their respective disciplines and to help students prepare for meaningful classroom discussion. This study finds that by completing the required readings and then posting discussion questions and reflections on topics of interest to which their classmates can respond--essentially beginning the conversation prior to the class session--students become more engaged in the course material. This exercise requires students not only to read the required course materials but to engage with them critically in order to move beyond a superficial understanding of the materials.  By using the same assignment and assessment tool, the authors found that blogs can be effective in enhancing class discussion in a range of disciplines and in integrating liberal learning into professional programs.            Blogging in the Classroom
  • Like online threaded discussion groups, blogs are an easy way to engage in dialogue on the web outside the classroom. The availability of several blog providers such as Google’s blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, and WordPress.com make it free and easy to set up, manage, and update blogs frequently and without additional support.   By using blogs “students become familiar with blogging, a tool now used by an ever-increasing number of employers to support routine operating functions” (Quible, 2005, p. 76).
  • Since blogs are a fairly recent pedagogical tool, new scholarship has emerged that points to its benefits in the classroom.  The ability of students and faculty to easily update an online journal promotes blogging as a new form of communication to enhance class discussion and to create a community outside the classroom.  Flatley (2005) argues that the technological medium provides a space where students can interact with one another, and it can open up the classroom space "where discussions are continued and where every student gets an equal voice" (p. 77).  In addition, blogs can promote collaboration (Flatley, 2005; Williams & Jacobs, 2004; Oravec, 2002).
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  • In contrast to more traditional forums for online discussion, blogs are open to the world to see. This provides visibility for students to share their ideas with the larger world. Quible (2005) says that blogs are “a natural in business communications courses” (p. 73) because they enable students to share their writing with a larger audience.  Glogoff (2003) notes that students “used the [class] blog for a purpose other than from what it was initially intended,” (p. 2162) causing them to create a new blog for a more general audience.  Huffaker (2005) argues that bloggers can get feedback on their writing from a wide range of other bloggers, and "they can link to fellow bloggers, creating an interwoven, dynamic organization" (p. 94).  In addition, "students can have a personal space to lty member not want student writing made public, blogs can be maintained so that only the students in the are allowed to access it and post to it.
Stephanie Cooper

Writing Matters 1 Designing Writing Assignments - 2 views

  • "writing-intensive" (WI) classes have in general found that what you write is what you learn best.
  • Over the last three years, the staff at the Mānoa Writing Program has interviewed nearly 200 students about their experiences in WI classes. In this issue, we focus on what most students tell us is a key to making writing matter: a well-constructed writing assignment.
  • In trying to answer these (and similar) questions when you give your students writing assignments, you may be taking important steps in helping your students to write and learn more effectively.    
Stephanie Cooper

CRASH COURSE IN COPYRIGHT - 0 views

  • Crash Course Tutorial The Crash Course Tutorial is available for faculty to use to learn Copyright basics, especially in the distance learning context.
Stephanie Cooper

Part One: Teacher Tips for Wiki Projects - The Tempered Radical - 1 views

  • Creating a classroom encyclopedia covering the content you are studying in class or a comprehensive collection of solutions to one common problem will be a motivating and productive task for your students. Groups can be assigned particular topics to tackle or charged with detailing the strengths and weaknesses of one potential solution, creating pages mirroring the format of Wikipedia entries. Conceptually, using Wikipedia as a model for your classroom wiki project will make your expectations approachable—and give students samples to refer to while completing their final products.
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      This is a great idea! I could see this replacing the old fashioned report on a subject.
Thomas Clancy

Ideas for Writing Assignments - 2 views

  • n this course, you will write a substantial research essay (6+ pages in MLA Style) on a topic of your own choice that relates to some aspect of the course material. In order to combat the procrastination (I-work-better-under-pressure) syndrome, this assignment has several steps all of which you must complete to achieve the best possible result.
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      I like how this assignment was broken down into several steps. The part where they have to share their paper with their classmates is great. This means that they will actually have to do some thinking to be able to answer questions about the topic. This would definitely help with critical thinking skills, thus preventing most opportunites for plagiarism.
    • Thomas Clancy
       
      I agree, Steph. That's what I'm trying to help our faculty see--their assignments in steps or phases that students can easily accomplish within a short lab visit.
  • It seems natural to assume that students in upper level courses will know the difference between a good term paper and a poor one. I've learned the hard way that this is an unwarranted assumption! My first attempts to use term paper assignments in my psychology courses were disappointing. The failure was partly my fault because I was not very specific in stating my expectations and the characteristics of good writing. Term paper assignments should be used as an opportunity to clearly demonstrate the differences between good and poor writing by communicating practices to avoid in the course assignment.
  • The following is a term paper assignment that I use in my Biopsychology course. The trend that you will notice in this assignment is that the expectations are very clear. For example, acceptable topics and information that should be covered within a topic are stated. In addition, classic space wasters such as huge direct quotes, long bulleted lists, large margins, and oversized fonts are illustrated as practices to avoid. As for the sources, the assignment clearly states that academic or peer reviewed sources are preferred whereas information from encyclopedias is considered unacceptable. These specific expectations help to clearly delineate the differences between good and poor writing practices.
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  • Dan Askren
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