“Camera shy” is not the first phrase that comes to my mind for Siva Vaidhyanathan. The University of Virginia faculty member commands healthy fees for his lively presentations on media studies and law at conferences, and he has even appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. But he’s not sure if he should record his lectures—or if he does, whether he should share them freely online.

An associate professor who focuses on digital media, Mr. Vaidhyanathan regularly teaches and writes enthusiastically about movements to make music, movies, and other creative works free online. I thought he’d be one of the first people to advocate open access to lectures.

But no. “I find myself playing devil’s advocate all the time” in class, he said. “I don’t want to be on the record saying something I don’t even believe” if the lectures go out on the Web. He considers the classroom a “sacred space” that may need to stay private to preserve academic freedom.

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)

Now when you talk to new teachers—which I do regularly as an education reporter—their biggest complaint is that no one teaches them how to control a classroom. For the small fortune they spend to get a teaching degree, they get plenty of pedagogy (“Reflections on Learning” is a typical course name), which they generally don’t use. But their professors never seem to get around to teaching “Keeping Kids Under Control 101.” Student-teaching stints are typically done in “middle-class districts that are well ordered,” says Aaron M. Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College at Columbia University, and few colleges offer practical training for those planning to work in tougher settings.



The solution is probably not to encourage teachers to bean kids with erasers. But something is needed. Jennifer Scoggins, 32, a New York teacher currently working on her Ph.D., said she had no chance to succeed when she began her first teaching job in 2001. She was asked to take over a second-grade class in Harlem midyear—after several other teachers had given up. The kids were out of control when she arrived, and things never improved. “Chairs were being thrown, kids were stabbing each other with pencils,” she said. “I felt absolutely like a total failure. The only thing I was proud of was that I never cried in front of the kids. But I cried everywhere else: in supply closets, on the subway, at home.” Even though Scoggins had earned a master’s in education, she said, “very practical things were never taught.”

» via Newsweek

Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.

» via Mashable

chrbutler:

From The Futurist:

How will digital technologies and hyperconnectivity affect learning and the classroom of the future?   We at THE FUTURIST magazine, for our January-February issue, addressed this issue with communications scholar Janna Anderson, an associate professor in Elon University’s School of Communications and the lead author of the “Future of the Internet” book series published by Cambria Press.

In far too many schools, we still “de-skill” students, unplugging them from the mediums they are most comfortable with to teach through methods contemporary to the buggy whip. We unplug our students, believing that laptops, iPods, cellphones, and even whiteboards have no real place in teaching the three Rs. As a result, students fail to see the relevance of their education as they judge the delivery and not the content. In our quest to boost high school graduation numbers and build a more educated workforce, we should be doing everything and anything we can to better connect students to those learning and opportunity pathways. That not only means technology, but it means well-integrated tech.

» via Eduflack » via Mind Dump

givemesomethingtoread:

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data.

“Getting technology tools into the hands of every student and family should be standard practice. It isn’t now,” said the under secretary of the Education Department, Martha J. Kanter, addressing a mix of technologists and educators at the HigherEd Tech Summit here, part of the giant salute to gadgetry known as the Consumer Electronics Show. Nor are best practices for professors to use technology to improve learning standard, Ms. Kanter said: “We have a lot of work to do to make faculty comfortable with technology and ways to use it. We are losing ground.”

But the under secretary was less specific about how the Obama Administration was going to help this happen. Ms. Kanter, who pushed technology programs when she held leadership positions at California community colleges, did mention the education department had $350-million dollars for a grants program in best practices innovation, but did not offer details about how and when such grants would be offered. Some technology executives in the audience noted that private industry was doing a better job identifying and distributing “best practice” modules than the government.

» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)