PEDABLOGUE - December 2003 Archives

December 2003

EdBlogger 2003 - WebLog-Ed did some post-year reflecting on blogs in education over the past year and in it's great hot list of best edublogs of the year, includes Pedablogue as "Higher Ed Blogger Who Best Translates to K-12" (in a tie with the illustrious Dan Mitchell and productive Ken Smith (tie)). WOW!... (10:15 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Time Management for Teachers - Over the break, my colleague, Lee Tobin-McClain had an article come out in The Chronicle of Higher Ed (I think this is #4 for her at The Chronicle!). It's a great self-help piece on Time Management for New Faculty. Highly recommended reading! (I'm the guy she mentions who usually doesn't... (09:59 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)

End of Year Reflection - I started this blog in September, at the beginning of the school year. Now that the term is over, I've got two books I've gotta finish editing, a new course syllabus to finish up, and graduate program classes and workshops to prepare (our graduate program residencies are held over the... (14:12 | 0 Trackbacks | 6 Comments)

An "A" Paper is... - "The sure mark of an A paper is that you will find yourself telling someone else about it." -- Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning "...an A+ is a touchdown that got the crowd to its feet -- a forty-yard pass play or a seventy-yard run from scrimmage.... (13:52 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation - My colleague Dennis Jerz recently posted about the current (and continuing) controversy about Powerpoint literacy sparked by Edward Tufte. I've only seen a few Powerpoint presentations that have had me riveted; most of the time I find the slides unnecessary and distracting supplements to the speech (at best) and often... (11:57 | 0 Trackbacks | 7 Comments)

Gun and Pencil: Book Buyback for Baghdad? - "Some students would put guns on their desk to take the test," says Dr. Hafudh Alwan, assistant dean of the political science department at Baghdad University. "Once, one was cheating and when I told him to stop, he said, 'Leave me alone or I will take this pen and... (15:52 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)

Missing Freshman Comp? - This year is the first time in years that I have not had a freshman composition class on my teaching load, as part of a one-time development and renewal release from the class. As a writer and an English professor, naturally this is a course I enjoy and would dare... (10:28 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)

Online Education Journals - Today's Education Week features coverage of the rise in online academic journals and includes a link to 100 educational research publications that are available online, care of the American Research Association. (This seems like such a useful resource on pedagogy, I thought I'd blog it real quickly...)... (18:47 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)

Cellphone Cheating - And to think, I'm annoyed if I even hear a cell phone RING in my class.... After reading the CS Monitor for my entry below, I found another article on the rise of cell phone cheating in the classroom. Obviously, these phones can vibrate so that the teacher won't hear... (16:22 | 0 Trackbacks | 4 Comments)
The REAL School of Rock - Today's Christian Science Monitor has a neat story on schoolhouse rock and rollers, learning in an innovative music education program called "Little Kids Rock." David Wish, leader of the program, dislikes comparisons to the recent Jack Black movie School of Rock, but regardless, Little Kids Rock sounds like something too... (10:51 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)

For the record.... - For the record.... I am not the new user named "Ped A. Blogue" on Live Journal, keeper of the blog Class. Diss. Missed. Though I do admire her name.... (13:50 | 0 Trackbacks | 3 Comments)

Good Job! Not! - After posting about the issues Alfie Kohn takes with grade inflation, I became enthralled with the education activist's articles against accountability standards and common practices in education. One article attacked a habit of mine (and many others) that hit me where it hurts: "Five Reasons to Stop Saying 'Good Job!'".... (09:23 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)

Is Grade Inflation a Myth? - At a recent meeting of our Faculty Senate, we received another good statistical presentation on grade inflation, updating us on where we stand since last year. The good news was that Seton Hill has actually seen a decrease in the overall GPA awarded compared to last year... this (probably) means... (19:44 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)

A Class Anthology - Every time I teach Poetry Writing, I put together an online anthology of student work (they submit their favorites and I post them). This term's class wrote several poems on four shared themes: "Birth | School | Work | Death" I used to have just one theme ("school", inspired by... (15:37 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)