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personalized cards by Angie Allen Stationary 

When I take down my displayed holiday cards each year, I always tell myself I'm going to write my friends a letter or card sometime throughout the new year. This has been a pipe dream of mine for years.  To sit down in an evening, choose a random friend, and write a note to them on beautiful stationary. It's a great notion but one that is often squashed by reality. 

She goes on to set a resolution to write and send on letter a month this year as a doable goal. She invites folks to join her in this resolution. Visit her blog if you're game.

January 27, 2011

A Classic 'Nontextbook' on Writing

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By James M. Lang

In the fall of 1974, a young scholar named John Trimble at the University of Texas at Austin was summoned into the office of a senior professor on the English department's executive committee. The senior faculty member had been hearing some disturbing rumors about Trimble, whose research focused on Alexander Pope. Word on the campus was that Trimble, despite his forthcoming tenure bid, was not putting in the hours on Pope. Instead, Trimble was working on a writing textbook.

Trimble confessed that the rumor was true. He had developed a writing style sheet that had become so popular among students and colleagues on the campus that it caught the attention of a publisher's local representative. The next thing Trimble knew, an editor from Prentice Hall was at his office door, asking whether he would be willing to expand his style sheet into a textbook. Trimble agreed, with the caveat that what he produced would look nothing like the majority of textbooks available at the time.

"I wanted it to be a 'nontextbook textbook,'" said Trimble, in an interview via e-mail, "something like Strunk and White's Elements of Style, agreeably short and compact, and nuts-and-bolts practical—a book that emphasized, and explained, how veteran writers actually think; a book with all the water squished out but with all the life left in; a book that students might reasonably find themselves actually reading cover to cover."

The editor loved the idea, and Trimble got a book contract.

Lovely tribute to the classic Writing With Style. Read the rest through the via link above

If there truly has been a decline in the quality of the teacher workforce, and if pundits truly believe that this supposed decline is related somehow to “Ed Schools,” then it might behoove those same pundits to explore the dramatic changes that have, in fact, already occurred in the “Ed School” marketplace.

If there has been a dramatic decline in teacher preparation, and in specialized training, it may be worth taking a look at those institutions that have emerged to dominate the production of education degrees and credentials in recent years. After all, Walden and Phoenix each produce 5 to 10 times the master’s degree credentials in education of major public universities. And, production of education master’s degrees is now nearly double the level of production of education bachelor’s degrees. And many of these entrepreneurial start-ups specifically frame their master’s programs as an option for individuals with a bachelor’s degree in “something else” to obtain a teaching credential.

Is even more deregulation and entrepreneurial teacher preparation what we really need? Can one really blame the traditional higher education institutions, whose share of production has declined steadily for decades, for declining teacher quality? Only if you ignore these trends, which I expect these pundits will continue to do.

Interesting piece about the current 'attack' on Ed Schools.

The challenges veterans face span well beyond red tape. About 46 percent of survey respondents taking college classes said they work more than 30 hours a week. Despite the financial support offered by the GI Bill, about 67 percent of respondents described financially supporting themselves and their families as a “moderate” or “major” challenge.

Transitioning from the military into college life also presents hurdles for many veterans. While they share challenges reported by many nontraditional students -- balancing work, family and academics, for instance -- they also bring other sets of issues linked to their experiences as veterans. About 10 percent of focus group participants said they had physical or psychological challenges resulting from their military service.

Some of the key challenges for veterans may be the cultural differences between life in the military and academe. One student interviewed for the report described struggles transitioning from the clearly defined world of the military to the more nebulous nature of college life.

“Getting here, the standard is so high,” the student said. “That was where I really struggled. I thought I was really strong in some areas, but when I came here I found it was like comparing apples to oranges.… [In the military] the expectations are clear; it is very structured, but here, every professor does something different.”

Join us at NWP Radio on Thursday, 7:00 Eastern, for our Veterans Day program that looks at veterans and education. Visit NWP Radio at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nwp_radio/2010/11/12/writing-and-healing-on-vete...>

By Michael Martinez and Thelma Gutierrez, CNN

October 20, 2010 -- Updated 1018 GMT (1818 HKT)

Ethnic studies banned in Arizona schools

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• There's another federal lawsuit involving Latinos and a new Arizona law
• Tucson schools have been teaching Mexican-American studies since 1998
• Tucson school system faces a $3-million-a-month sanction unless it ends program
• The sanction comes under a new state law championed by the state's education head

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- Eleven Tucson, Arizona, educators sued the state board of education and superintendent this week for what the teachers consider an "anti-Hispanic" ban looming on Mexican-American studies.

The suit comes in a state already roiled by a controversial immigration law that is being challenged in court.

Read the rest of the story through the via link above.

Common Sense Media's new campaign asks schools to do more to teach students about online privacy.

Amid growing concern about how much information students are revealing about themselves in their personal profiles on social networking web sites and other online services, the national child advocacy group Common Sense Media is asking adults, parents, and teens to help make a stand for online privacy by demanding that companies provide an “opt-in” feature for sharing the information of all children under the age of 18.

Common Sense Media’s national campaign, called “Do Not Track Kids,” began from what the group considered to be startling statistics about online privacy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 50 of the most popular U.S. web sites are placing intrusive tracking technology on visitors’ computers—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time. Fifty sites popular with U.S. teens and children placed more than 4,000 “cookies,” “beacons,” and other tracking technologies on their sites, the Journal reported—and that’s 30 percent more than were found on similar sites aimed at adults.

“Tracking technology scans in real time what people are doing on a web page, then instantly assesses their location, income, shopping interests, and even medical conditions,” explained Common Sense Media. “Individuals’ [personal] profiles are then bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.”

The worst part, says Common Sense Media, is that children over the age of 13 have no say on whether or not their personal information is collected—or their personal profile is shared.

Our good colleagues at Common Sense Media are a source of great resources and advocacy for kids online. Read the rest of this story at e-School News through the via link above, but also check out the CSM website for more information.