CUR Institute: Mentorship, Collaboration and Undergraduate Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities

March 23-25, 2012

Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI

This workshop will bring together teams of three to five faculty members and administrators engaged in enhancing undergraduate research opportunities at their home institutions, focusing on undergraduate research as faculty development, student-based inquiry and institutional support structure. The three days will consist of plenary lectures presented by facilitators associated with CUR interspersed with individual team meetings with CUR mentors. Faculty and administrators from disciplines throughout the social sciences and humanities will spend the weekend discussing models of undergraduate research, mentorship and collaboration; what "research" and "mentorship" mean in different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities; assessing the value of undergraduate research; and means of augmenting funding for undergraduate research internally and externally.


Application Deadline: February 3, 2012.


For more information about this institute, please visit http://www.cur.org/institutes/socscihum.html


Council on Undergraduate Research
734 15th St, NW, Suite 550
Washington, DC 20005
http://www.cur.org/
cur@cur.org
(202)783-4810
(202)783-4811 fax

CUR Institute: Mentorship, Collaboration and Undergraduate Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Lesson Planet: Digital Learning Day and 21st Century Skills

http://www.lessonplanet.com/article/education/digital-learning-day-and-21st-century-skills



Digital Learning is any instructional practice which uses technology to enhance your students learning experience.

By Greg Harrison

Posted January 23, 2012

February 1st has been named Digital Learning Day. Given the explosion in the use of technology in our classrooms, homes, and as part of social communication, dedicating a day to this topic seems only fitting.



21st Century skills go hand-in-hand with Digital Learning Day. They both have the same purpose: to explore how teachers can provide students with the skills they need to succeed in school, in a career, and in life. In this article, I'm going to propose an activity you can do with your students that combines these two relatively new schools of thought when it comes to teaching and learning.


21st Century Skills and Persuasive Writing
Two of the basic tenets of 21st Century Skills involve communication and the development of life skills. The basic focus of Digital Learning is incorporating technology into your students' experience. By combining these goals, you can help your students communicate effectively while using technology.


Learning how to organize, compose, and present a persuasive piece of writing is, to me, a very important life skill. The teaching of persuasive writing can easily utilize the most widely-used technological piece of all - the computer! The activity below would be suitable for upper-elementary to high school students.


The Beauty of the Written Word
One of the greatest pieces of persuasive writing ever penned was written by the great Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence contains all of the elements of a good piece of persuasive writing; a thesis statement, a series of ideas to support it, arguments and examples, and a very compelling conclusion.


In order to have your students delve into an exploration of this topic, give each of your students a copy of The Declaration of Independence and put them in groups of four. Have them use a highlighter to find the thesis, the three most compelling ideas to support it, at least two supporting facts or examples, and the conclusion. Have each group share what they found with the class.


After this warm-up, assign students a simple task for homework; they must think of a topic for a persuasive essay. The topics MUST be student suggestions. The persuasive essays will be much better if the topics are something students find interesting and compelling. Some sample topics are:
•Why I should be able to get a puppy.
•Why homework should be abolished.
•Who should be elected as our next President.
•Why skiing (or a sport of their choice) is the best sport ever.


Using the Persuasion Map
I discovered an excellent interactive graphic organizer called the Persuasion Map, which enables students to easily organize their ideas for a piece of persuasive writing. Using the computer, students type in their thesis statement, three compelling reasons which support their thesis statement, three facts or examples which support each reason, and a conclusion. Using the Persuasion Map, students can edit, save, and print their work. Once the map is completed, students can use it as a guide when writing their persuassive essay on the computer. If there is time, have your students share their final product with the class. The essays are then compiled into a "Persuasive Essay Book," which can be shared with other students, parents, teachers, and used during SSR time. Below are some other excellent lessons that would be great to use during during the upcoming Digital Learning Day.


Digital Learning Day Lesson Plans: Technology At Work
This lesson is designed for early to upper elementary students. The main thrust of the lesson is to show students that "technology" isn't a new idea. It's been around since the beginning of time! Students utilize the Internet to compile a list of the ten technological advances they think are the most important in human history. Each group creates a timeline with their choices.


Teach Your Parents Well
In this absolutely marvelous middle school to high school lesson from The New York Times, students develop a course outline which teaches adults (their parents), about a relevant technology popular with today’s youth. The courses may be created using web sites, multimedia devices, digital cameras, cell phones, text messaging, or other uses of technology in contemporary culture.


Introduction of Self
In this fabulous lesson designed for middle-schoolers, students create a video reflection that introduces them to the rest of the class. This lesson is meant to be used at the very beginning of the school year, and utilizes the most popular form of technology (the video), in a creative and meaningful way.

And The Winner Is.......
In this excellent lesson designed for high schoolers, students are introduced to The Nobel Prize for Literature. Then, students work in pairs to learn about people who have won this famous prize. They do research on an individual, and create a PowerPoint presentation. This high-level lesson requires students to access and utilize a wide variety of technological tools.

Lesson Planet: Digital Learning Day and 21st Century Skills

Chronicle of Higher Education: Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/tenured-professor-departs-stanford-u-hoping-to-teach-500000-students-at-online-start-up/35135?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed

January 23, 2012, 4:53 pm

By Nick DeSantis

The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his tenured position to aim for an even bigger audience.
Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital – Life – Design conference in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters.

During his talk, Mr. Thrun explored the origins of his popular online course at Stanford, which initially featured videos produced with nothing more than “a camera, a pen and a napkin.” Despite the low production quality, many of the 200 Stanford students taking the course in the classroom flocked to the videos because they could absorb the lectures at their own pace. Eventually, the 200 students taking the course in person dwindled to a group of 30. Meanwhile, the course’s popularity exploded online, drawing students from around the world. The experience taught the professor that he could craft a course with the interactive tools of the Web that recreated the intimacy of one-on-one tutoring, he said.
Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move was motivated in part by teaching practices that evolved too slowly to be effective. During the era when universities were born, “the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digitial media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago,” he said.

He concluded by telling the crowd that he couldn’t continue teaching in a traditional setting. “Having done this, I can’t teach at Stanford again,” he said.
One of Udacity’s first offerings will be a seven-week course called “Building a Search Engine.” It will be taught by David Evans, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Virginia and a Udacity partner. Mr. Thrun said it is designed to teach students with no prior programming experience how to build a search engine like Google. He hopes 500,000 students will enroll.

Teaching the course at Stanford, Mr. Thrun said, showed him the potential of digital education, which turned out to be a drug that he could not ignore.
“I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. “And you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.”

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Chronicle of Higher Education: Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up

FREE Oxford University Press Webinar - LYRASIS member exclusive

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Please join us for an exclusive product demo from Oxford University Press, exclusively for LYRASIS members. This online demo is a great way to get first-hand experience with Oxford's resources and ask questions directly from the vendor. 

Simply follow this link to register today.  Access details will be emailed directly to you.  Please note that due to the tight schedule, each product demonstration will start on time according to the below schedule.  Attendees may drop in and drop out at any time.

Wednesday, February 8, 3 - 4:30 p.m. ET

• 3:00 PM-3:15 PM: University Press Scholarship Online
• 3:15 PM-3:30 PM: Oxford Bibliographies
• 3:30 PM-3:55 PM: Online Art & Music Online Resources
• 3:55 PM-4:00 PM: Break
• 4:00 PM-4:20 PM: Oxford's Online Dictionaries
• 4:20 PM-4:30 PM: Introducing the Oxford Index

FREE Oxford University Press Webinar - LYRASIS member exclusive

eLearners: Top Career Skills Gained from Distance Learning

Top Career Skills Gained from Distance Learning

Distance learning requires focus, dedication, and organization — all useful in both the classroom and the conference room. Earning your degree online offers more than flexibility and convenience. You also may gain some valuable skills that could be put to use at work. Without being able to use your voice or body language in an online class, your written communication skills become essential. Whether writing project outlines, status reports, or emails, the ability to write clearly and concisely could be highly desirable in any employee. Juggling work, kids, everyday errands, and school requires excellent time management skills. An employee with the ability to stay focused, meet deadlines, and keep it all together may be an asset. Online students develop a high level of comfort using the Internet and computers for class. Organizations increasingly depend on computer technology to conduct business. Having strong computer skills means being able to use today's tools to get the job done.

eLearners: Top Career Skills Gained from Distance Learning

Simple K12 FREE Webinar: Watch What's New In The Teacher Learning Community

http://simplek12.com/tlc/mh2zp/

Simple K12 FREE Webinar: Watch What's New In The Teacher Learning Community

#OCL4Ed: Another free professional development opportunity from the OER Foundation and Ako Aotearoa

OER Foundation & Wikieducator

http://wikieducator.org/images/0/05/OCL4ED_poster-2012-01.pdf

#OCL4Ed

Another free professional development opportunity from the OER Foundation and Ako Aotearoa
23 - 27 January 2012

http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About

Open content licensing for educators is a free online workshop designed for educators and students who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.
The course materials were developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from UNESCO. The course will provide prerequisite knowledge required by educators to legally remix open education materials and help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses.
This free workshop is sponsored by Ako Aotearoa, a strategic partner member of the OER Foundation and scheduled for 23 - 27 January 2012.
Participants will need approximately 1 hour for each day of the workshop at a time which suits your own schedule.

today and share the gift of knowledge
The course will be hosted using the OER Foundation's Moodle website.

1. If you are familiar with Moodle, you can go directly and register for the course (Create an account and click on the "Enrol me in this course" link on the left-hand side of your screen.)
2. If you are not sure how to register, consult these guidelines for getting started.
3. Share the gift of knowledge and invite your friends and colleagues to join us for this inaugural workshop. We aim to break a world record for hosting the largest free workshop on open content licensing. Send them a link to this url: http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About

#OCL4Ed: Another free professional development opportunity from the OER Foundation and Ako Aotearoa