Pedagogy
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This essay is adapted from a talk given last May at the American Literature Association Conference in San Diego. I want to set down and illustrate a number of operational principles which I have found helpful in teaching a reconstructed or multicultural course in American literature. I will talk about voice, audience, function--three closely related elements--then about ethnography and context, and finally about what is to me central: comparative study. I don't suppose that these principles, much less the illustrations, are exhaustive or in many cases particularly new; I do think they can be useful, and also that they can stimulate other teachers to share their approaches to what, in real practice, is a relatively new discipline. One theoretical issue before I get down to cases. It has been argued that the real issue is not what a syllabus contains but how the texts are taught.
www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/tamlit/newsletter/4/Lauter.htm
The Age of the Essay
September 2004 Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure.
Academic Leadership Setting academic priorities, evaluating faculty, succession planning, making the transition from faculty to administrator, the issues and leadership responsibilities are many, and seem to grow daily. Turn to Faculty Focus for academic leadership articles written to help deans, chairs, and other academic decision makers lead effectively. App Of The Week App of the Week is a new feature here on Faculty Focus written by Dave Yearwood, PhD, associate professor and chair of the technology department at the University of North Dakota.
Topics in Faculty Focus
Writing to Learn
Writing to Learn: Using In-Class Writing Assignments Across the Disciplines by Jerry Alexander, English Department W hen I first read the phrase writing to learn , I thought the author had made a mistake. " Learning to write is what he meant," I said to myself. Once I read on and discovered what the author meant by writing to learn , I was forced to reflect further on the idea. As a teacher, I use writing myself as a means of increasing my own understanding of complex subjects; indeed, for most teachers and scholars, the basic impulse to write about what we are studying is a strong one; doing so helps us better understand our subject; we use personal, informal writing as a learning tool. As if this unspoken understanding of the benefits of writing weren't enough, composition theorists were arguing for the benefits of using writing as a learning tool long ago (see Janet Emig's 1977 article "Writing as a Mode of Learning," for example).This is the introduction to Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. The different taxonomical levels can be viewed individually via the navigation bar or below this introduction as embedded pages. This is an update to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy which attempts to account for the new behaviours and actions emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy describes many traditional classroom practices, behaviours and actions, but does not account for the new processes and actions associated with Web 2.0 technologies, infowhelm (the exponential growth in information), increasing ubiquitous personal technologies or cloud computing. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy isn't about the tools or technologies rather it is about using these to facilitate learning.
Bloom's Digital Taxonomy
What makes a great teacher? - A student says, "This!"
Opt out of standardized tests About this Blog This blog is maintained by me, Lisa Nielsen, and was created to enable me to share information, ideas, and resources with other innovative educators and parents as well as begin to grow a community interested in supporting young people to learn innovatively. This blog has a companion social network , wiki , and Twitter feed designed to support and reinforce its contents. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in The Innovative Educator are strictly those of the author and contributors and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of the NYC DOE , the AVP or any other entity. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
TeachMoore: More Important Things to Do With Student Writing Than Just Grade It
A recent study by University of Akron comparing the scoring of student essay writing by computer software programs versus that done by "trained human readers" has caused quite a bit of controversy among college level English teachers. The authors of the study rightfully point out that these findings should not be taken as an excuse to rush to replace English teachers, but rather as an indication that these software programs could be a useful resource for student writers as a way to get additional feedback on their writing. Coincidentally, the English faculty at the community college where I teach, just met to conduct our annual review of student performance across our writing program. One thing we do at these sessions is a blind cross-score by teachers of essays written by our students on the essay portion of the Proficiency Profile test from ETS.
Creating a Common Craft-style video is part of the classroom assignment. By Shelley Wright I teach in an inquiry, project-based, technology embedded classroom. A mouthful, I know. So what does that mean?
Life in a 21st-Century English Class
Flickr:WhatMegSaid Allowing time for refleciton helps kids make meaning out of experiences and information they encounter. Parents and teachers expend a lot of energy getting kids to pay attention, concentrate, and focus on the task in front of them. What adults don’t do, according to University of Southern California education professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, is teach children the value of the more diffuse mental activity that characterizes our inner lives: daydreaming, remembering, reflecting.
Why Daydreaming Isn’t a Waste of Time
What Should Rubrics Measure?
Rubrics are tools that help teachers and students generate feedback about student evidence and student work. They offer an alternative to “point-based” or “number-based” grading, and they are often paired with authentic assessment. In my experience, most teachers usually create rubrics long after they have crafted a worthy performance task. However, I wish to pose an important question: Shouldn’t we know what evidence we seek BEFORE we even begin to think about performance tasks? If the goal of a performance based assessment is to provide teachers with evidence that a student has achieved understanding, then the rubric criteria should be identified FIRST. By crafting a rubric after the performance task, it is easy to fall into the “measurement trap.”
The Benefits of Making It Harder to Learn - Do Your Job Better
By James M. Lang In January 2011, a trio of researchers published the results of an experiment in which they demonstrated that students who read material in difficult, unfamiliar fonts learned it more deeply than students who read the same material in conventional, familiar fonts. Strange as that may seem, the finding stems from a well-established principle in learning theory called cognitive disfluency, which has fascinating implications for our work as teachers. As the researchers pointed out in their article in the journal Cognition, both students and teachers may sometimes judge the success of a learning experience by the ease with which the learner processes or "encodes" the new information. But learning material easily, or fluently, may sometimes produce shallower levels of learning.A Liberal Decalogue: Bertrand Russell on the Ten Commandments of Teaching
by Maria Popova “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and social critic Bertrand Russell endures as one of the most intellectually diverse and influential thinkers in modern history, his philosophy of religion in particular having shaped the work of such modern atheism champions as Christopher Hitchens , Daniel Dennett , and Richard Dawkins . From the third volume of The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1944-1969 comes this remarkable micro-manifesto, entitled A Liberal Decalogue — a vision for responsibilities of a teacher, in which Russell touches on a number of recurring themes from pickings past — the purpose of education , the value of uncertainty , the importance of critical thinking , the gift of intelligent criticism , and more.Do not feel absolutely certain of anything. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Teachers
Business - Joel Rose - How to Break Free of Our 19th-Century Factory-Model Education System
A technology and education entrepreneur gazes into the future of the classroom Apple Marketing chief Phil Schiller speaks during a news conference; Reuters More than 150 years ago, Massachusetts became the first state to provide all of its citizens access to a free public education.Is there a difference between students and learners? This question has been rattling around in my brain for a while now. In fact it started almost 2 years ago when I read this amazing post about learners and students by David Warlick. I began noticing that many people seemed to use the two words interchangeably as if they meant the same thing…but do they really? In looking through dictionary definitions I failed to find any clarity.