I heard a wonderful address by Prakash Nair, President of Fielding Nair International and Managing Editor of DesignShare.com. He was discussing David Bartlett’s work on the Connected School/Connected Campus. According to the 8 Rules of David Bartlett, students can educate themselves anywhere, therefore schools must do/offer something different/unique that cannot be found elsewhere. Bartlett argues that school campuses must act as the following eight things:
- The Campus as Social Anchor
- The Campus as New Social Infrastructure
- The Campus as an e-place to be
- The Campus as an ideas generator (culture of creativity)
- The Campus as Ideas harvester (trial ideas for testing creativity)
- The Campus as part of a network economy
- The Campus as builder of social capital
- The Campus as a model of a new, participatory democracy
How could communication in the classroom help achieve these goals? Should we, perhaps, use these ideas to rethink communication goals or communication pedagogy ?
I am putting together a series of guest posts on this topic and want to get some immediate feedback about what might be useful for people to read about. I have done work with Writing faculty on using performance-related activities in the classroom to help urge reticent students to participate. For instance, I’ve encouraged professors to use images or clips that show people reading/performing texts to start discussion because it gets students away from strict textual analysis and prompts them to draw on their opinions in discussion. But, I’m hoping that my colleagues in theatre have more innovative ways of thinking about these three topics in conversation. Any initial thoughts? Anything people want to hear about specifically so that I can search out posts on that topic?
Interesting article in the NY Times on the organization FairTest. It is the only true watchdog organization for standardized testing, but with the increased emphasis on testing–and therefore decrease in donations–it may soon close shop. I found the comments and reactions from representatives of testing services a little startling. For instance,
In a recent newsletter, FairTest printed an analysis of SAT results, using, and crediting, College Board research showing the direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For every extra $10,000 a family earns, children’s combined math and verbal scores go up 12 to 31 points. So children whose parents earn $50,000 score better on average (a combined 996 SAT) than students from families who earn $40,000 (967) but worse than students from families who earn $60,000 (1014).
For politicians and testing executives bragging about how No Child’s testing emphasis is closing the achievement gap, these are not promising numbers.
In 2004, the College Board demanded that its data breaking down SAT scores by income, race and sex be removed from the FairTest Web site, claiming that the posting was a copyright infringement. But after FairTest showed the letter to reporters, the College Board backed down, calling it a mistake by a junior staff member.
With all of the recent changes in standardized testing (for instance the imminent roll-out of the new, longer GRE) it seems important to have an organization such as this.
I attended a seminar on plagiarism last week that actually raised NEW ideas about this issue. There was a great deal of information covered, but one question I had at the end was the relationship between plagiarism in written work and plagiarism in oral assignments. Although I eventually convince students of the importance of citing sources in papers, it seems that the ephemeral nature of presentations leaves them believing that it is less important to do so in those assignments. This is coupled with the fact that style sheets never deal with oral citation–and, yet, it seems more and more professors are assigning oral presentations in their classrooms (arts, science, business, etc.). Do you think there are different issues at stake related to plagiarism when dealing with presentations—particularly when students AREN’T using PowerPoint? Should we use different strategies with our students when teaching them about oral citation? I’ve thought about creating a “style sheet” for presentations that includes different examples of ways to note authors and sources. Does anyone out there already have such a tool?
The strike in NYC has me thinking about an assignment for a course on communication or a communication-intensive course. Students would collect the public documents, videos, publications, and press conferences related to the strike and trace the communication styles of the two sides and the press, mayor, etc. Students would identify what kinds of rhetoric each uses, its effectiveness, how different sides stop the communication flow, etc.
After a one-day conference last week in which we discussed making assignments relative to a student’s personal experience, this seems like an interesting idea. I’m sure other communities have similar public disputes they could use.
Have any of you heard of the organization Teachers & Writers Collaborative? I was just looking at their site and it looks like they have good information and a smart program. Their basic premise is that professional writers can offer writing teachers innovative pedagogical tools. They offer workshops, publish books, have a resource library and center, and run the online forum WriteNet. Most these tools are aimed at teaching K-12, but some of their ideas seem valuable for undergraduate teaching. This approach is similar to one that many college theatre programs take — hiring professional practitioners to teach students — and I know some college writing programs do this as well. Has anyone ever used their books or resources, or do you know more about this organization?
Interesting article in the NYT on some of the ways colleges are using the SAT essays. For instance, I didn’t know that college admissions offices can download a student’s SAT test essay from the College Board. I think it is a little troubling that a number of colleges said “they would use the SAT essay to evaluate whether students had received outside help on their application essays in cases where there appeared to be discrepancies in the applicants’ writing levels.” I think this brings up issues of genre (won’t a personal essay often be better because it is something about which the student feels passionately?), but also issues related to editing, revising, writing under timed conditions versus a drafting process, etc. I’m not sure that I agree with the argument that “basic writing and organizational skills should be consistent between the two samples.” But, in many ways, our work with the diagnostics functions under a similar assumption. I’d be interested to hear from others.
Recent Comments
RSS