Beyond School

In these reports, and others, emphasis is placed on getting students actively involved in doing science and thinking like scientists. In its executive summary, the NSF report recommends that “. . . all students learn [science] by direct experience with the methods and processes of inquiry.” While doing, thinking, and inquiring, students learn science and also develop key skills including collaboration, teamwork, communication, and responsibility.

An important characteristic of studio classrooms is that students have more control and responsibility for outcomes than in traditional classrooms. Instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) are mentors, acting as learning guides, providing the learning environment and materials needed for students to create their own learning. Instructors help students start on projects and are on hand as resources for students to use. Besides the instructor, learning resources include traditional texts and other reading materials, and also student peers in a class. Consequently, a key to success is that students must attend class and everyone must participate; this requires some adjustment by students who have not experienced such a classroom environment before. Most students, however, do catch on and in the end find it easier to attend fewer classes even if they are of longer duration.

Yesterday I noticed, that there is no way to search all social bookmark services at once. “There must be something like a meta search for that“, I thought.

Nope, there wasn’t. I did a research but I found nothing except some dead links from sites who might have had this service but are offline now.

Google Co-op is a very nice way to set up a custom search engine, and although I like Rollyo and Swiki, Google is still the best: Fast crawling, huge index. And I like the easy way to integrate the co-op search within Drupal.

Easy said, easy done, here we go: My Social Bookmark Search Engine.

Based on the results of the study conducted by Ede and Lunsford
[39], seven organizational patterns for collaborative authoring were
identified. These patterns are:

1. the team plans
   and outlines the task, then each writer prepares his/her part and the group
   compiles the individual parts, and revises the whole document as needed;
2. the team plans and outlines the writing task, then one member prepares
   a draft, the team edits and revises the draft;
3. one member of the team
   plans and writes a draft, the group revises the draft;
4. one person
   plans and writes the draft, then one or more members revises the draft
   without consulting the original authors;
5. the group plans and writes
   the draft, one or more members revise the draft without consulting the
   original authors;
6. one person assigns the tasks, each member completes
   the individual task, one person compiles and revises the document;
7. one dictates, another transcribes and edits. Results from the study
   indicated that the percentage of writing groups that use these methods often
   or very often range from 3% (method 5) to 31% (method 3).

• Interesting research on collaborative writing models.  Obvious relevance to classroom wiki workshop designs and roles.
   - post by cburell

Survey one, which was administered to a large group of writers
(approximately 800), provides information on the amount of time spent on the
various phases of the writing process. The results show that generating
ideas (14%), note-taking (13%), organizational planning (13%), drafting
(32%), revising (15%), editing (13%) contribute to the total writing
process. Ede and Lunsford [39] also examined co

llaborative authoring and the results
indicates that the level of satisfaction in the group writing process is influenced by eight items:

• the degree to which goals are articulated and shared;
• the degree of openness and mutual respect;
• the degree of control the writers have over the text;
• the degree to which writers can respond to others who modify the text;
• the way in which credit (directly or indirectly) is acknowledged;
• the presence of an agreed upon procedure for managing conflicts and
  resolving disputes;
• the number and types of (bureaucratic) constraints imposed on the authors–
  deadlines, technical/legal requirements, etc., and;
• the status of the project within the organization.

• Again, interesting for wiki-based projects.  The percentages of total project time taken by each phase of the writing process is especially relevant to the student-created wiki textbook project I’m launching in my history class this week.
   - post by cburell

Newcomer iShowU is a very strong competitor with Snapz Pro X when it comes to movies. I’ve found that I have more control with iShowU, being able to pause the capture, for example. It also comes with many presets for various types of movies. Again, you have the option to capture a microphone track, and choices for audio quality.