English Education Professor

Wildly entertainting Podcast from NYT Ethicist.
Character does not prevent cheating: Social context does, according to experiments. So, classroom teachers need to create ethical communities.

Wildly entertainting Podcast from NYT Ethicist.
Character does not prevent cheating: Social context does, according to experiments. So, classroom teachers need to create ethical communities.

tiddlyspot

Your own wiki in seconds
Get your own powerful personal wiki in seconds with no installation required. Update it online and offline.

Hiveminder – Get busy!

What is Hiveminder?

Hiveminder is a webservice that helps you keep track of all of your to do lists in one convenient place. It’s easy to make new lists quickly or to share tasks with anyone in your hive of friends, family, and co-workers. Hiveminder makes it easy to see only the tasks you’re looking for and to sync your lists with your life. Whether you’re planning your honeymoon, streamlining your business, or just trying to make it through the semester, Hiveminder has the tools you need to get busy! What is a “braindump?” These “braindump” boxes allow you to quickly type out tasks as they occur to you so that you don’t forget them, and the tasks are then added to your To Do list. You can always add information to or organize them later, but at least they’re out of your head.

Heard from Benjamin Barber on the Tavis Smiley Show:

————- 

Civility is critical to Democracy, but it is not a skill taught any more.

————-

Wordorigins.org: The Big List

Most commonly misspelt / misspelled words in English

From Education World, What can teachers do to help develop mastery-oriented students — students who will face a challenge rather than be overwhelmed by it?

Students who are mastery-oriented think about learning, not about proving how smart they are. When they experience a setback, they focus on effort and strategies instead of worrying that they are incompetent.

This leads directly to what teachers can do to help students become more master-oriented: Teachers should focus on students’ efforts and not on their abilities. When students succeed, teachers should praise their efforts or their strategies, not their intelligence. (Contrary to popular opinion,

_________________ 

praising intelligence backfires by making students overly concerned with how smart they are and overly vulnerable to failure.
_________________

When students fail, teachers should also give feedback about effort or strategies — what the student did wrong and what he or she could do now. We have shown that this is a key ingredient in creating mastery-oriented students.

In other words, teachers should help students value effort. Too many students think effort is only for the inept. Yet sustained effort over time is the key to outstanding achievement.

In a related vein, teachers should teach students to relish a challenge. Rather than praising students for doing well on easy tasks, they should convey that doing easy tasks is a waste of time. They should transmit the joy of confronting a challenge and of struggling to find strategies that work.

Finally, teachers can help students focus on and value learning. Too many students are hung up on grades and on proving their worth through grades. Grades are important, but learning is more important.