Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Educause Review Current Issue — Volume 45, Number 4, July/August 2010
The Open Future
Openness as Catalyst for an Educational Reformation
David Wiley
As institutions and as individuals, we seem to have forgotten the core values of education: sharing, giving, and generosity.
The Open Student
Questioning the Future of the Open Student
Vicki Davis
Open content is not yet changing students' lives because there are questions that should be answered first.
The Open Course
Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement
Dave Cormier and George Siemens
Online open courses can leverage communications technologies and open the door to learners to fully engage with the academic process.
The Open Faculty
To Share or Not to Share: Is That the Question?
Maria H. Andersen
Open digital faculty do more than just share and participate in open resources; they transfer their approaches to the teaching space.
The Open Ed Tech
Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle
Brian Lamb and Jim Groom
Has the wave of the open web crested? What does "open educational technology" look like, and does it stand for anything?
The Open World
Access to Knowledge as a Foundation for an Open World
Carolina Rossini
The right to be a creator, the right to govern and develop one's own knowledge, and the right to share with others are fundamental freedoms for the Internet age.
Newsweek: Farewell, Libraries?
Amazon’s report that e-books are outselling hardcovers means book collections—personal and public—are about to get a drastic makeover.
Inside Google Books: Google’s Estimates Approx.146 Million Books (Printed and Bound); 129,864,880 Minus Serials
Thursday, August 05, 2010 at 8:26 AM
Posted by Leonid Taycher, software engineer
Project Muse Adds The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies (Vol 1 No 1) To Collection
The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies
Volume 1, Number 1, 2010
E-ISSN: 2152-9272 Print ISSN: 1947-6574
Faculty Focus: Good Teaching: The Top 10 Requirements
By: Richard W. Leblanc, PhD in Philosophy of Teaching
One. Good teaching is as much about passion as it is about reason. It’s about motivating students not only to learn, but teaching them how to learn, and doing so in a manner that is relevant, meaningful and memorable. It’s about caring for your craft, having a passion for it and conveying that passion to everyone, but mostly importantly to your students.
Two. Good teaching is about substance and treating students as consumers of knowledge. It’s about doing your best to keep on top of your field, reading sources, inside and outside of your areas of expertise, and being at the leading edge as often as possible. But knowledge is not confined to scholarly journals. Good teaching is also about bridging the gap between theory and practice. It’s about leaving the ivory tower and immersing oneself in the field in talking to, consulting with, and assisting practitioners and liaising with their communities.
Three. Good teaching is about listening, questioning, being responsive and remembering that each student and class is different. It’s about eliciting responses and developing the oral communication skills of the quiet students. It’s about pushing students to excel and at the same time it’s about being human, respecting others and being professional at all times.
Four. Good teaching is about not always having a fixed agenda and being rigid, but being flexible, fluid, experimenting, and having the confidence to react and adjust to changing circumstances. It’s about getting only 10 percent of what you wanted to do in a class done and still feeling good. It’s about deviating from the course syllabus or lecture schedule easily when there is more and better learning elsewhere. Good teaching is about the creative balance between being an authoritarian dictator on the one hand and a push-over on the other. Good teachers migrate between these poles at all times depending on the circumstances. They know where they need to be and when.
Five. Good teaching is also about style. Should good teaching be entertaining? You bet! Does this mean that it lacks in substance? Not a chance! Effective teaching is not about being locked with both hands glued to a podium or having your eyes fixated on a slide projector while you drone on. Good teachers work the room and every student in it. They realize that they are the conductors and that the class is their orchestra. All students play different instruments and at varying proficiencies. A teacher’s job is to develop skills and make these instruments come to life as a coherent whole to make music.
Six. And this is very important, good teaching is about humor. It’s about being self-deprecating and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s often about making innocuous jokes, mostly at your own expense, so that the ice breaks and students learn in a more relaxed atmosphere where you, like them, are human with your own share of faults and shortcomings.
Seven. Good teaching is about caring, nurturing and developing minds and talents. It’s about devoting time, often invisible, to every student. It’s also about the thankless hours of grading, designing or redesigning courses and preparing materials to still further enhance instruction.
Eight. Good teaching is supported by strong and visionary leadership, and very tangible institutional support—resources, personnel, and funds. Good teaching is continually reinforced by an overarching vision that transcends the entire organization—from full professors to part-time instructors—and is reflected in what is said, but more importantly by what is done.
Nine. Good teaching is about mentoring between senior and junior faculty, teamwork, and being recognized and promoted by one’s peers. Effective teaching should also be rewarded and poor teaching needs to be remedied through training and development programs.
Ten. At the end of the day, good teaching is about having fun, experiencing pleasure and intrinsic rewards … like locking eyes with a student in the back row and seeing the synapses and neurons connecting, thoughts being formed, the person becoming better, and a smile cracking across a face as learning all of a sudden happens. It’s about the former student who says your course changed her life. It’s about another telling you that your course was the best one he’s ever taken. Good teachers practice their craft not for the money or because they have to, but because they truly enjoy it and because they want to. Good teachers couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Dr. Richard W. Leblanc is an associate professor at York University in Toronto. Contact him at rleblanc@yorku.ca
Learn the Net Your Online Guide
Learn the Net is a privately-held company based in San Francisco, California. The company focuses on delivering high quality educational products and services in print, digital media, and to the desktop and mobile devices via the Internet and intranets.
Learn the Net went online in April, 1996. The site is now widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading guides to the Internet and World Wide Web. It's used extensively as an objective source of Internet training by thousands of educational institutions worldwide, including schools, universities and libraries, as well as corporations and government agencies.
Our field-tested products have garnered numerous industry awards. The editors of Yahoo!Internet Life ranked Learn the Net among the Top 100 Sites in 1999 and 2000. For a look at the early days of this pioneering venture, visit http://www.archive.org/
The White House Blog: Teaching Our Way to a Stronger Economy
Posted by Melody Barnes on August 10, 2010 at 06:54 PM EDT
US Teacher Jobs Data 2010
This week, President Obama visited the University of Texas to discuss the relationship between his goals for America’s higher education system and the future of the American economy. And today, the President took bold action, signing important legislation to provide urgent fiscal relief to school districts across the country to maintain our education system, and to enable 160,000 teachers to keep their jobs.
Over the past several months, President Obama has been working with Congress to pursue this legislation that would prevent so many teachers from returning to their schools and classrooms in the coming months. The legislation signed by the President today marks an investment in our economic prosperity and in our children’s future. Without it, the loss of thousands of jobs by teachers and other education personnel would have rippled through the larger economy and undercut the nation’s recovery.
As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has traveled across the nation to discuss our Administration’s education agenda and our work to deliver a complete and competitive education to all children, he has witnessed firsthand the looming cuts that school districts faced as a result of the current economy.
For example, in Iowa, schools were weighing layoffs of 1,500 education personnel – half of them teachers. Ames, Iowa had planned to cut kindergarten from full-day to half-day – even though research shows that students benefit from extra instruction. One school district in Washington state had plans to cut 10 percent of its teachers. And the Board in Charlotte, North Carolina, voted on a budget that will result in approximately 500 teacher layoff notices.
Today’s bill brings needed relief to these and other communities across the nation. In addition, because the legislation is fully paid for, in part by closing tax loopholes that encourage corporations to ship American jobs overseas, we’ll be able to meet this charge in a manner that does not add to our deficit.
We must place America’s children and the safety of our communities above partisan politics. As the President noted earlier today, “a challenge that affects parents, children and citizens in almost every community in America should not be a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It is an American problem.”
Today’s legislation responds directly to that problem. It lets America’s parents, students, and teachers know that help is on the way. And it delivers hope that they’ll begin a successful and productive year when they return to school this fall.
Melody Barnes is the Director of the Domestic Policy CouncilIn order to compete and win internationally, our nation needs a highly educated workforce that is second to none. Rising levels of education are critical to creating shared economic growth and mobility for every American. And keeping America’s teachers in our classrooms is central to that goal.
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