Writing Across the Curriculum

Infographics can change the way we learn, the way we see information put in front of us.  They help us digest that information and leads us to draw important conclusions more swiftly. After doing a little research online I was able to discover 10 gorgeous infographics on education that do more than simply show information, they relay it in a really potent and amazing way.

So what happens between the end of that two-course sequence and the start of the rest of those students' college careers? If pressed I would offer a hypothesis or two: In many courses that are not focused on writing skills, instructors might not provide detailed enough instructions on their writing assignments to convey to the student what the instructors' expectations are, and A different issue is whether or not the student understands the course material: a badly written essay may be the result of the student author not understanding the subject rather than not being a capable writer.

Users increasingly rely on individual pages listed by search engines instead of finding better ways to tackle problems.

Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline.

In 2008, I started a non-profit organization called the Khan Academy to deliver free online education. As it turns out, our tools have given students and teachers the power to "flip" the traditional classroom: Students can hear lectures at home and spend their time at school doing "homework"-that is, working on problems. It allows them to advance at their own pace, gaining real mastery, and it lets teachers spend more time giving one-to-one instruction.

The use of models and other abstract forms in literary study has recently seen a revival in a digital age that puts data and sophisticated data management systems in the hands of the literary scholar, teacher, and student. Pedagogical applications of these abstract models are rich with possibility for the literary classroom, and offer exciting opportunities for engaging non-English majors and non-traditional learners in the advanced study of literature, as well as challenging students to verbally articulate visual and spatial knowledge.

I think the writers' workshop is an appropriate model for academics who want to make their manuscripts better. Creative writers have been "workshopping" each other's stuff for a long time. The workshop model can lead to tears, to bruised egos, and, occasionally, to black eyes. But the right group can produce better work.

If business happens through networking, then what should I be doing to help my students understand both why, and how, to network? Do I have an obligation to teach the importance of networking to students in my English courses, or can I safely leave that lesson to my colleagues in the business department?

The internationally recognized series of  Horizon Reports is part of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectors around the globe. This volume, the  2011 Horizon Report, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. It is the eighth in the annual series of reports focused on emerging technology in the higher education environment. 

Shows how online games create 4 characteristics (blissful productivity, strong social fabric, an urgent optimism, and epic meaning) in gamers that uniquely equip gamers to solve the world's problems.

At the recent THATCamp Southeast, I had a chance to teach a hands-on session for building interactive, geospatial timelines.

If you can break down what you're looking for in a good paper into a set of categories and assign a numerical value to each category, then you should definitely consider using Google Forms to help you grade. I just developed a quick and easy way to do this. Here's what I do.

Separating Gen Y into two groups are some drastic differences. It's Nintendo vs. Guitar Hero, Discmans vs. iPods, Chat rooms vs. Skype and B.T. (Before Texting) vs. A.T. (Always Texting). The word coined to describe this schism between older and younger Gen Yers is "gaplet."

Some excellent questions for building an assignment. Look beyond the writing assignment pedagogy to the general aspects of any assignment.