FIRST REACTIONS TO "THE ITALIAN"

Post here your first impressions/reactions to "The Italian".

Read the previous postings and include references to them in your comments.

SON OF ITALY - your grade

The first person to leave a posting will give a grade (A - F) to the book with a well thought-out explanation 0f the rationale. You don't need to be long-winded. Quality beats quantity.

Each subsequent person, will (1) comment on the previous comment, (2) give a grade with an explanation.

Repeat your grade (without + or -) in the survey

STANDARDS: the best work from FEB 4

            The fundamental obstacle preventing the effective integration of new technologies in education lies in the genesis of our current educational system. In that this system was devised to harness the powers of typographical media, it is inherently incompatible with the so-called “new media.” That being said, it may be possible to utilize the strengths of the infotech revolution if we accept that education must adapt to the emerging technologies and not the other way around.

            This process of adaptation should not, however, be confused with a wholesale re-imagining. Though “the concepts of ‘ownership and participation’… along with ‘horizontal,’ non-hierarchical communication” are in many ways antithetical to the principals now valued in education, the primacy of face-to-face interactions should not be abandoned in favor of digitally mediated ones.

            One way to achieve this balance between traditional community and technology would be to increase interaction in the classroom using computers. Ideally this would mean one computer for every student wirelessly connected to a digital blackboard at the front of the class. This would not only allow the professor’s lecture notes to be saved directly to the student’s hard drives, but also allow those students to contribute directly t the lesson simply by sending information to the board. With this system implemented each computer would contain at the end of a class the work of the entire classroom community thereby turning a vertical learning system into a horizontal one. 

SAMPLE: taking notes (Son of Italy)

Here is a GOOD example of note-taking and 'self-reflective' comment.

Please adopt this structure. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Son of Italy Notes (Chapters: 1-5)

• Poverty (pg. 7)
• One bed in which he, mother, father. Brother slept; No real sense of time in the evenings (pg. 8)
• Goats and sheep slept in the house in the evening (pg. 9)
• Violence (pg. 10)
• Isolation (pg. 11)
• Symbolism? –Dream sequence-he reaches the top of the mountain and starts falling (pgs.13-14)
• Half hour walk to town (pg. 17)
• Dangerous venture to town (pg.18)
• Since he is the oldest son, he works, school attendance irregular (pg. 22)
• Stopped going to school at age 12; everyone must help (pg. 24)
• Givers themselves are very poor, though rich in kindness (pg. 27)
• Witchcraft (pg. 34)
• “Witch” driven from the town (pg. 39)
• Boy gives “witch” his lunch and she is very grateful
• Father wants to go to America (pg. 47)
• American is the land of riches (pg.50)
• He decides he wants to go with his father and his mother knew her son would not return (pg. 52)
• Physical examination (pg. 56)
• Examined at Ellis Island (pg. 58)

 

Comments:

After reading my notes over, one aspect that stands out the most is the poverty this family and the people in this small town must go through.  They go through much hardship but they always make the most of what they have.  

Grades: Students vs. teachers

 Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

By MAX ROOSEVELT

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it,” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Professor Greenberger said that the sense of entitlement could be related to increased parental pressure, competition among peers and family members and a heightened sense of achievement anxiety.

Aaron M. Brower, the vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offered another theory.

“I think that it stems from their K-12 experiences,” Professor Brower said. “They have become ultra-efficient in test preparation. And this hyper-efficiency has led them to look for a magic formula to get high scores.”

James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”

At Vanderbilt, there is an emphasis on what Dean Hogge calls “the locus of control.” The goal is to put the academic burden on the student.

“Instead of getting an A, they make an A,” he said. “Similarly, if they make a lesser grade, it is not the teacher’s fault. Attributing the outcome of a failure to someone else is a common problem.”

Additionally, Dean Hogge said, “professors often try to outline the ‘rules of the game’ in their syllabi,” in an effort to curb haggling over grades.

Professor Brower said professors at Wisconsin emphasized that students must “read for knowledge and write with the goal of exploring ideas.”

This informal mission statement, along with special seminars for freshmen, is intended to help “re-teach students about what education is.”

The seminars are integrated into introductory courses. Examples include the conventional, like a global-warming seminar, and the more obscure, like physics in religion.

The seminars “are meant to help students think differently about their classes and connect them to real life,” Professor Brower said.

He said that if students developed a genuine interest in their field, grades would take a back seat, and holistic and intrinsically motivated learning could take place.

“College students want to be part of a different and better world, but they don’t know how,” he said. “Unless teachers are very intentional with our goals, we play into the system in place.”

Due WED Feb 18

Each group convener will post the 'best comment' on technology.

The groups then will discuss the submissions and will select the best of the best (you can't vote for your own) and post the decision.

Cartoon Analysis - Volunteer to give a presentation

Click and let us know which cartoon you want to present in class (use the cartoon number in the course webpage).