Wednesday, August 18, 2010
DU Athletics S.A.L.T. Fall 2010
August 17, 2010
Dear Scholar-Athletes:
I hope that you had a great summer and you are ready to being the new school year with focus and determination. In order to help you get off to a great start, we have planned our annual Scholar-Athlete Leadership Training (S. A. L. T.) to be held on Saturday, August 28, 2010from 8 am to 5 pm. This training is mandatory for all scholar-athletes.
Our special guest this year is Felicia Hall Allen and Associates. I have attached a copy of her bio for your information. Ms. Hall will lead us through team building exercises that will prepare us to meet all of our goals in the classroom and in competition. You will hear more details in the next week from your coaches. I have purchased some really nice gifts for you this year! I am anticipating a successful year.
We will see you soon!
Sincerely,
Kiki Baker Barnes
Athletic Director
Kiki Baker Barnes, M. S.
Dillard University
Athletic Director/Head Women's Basketball Coach
2601 Gentilly Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70122
504-816-4953 (office)
504-816-4365 (fax)
kbarnes@dillard.edu
www.dillardbleudevils.com
Click here for more information about Felicia Hall Allen and Associates. http://feliciahallallen.com/
Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Report: U.S. K-12 Schools Failing To Educate Black Males
Despite the occasional success in closing the achievement gap, America’s K-12 educational system does a wholly inadequate job of educating Black males, as evidenced in large disparities in the graduation rate between Black males and their White counterparts.
So says a new report being released today from the Cambridge, Mass.-based Schott Foundation for Public Education.
“The harsh reality is that systemically most states and too many districts don’t provide the necessary, targeted resources or supports for all students’ educational success,” Schott Foundation president John H. Jackson states in the report, titled Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males. “We have too often settled for the sweet taste of minor success over stomaching the bitter taste of the reality that without systemic reform we are winning some battles, but largely still losing the war.”
The report singled out New Jersey as the only state with a significant Black male population with a higher than 65 percent high school graduation rate and attributed this to the greater per pupil spending and instructional time that came about as a result of the Abbot v. Burke lawsuit filed by the Education Law Center. The 1981 lawsuit claimed the state had failed to meet its constitutional obligation to provide a “thorough and efficient” education to students in poor, urban school districts.
The Schott report singled out six states—New York, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana—as having the worst graduation outcomes based on a mathematical formula known as the Schott Education Inequity Index, which ranks states by subtracting the graduation rate among Black males from 100 percent, then adding that amount to the difference, or the “gap,” in graduation rates between Black males and White males.
The Schott report, including its remedies and overall framework, drew varying degrees of both criticism and praise from education experts and commentators familiar with the Schott approach.
Ellen Winn, director of the Education Equality Project, says she keeps the annually-released Schott report on Black males on her desk because of its value as a resource tool for those concerned with closing the achievement gap.
“They are telling the honest story about what’s going on with African-American boys in our country, which is horrendous,” Winn said. “Too often that tragic story can get hidden.”
However, Janks Morton, a Washington, D.C.-based author, filmmaker whose work deals primarily with Black men and boys in the United States, criticized the report for its emphasis on Black educational deficits.
Morton is known for his public repudiation of the widespread belief that there are more Black men in prison than in college, a claim that gets repeated in the latest Schott report, which states “the rate at which Black males are being pushed out of school and into the pipeline to prison far exceeds the rate at which they are graduating and reaching high levels of academic achievement.”
“They really uplift and expose the less desirable portions of the negative statistics about Black boys,” said Morton, who has studied previous Schott reports on public education and Black males. “That garners a lot of attention and support.”
Morton said the low graduation rates among Black males can be complicated by other factors, such as Black single parents moving out of school districts and thus making it appear as if their child has dropped out. He also said many Black male students ultimately graduate from high school but not in the conventional manner or timeframe. Morton said by emphasizing the educational deficits of Black males, the Schott Foundation appeals to a certain ethos in American culture in which privileged individuals like to see themselves as heroic rescuers of the less fortunate.
Schott Foundation president John H. Jackson said the report is meant to illustrate how America’s school system is systematically disenfranchising Black males.
“Whenever you see a trend that is identifiable by race and gender, then we have to ask questions around the systemic challenges,” Jackson said. “So the fact that you see 46 out of 50 states, you see the Black male at the bottom of graduation indicators, seems to indicate to me beyond just personal drive.”
“There’s a need for resources by which this population can be successful,” Jackson continued. “If it’s just a matter of personal drive, we shouldn’t be able to identify by race or ethnicity who has more or less.”
However, Morton says one factor that explains racial disparities in educational achievement is whether children are being raised in single- or two-parent households. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids County Data Center, 65 percent of Black children are being raised in single-parent households versus 23 percent of White children.
“Basically, those (children) from two-parent homes outperform those from single-parent homes, hands down,” Morton said.
Morton also took exception to the report’s recommendation for greater resources to be invested in public education as a means of narrowing the achievement gap.
“The highest per capita expenditures in this country are African-American urban districts,” Morton said, using D.C.’s public school system as an example where poor outcomes for Black students persist despite the fact that it has one of the highest rates of per pupil spending in the country--$16,353 in fiscal 2008, second only to New Jersey, which spent $17,620 the same year, and far beyond the average $10,978 that high-poverty urban districts spent in the 2006-2007 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“They’re getting money,” Morton said. “The problem is that the bureaucracy, teachers unions and other functions of that system do not allow for the trickle down that it’s intended for, and that’s the students.”
Winn, of the Education Equality Project, agreed that greater investments don’t necessarily lead to better outcomes.
“Unfortunately, that’s not really the case,” Winn said.
Magna Publications: New programs to round out your faculty orientation
New Faculty Orientation Checklist
Review handbook
Discuss department goals
Establish classroom policies & procedures
Explain syllabus policy
Show New Faculty Orientation Programs
Special Offer:
Just in time for the new school year, we've put together a special bundle featuring four 20 Minute Mentor programs that will help new instructors succeed right from the start. Each program features a 20-minute video presentation, plus 3 to 8 pages of supplemental materials, a copy of the PowerPoint presentation and the transcript. It’s all delivered in a convenient CD package so that it can be viewed during your next faculty orientation or departmental meeting.
No faculty orientation meeting is complete without Magna's 20 Minute Mentor programs. Each 20 Minute Mentor provides practical advice for tackling some of the trickiest classroom issues.
The New Faculty Orientation 4-pack includes:
• How Should I Respond to Wrong (or Not Very Good) Answers? presented by Maryellen Weimer, Ph.D.
• How Do I Discuss Academic Integrity During the First Class? presented by Gary Pavela
• How Can I Clarify Fuzzy Learning Goals? presented by Linda Suskie
• What if a Student Asks a Question I Can’t Answer? presented by Therese Huston, Ph.D.
Get all four of these 20 Minute Mentor programs for only $299! That’s a savings of $100 if you purchased the programs separately. This offer is only good through September 30, 2010 so order today!
Faculty Focus: Save Time and Teach Better with Screencasting
By: John Orlando, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
It is critical to spend time training your students how to properly use the systems you’ve adopted into your teaching repertoire. A common fallacy is to believe that because students today are “digital natives”—meaning that they grew up with technology—they are good at using any technology. I’ve found that students’ understanding of technology is narrow and deep. They are very adept at text messaging and navigating Facebook, but they are not versed in using blogs, wikis, document sharing systems, and the like.
Assuming that your students will pick up a new technology on their own is a recipe for disaster. You must also be explicit about how you want them to use these systems to avoid them going off in the wrong direction.
Training your students in the use of technology need not be time consuming. The secret is to only do it once—it becomes time consuming when you need to repeat the training over and over.
You can take time in class to demonstrate how to use a system, but what about the students who miss class that day, or simply forget parts of the presentation? You can write out the steps for an online class, but seeing how something is done is far more effective in learning a process than reading about it.
Happily, it is very easy to make a screencast that walks people through the process and allows them to view it as often as they need. I’ve found that it takes far less time to make a screencast of a process than to write out the directions. I’ve also found that I get far fewer questions about a process with a screencast than written directions.
I make screencasts to explain nearly any task to students or colleagues. For instance, if I make a spreadsheet for my boss or others, I’ll accompany it by a two or three minute screencast pointing out which cells contain which information. This saves a lot of time explaining things later. I also make screencasts showing students how to post to the class blog and wiki, and allow them to view them on their own.
Screencasting only requires a microphone, which are built into some laptops, and if not can be purchased for around $30. The system will record your mouse movements and everything you do on the screen while you describe the process. There are numerous free and easy to use systems, and sites to post the results for your audience to watch or download at their leisure.
Once you start screencasting, you won’t want to stop. Have fun!
Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.
Links to Free Screencasting Software for Teachers
Jing ( http://www.jingproject.com ): An excellent system from TechSmith which allows users to make five-minute screencaptures and either download the videos or post them to screencast.com.
ScreenJelly ( http://www.screenjelly.com/ ): Allows for 3 minute videos that can be shared by email or Twitter.
ScreenR ( http://screenr.com/ ): Make screencasts without downloading any software.
Screencast-O-Matic ( http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ ): Allows for up to 15 minute screencasts that are hosted on the site or uploaded to YouTube.
John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.
Permalink: http://www.facultyfocus.com?p=14790
2010 U.S. News & World Report Ranks the Nation’s Colleges and Universities
Each year U.S. News & World Report ranks the nation’s colleges and universities primarily for academic quality. The top tier includes 197 schools. A separate listing ranks historically black colleges and universities. The rankings of the universities in Louisiana and the Southeastern Conference are:
TOP TIER UNIVERSITIES
1. Harvard University.
2. Princeton University.
3. Yale University.
4. Columbia University.
17. Vanderbilt University.
51. Tulane University.
53. University of Florida.
56. University of Georgia.
79. University of Alabama.
85. Auburn University.
104. University of Tennessee.
111. University of South Carolina.
124. LSU
129. University of Kentucky.
129. University of Kentucky.
132. University of Arkansas.
143. University of Mississippi.
151. Mississippi State University.
SECOND TIER
Louisiana Tech University.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
University of New Orleans.
TOP BLACK COLLEGES
6. Xavier University.
9. Dillard University.
34. Southern University.
34. Grambling State University.
SECOND TIER BLACK SCHOOLS
Southern University at New Orleans.
Source: U.S. News & World Report
International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (IJTLHE)
The International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (ISSN 1812-9129) provides a forum for higher education faculty, staff, administrators, researchers, and students who are interested in improving post-secondary instruction. The IJTLHE provides broad coverage of higher education pedagogy and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) across diverse content areas, educational institutions, and levels of instructional expertise. The specific emphasis of IJTLHE is the dissemination of knowledge for improving higher education pedagogy. Electronic distribution of IJTLHE maximizes global availability.
All manuscripts submitted to the IJTLHE should be in accordance with the journal’s purpose - to encourage the study, development, application, and evaluation of higher education pedagogy. All manuscripts are refereed (blind) using a peer-review process involving at least two reviewers. The review process typically takes approximately three months.
Finally, the IJTLHE is a publication of the International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning (ISETL). The mission of ISETL is to encourage the study of instruction and principles of learning in order to implement practical, effective methods of teaching and learning; promote the application, development, and evaluation of such methods; and foster the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning among practicing post-secondary educators.
ITHAKA Sustainable Scholarship Conference 2010
ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and networking technologies. We serve scholars, researchers and students by providing the content, tools, and services needed to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. We are committed to working in collaboration with other organizations to maximize benefits to our stakeholders.
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