Diigo bookmarks (weekly)

• The global pressure on education | Inquirer Opinion

  Opinion piece by Randy David for the Philippine Daily Inquirer (2014.03.09).

  tags: education globalization internationalization Japan opinion universities

  • All over the world, there is a growing recognition by governments of the need to produce graduates equipped with global competency—individuals who not only can live and work in foreign cultures but can also navigate the complexities of a world society
  • Japanese industry worries that its own universities are turning out graduates who cannot function in the global system
  • The global pressure on education is exerted primarily by industry but is also coming from families. It takes the form of a demand for high-quality graduates with global knowledge, skills, and values, who can find high-paying jobs and pursue stable careers in the world economy

• John Dewey: The Need for a New Party | New Republic

  "[A] statement of the nature of the need and an account of why it is so generally felt are necessary preliminaries to any discussion of how a new party may grow up and what its program will be" (1931.03.18, ¶1).

  tags: Dewey John NewRepublic political parties politics

• Serif vs. Sans: What’s Right for Your Presentation?

  "if you are going to pursue offline efforts with your deck, then go the Serif route. If you are doing everything online, go the Sans route. If you are unsure, Sans is presently the most modern and popular style of typeface."

  tags: design fonts presentations SlideShare tips

• Higher Education and the Japanese Disease | Nippon.com

  "In an age calling for an increasingly globalized workforce, there is widespread alarm about declining standards in the Japanese education sector. Where do the problems lie? Kariya Takehiko, a sociology professor who has taught at universities in Japan and England, analyzes the current situation."

  tags: education globalization higher education internationalization Japan

  • Japanese universities have become places in which no learning goes on outside the classroom.
  • Japan has suffered a clear decline in the talent and skills of its workforce, precisely when these things are more crucial than ever in an increasingly globalized environment. Although many people realize what is wrong, companies, universities, and the society as a whole have been unable to act to change the system.
  • it is likely that the short-sighted competition for advantage will lead to a further decline in educational standards and a loss of equal opportunities.

• Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed | Alternet

  • costs are multiplied by the number of users

• The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar - Michelle Navarre Cleary - The Atlantic

  "Just as we teach children how to ride bikes by putting them on ... bicycle[s], we need to teach students how to write grammatically by letting them write. Once students get ideas they care about onto the page, they are ready for instruction—including grammar instruction—that will help communicate those ideas" (¶5).

  tags: TheAtlantic college education elementary school grammar languages learning instruction instructional practices research secondary schools teaching universities writing

• Predicting who will publish or perish as career academics

  "Unequivocal" findings are precipitating "strong reactions" (Picking winners and losers, ¶4).

  tags: academic writing academics careers gender gap publication publications

• Language Magazine » Let Learning Emerge

  Introductory article by Diane Larsen-Freeman (March 2014) about lessons to learn from complexity theory, prior to speaking in Portand, OR, at TESOL 2014.

  tags: adaptation complex systems complexity theory inert knowledge interaction language learning Larsen-Freeman Diane power law of practice teaching

  • Although the components that make up a complex system may be many and may be different from each other, what makes a system complex is the quality of emergence. Emergence is “the spontaneous occurrence of something new” (van Geert, 2008, p.182) that arises from the interaction of the components of a complex system, just as a bird flock emerges from the interaction of individual birds.
  • The inert knowledge problem, given its name by Alfred North Whitehead many years ago, refers to the fact that students appear to be able to do something in the classroom at one time but not at a later time. In other words, what they have acquired has become inert — unavailable to use for their own purposes at a later time and place.
  • The power law of practice reflects the fact that the effect of practicing something declines over time. In other words, the immediate benefits of practice of the right kind can be considerable, but as time passes, the effect of continuing to practice falls off dramatically and only makes a more modest contribution to proficiency. This is a nonlinear phenomenon.
  • Sometimes complex systems are referred to as “complex adaptive systems.” Calling them adaptive recognizes their capacity to change in response to a changing environment. One way that I think this characteristic applies to language is through what is called co-adaptation (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Just as children benefit from speech customized for them, second language learners can benefit from the modifications or adaptations that are made in speech to them in order to enhance its comprehensibility for them. But notice I wrote co-adaptation. The language resources of both conversational partners are changed by the interaction.

• Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing | Council of Writing Program Administrators

  "This Framework describes the rhetorical and twenty-first-century skills as well as habits of mind and experiences that are critical for college success" (Executive Summary, ¶2).

  tags: composition critical thinking education frameworks habits of mind learning metacognition teaching writing

• The Case for Academics as Public Intellectuals | AAUP

  In this article, Nicholas Behm, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, and Duane Roen argue, "Talking only to one another is never enough."

  tags: academia academics civics communication communities democracy education engagement intellectuals professionalism public speaking scholarship writing

  • Doug Hesse, a rhetorician at the University of Denver, has argued in the Washington Post that machine grading is not capable of measuring how well a piece of writing “fits a given readership or audience; how well it achieves a given purpose; how much ambition it displays; how well it conforms to matters of fact and reasoning; and how well it matches formal conventions expected by its audience.”
  • Les Perelman, research affiliate with MIT’s comparative media studies program and president of the Consortium for Research and Evaluating of Writing, has shared his insights about the weaknesses of machine scoring in interviews that have appeared in such venues as the New York Times and Inside Higher Ed. Perelman stated in a May 5, 2013, interview with the Australian Broadcast Network that artificial-intelligence programs cannot match human raters because computers can count but they cannot understand meaning. He said, “Language is much more complex, and until we can get a computer that can actually understand the meaning of words, it’s not going to be able to analyze argument or the important parts of writing.”

• Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1313. The Case for Academics as Public Intellectuals

  • • Fostering a healthy democracy, ¶3
  • Les Perelman, research affiliate with MIT's comparative media studies program and president of the Consortium for Research and Evaluating of Writing, has shared his insights about the weaknesses of machine scoring in interviews that have appeared in such venues as the New York Times and Inside Higher Ed. Perelman stated in a May 5, 2013, interview with the Australian Broadcast Network that artificial-intelligence programs cannot match human raters because computers can count but they cannot understand meaning. He said, "Language is much more complex, and until we can get a computer that can actually understand the meaning of words, it's not going to be able to analyze argument or the important parts of writing." These scholars and others have drawn on numerous research findings and a policy statement on machine scoring published by the National Council of Teachers of English.

• 10 Reasons Why I Want My Students to Blog - Getting Smart by Susan Lucille Davis - DigLN, edchat, EdTech | Getting Smart

  "First of all, blogging is writing, 21st-century style, plain and simple. Blogging constitutes a massive genre.  It comes in many forms, addresses myriad topics, and can certainly range in quality. For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best venue for teaching student writing. As bloggers, young people develop crucial skills with language, tone their critical thinking muscles, and come to understand their relationship to the world" (¶1, 2014.03.11).

  tags: authenticity blogging blogs change civil discourse discourse education engagement feedback learning media passions practices processes student voices teaching transparency wink_students writing writing practice

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