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2012: Page 1 of 366

2012-01-01T23:52:00.002-06:00

Happy new year!

The Storyteller: Kathryn Tucker Windham

2011-06-12T23:31:00.044-05:00

The world lost one of the great storytellers today. Kathryn Tucker Windham was the author of 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey and many other books. She also participated in storytelling conventions and shared stories on public radio.

I found a story from KTW in a show I used to host and co-produce on Alabama Public Radio. This particular episode of Alabama Life from October 2, 2005 was a preview of the visit from the StoryCorps mobile booth that came to downtown Northport, Alabama a month later.

I actually got to visit KTW at her home in Selma, Alabama and record this particular story (Jeffrey was not there that day). She talks about the importance of family stories and the importance of recording those stories. [Click to listen]

Thankfully, there are many, many recordings of stories from Kathryn Tucker Windham.

Additional news items about Ms. Windham can be read at the Montgomery Advertiser and from AL.com, which also includes a video with KTW telling a couple of stories.

Let's do it to improve learning

2011-06-11T13:18:00.003-05:00

I like this statement from the opinion piece in the Chronicle.

"Let's not do assessment just because it is mandated. Let's not do it to make accreditation agencies happy or because everyone else is doing it. Let's do it to improve learning."

Of course, there are still many issues to work out in order to determine what to assess, better ways to assess, and what to do with those assessments. But underlying all the debate SHOULD be this foundation: Do it to improve learning.

What if you could buy individual chapters instead of the whole (expensive) textbook?

2011-05-23T09:11:00.003-05:00

It's kind of like buying individual songs instead of the whole album on iTunes or eMusic.

In this case, though, it's not so much about preference for a particular song or very interesting chapter. In the textbook case, some professors do not assign the whole book. They only require reading of particular chapters that apply to that class. Yet, students have been forced to pay for whole textbooks—sometimes 100 or 200 dollars or more.

I think this new model for textbooks is a good idea for two reasons. The first is economical: Saving money on textbooks is important for many students trying to earn a degree. The second is educational: Professors may want to structure the class by synthesizing ideas so that students gain an understanding of issues that no current textbook covers in quite the same way.

However, there are some issues this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that are worth considering, especially the "whole book" experience.

What do you think?

Would you use bit.ly in academia?

2011-03-20T23:53:00.003-05:00

Would you use link shorteners, such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com, to provide more convenient links to sources in academic papers? Would you be allowed to do this?

Butler Cain's trying it, but he's curious to know what you think.

And so am I.

Learning about the art of teaching

2011-03-17T21:56:00.002-05:00

I recently ordered a lecture series from The Great Courses. It arrived today, and I'm now watching the first episode. I'm very excited to start learning from The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator.

One space or two: How many do you put after your sentences?

2011-02-03T16:03:00.001-06:00

Do you type one space after the end of a sentence? Or do you type two?

As you can see, I only use one space, but I picked that up this past decade while working with an online news web site. Now it's a habit, but that was not how I learned to type. Back in the '80s, two spaces was the rule.

The writer from Slate, however, was adamant about the one-space rule.

"Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong," Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo writes in a recent editorial.

However, judging from comments left on the blog post at EdWeek.org, the grammar court is still undecided.

Interactive Teaching Methods

2011-02-01T23:50:00.000-06:00

Online Learning: New report focuses on a blend of online and classroom teaching

2011-01-25T12:11:00.003-06:00

This eLearning Update focuses on the mix of online and classroom teaching. The authors of the report see this combination as being the future of education, especially for high school.

'The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning' is one of the first reports

devoted exclusively to blended learning. And while its authors concede blended learning is inherently variable in quality, financial feasibility, and format, they argue it will be the vehicle that pushes the proportion of high school courses offered online to 50 percent by 2019, while the percentage of K-12 students who study fully online flattens at around 10 percent.

I wonder if this is the direction you'll see online learning going in universities, community colleges, and Christian higher education in the near future?

How NOT to argue

2011-01-17T23:10:00.003-06:00

I like this post from my brother. If you have ideas you want others to hear, avoid these things!

Use of language that is unduly forceful in delivery or style may effectively inflame the passions of an audience or inspire those who already agree with the speaker. However, beyond this limited use, the hyperbolic delivery of our ideas has several serious drawbacks. [Read more]

Lighting a candle rather than cursing Wikipedia

2011-01-17T15:44:00.002-06:00

Regardless of what you think of Wikipedia, people do use it. Even if students start with Google to search for a topic, Wikipedia entries are often on the first page of results; many times they are at the top of the list.

Instead of condemning Wikipedia, people who know about a particular subject matter could spend a little time updating articles and adding citations. This story from the Chronicle discusses how some teachers are using the classroom to do just that.

“We don’t want them to cite Wikipedia,” he said of students. “What we really want them to do is understand how to use and critically evaluate the articles on Wikipedia and then learn how to contribute to make those articles better.” [Read more]

Watson: not-so-trivial advance in artificial intelligence

2011-01-15T15:57:00.004-06:00

Watson, the computer, is playing Jeopardy. Interesting. However, when I first saw this article, I thought, "How is this computer any 'smarter' than Deep Blue, which defeated chess champ Kasparov several years ago?"

But as I read more, the linguistic aspect caught my eye. This computer is able to understand language, filtering out what is and is not relevant to its goal of winning the game. And it can answer in the form of a question! Fascinating.

Watson, named for IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, is reminiscent of IBM’s famous Deep Blue computer, which defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. But while chess is well-defined and mathematical, “Jeopardy!” presents a more open-ended challenge involving troves of information and complexities of human language that would confound a normal computer.

“Language is ambiguous; it’s contextual; it’s implicit,” said IBM scientist David Ferrucci, a leader of the Watson team. Sorting out the context—especially in a game show filled with hints and jokes—is an enormous job for the computer, which also must analyze how certain it is of an answer and whether it should risk a guess, he said.

Watson is powered by 10 racks of IBM servers running the Linux operating system. It’s not connected to the Internet but has digested encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, news, movie scripts and more.

Voiceovers: Learning from Rob Inglis and the Hobbit

2011-01-12T12:45:00.003-06:00

I've recorded many voiceovers ever since I started working in radio in 1991. Most of those voiceovers were radio commercials, though there has been a bit of narration for videos and such. One area of voiceovers that interests me is recording audio books. Lately I've been listening to a few to see how different ones are done.

So far, I'm most impressed by Rob Inglis. He recorded the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I've listened to a little more than half of the Hobbit, so far, and I am amazed. He tells the story very well, even changing his voice slightly (or sometimes greatly) to indicate different characters. I wonder if his characterization of Gollum influenced Andy Serkis in Peter Jackson's movie adaptations.

Inglis does more than talk; he sings, too! And he burps when appropriate (Smaug). All in all, listening to this audiobook makes it seem as if Tolkien himself were telling me the story.

Here's a link to an interview with Rob Inglis as he talks a bit about the process of recording Tolkien's work.

Free textbooks: A complex issue

2011-01-11T09:07:00.003-06:00

This article highlights some of the obstacles to creating and offering free (or very cheap) textbooks online. Despite the complexity, it is worth the effort. For some students, free or low-cost textbooks could mean the difference between going to school or not.

Making a game of research and citation

2011-01-10T14:01:00.005-06:00

How do you get students interested in researching and citing sources? Turning these tasks into a game is one way.

Amplify’d from chronicle.com

Students are rewarded for their research skills and their ability to differentiate between good and bad material. To play, they find sources, which are judged by their peers for relevance and credibility, and then measure the worth of sources their classmates find. They gain more points the more sources they assess accurately and the better their own sources are judged.

“One of the most difficult things for students to do is their research,” she says. “After they exhaust things like Google and the Web, they don’t know where to turn.”

“Suddenly I had a room of college freshmen trying to access high-quality databases,” Ms. Johnson says. “That doesn’t happen too often.”
Read more at chronicle.com

What won't they know?

2011-01-06T23:23:00.002-06:00

This article describes some of the things that babies born in 2011 will never know. Well, it's not that they will never know some of these things, but they won't be as familiar with them as we are. Perhaps these things will be to them like the telegraph is to us.

Assessing Academic Achievement

2011-01-06T15:23:00.003-06:00

This blog post from Dr. Rick Yount describes some really bad ways students have been tested in Christian schools, and I'm sure there are similar tales from other state colleges and public schools, as well.

What are some of your worst (and best) assessment experiences?

TechLearning's Top 10 Predictions for 2011 (with proof!)

2011-01-05T14:16:00.003-06:00

Coming this year (according to TechLearning): Textbooks are dead, for real this time. Assessment will be comprehensive and constant. Facebook will be encouraged. Students will surf away (kind of). The end of testing is nigh. Students forced to use phones in class. Content will be free for all, all the time. Students will learn outside of school. And All data become compatible—globally!

Explanations and evidence are included in the article.

2011: A New Year for Blogging and Tweeting

2011-01-01T23:01:00.000-06:00

If I were following the advice in Clive Thompson's article, I'd be tweeting this rather than blogging about it. The suggestion is that the sharing of links and brief thoughts is better suited for Twitter, but more in-depth analysis and writing belongs on blogs.

I do like the idea, and I plan on doing that this year.

And while I'm writing, I might as well make this more than simply a tweet. I'm also working on improving this blog. For one thing, regular practice is a good thing for anyone wanting to write better, and blogging is a convenient way to write often. I also want this blog to be helpful, useful, and encouraging to those who are interested in education in general and Christian education in particular.

I want to connect with others who are interested in teaching so we can learn from each other. The seminars I'm taking at Southwestern Seminary have been enlightening, and I want to share those ideas with others. I'm also curious to hear counterpoints to some of the teaching issues that I'm studying.

Last semester, I took a class on educational psychology and wrote a paper on using testing/assessment to improve both teaching and learning. In the spring, I'll be taking Educational Testing and Measurement, a whole course dedicated to what I began researching in my Ed Psych class. Testing/assessment seems to be a controversial topic in education, so I plan on sharing what I'm researching and look forward to hearing your ideas on the subject, as well.

Have a happy and educational new year!

What have I learned so far? (Part 1)

2010-12-07T15:40:00.003-06:00

Sometimes you get too busy to blog if blogging is not high on your list priorities! However, I have reason to move it up the priority list. Writing skills are important in school, no matter what level. I need to work on improving that skill.

More specifically, though, I need to learn to write in a different genre: academia. Beside the requirement of citing every quote and idea--not a bad policy no matter what genre you're writing in--there is also a style expected in certain academic writing. More on that later.

I still have one more final exam to finish before finally finishing this first semester of doctoral level work. Then there is a long break over the holidays and through half of January before starting semester two.

So, part two of "What have I learned so far?" will have to wait.

Day Three

2010-08-25T16:08:00.001-05:00

It's the third day of doctoral work. I just finished another class. This one is Christian Higher Education Administration. That's a long class name to say and to type! CHEA is a nice, short acronym. CHEA is a very wide-angle view of a big subject. There is a Teaching in Christian Higher Education class that I'll plan on taking a few semesters from now. The admin course basically covers everything that happens on campus outside of the classroom.

We will be looking at several aspects of higher education administration, with the added perspective of what makes a Christian college distinct. This is going to be a challenging course, but I'm very excited about it. Sure, I have a book review due in two weeks, and another due the following week. And two presentations. And an accreditation study. And a few other things. But I'm still excited.

One assignment is to read the Chronicle of Higher Education every week and bring an article to class so we can discuss it. Hmm. That might make for interesting blog posts in the future, too.

Day One

2010-08-23T14:14:00.001-05:00

This is a big day. I start doctoral studies today.

First up, Educational Psychology with Dr. William 'Rick' Yount. I'm looking forward to this class. His new book, Created to Learn, 2nd edition, was just released this month. Among the updates is a chapter on recent developments in the study of how the brain works. Fascinating stuff!

After Ed Psych I have a class on Interpreting Statistical Data with Dr. Chris Shirley. I've come to appreciate statistics and what it can offer, but some of the math is tough. And the books are pricey. I am looking forward to the class, though, because we're doing more than just studying formulas. We will be seeing how to actually use statistics to examine other studies by other researchers.

You know how it is when the news reports the latest findings about such and such? Sometimes it completely contradicts the last report. Well, there are journalistic issues that come into play here, of course, but when it comes to the studies themselves, the stats people use are important. We're going to learn how to test their results to see if they are accurate, and at the same time we will be learning how to be as accurate as possible with our own research.

There's another class later in the week, but I'll hold off on writing about that one till it's closer to time.

Saved: Money!

2010-07-02T17:19:00.001-05:00

Hi. The NaBloPoMo theme for July is "Saved." One thing my wife and I love to save is money! She found a coupon recently for a free bagel from Einstein Brothers. We've been enjoying those each Friday. I think there's one more week on that deal. Deals like that are also good when you're interested in branching out a bit from the usual. That's what Tiff did. Me? I stuck with my fave: Cinnamon Sugar Bagel. Microwaved for 20-30 seconds. Mmmm. Good.

July blogging theme

2010-07-01T19:46:00.001-05:00

Well, NaBloPoMo's theme for July blogging is "Saved." There's a lot to say on that topic, so let's see how many days in a row I can blog on that.

First of all, I can write about a current project: Saving my old audio cassettes. We have way too many of them, and they take up much more space than MP3s. :) So, I've been working on digitizing my old tapes.

I recently discovered an old voiceover demo I had recorded back in the early 1990s. I found my first ever commercial, as well as several others. When I digitized them and labeled them in iTunes, I wanted to name the album, "Oh The Horror." I've come a long way. Those old recordings just reminded me of how far!

My First Computer: Vic-20

2010-03-04T16:30:00.001-06:00

Haha. My first computer. And that's William Shatner doing the commercial for the Commodore Vic-20!