August 31, 2010 – 6:50 pm
Many semesters ago, even prior to the issues brought up in this post, I had one of my first encounters with the laptop and smart device as a tool for critical thinking and information literacy. In Composition II, we’d been talking in class about Connecticut’s brain drain subject and the thought occurred to me that [...]
I’m teaching myself how to play the guitar. I have the Idiot’s Guide and a Fender acoustic, whose neck is too small for my left hand but is nonetheless playable. Too small, because at the size of my fingers, it’s tough to play something like A without the index rubbing up against the third string. [...]
It’s always interesting after a course has run to think back through and consider content, method, and production. New Media Perspectives has seen several versions and we’re really just hitting our stride in the course. We cover several issues: 1. An overview of new media principles and examples we think are generalized and reflect digital [...]
This is an email answer from a student, responding to an article I sent that seemed to have relation to her research topic: This article would have been perfect to go along with the Filion study. Nice.
There are a couple of problems with 60 Minutes’s Brain Power report: 1. This isn’t The Matrix nor do these pills make people “smarter”; they temporary provide chemical therapy for focus. The persistent use of “smart drugs” is deceptive. 2. The report should have been framed against testing as a means of measuring learning in [...]
I finally finished Elizabeth Green’s article in NY Magazine titled Building a Better Teacher, which describes Doug Lemov’s methodology and M.K.T. as examples of innovation. It’s a good piece. A basic idea in Green’s article is that money isn’t enough. Better teacher instruction is a good way to go in improving student performance but hasn’t [...]
January 12, 2010 – 6:59 am
Over the past several weeks I’ve been watching Journalism, the Humanities, and the Marketplace wonder about itself. We have Tiger Woods to watch and now a variety of gripes about the Edwards’ and “what was really going on.” The news this morning is a round table expressing justifications for the story. Nothing about trivia. In [...]
December 3, 2009 – 8:49 pm
Dale Daugherty at O’Reilly writes, On this same day, I heard from a physics teacher in California that he can’t access the Makezine.com site. He was trying to download a project plan for the Wooden Mini Yacht in Volume 20 of Make to use in his class. His school district uses software to block access [...]
November 25, 2009 – 10:22 am
Lawrence Johnson on FB has sparked yet another conversation related to education and culture, drawing on an example of textbook company incentives and the seeming de-emphasis of the value of hard work required for excellence in learning: use this tool and student performance will improve. The conversation is proceeding but as I don’t like the [...]
October 22, 2009 – 9:31 am
Mark Bernstein writes, concerning William Chace’s article in The American Scholar and in reference to a relevant tweet on knowledge about books and, in addition, “whether there could be a single correct answer to any of the important questions that one might ask of an English professor: Harvard and Tufts and BU and Brown and [...]
October 21, 2009 – 6:17 pm
In my FYE course I’ve been insisting that students make games that challenge people to fail. This is a core element of games: if there’s no real challenge, there’s no real reason to play and no fun. Via FB, Beau Anderson links to this article in Scientific American titled Getting it Wrong: Surprising Tips on [...]
September 12, 2009 – 11:52 am
Dennis Jerz announces a position in writing instruction at Seton Hill University. Seton Hill University seeks specialist in Composition/Writing Studies for tenure-track, Assistant Professor of English, beginning fall 2010. The faculty member will teach composition and related courses in the Undergraduate Writing Program, with additional generalist responsibilities in English. 4/4 course load. A Ph.D. in [...]
I’ve been looking for the right word to describe the evaluation of problem solving processes. Today, while struggling with some evaluative language, it hit me: disassemble. That’s it. We apply problem solving processes daily, even when we lose the keys. Ah, backtrack. We follow processes, but do we do enough to evaluate them when one [...]
It’s been a long and short semester. Lots of evaluations yet to get through. But it’s also somewhat sad to see the semester go. My commitments to our Ability-based teaching and learning system have come to formal close, as chair of the team that developed, put into place, then revised, and again put into place [...]
February 28, 2009 – 12:23 pm
From what I remember of my younger days, I used to consider myself a “teacher.” I was someone who “instructed” students in the arcane arts of reading, writing, literature and history. I grew up a medievalist and nurtured the image of the dusty scholar in his library professing on Beowulf. Academics call themselves by many [...]
That Night I Wandered on my Homeward Way (DrunkenBoat 10)
100 Days: 100 Poems, Summer 2008
