Doug Noon's Bookmarks

What we found is that there are three main types of conversations going on. First, there are status updates of every day occurrences such as, "getting coffee," "check out this post on X," "going to sleep," or other mundane life things. Second, there are short term memes where many people talk about some event before, during, or after it. These conversations are usually short lived -- ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. For example a TV show like "Lost" will have some buzz, before, during, and for a short time after the show airs, but will drop out of the stream very quickly. We saw that happen with "LSD" when the drug's creator Albert Hoffman died last week. The final type of discussion we see on Twitter, are long term memes. These are topics of interest that people talk about for days, weeks, or even months. Politics or new video games are great examples of these longer term discussions happening on the platform.

This classism is plentiful and well documented (Kozol, 1992). For example, compared with their wealthier peers, poor students are more likely to attend schools that have less funding (Carey, 2005); lower teacher salaries (Karoly, 2001); more limited computer and Internet access (Gorski, 2003); larger class sizes; higher student-to-teacher ratios; a less-rigorous curriculum; and fewer experienced teachers (Barton, 2004). The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (2004) also found that low-income schools were more likely to suffer from cockroach or rat infestation, dirty or inoperative student bathrooms, large numbers of teacher vacancies and substitute teachers, more teachers who are not licensed in their subject areas, insufficient or outdated classroom materials, and inadequate or nonexistent learning facilities, such as science labs.

Risk, to its credit, worried that “schools may emphasize such rudiments as reading and computation at the expense of other essential skills such as comprehension, analysis, solving problems, and drawing conclusions,” and it asserted, “Our concern, however, goes well beyond matters such as industry and commerce. It also includes the intellectual, moral, and spiritual strengths of our people. . . .”[3] But these caveats were buried beneath the report’s urgent calls to improve the reading and (especially) math skills that purportedly determined the nation’s economic health, and to increase the standardized testing that would spur such improvement.

From an irrational faith in the ability of standardized tests to inspire greater learning, and from an unwillingness to finance more expensive tests that would sample critical thinking as well as basic skills, we’ve again narrowed the curriculum to “minimum competency,” precisely the 1970s standard that A Nation at Risk denounced.

These governing elites in practically all underdeveloped
countries have in general terms explained themselves in favor of greater equality
and, in particular, of raising the living levels of the poor masses. But in
most of these countries the actual trend has been towards greater inequality.
The fruits of whatever development there has been has gone to the upper strata,
while the lower strata have not seen much improvement and have often even actually
experienced worsening living and working conditions. This trend has recently
been pushed forward by the combined effects of the population increase and the
oil and food crisis.

A) Students who have an introversion tendency can be very good at the Reflection and Abstract hypothesis phases, but not so at the Active Testing one. In order to change that, I help create small groups where they feel safer and can take risks such as sharing their thoughts aloud and asking more questions.

B) More extroverted students can be very good at having constant Concrete experiences and Active Testing, but may benefit from increased Reflection and Abstract hypothesis. Having them write papers, maybe predicting the outcome of certain experiments or even current political affairs, helps.

Here is what Henry David Thoreau told
us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." Here
is what Goethe told us: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song,
read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, speak a few
reasonable words." Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is not worth
living." Rabbi Hillel told us: "What is hateful to thee, do not do to
another." And here is the prophet Micah: "What does the Lord require of
thee but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." And
I could say, if we had the time, (although you know it well enough) what
Jesus, Isaiah, Mohammad, Spinoza, and Shakespeare told us. It is all the
same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has
always been, and it is a delusion to believe that the technological
changes of our era have rendered irrelevant the wisdom of the ages and the
sages.

. . . . I dread finding out whether my daughter and her friends are or are not deemed "gifted." Although I don't put a lot of stock in the assessment process, especially considering how widely a small child's performance can vary depending on his or her mood on testing day, I can't avoid my visceral faith in the labels and ranks that tests confer. For all the rhetoric I spouted as a teenager about cultural biases and multiple intelligences, I remember feeling smug when I learned that a seemingly bright peer had scored lower than I had on the SAT. Will my opinion of my daughter change if she is not deemed gifted? Isn't kindergarten a bit early to be deeming children as smart or not, and to be tracking them accordingly? . . . .

Therefore, due to this potentially extended global audience, major benefits of blogging in the language classroom include:





1. The choice of more appropriate language on the part of the learners. leading to better writing skills


2. The addition of new perspectives to the learners' thoughts, giving them the possibility to move forward in their own reflections


3. The motivational aspect of realizing that one's voice echoes in distant parts of the globe and is heard by others

Many classrooms today use a popular software program to test student reading. No longer do students read for pleasure or information. They read to win points in a misguided effort to mechanize teaching and learning. This perverse notion of motivation turns reading into a contest with winners and losers. Strong readers choose simpler books to rack up points quickly, while struggling readers are humiliated by the public nature of their scores.

Guess what? Teachers tend to become dependent on teacher-proof systems and stop exercising professional judgment. While the company behind this system has been very nimble and creates tests for new books, teachers are unlikely to value the reading of a book not in the system.