EduBlog Insights

The current issue (May 2008) of Educational Leadership is
terrific. The theme is “Reshaping High Schools.”

Bob Wise, former Governor of
West Virginia and the President of the Alliance for Excellent Education, kicks
it off with an article “High schools at the Tipping Point” which zeroes in on
the choice the United States faces:

“Do nothing to fix a broken high school system and watch our
competitiveness further decline, or summon the political will to demand change.”

“Put Understanding First” by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
addresses the high school curriculum and how it should start with the long-term goals of schooling: meaning making and transfer of learning

This publication is packed with many other good articles. Be sure to read it!

Yep, I’m still dreaming. Dare to Dream - that’s my motto! I read an article in Classroom Leadership and it ties right in with my post yesterday. The article is Bridging the Gap

assess the effects of their choices.

Then the author gave the following examples to make it work in the classroom:

You can help students make links between learning and life by

doing some of the following:

• Start a schoolwide dream initiative. This jumpstarts the focus of

  connecting dreams to education and creates a support system for students to

  embrace the concept and make the right choices.

• Make a dream poster. This provides a visual representation of the

  future students want and the steps they need to take to achieve it.

• Write a dream speech or newspaper headline. This exercise allows

  students to look into the future and write about what they see themselves

  accomplishing. As a follow-up exercise, they would write the steps they need to

  take to achieve this dream.

• Fill-in-the-blank survey. You can create a survey that the student

  would complete talking about her future. For example:

  When I become 25, I would like to ___________________ with

  my life. I would like to do this because________________. I need to

  ________________ while I am in school because ________________________.

  It’s important to help students make connections between

  today’s education and tomorrow’s ambition. When they do so, there is a higher

  level of enthusiasm about school and students make choices that will result in

  more promising futures.

This would be great starters for the school-wide weblog seeking out student voices!I sure like the connections Coach D

blogging!
—–

There’s an excellent post pointing to Free online journals on Martin Terre Blanche’s Collaborative Learning Environments.

I got lost in the maze as I was wandering through some really good journals. I did come across an article listed under ‘current practice’in E-Journal of Instructional Science & Technology . It was ‘Blogs as Electronic Learning Journals’ by Laurie Armstrong and Dr. Marsha Berry.

This paper discusses the ability of blogs to integrate the personal aspect of a journal to document the student’s learning journey and the resulting effects.

I can’t find this article online but Syllabus has a good article about blogging entitled “Campus Communications & The Wisdom of Blogging”  by Sarah Roberts of Duke University.  Some excerpts:

The number of uses for blogs are limitless.  As a tool for extending learning and encouraging communication and community, blogs are expertly designed to seamlessly integrate the endeavors of many students and faculty.

Consider the undergraduate year-abroad experience.  What if students could have a place to chronicle their experiences in these different cultures and countries?  A homepage for all active blogs by students abroad could be created, featurning the most recent entries and breakdowns by class, year, program or country of study.

In other arenas, blogs could be used to continue particularly lively class discussions cut short by an in-class schedule.  Students could further their arguments with links to other information and evidence to support their positions.

In the pedagogical realm, the uses of blogs are only limited by the imagination.

In the classroom, a professor might document hs or her personal research and allow students to follow their progress via the project’s blog.  Student blogs - the spontaneous transmission of ideas, analysis, knowledge - could be a valuable mechanism for preserivng information for the research community.

The rise of blogging suggests new ways to think about collaboration and communication in the university setting.

New ways to think - it resonates with me.  I was delighted to see an article that included so many possibilities in the university setting.

See the comment below - the article is online now and Stephen Harlow is kind enough to link to it.  Thanks, Stephen!