A great holiday message from WSWHE BOCES IN NY via Ken O’Connor.

Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy Chanukah to all of you!

eDGe eTextbook

This article from Saturday’s New York Times (online edition) reviews a device that seems to bridge the textbook utility gap between laptops and e-readers like the Kindle.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said that E-textbooks have special requirements that can be addressed by hybrids like the eDGe, she explained. “The devices have to render graphics faithfully, ideally with color,” she said, “and students should have the ability to take extensive notes and share them,” as well as have access to whatever interactive elements publishers provide.

Besides saving trees and reducing textbook costs (we hope), we may look forward to the increased well-being of students’ spinal health by eliminating the ubiquitous overweight backpack.

This article from Saturday’s New York Times (online edition) reviews a device that seems to bridge the textbook utility gap between laptops and e-readers like the Kindle.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said that E-textbooks have special requirements that can be addressed by hybrids like the eDGe, she explained. “The devices have to render graphics faithfully, ideally with color,” she said, “and students should have the ability to take extensive notes and share them,” as well as have access to whatever interactive elements publishers provide.

Besides saving trees and reducing textbook costs (we hope), we may look forward to the increased well-being of students’ spinal health by eliminating the ubiquitous overweight backpack.



This dates back to 2007, when Sylvia Lavin explained how when she was a child, she used to visit Art Museums with her parents, both Art Historians. While they studied the artworks, she would study and mimic their gestures, getting ready for her fruitful career as a critic.  At what moment did dildos and other useful household utensils finally enter the equation is something that needs further exploration.

No, no pun intended.

About Sylvia Lavin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Lavin

Form Follows Libido (a glimpse): http://books.google.es/books?id=Jp0Qvoc0c64C&dq=sylvia+Lavin&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=sofcVg8aWn&sig=OgUo_X9zFrnGwE1vF41o36upObA&hl=es&ei=LOwYS87dHaa5jAf1oaCKBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CDoQ6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=&f=false

We outline three ways in which evidence-based practice (EBP) is formally embedded into the curricula for pre-registration Speech and Language Therapy students and experienced Speech and Language Therapists at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. We describe key features of an undergraduate module, an undergraduate clinical placement, and a new Master’s degree program, each aimed at encouraging critical thinking and clinical problem-solving skills in students.

from Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention

A bad teacher can cost pupils up to half a grade at GCSE, according to new research.

Responce to Telegraph article

That’s simply a lie. It surely has to me more than half a grade?

I’ve seen teachers posting about this story on other blogging site saying that it has nothing to do with them it must be the students faults…NO!

It is impossible for it to be the students faults for having bad grades. A teachers job is to get students through the syllabus and getting them the best grades they can. If the student fails- the teacher fails. It is a teachers job to make the lesson engaging, make these students WANT to learn. I’ve seen it done with some of the most hard to reach young people.

It is a teachers role and responsibility to cater for these young people and to make sure they are having the best learning experience.

If I had a bad maths teacher, i know that i wouldn’t have done aswell in my maths GCSE. I’ve been to several school sitting in on lessons, seeing how teachers implement their lesson, ad i’ve seen quite how BAD a teacher can do. How can teachers say that it’s not their fault…..ITS THEIR JOB.

As the article says, “Inspire challenge and extend”. that’s what teachers should be doing. Inspiring young people to want to learn and engage with a subject, whilst still challenging and broadening their views. We need teachers to go beyond the classroom, and not just hand out the textbook! Teachers should be TEACHING not reading from books.

Why can’t young people just be given the opportunities they deserve- young people are entitled to a good education, everyone starts off at school- maybe if we start looking at the 8,130 permanent exclusions this obviously shows that education isn’t for all young people, maybe we should stop looking at way we can exclude these young people- further alienating them and pushing them further into an unconstructive culture. Surely excluding roughly 4.4% of all pupils for a fixed exclusion isn’t the way to go. We should be nurturing and supporting these young people. (information from the DCSF statistical first release)

“Teacher think they’re a disruption to the class” its the teachers job to make sure that their not.

Young people are being excluded because of the failing of he teachers. A teachers job is to teacher pupils and give them support. Not just to teacher and give support to the ‘well behaved average  grade’ students. but to ALL students.

I think schools shouldnt be allowed to exclude student PERIOD.

What do you think?

Rant over.

Telegraph article

DCSF Statistics

PANDUAN PENULISAN SOAL AKHIR SEMESTER GANJIL SMA

Oleh : BADRIAH

Disajikan Untuk Kegiatan:

MGMP BAHASA INGGRIS KAB. CIANJUR

SELASA, 17 NOVEMBER 2009

1. PENYEBARAN BUTIR SOAL

1. KARTU SOAL

KARTU SOAL

Jenis Sekolah        :  ………………………..                                                                Penyusun              : ………………….

Mata Pelajaran     : …………………………                                                                Tahun Ajaran        : …………………

Kurikulum              : ………………………

Bentuk Tes            : ………………………….

MODEL PENULISAN INDIKATOR BUTIR SOAL

Menempatkan kondisi di awal kalimat. Digunakan untuk soal yang disertai dengan dasar pernyataan (stimulus), mis: berupa gambar, kalimat, paragraph, denah, grafik, kasus or else.

Contoh soal :       “Mother has an interior decorator design the living room”, means that ……

A.   Mother has to design the living room

B.   Mother has asked an interior decorator to design the living room

C.  The living room has already been designed by an interior decorator

D. Mother has designed the living room as the interior design requested

E.  The interior design asked mother whether he could design the living room

Indikator butir soal:

Diperdengarkan sebuah pernyataan pendek dalam bentuk kalimat causative, kemudian peserta didik dapat menentukan pernyataan yang sama artinya dengan tepat (Audience Behaviour CD)

= soal diperdengarkan atau dibacakan dua kali, kemudian siswa memilih pernyataan yang sama artinya

KARTU SOAL

Jenis Sekolah        :  SMA                                                                                    Penyusun              : BADRIAH

Mata Pelajaran     : BAHASA INGGRIS                                                               Tahun Ajaran        : 2009-2010

Kurikulum              : SMAN 2 CIANJUR

Bentuk Tes            : PAPER AND PEN (MULTIPLE CHOICES)

1. KISI-KISI BUTIR SOAL

3.   NASKAH SOAL

Copy paste dari kartu soal

Semoga bermanfaat

Call for a Revision in Teaching Methodology

The ideas put forth in this blog posting discuss a new approach to teaching methods (as you likely derived from the title).  The main idea here is a more dialectic approach.  This means more discussion and debate in the classroom as opposed to the traditional “teacher speak – student listen” methods.  Allowing the students to become more involved fits very well with the stages of their development emotionally and mentally.  As adolescents they are naturally becoming more inclined to speak their minds and question information before readily accepting it.

Also, the author mentions a two-tiered system of learning, which I personally found to be brilliant and exciting.  Students obviously will need to be informed on a subject before being able to debate or discuss said subject.  The idea is that students would attend a class, such as European History, where they would listen and absorb while the teacher taught in a traditional manner.  After this class period, their next period would be a debate and discussion based class focused on what was discussed in the previous period.  I would have loved that in school and I think many young minds would respond very well to this.

He briefly mentions the fact that introducing children to this debate/discussion style of learning early on could also possibly help alleviate some of the major issues of anxiety and shyness of today’s youth.

I can’t do the article justice in my own words and it is not the end-all save-all of ideas but I do find it to be a great step in the right direction.  It is lengthy but a highly recommended read.  Enjoy! Let me know what you think! Leave me some comments!

Con lo sviluppo delle nuove tecnologie si affacciano sul campo nuove risorse didattiche che vale la pena di conoscere e magari affiancare a quelle già consolidate, nell’ottica di rinnovarsi ed avvicinarsi alle esigenze degli studenti che stanno crescendo in ambienti virtuali.

Il learning object (LO) rappresenta un’unità minima di contenuto educativo, proponibile sia in aula che on-line in qualsiasi Corso di Laurea.

I am going to begin to explore using various technology in instruction for the adjunct, specifically technology that is available, free and helps in instruction.

I will begin with a nice article about the notion of “Cloud computing” or, computing at a distance.  Give it a read, and then come back.

A trip into the secret, online ‘cloud’ – CNN.com.

I liked the writer’s ability to track down the abstract into a concrete, in this case server farm, thing that allows the reader to understand an often nebulous concept.  Kudos.

I believe that the best teachers are both rigorous and kind.  In terms of rigor, my syllabi are usually demanding in terms of the quantity of philosophers and major topics they cover and the quality of readings that they assign.  I give comprehensive exams, demand their writing shows signs of philosophical talent for an A, and grade class participation in a way that demands of every student both high frequency and high quality participation.  But the pressures of challenging course material should be the only source of stress students endure—extra anxieties stemming from the students’ interpersonal dealings with their instructor are simply counterproductive.  Teachers should create as encouraging and helpful relationships with their students as possible to ease the strains of an uncompromisingly ambitious workload, rather than exacerbating them through apathy, carelessness, or discouragement.  To build rapport with my students, I make a point of learning all my students’ names the first day of class before we start covering any material, show up 15 minutes before class whenever possible to take advantage of the opportunity to chat informally with them, accept late work without penalties, and make myself as available to them as I can through office hours and online social media.

Kindness towards the students also involves being sensitive to the lack of a sense of separation many students have from their ideas.  Especially in the case of novices to philosophy, many students are inclined to feel personally criticized when their ideas are rejected.  I put a lot of care into fostering active class participation by making students’ forays into expressing their ideas as stress-free and productive as possible.  This often begins with moving closer in the room to students when I call on them and then making eye contact with them so that they focus on me and not on their peers.  Then restating their ideas approvingly often validates them by showing them that I understand them and that they make sense.  Often at this point, it means amplifying students’ ideas to show them that I see they have more good implications to their thought than they had even communicated right away.  Within this context, constructively and sympathetically challenging their thoughts is far more productive because the students already feel validated and successful as contributors.  My students almost invariably seem to take my criticisms and philosophical challenges as collaborative rather than combative.

The most pivotal next step is to subtly mediate the students’ vigorous philosophical challenges to each other’s by having each student address their ideas to me, rather than directly to each other.  I will go around the room discussing the ideas at hand one on one with each student and moderating a larger debate, with each student feeling validated by my display of confidence in them.  This approach usually leads to more and more participants who bring a wider range of fruitful perspectives and a lively debate since everyone feels comfortable to speak up and personal acrimony or tensions are defused through my mediation.  Of course sometimes a student’s suggestion indicates a clear misunderstanding.  In those cases, it is crucial not to be so kind as to affirm a confused idea and mislead both the student and the rest of the class.  But even in those cases there are ways to be encouraging rather than discouraging to the student whose idea you need to reject.  You can explain to them how you see they made the mistake they did, affirm their reasoning process, and then explain to them what they overlooked or did not quite understand yet.  This art of sensitivity on one’s feet can make all the difference between whether or not the student tries to speak again.

The final indispensable sensitivity when dealing with students is to remember to focus on their freedom to develop their own intuitions, even where these manifestly differ from your own.  The art is to help students formulate their own ideas as well as they can be formed and then to engage them with challenges that come out of their ideas.  You do no favor to a student with whom you agree when you do not challenge him or her with another perspective and you do no favor to a student with whom you disagree when you put the advancement of your personal opinions ahead of their abilities to develop their own ideas.  Students should never feel afraid to disagree with you or an incentive to curry favor with you by telling you what they know you want to hear.  In most semesters, I have coyly guarded my own fundamental views in order to keep students from lazily relying on me as an authority, shamelessly pandering to my prejudices, or fearing my hostility to their contrary intuitions.  Other semesters I have let my students know my stances on a given issue when bringing in a guest philosopher to debate me and be a representative for those students who disagree with me, or simply have demonstrated a daily concern for their development as thinkers over the creation of converts.  Regardless of whether I have hidden my views from the students or have been nonchalantly frank about them when asked, as long as I have maintained a student-centric attitude that was concerned ultimately with their cultivation and rarely with my own soap box, students have never shown any signs of feeling encumbered in expressing their opinions in their writing or speaking in my classes.

All of this effort in getting students to speak comfortably is crucial to my teaching style since I teach through conversation.  I usually spend the first fifteen to twenty minutes of a lecture explaining the motivation behind the major question we are covering that day and then the broad outline of the answer that our assigned reading proposes.  It is crucial to highlight what the question is before giving them an answer to it, so that they can understand why it is important.  By the end of those fifteen minutes or so the students are either asking questions and challenging the ideas already or I am soliciting such responses from them.  The rest of the period is usually driven by their questions.  Different from the Socratic method, in which one coaxes desired answers from students through careful (often leading) questions to them, I see my goal as cultivating their questions so that when I give them a philosopher’s answer it is something they were motivated to care about.  When the students’ questions lead us to the ideas we were going to cover anyway, they feel like I am responding to their thoughts and concerns, rather than that I am just dumping information on them.  The art of guiding a class discussion for me is one of stimulating them to ask the questions the philosophers are asking so that the material I am teaching is something they want to be learning and so that they are better equipped to challenge the ideas I am presenting.  When people have asked a question for themselves, they are more likely to be able to recognize a flaw in the answer given, since as questioners, they understand to a significant extent what is at stake in a satisfying answer.

My lectures are dynamic and free-flowing, given this style of teaching.  In each lecture, the presentation of the ideas follows the stream of the class’s thought, rather than a pre-fabricated outline, except in those cases where a given idea or system does not admit of such loosely structured presentation for clarity.  For the most part, coherent sets of ideas can be presented in a range of orders and with varying emphases and I find it endlessly exciting to see the various ways to weave the threads of the same philosophy together when presenting it to a different class.  Some ideas covered are frequently the same, but the fresh derivation of them through the interaction with unique students each time is an extremely satisfying, creative activity.  Then when test time comes, I hand out a complete set of my notes for the students to study from so that they do not have to spend their studying energy on hunting and pecking through the texts or their notes but can concentrate on the central themes, explained in detail as though they had come to see me or written me with questions.  Such study guides help supplement their notes and so free them to focus during each lecture on keeping up with the ebbs and flows of the class discussion, rather than stressing over their abilities to reduce it all to testable information for regurgitation on an exam.  Separating the process of actively deriving and developing the ideas together as a class from the later need to have a valuable, orderly set of notes to help with committing to long-term memory, helps students to both think vigorously and then memorize well through techniques distinctly tailored to each goal.

Your Thoughts?

Salah satu kemampuan berbahasa Inggris yang harus dikuasai oleh peserta didik tingkat SMA adalah kemampuan menyimak (Listening). Banyak cara yang dapat dilakukan oleh para pendidik untuk membuat para peserta didik meningkat dalam kemampuan menyimaknya.

Salah satu cara yang sering dan biasa dilakukan adalah dengan memutarkan kaset yang di dalamnya telah direkamkan monolog teks, dialog, dan ekspresi.

Bagi beberapa sekolah yang memiliki fasilitas relatif lengkap, kegiatan menyimak dengan memutarkan kaset, CD, atau DVD  bukan merupakan masalah yang besar. Sekolah-sekolah yang dilengkapi dengan fasilitas Pusat Sumber Belajar (PSB) menyajikan latihan menyimak menjadi kegiatan pembelajaran yang sangat menarik.

Namun berlainan sekali dengan sekolah-sekolah yang belum memiliki sarana yang cukup untuk itu. Maka dalam hal ini, kreatifitas guru tertantang untuk mampu menyajikan materi listening dengan sarana dan kondisi kelas yang “seadanya” (dalam tanda kutip)

Tidak jarang guru menyajikan materi ajar menyimak berubah bentuk menjadi materi ajar menulis, dalam arti  kegiatan pembelajarannya berubah. Misalnya para guru berharap siswa mampu menemukan informasi tertentu dari teks monolog lisan pendek. Tetapi pada pelaksanaanya guru pertama-tama meminta para siswanya untuk membaca teks; kemudian mereka menjawab pertanyaan yang menyertai teks.  Dalam hal ini, kegiatan monolog lisan tidak terjadi, yang dilakukan adalah membaca.

Menyikapi hal di atas, tidak lantas serta merta guru dengan merogoh kantongnya sendiri membeli peralatan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan pembelajaran menyimak. Ada cara mudah dan murah yang dapat dilakukan.

Sebagai contoh mari kita lihat teks berikut. Teks ini ditujukan untuk menemukan informasi rinci dari sebuah teks ( Membaca). Teks ini dapat diubah menjadi teks monolog dengan cara mengubahnya menjadi teks monolog.

Read the text below and then answer the questions below it

The killer sea waves known as tsunamis are so quiet in their approach from a far, so harmless, that until their history has been one of surprise attack.

These seismic sea waves- or tidal waves, as they are sometimes called- bear no relation to the moon or tides. And the word tsunami, Japanese for harbor wave, relates to their destination rather than their origin. The causes are various: undersea or coastal earthquakes, deep ocean avalanches or volcanism. Whatever the cause, the wave motion starts with a sudden move like a hit from a giant paddle that displaces the water.

In 1883, Krakatau volcano in the East Indonesia erupted, and the entire island collapsed in 820 feet of water. A tsunami of tremendous forces bouncing around Java and Sumatra, killing 36,000 people with walls of water that reached 115 feet in height.

In 1946, tsunami struck first near Alaska and then without warning hit the Hawaiian islands, killing 159 people and causing millions of dollars damage.

1. What is the topic of the text above?
2. What is Tsunami caused by?
3. When did Krakatau volcano erupt?

Pertama, untuk mengubah teks reading menjadi monolog teks lisan, ubahlah perintahnya menjadi perintah yang meminta peserta didik untuk menunjukkan kemampuan menyimak.

In this section of the exercise you will have a chance to show how well you understand spoken English. You will hear Ms B reads a text. The text will be read two times. They will not be printed in your working sheet, so you must listen carefully to understand what Ms B says. Choose a, b, c, or d as your best answer.

Kedua, pastikan bahwa siswa memegang lembar kerja TANPA ada teks.

Ketiga,pastikan bahwa guru yang membacakan teks ajeg pada perintah yang dibuatnya. Yakni hanya membaca teks dua kali saja.

Keempat, guru membacakan teks dengan suara yang cukup terdengar oleh seluruh peserta didik.

Kelima, pertnyaan yang mengikuti teks monolog diubah sesuai dengan tujuan pembelajaran. Tetapi misalnya jika peserta didik hendak diarahkan pada penguasaan SKL Listening UN (=jawaban disediakan), maka berilah mereka lembaran kerja yang memuat hanya pilihan-pilihan jawaban saja. Sebagai contoh, berikut pengubahan soal

1) Ms B describes in detail …………..

a. How harmless the tsunami seems to be for sailor

b. What damage the tsunami caused in Japan

c. When the tsunami tends to attack unexpectedly

d. Why tsunamis are called the killer sea waves

2) When did the Krakatau erupt?

a. 159                 b. 115                    c. 1883                  d. 1946

3) How high was the sea wave that took 36,000 lives?

a. 115 feet       b. 159 feet          c. 100     feet      d. 820 feet

4) The thing that cannot cause for seismic waves is…

a. Earthquakes under the ocean                            c. ocean volcanoes

b. The rise and falls of sea levels                           d. underwater avalanches

Hal-hal yang disampaikan di atas, dapat dilakukan oleh semua guru. Sehingga para peserta didik dapat mengenal monolog lisan tidak hanya melulu pada saat Ujian Nasional saja.

Tulisan ini tentu saja tidak merupakan jawaban atas semua permasalahan yang berkaitan dengan listening di kelas. Mengingat setiap kelas memiliki ruhnya sendiri dan keunikannya sendiri.

Selamat berkarya.

A new report released on October 29, 2009 by the nonprofit group Project Tomorrow and Blackboard Inc., finds that parents, students and some teachers are greatly dissatisfied with the technology skills students are learning in school.

The report finds that about only one-third of parents and 40 percent of grades 6 through 12 students feel that schools are doing a good job of teaching and implementing technology in the classroom. According to the report, more than half of school principals and administrators thought that they were doing a good job of preparing students for using 21st-century technology.  The contrast between the two figures reveals that there is a large disconnect between how parents, school principals and administrators feel about the way technology is taught in the classroom. 

The report also discovers that parents feel that teachers are not receiving the proper training to implement new technology in the classroom and they also feel that teachers do not have adequate access to new technology such as: interactive whiteboards, computer projection devices, laptops for students, tablet PCs, online textbooks, organizational tools, games, mobile devices and other technology-based organizational tools. The report focuses on the parents’ perspective of technology use in the classroom, but it gives great insight into what information parents want their children learning and what products they want their children using.

The data from the report comes from a new analysis of Project Tomorrow’s 2008 Speak Up project. The analysis was a collection of data from over 335,000 K-12 students, parents, and educators about online education and 21st-century learning in the U.S.

For more information about“Learning in the 21st Century: Parents’ Perspectives, Parents’ Priorities,” visit: http://www.blackboard.com/Solutions-by-Market/K-12/Learn-for-K12/Leadership-Views/Education-in-the-21st-Century.aspx.

 Let NSSEA know your thoughts!