The Pedagogy of the 21st Century

Best Teaching Tip of the Week

How to Skim
   Ken Riggs of Humboldt, Saskatchewan, says,”I took a course on Time Management years ago which taughts tips on how to skim document. Just a quick google search came up with these two sites.http://42explore.com/skim.htm
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/skimming-and-scanning-using-the-times-to-develop-reading-skills/

Is Remedial Math a Scam?

Is remedial math in college a scam?

Some educators think so. So our son Willie takes math and language tests before entering community college. He scores in the upper 5% on the math test.  And yet the college makes him take two remedial math classes before he can start to get college credit.

Several community college presidents have expressed concern to me about the value of remedial math for smart students.  And one educator told me this month that it is a money scam, as a way for the college to get more money without having to award college credit. 

No one, not even our son, is arguing over the value of learning math. But bottom line:  it further delays smart kids getting into the workplace where they can get the economy going and start paying taxes.  What do you think?

Best Teaching Tip of the Week

More Administrators Go Online
   “With respect to understanding and support from central administrators for online learning and teaching, I am seeing a good trend in this regard. More and more administrators are sharing that they have experience teaching online. I have served on some search committees where this has been the case. They are able to talk very knowledgably about online teaching and learning in their interviews. They offer specifics regarding how they have taught online.” – Mary Dereshiwsky, COI, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

Best Teaching Tip of the Week

SurfMark tracks sites
   “A tool I recently learned about, called SurfMark. It is a tool that keeps track of the sites students view, and their relationship to each other, and organizes that record into several different possible views. Students can then annotate and reorganize the pages, either individually or collaboratively.” – Rosemary Capps, University of California Davis, Davis, CA.

Best Teaching Tip of the Week

OK to Text in Class

“I have stopped telling students not to text or be on the computer in class (college class) for several reasons. First they will just try to do it surreptitiously. But the biggest reason is that too many times I have yelled at them and then found that they were actually LOOKING UP something that I was lecturing about. I was punishing them for being engaged! Yikes!” - Sarah O’Hara, Pima Community College, Tucson