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THE NEXT DIGITAL SCHOLAR

Name: THE NEXT DIGITAL SCHOLAR
Author: James P. Purdy
ISBN: 978-1573874953

A FRESH APPROACH TO THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS IN RESEARCH AND WRITING

by James P. Purdy edited by Randall McClure ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 14, 2014

A thorough, convincing and useful exploration for modern educators.

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A guide for teachers looking to incorporate digital literacy, multimodal communication and the Common Core State Standards into their work.

Purdy and McClure (The New Digital Scholar, 2013) have collected essays by dozens of experienced educators that address Common Core implementation and the most effective ways to meet students’ needs by using digital forms of communication. The book focuses primarily on teaching the humanities, particularly reading and writing—or rather, information consumption and production. Several chapters stress the importance of incorporating standards across multiple formats, from print to digital text to video to infographics. The book is full of concrete methods that the authors have used in their own classrooms—such as Google Docs to write a collaborative poem, a geotagged map of neighborhood graffiti as part of a unit on Frankenstein, or an audiovisual “remix.” The chapters cite specific online tools, such as Weebly and Storify, but the emphasis is less on how to use particular tools than on the reasoning behind a particular educational strategy. Appendices include sample lesson plans and evaluation rubrics, and the book also includes links to a substantial amount of online material. The book’s primary audience is knowledgeable teachers in public schools, so readers without an education background may find some of the pedagogical theory a bit dense. However, each chapter focuses on implementing specific techniques and meeting clearly defined goals. Both supporters and opponents of Common Core will likely find value in this book; although it doesn’t address the standards’ broader controversies, it does acknowledge potential shortcomings that digital tools and digital literacy might address.

A thorough, convincing and useful exploration for modern educators.

Pub Date: July 14, 2014

ISBN: 978-1573874953

Page Count: 568

Publisher: Information Today Inc

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

EDUCATION

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MEMOIRS OF A MINOTAUR

FROM MERRILL LYNCH TO PATTY HEARST TO POETRY

by Robin Magowan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 1999

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MEMOIRS OF A MINOTAURFrom Merrill Lynch to Patty Hearst to PoetryMagowan, Robin

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1999

ISBN: 1-885266-79-0

Page Count: 276

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BUSINESS | EDUCATION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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THE STUDENTS ARE WATCHING

SCHOOLS AND THE MORAL CONTRACT

by Theodore R. Sizer & Nancy Faust Sizer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 16, 1999

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A passionate argument that moral education should be seen as an intrinsic part of high school life suffers from the very abstraction the authors seek to avoid. Sizer, noted author of a trio of school-reform books (Horace’s Hope, 1996, etc.) and his wife, who trains teachers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, believe that most educators view character education as an “extracurricular” activity designed around a series of “absolute” nouns: respect, integrity, honesty, and so forth. The authors, on the other hand, insist that “the routines and rituals of a school teach, and teach especially about matters of character” and that becoming an ethical person ought to be an active struggle that engages students’ minds as much as calculus does. For even as the typical high school preaches a “civil religion” intended to turn out young people of good character, the Sizers point out, the sights and sounds of a typical school day may undermine these same values. Students who walk into broken-down school buildings learn that their education is not a priority. Teachers who come to school ill-prepared also teach their students how to cut corners. Schools with predominantly white honors classes teach that academic winners and losers break down along racial and class lines. Though the Sizers do a wonderful job of highlighting the hypocrisy that students see all too clearly, the authors frequently use “real-life” situations as springboards for airy theorizing. Rather than discussing the frightening rise in student violence, for example, the chapter on “Shoving” contemplates pushing in the hallways, dirty jokes, and rudeness, before redefining ’shoving” past the point of absurdity to mean breaking new intellectual ground. This book makes an eloquent case that schools need to practice what they preach. But because the authors define their moral categories so broadly, the values they champion lose their power. When words mean too much, they ultimately mean too little.