Homeland Security Affairs: Article - Changing Homeland Security: Shape Patterns, Not Programs
An article that is attracting some attention because of its applicability to much more than homeland security. I think it has something to offer our curriculum development efforts.
Interesting questions about the past and future of what it means to be literate.
What's the test of a good school? - Telegraph
Article with some strong connections to our current ELP curriculum reform efforts -- found and passed on by Chris Gallagher.
How writing and the teaching of writing appear to be undergoing a major change. "That change is spelled out clearly by the National Council of Teachers of English, which last year published “new literacies” for readers and writers in the 21st century. Among those literacies are the ability to “build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally,” to “design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes,” and to “create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts.” Very little of that kind of work is possible to achieve without expanding the way we think about writing instruction in the context of online social tools."
Lyrics Training - Improving your foreign languages skills
Site that provides music videos with subtitled lyrics. The lyrics have words missing and students try to fill them in as they listen to the songs. Available for several languages. it might be fun to have students create their own and share.
Site that presents a variety of arguments, many taken from real life such as arguments made in support of not extraditing "a famous film director" from Switzerland to the US, and then presents multiple choice options for why the argument is flawed. After you choose what you think the flaw is, you get feedback on whether you were right or wrong and why.
Currents - Stitching the World Together - NYTimes.com
Interesting analysis of today's global pioneers and pilgrims. It might be good to ask ICU students which of the categories, if any, they feel they do or might someday belong to as well as what other categories they can think of.
Donald Clark Plan B: Massive increase in words consumed
interesting statistics on exposure to words and how we are exposed to them.
There is a wealth of good lecture material out there.
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Danish pupils use web in exams
"Students are no longer required to regurgitate facts and figures. Instead the emphasis is on their ability to sift through and analyse information."
Doesn't sound too bad to me.
Gideon Shalwick — The Meta Workings Of An Online Entrepreneur
Blog site with a short how-to explanation of using a free web service called UStreamtv to embed streaming video in a blog. Could have some nice applications for teacher-student and student-student interaction outside of class.
Tony Bates Using Technology to improve the cost-effectiveness of the academy Part 2
Second part of Tony Bates' article on the future of higher education. Has a good summary list at the end.
Using technology to improve the cost-effectiveness of the academy: Part 1 « Tony Bates
The first part of a good consideration of how university education may change in the near future and the role that technology will play in those changes.Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching
Insightful paper on using CMS like Moodle and Blackboard
Wonderful and extensive collection of information on instructional design.
http://ihec-djc.blogspot.com/2009/09/social-learning-sites-and-online.html
This is a good list of online language learning sites and resources
Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard - Chronicle.com
but then we knew this already.....
Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers - Chronicle.com
A question this article brings to my mind is why can't academic writing be for a wide audience? Perhaps melding traditional academic writing with the broad reach and audience of the internet is what we should be working on.
Op-Ed Contributor - End the University as We Know It - NYTimes.com
Is the ELP a model for the university of the future? We seem to fit some of the recommendations in this article. However, there are ideas here that would be good for us to consider as well.
ZaidLearn: Do You Want To Learn English As A Second Language?
Nice aggregation of on-line ESL sites
