Education: August 2007 Archive Page

AP:

A court on Friday fined a 15-year-old schoolboy for posting a video on YouTube of his teacher singing karaoke without her permission and claiming she was a lunatic. In the first case of its kind in Finland, Nurmes District Court found Toni Vesikko guilty of intentional defamation and fined him $120. He also was ordered to pay $1,000 in damages for "causing harm and suffering," and $3,000 in court costs.

Just because she sings at a party does not give people permission to publish video footage without her permission. I don't think it's possible that anyone would think the "lunatic" claim was factual, but it still exposed her to ridicule. This is a very different thing from posting a video of a public figure, or yourself.

Here's a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile [try here -- DGJ] is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing again in 2005-6. I especially liked reviewing Joyce T. Povlacs' 101 Things You Can Do the First Three Weeks of Class. If your term is just getting started too, you might want to review this list.

Here's a carefully worded google search that results in a great sampler of more on this topic.  --Mike Arnzen

Our first day of classes isn't for another week. Today was a full day of meetings, with lots of slideshows bearing statistics about how many students are enrolled, how we are doing on various ongoing university goals, and so forth. I'll be chairing the undergraduate English program review committee, and I also volunteered to be part of an ad hoc committee implementing an undergraduate humanities conference next spring. We hope to encourage juniors to deliver research papers on campus, so that during their senior year they can apply to off-campus conferences. (I presented on academic panels with four undergraduates at two conferences, last year, and I'm excited by the prospect of establishing a more formal way to keep that momentum going.)

Getting ready for the students is foremost in my mind, even though I've got another full day of meetings tomorrow. So now that the kids are in bed I'm taking a moment to think about the first day of classes. I'm still casting about for a comfortable way to start the first day of classes. 

If we teach our children that school is a prison, then summer school is extra punishment for the worst offenders. The sting of humiliation and failure adds to the pain of having to go to school when your friends are free.

That's too bad, because summer school isn't a punishment, it's an opportunity. In terms of education, summer vacation isn't a well-deserved rest; it's the time students forget much of what they learned.

[...]

Summer vacation persists because of tradition, inertia and the desire of some businesses for seasonal labor. The school calendar may have agrarian roots, but there's nothing natural about it. The good lord may have decreed that plants sprout in the spring and are harvested in the fall, but he never said kids were supposed to stop learning in the summer. --Holmes: Send them all to summer school (Daily News Trivia)

Sheesh. When I used to teach a two-semester freshman writing course, I was shocked at how much backsliding there was over Christmas.

After I returned the first assignment in January and said something like, "This is not high school anymore, and I won't expect to have to repeat material that should still be in your notebooks," the next assignments were much better.

Rather, Salen and other planners are looking at how games naturally engage players and teach them new skills, and hope to apply those principles to create kids who not only ace their SATs, but are also well suited for the 21st century.

Games offer a context for problem-solving with immediate feedback, and often involve social interaction that can reinforce lessons learned, Salen wrote in a proposal. Combine that process with the skills that modern games encourage -- like computer literacy and navigating through complex information networks -- and you have the basis for a brand new pedagogy, Salen believes.

The planners will devote this year plotting a curriculum, and will test pieces of it in high school classrooms the following school year. Right now, the ideas are vague but intriguing: Alternate reality games could be used to study science, as those players typically seek out and analyze data, and then propose and test their hypotheses. Salen also envisions harnessing the creative urges that kids already express through fan fiction, blogging and the creation of avatars and online identities. --Eliza Strickland --A Win-Win Scenario: 'Game School' Aims to Engage and Educate (Wired)

The smell of a flower - The memory of a walk in the park - The pain of stepping on a nail. These experiences are made possible by the 3 pounds of tissue in our heads...the BRAIN!! --Eric H. Chudler --Neuroscience for Kids (University of Washinton)

My son was asking me a lot of questions about how alcohol affects the brain, and an internet search lead me to this great site. I hope they have another neuroscience poetry competition.

The administrators generally agreed that people skills were important, yet those skills remain underrepresented in required courses. One likely explanation: Students don't like the courses, and they are pressuring administrators to drop them.

When curricula emphasize soft skills, administrators "are significantly more likely to report increased pressure from students to change the curriculum," the researchers said.

"Given that students are indeed the direct consumer and key revenue stream of most M.B.A. programs," they write, "this finding supports recent assertions that students' general disdain for people-focused course work drives considerable policy decisions regarding curricula. ... This finding may suggest that with respect to designing a relevant M.B.A., the customer is not always right." -Katherine Mangan --Companies and Business Students Differ on What Skills M.B.A. Programs Should Teach (Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription))