Interview with Mark Max, Vice President of Blackboard Analytics (formerly iStrategy)Blackboard Analytics for Learn combines the data from Blackboard Learn with student and course attributes from the student information system to create reports and dashboards. We discuss how this product is used by students, faculty and leadership, for example:Students: How do I measure up to my peers?Faculty: How can I easily find students who are at-risk?Leadership: Who are the most innovative instructors?Podsafe Music Selection from the Music Alley"Stress" (song and flash animation) by highly caffeinated Jim Infantino of the band, Jim's Big Ego.Duration: 23:25

For those who are in a position to access BBC programmes, either in real time, or on iPlayer, I would like to recommend that you catch BBC4's The Brain: A Secret History. It is a documentary about the history of experimental psychology, and the first of three episodes ran last night at 9pm GMT.As I had expected, it was simultaneously enlightening and deeply disturbing. There was coverage, including direct video footage of several of the experiments we've read about or studied: Pavlov, Skinner, Milgram et al.The cruelty to animals and the breathtaking lack of concern for people's human rights beggars belief, as always; and the views expressed by some of the experimental researchers in their heyday fills me with impotent rage. At one point, my husband had to leave the room. I think I might have followed if this were my first exposure to the concepts. As it is, my exposure to the work of the likes of Pavlov and Skinner dates back to the Time Life Library series which my mother acquired when I was about 7 or 8, and the issue that addressed this subject was one I returned to so many times that it eventually fell to bits.I was an by the time I first heard of Stanley Milgram and his eponymous experiment. My very first reaction was to ask whether the naieve subjects were given counselling afterwards to help them cope with the revelation of what they were prepared to do to another human being. I mean: how do you make peace with such knowledge about yourself? Last night's episode included an interview with one of the few surviving subjects, and it was plain that the man is still traumatised, nearly 50 years later! There are times when one doesn't want to be vindicated. For me, this was one of them.Coverage of electroshock therapy included a case study of one young woman institutionalised for brain reconditioning by her mother because of arguments about a new boyfriend. This involved interviews with the (now much older) woman herself... well, suffice to say I was seething. Nevertheless, it is heartening to see that the human mind is more resilient than expected.The show is presented by psychiatrist Michael Mosley, who at one point takes a hallucinogen as part of the programme. His passion for his subject is infectious, although I might be the wrong person to make that call, since I had a pre-existing fascination with the subject.Did anyone else catch it? What were your views?

Interview with Karl Okamoto and Emily Foote, co-founders of ApprenNet LLC.Online LawMeets® leverage the ApprenNet platform to bring a community of lawyers together in order to foster knowledge sharing without the high costs that traditional apprenticeships entail. Online LawMeets offer the ability to scale significant predictors of skills acquisition, including: observation, social capital and mentorship.They answer the questions:What is a traditional law ‘Meet’What is a MOOC?How do you use a MOOC to simulate an apprenticeship?How does LawMeets work?Can anyone use ApprenNet?Podsafe Music Selection from the Music AlleyAir on G String by J.S. Bach performed by UK’s Brunswick DuoDuration: 22:39

Do we collate data too much? Do we infer from observation too much? Do we believe we know what’s best for our young learners to read simply because we are the teachers? Answering the third question first - without going directly to the source - our students - then the answer is probably an unfortunate yes, making the other two answers a negative yes as well. The following is an interview to get a 6 year-old’s opinion on Extensive Reading. The insight on the value of pictures and the power of their appeal and reading encouragement to young learners is soon apparent and is something educators should not undervalue nor underestimate, especially when selecting the right readers for their classroom library. What’s your name? George How old are you? 6 Do you like to read? Yes, a lot. Do you know about Extensive Reading? (Thinks for a second) What does that mean? Do you play video games? Sometimes. I like Minions. Is that a race? Yes. If you finish the first lap then you can do the second lap. You mean you get extra time? Yes. Your time is extended? Hmm, extra yes. Oh! Extended means like extra? Yes. Do you think extra means choice? Hmm, yes. So Extensive Reading means… reading choice? Basically. Do you like Extensive Reading? Yes. What is the last book you read? George’s Marvelous Medicine. Why did you like it? It’s funny, and I really liked the pictures, especially when Grandma got taller and thinner - and uglier! Who gave you the book? Alex (his uncle). He said it was his favourite book when he was little, so I really wanted to read it. Did you read it by yourself? No, with my Dad. And the pictures really helped me understand the words I didn’t know. What other books do you like? Curious George. Do you like books that have characters with your name? (Laughs) Sometimes. When do you read books? With my Dad, at night. In bed before I go to sleep. George’s Marvelous Medicine took about a week. At night is my favourite time to read but I sometimes read after lunch. On the sofa. I don’t like reading in the morning so much. How about reading on a computer? I like reading stories both on computers and books. What book are you reading now? Fables from Africa. Do you like it? Yes, it’s about animals. I really like books about animals. And it has some good pictures. Do you talk to your friends about books? Not really. But I sometimes read to my sister. I point to the pictures when I read to her. How old is she? 18 months. But I only try when she’s in a good mood. How many books have you read in your life? I have no idea about that. You have 2 Curious George books that have 8 stories each, so 16 stories. How many times have you read those stories? So many. Why have you read the same stories so many times? Because the pictures are so funny. What other books do you read? I speak Japanese too, so sometimes I read Japanese books, but not the ones with Kanji. I don’t know Kanji. What do you like about Japanese books? The stories are good. And I really like the pictures. They help me understand more. Oh, and I really like word search puzzles. It doesn’t feel like reading but I feel smarter after I do them. Last question, do you have a favourite book? I have four! Curious George (all), George’s Marvelous Medicine, Baby Animals, and Where the Wild Things Are - that one has great pictures! Sorry, one more question. If a book doesn’t have pictures will you read it? Yes…maybe…, but I will always choose the one that has pictures. So George, I think you like Extensive Reading. Yup!Filed under: Graded Readers, Young Learners Tagged: Extensive reading, Oxford Big Read, oxford big read competition

Interview: Scott Nadzan, Director of Marketing & Sales for Ensemble Video. Ensemble Video is like an institutional YouTube with the flexibility and controls required in higher education. We answer the questions:What is video content management?How is it used?What formats are supported?Why isn’t Youtube good enough?Does it work with my LMS?Can you use it for iTunes U videos and GoToMeeting recordings?Podsafe Music Selection"A Passage of Life" by KitaroDuration: 25:46

Teacher and teacher trainer, Gareth Davies, explores how we can motivate students to improve their writing skills ahead of his upcoming webinar on Solutions Writing Challenge #2: "My students don’t want to write". Is writing the new speaking, do we communicate now more through text messages, Facebook chats and tweets than we do through face-to-face communication? If the answer to this question is yes, then writing should be at the top of the list of 21st Century skills that we are teaching our students. Yet students view writing as a bore, a chore, something to be set as homework so they have time to find an excuse for not doing it.  Even if your answer to my question is no, I still think writing has an important part to play in developing students’ language skills. Writing gives students time to put into practice what they have learnt and, if they are confident, to experiment with the language. It also gives English teachers a unique insight into the lives of their students. So how do we motivate our students to write?  I think as teachers we often throw our students into the deep end with writing tasks. When we ask them to speak they often only have to say one or maybe two sentences that are quickly forgotten but when writing they have to build whole texts that are there in black and white for all to see. So maybe we need to get our students happy in the shallow end and lead them to deeper waters when they are ready. In other words writing can be developed in stages, allowing students to experiment with language and building up their confidence to put longer pieces of text together. We can do short activities to help them tap into their creativity and help them structure sentences appropriately. We can do collaborative writing tasks to give students a chance to help each other. We can develop interactive writing tasks that allow students to see how writing is communication and has a relevance to their lives and we can study songs or prose to allow students to see how to use words and phrases imaginatively in the classroom. Finally we can make sure that the feedback that students get on their writing tasks focus as much on the content as on the accuracy of the language used. In my webinar, I will show examples of these kinds of tasks and show how the process of learning writing skills can be fun and help students to enjoy writing. Register for Gareth’s webinar ‘Solutions Writing Challenge #2: Writing - the new Speaking’ on either Thursday 19th or Friday 20th of March to explore this challenge further. Filed under: Professional Development, Teenagers Tagged: Professional Development, Solutions, Solutions writing challenge, Teacher Training, Teenagers

A post bubbling out from today's earlier offering.My mother was a bookworm. She was also a single, working parent from fairly early on. The education model in which I found myself during the earlier years of my school life involved a great deal of independent, investigative learning. Since it was a logistical nightmare to get me to the library to access reference books, my mother set about creating a reference section in our home library. This involved purchasing a set of encyclopaedia (World Book of Knowledge, if I remember correctly, since anything more upmarket was out of her reach), various text books and - joy of joys to my little heart - the Time Life Nature series.From the age of about 7 or 8, I pored over those editions. I forget which one it was that explored things like colour blindness, dwarfism/gigantism and psychology (I think it was Evolution), but that was my absolute favourite. It literally fell apart from use. And I wanted to know more. I regularly hauled it out and subjected my poor mother to my own theories about the content, as well as myriad questions.When I started studying learning theory as an adult, I found I already knew about Pavlov and Skinner. I had read and reread about them in my precious Time Life books. When I shared this with my lecturer, I was informed, with raised eyebrows, that I must have been a most precocious child.I don't remember that being the case at all. I just remember being fascinated.One of the experiments that featured in the book was Harry Harlow's work with baby Rhesus monkeys. These were taken away from their mothers and placed in enclosures where they had a choice between terry cloth or wire frame 'mother'. In one group, the wire mother was fitted with a milk bottle. In the other, it was the terry mother that was thus equipped. Without fail the monkeys preferred the covered option, even when it offered them no food. I remember reading the conclusion about the preference for a tactile experience and wondering whether the monkeys perhaps preferred the covered version because it offered them a hiding place of sorts, rather than because it was more cuddly.It's very frustrating to be 8 and have no-one to ask about such things. But I remember wanting to know. I remember that drive. That endless exploration of a series of books which constitutes a landmark in my learning experience, and experience which carries on to this day.How thrilled I was to find several photographs of the Time Life Nature series... with Evolution in every single one!

Interview: Sean Brown, Vice President of Education at Sonic Foundry. Sean has over 17 years of product management and education business development experience at IBM, Apple and Oracle before coming to Sonic Foundry in 2002. He is a past president and board member of the Hopkins Foundation for Innovation in Education.We discuss their Mediasite product including:lecture capture in the classroomtheir new product that supports personal recording at the desktopfaculty and student acceptancenew uses including flipping the classroomsupport for mobile devices including iPadPodsafe Music Selection from Music Alley"Winter Moon" by Rhonda Lorence - from the new age viola album "Winter Moon"Duration: 29:08

Many believe that the acquisition of oral language must precede learning to read and write in a second language. Yet, the integration of reading- writing- speaking-listening- thinking may not only enhance, but also, clarify L2 language learning in communicative settings.  In this post Marylou M. Matoush, introduces her forthcoming webinar on supporting young second language learners as they develop biliteracy. In our volume, Focus on Literacy, my colleague, Danling Fu, and I discussed the idea that "languaging pushes thinking while thinking pushes and extends languaging." We used the term "languaging-as-thinking" to describe the process of "doing language, literacy, and learning while being and becoming (Fu & Matoush, 2014, pp. 14-15)." Active languaging-as-thinking while learning to read-write-speak-listen leads to bilingual/biliterate communicative competence, particularly when it is done for purposes that students see as meaningful and authentic. Active languaging-as-thinking takes place during discussions before, during, and after reading. Just as significantly, it also takes place during the drafting of pieces of written communication and during interactions about the revision of those pieces of writing.  And, when teachers view reading as an opportunity for students to see, hear, and respond to language and view writing as an opportunity for students to give voice to their own interests, inclinations, and ideas, they lead students on the journey to becoming thoughtful biliterates via: Language acquisition that’s connected to home language and cultures Voiced, personally meaningful language and literacy Opportunities to develop cognitive flexibility as well as linguistic flexibility Instructional emphasis on active languaging-as-thinking impacts student’s understandings of L2 language and literacy and their feelings of self-efficacy regarding L2 language and literacy learning. Further, such an emphasis impacts their identity development as empowered biliterate language users who can choose how, when, where, and with whom they are able to communicate because they learn to make social, cultural, and linguistic choices that can reflect those identities. Bilingual/Biliterate Development Second language learners construct "one language system" not "two separate language systems" (Genesee, 2002). This newly acquired system develops gradually as students develop linguistic, cultural, social, and personal understandings. The developmental process is unique to each and learners develop at their own rates and according to their own particular sequence. This requires new language and literacy acquisition to be understood in terms of each student’s home language, culture and social interactions, their experiences with L1 literacy learning, as well as the personal interests, abilities, and inclinations that determine each individual’s use of language and literacy.  Because these factors are unique to each student, supporting each student through the process of becoming biliterate is not a simple task. Supporting Bilingual/Biliterate Growth "Don’t expect perfection, expect growth." - Linda Hoyt Many instructional approaches focus on correct, native-like language use for L2 learners.  Yet, primary school learners are grounded in home-based language practices that are "transformed" (Grosjean, 1989) as a new interlanguage system develops. The "multicompetence" (Cook, 1991) that results from this process of transformation suggests that learning should be viewed in terms of "interlanguage" growth rather than in terms of the "target language" (Firth and Wagner, 1997). There is a growing body of research that demonstrates that this applies to both oral and written language development among primary school learners as well as among older students. In fact, Fu (2009) observed adolescent L2 writers and noted that many students visibly progressed from home language writing, to mixed language writing, to the clear use of interlanguage and that this progression occurred prior to the use of conventional English. Similarly, many instructional approaches focus on bilingual or oral language development prior to biliterate or written language development. Yet, reading-writing-listening-speaking-thinking develop into a single, integrated interlanguage system in which written language supports oral language acquisition, just as oral language supports written language acquisition. Also, both oral and written language lacquisition are supported by: realia (physical objects) gestures, movements, and other kinesthetic involvement illustrations and other representations personal experiences grounded in home language and culture shared events and experiences meaningful social uses of language The forthcoming webinar will focus on how these and other active languaging supports that enhance L2 biliteracy learning among diverse primary school students. A few practical, low-cost ideas for generating text that can be used for instructional purposes will be included.     Cook, V. (1991). The poverty-of-the-stimulus argument and multicompetence.  Second Language Research 7, 103-17. Firth, A. & Wagner, J. (1997) On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81. 285-300. Fu, D. (2009). Writing between languages: How English language learners make the transition to fluency. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fu, D. & Matoush, M. M. (2014). Focus on literacy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Genesee, F. (2002). Portrait of a bilingual child. In Vivian Cook (Ed.), Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 167-196. Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person.  Brain and Language 36, 3-15.    Filed under: Professional Development, Skills, Young Learners Tagged: Focus on Literacy, Professional Development, Skills, Teacher Development, Young Learners

Interview: Gwen Burbank, Curriculum Manager/Instructional Technology Specialist for the MBA program at St. George’s University in Grenada, West Indies. Gwen is also a member of the Pennsylvania Distance Learning Association (PADLA.org)Gwen went undercover as a MBA student in St. George's synchronous online program. We discuss:key educational management issuesinstructional design factors teaching techniques helpful in keeping students engaged and honest"the good, bad and ugly" of synchronous online learningPodsafe Music Selection from Jamendo"Woods of Chaos" by Rob Costlow - New Age Piano"Duration: 30:55