Journey to Ithaca

My instructional technology fellows small group met today, and discussed two articles: Seven Principles for Good Practice and Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. The first article (from 1987) briefly presents a framework for analyzing what the pedagogical literature identifies as best practices, and the second article (from 1996) describes how to implement the principles using technology.

Grading papers never ceases to remind me of this scene.

Salon | Shameful Illinois Prosecutors Go After Student Investigators/a>

In today's news of ridiculous violations of student privacy, academic freedom, and social justice....

Make it work!

Indeed, Gunn is in many ways a role model for a graduate adviser. His initial responses are helpful, and keyed to what he believes are each designer's strengths and weaknesses. He is generous with praise and never fails to express skepticism—his catch phrase for when there's a disaster looming is a sweet "I'm concerned." Indeed, on his face you can see concern.

The Chronicle of Higher Education | Fashion Lessons for Graduate Students

What Project Runway tells us about graduate school.

Instead of isolating teachers, the Generation Schools model organizes them into grade- and subject-based teams, designed to blend different types of expertise and levels of experience. The daily schedule and calendar are designed with time for regular and ongoing teacher collaboration and planning, giving teachers "time to learn from each other and to learn from their work," Brown says. In the mornings, all teachers teach 90-minute academic classes that average 14 students; afternoons are divided into shorter, larger elective courses and two hours of daily planning. Twice a year, grade-based teaching teams get a four-week break—three weeks to rest and one week to meet, plan, and observe colleagues. The breaks are staggered throughout the year, and while one group of teachers is on break, another team of their colleagues steps in to teach their students "intensive" monthlong literacy courses focused on career and college planning. The result is a school year that is extended to 200 days for students—20 more than the national average—without having to extend work time (and pay) for teachers.

via www.educationsector.org

The educational model described in the link (which is more fully articulated in a PDF report also available at the above link) makes so much sense I nearly fell out of my chair. What can I say--I don't read terribly much pedagogy literature that identifies problems and solutions and experiments with implementation in a way that matches my own experiences as a teacher and learner. Read the whole thing.

The Quick and the Ed | Why There’s No Such Thing as a Three-Year Free Lunch

Great piece on the inanity of recent arguments in favor of three-year bachelor degrees.

Washington Post | More Schools Experimenting with Digital Textbooks

Used in conjunction with sufficient teacher oversight and classroom discussion, I think digital textbooks and educational software can be incredibly effective.

The Chronicle of Higher Education | The Millennial Muddle: How Stereotyping Students Became an Industry

For as long as human hair has turned gray, elders have looked at their successors and frowned. "Children nowadays are tyrants," goes an old quotation widely attributed to Socrates. "They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." In 1855 a professor at Davidson College described college students as "indulged, petted, and uncontrolled at home … with an undisciplined mind, and an uncultivated heart, yet with exalted ideas of personal dignity, and a scowling contempt for lawful authority." Albert Einstein opined that while classrooms are many, "the number of young people who genuinely thirst after truth and justice is small."

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
--T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone

via www.happiness-project.com

Confessions of a Community College Dean: Compare and Contrast

Dean Dad compares the increasing lack of funding for higher education in the US with increased funding elsewhere.