education & tech

Last week, you read a a post on Wired (Science) on "internet searching for scientific articles is bad for researchers" in reference to an article published in Science by University of Chicago sociologist James Evans ([not yet available online). What are the aspects touching educational researchers? What have you gained -or lost , from the internet's rise? asked Bradom Kein, the author of Wired's article.

Researchers and investigators are against Evan's conclusions and we've collected the most significant from the thread of comments in Is Internet Bad for Science?

"Science is self correcting when properly practiced. Plagiarized or improperly conducted research will lead to improperly formed and incorrect conclusions. The internet is no worse for science than the calculator is bad for math."

"There are some old articles which are referenced and cannot be found online and one must make the occasional trip to the musty section of the library - usually the dank basement - something to be done on those rainy Sunday afternoons when one can indulge in reading about the exploits of those who did the gritty pioneering work.. But it is not that much of an annoyance, as one can use the time to ponder in a different mental gear - a faculty often underused these days. Also, there's something to be said for the value of "classic" papers that aren't yet available online. My grad adviser could find insights that we would never have thought of in work published in the 1940's or earlier."


"The way that google structures its listing makes it difficult to find the more obscure texts. Couple that with the laziness of users who no longer wish to browse further than the top 10 in the listing, and it makes for very bland academic readings." In other words "Separate the wheat from the chaff."

And speaking of Educational Sciences: "The knowledge is general, but encourages people to pursue certain topics in depth."

Now, how will researchers will be affected with the outsourcing editing and translation of research database papers?. I was touched by a post written today by Roy Peter Clark, taking to copy editors: "I need copy editors to know that Eva Longoria is not the wife of Tampa Bay Rays baseball phenom Evan Longoria. I need them to know that a Florida cracker is not something you eat, and that it may or may not be offensive to some readers. I need a Rhode Island copy editor to know that you don't dig for clams; you dig for quahogs, a word of Indian origin -- American Indian. I need copy editors who know that Jim Morrison of The Doors went to St. Pete Junior College, that beat writer Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., but is buried in Lowell, Mass. I want them to know that Lakewood High School is different from Lakewood Ranch High School. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is 108 blocks north of 54th Avenue South."

Do we still have language barriers to talk about science? How research gets influenced with those resources re-elaborated by people, others than native speakers?

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If you live in the U.S. I will appreciate deeply you respond to this call to action. Hilary Goldman (ISTE Director of Government Affairs) writes in an email dated 07/15/2008 and originally spread out by M. Guhlin. What is the Preparing Teachers for the Digital Age Program? This program would revamp the existing Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to use Technology. The updated program will provide consortia with two options to address the preparation of our nation’s teachers: a) Develop long-term partnerships focused on effective teaching with modern digital tools and content that substantially connect pre-service preparation of teacher candidates with high-needs schools; or, b) Transform the way schools of education teach classroom technology integration to teacher candidates.

Below is the text of Goldman's e-mail:

I just learned from Senate staff that no decision has been made yet about the Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners program inclusion in the final higher education reauthorization bill, and that the program is still in the mix of conversations. NOW is the time to voice your support for this program. You can send a letter of support through the URL below, or call your Senators offices directly, you can find the telephone number on www.senate.gov and ask to speak to the legislative aide who handles education issues.

Action: Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative to request that the “Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners” program be included in the final Higher Education Act Reauthorization bill. Use this URL to send a letter to your two U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative: http://capwiz.com/edtech/issues/alert/?alertid=11056961&type=CO

This URL will bring you to a prepared letter that can be edited to personalize with your comments as well as an area to type your name and address. Make sure to authenticate and click send.

Background: Many of you may already be aware that the “Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners” program that the ISTE SIGTE developed for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act has been included in the House bill as Title II-B of H.R. 4137, The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007.” The program is not included in the Senate bill. House and Senate negotiators are meeting to work out the differences between the two chambers’ passed bills. Members of Congress must hear support for this program from their constituents if the program is to be included in the final bill.

For more information about the Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners program and a copy of the legislation please go to: http://www.iste.org/Advocacy/Feb08-support

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Hilary Goldmann at hgoldmann@iste.org or 202 861-7777.

Hilary Goldmann
Director of Government Affairs
International Society for Technology in Education
1710 Rhode Island Avenue
Washington, DC 20036
202.861.7777 x-119 fax: 202.861.0888
Membership Services: 1.800.336.5191

Join in , support the education of your relatives, your friends and the next generation of american citizens!

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The Centro de Estudios Interamericanos (CEDEI) is situated in Cuenca, Ecuador. The organization seeks qualified EFL teachers for October 2008. The Center is a not-for-profit institution of higher learning founded in 1992, dedicated to the study of American languages and cultures. To foster understanding among the people of the Americas, their organization sponsors a variety of academic activities independently and in conjunction with universities in North and South America. CEDEI has three locations in Cuenca, offering English classes to more than 700 students with a staff of at least 40 teachers.

Cuenca is a province of Ecuador and it is located high in a valley in Ecuador's southern Andes. Cuenca city has more than 400,000 inhabitants and is the third largest city in the country (after Quito and Guayaquil). Cuenca enjoys spring-like temperatures year round, during night time it's a bit chilly. In 1999, Cuenca was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site

The positions available are EFL teachers for children, high school, and adult groups.

Qualifications required: a Bachelor's Degree, a TEFL/CELTA/TESOL or other related certificate, and must be a native English speaker. Desired qualifications also include experience working with all ages starting at 7 years old to adults, teaching Business English, Pronunciation, and TOEFL Preparation.

Teachers are expceted to work between 15-20 contact hours per week with opportunities for extra tutoring and conversation classes. Most classes are Monday-Saturday but teachers will have a five-day week. CEDEI [es] also offers an environment where teachers are supported in their professional development with frequent workshops, curriculum shares and a well-stocked resource room.

If you meet the needed qualifications send via e-mail your updated resume and attach letters of recommendation – one of your references should be able to describe your teaching abilities.

Starting pay is $275 USD per 50-hour adult class, $220 USD per 40-hour children’s class, and $234 USD per 36-hour Saturday class. They offer classes over a 10-week and 5-week teaching cycle. Starting pay for tutorials is $5.50 per hour. While teachers don’t earn a lot of money by international standards, they do earn enough to live comfortably in Ecuador and gain much in teaching experience and cultural exchange. There are other perks included.


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Technology has changed the way we used to perceive the notion of science. Before, everyone was reverent to this concept and mathematicians invented ideas, notions and axioms to explain their science, thus it became the scientific method and asked to demonstrate what mathematicians can hardly show.

It's been a long way until everyone accepted what should be called science. In this century although, kids and youngsters don't want to read (a premise to comprehend science), they are more interested in the solutions more than in the problems. In other words they bypass something that is a requirement to build science, the object.

Humble postdoc, Duncan Rilley has brouht up a very trivial question, Who owns the science? If nobody wants to hear about science now, except those who started their research before 80's or went to college as babyboomers, then we are not developing science. Funds to scientifical research are not being poured and the government is the only one to fund national security researching. Is it estrange we cannot solve yet the highest cause of mortality, a cure for cancer?

Is there anyone reading this post who thinks, science still is ahead of technology as it used to be or is it that we are making research only to serve technology and in its only direction. As for me, it's necessary to reinvent the concept of science, first of all, and secondly, put investigation up front as top priority. Science was made to solve the object of a problem, not just to built the most infinitesimal silicon's chip or alter the DNA, which by the way has been the most revolutionary finding of the last century.

I will close calling Riley again, he closed his post diligently, "If you would like to join the debate, and you are anywhere near Manchester, UK, you might be interested in Who Owns Science?, a public lecture and debate. Join Anna Ford chair a discussion lead by Nobel laureates John Sulston and Joseph Stiglitz on just who the hell is it who owns this crazy little thing called Science?"

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This video is about Wesch's Web 2.0 wisdom presented at the University of Manitoba on June 17th. 'It is all about media literacy and how he engages his students at Kansas State University. This 66 minute video is well worth the time in order to get a glimpse of how he tries to make students knowledge-able' says Stephen Downes

During his presentation, Michael Wesch, an cultural anthropologist, explains his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.

'It’s basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my students to work online,' he's explained. “We tried every social media application you can think of. Some worked, some didn’t.”

If you are not yet familiar with professor Wesch work, consider subscribing to his YouTube channel.

Update:

Jack Chorowski also says, 'Web 2.0 shows that everyone is better than anyone; a large group working together can create information rivaling the content of experts.'

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During this weekend where they also congregated for the II CREAD Andes Congress and Virtual EDUCA Summit, the Loja Technical University (UTPL - Ecuador), dozens of doctors and candidates to PhD attended the First Summit on Collaboartive Doctorate Programs and Research Incubators and the event was patronized by the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (OUI)


Claude Olivier, ETS PhD attending the meeting. Watch the proposals I, II & III [es]

I won't answer this question but I want to hear your comments on this one. Why I don't have an answer? To give an answer of this character you have to have the knowledge and the experience and I don't. It's a complicated issue that many of you will jump in and start talking whether this were a colloquial conversation, but it isn't.

How come that big positions in the labor market are being occupied by people with a different degree for which they are serving? This is the point, and for discussion I would like to bring a Forrester specialist, Jeremiah Owyang.

In a very interesting post about his Six Carrer Tips this gentleman has written, Education matters, but not as much as you thought:

"..More and more executives I meet have degrees in something they didn’t study in school for. For most jobs, they hire you because of what you can do for them, not what school you went to. There’s a reason why education falls to the bottom of the resume, and the ‘value statement’ is at the top, quickly followed by real world experience. Don’t get me wrong, education is very important, a bachelor degree is really expected in today’s workplace, but I often lean on the broad, theoretical knowledge I gained as a primer (or glossary) for me to dive in deeper in the business world."

How many of us, teachers were prepared to work in a different environment and still we do a great job but shouldn't we making more money on that original career? Yes, I know, many will be saying that it's a matter of time and adult decision, even though you are a sacrificed labor intellectual and your bank account is almost empty and your family struggling to get in the big leagues or finish paying your mortgage.

A group of aerospace engineering and computer science students gathers once a week in Atkinson Hall of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to learn designing technology for the developing world. But their lecturer Derek Lomas never quite shows up in the classroom, at least not in person. He prefers to take classes of the popular ‘Design for Development’ course from his desktop in Mumbai — through videoconferencing that is.

They are using what sciencedaily.com calls  instructional technology.  "University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a "hybrid class" that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format"  they wrote in its Science News column, today.

Practice of hybrid classes are growing so quickly and practicality for students and professors, at UH  and on campuses across the U.S., because of the advantages for students , in presentation of material as accessibility and flexibility. Brian McFarlin, was the researcher at UH and he can testify for example that an upper-level business law and ethics class in the UH Bauer College of Business reaches more than 1,000 students each academic year because of its flexible, hybrid offerings.

But what is the linking between those students at California Institute and the University of Houston?  No secrets. It's technology applied to the education. Same as Mumbai or Australia, students and teacher are able to learn or re-learn at the same time, even being so far away. In this case the use of the videoconferencing is vital and the good handling of PowerPoint files helps these students to obtain grades, on average a letter grade higher than those in the traditional format

Houston students attend class in classrooms, but students as far away as Australia also take and participate in classes. To date, there has been limited literature addressing the effectiveness of such classes.  McFarlin has comments on the advantages in timing of hybrid class: "That means two courses could be taught in a classroom that would normally be dedicated to one traditional lecture course [and] The key to success with instructional technology is to keep the focus on student-related outcomes and learning. This was my objective."

Findings were published in the journal "Advances in Physiology Education."

I wanted to write about what's happening on applications, and what I ended is thinking of best ways to help students getting to college or universities.   Sometimes inexperienced young people commits to study but they don't realize of all their chances to change  life while concluding  professional careers.

Change the way your take your notes in class.

It's not the best way to handle documents but for students works perfectly. Google Docs is a good tool not to take notes only, but to share them and enrich them when you have to work on projects.  Remember too, Google Docs allows you to embed Power Point files.

Of course, Google Docs isn’t perfect. When using it with 4 or more collaborators, Paul Stamatiou [Google Docs: Changing the Way I Work]  have found that merge conflicts  occur quite often and it becomes rather annoying.  Other than those issues, Docs falls short of being a complete word processing solution for students. Many of them still end up fine-tuning their documents in Microsoft Word before printing and turning them in.

Brand yourself writing on a blog.

"I haven’t yet taken much consideration’s for “branding” of my blog, but I think in someway our sites take on branding naturally ... so I guess in a way without trying, we do end up branding ourselves" says Stephanie from jusanotherblogger.com

And she's right. It doesn't matter if you are a technical or social student, having a blog helps you lots. One of the first steps in creating a brand for yourself is to make your blog visible. Post meaningful entries, comment on your niche’s top blogs, or simply gain a regular readership. Visibility creates opportunities, it's  believed that when you brand yourself, the competition becomes irrelevant. So, the goal of personal branding is to be recruited based on your brand, not applying for jobs.

Pick courses that will help you make bucks.

If you're in college, about to start the university, or looking to take some classes,  the list below for college courses will help make you rich.  It's well known that school doesn't prepare you  for life, even when educators, administrators or government shout it out loud.   Schools (though) help to identify which classes are the most relevant and helpful for those of you looking to become rich entrepreneurs.

Robert, head of flimjo.com lists eight courses that, if used correctly, will put you on your path to amaze money (no particular order):

1. Accounting - People does not comprehend the difference between an asset and a liability.

2.  Marketing  - Products fail because you need to find the market first, and then develop a product.

3. Economics - Identify which direction your business is going in, then take advantage of specific trends,

4. Finance - Learn time value of money and why you lose money while waiting for your refund check!

5. American History Course - Turn around terrible decision-making learning from history.

6. Writing and Composition - Open doors, figure it out how many blogs are paying money to good writers.

7. Literature Courses - Books provide timeless principles of personal development and wealth creation.

8. Management - Understanding of management concepts and learning different techniques and skills will not only make you likable,  they will  help you make more money!

Everyone who has been teaching temporarily or in a regular peace has confronted problems of discipline in the classroom ( or even in the surroundings of this room). Those experiences go from pre-K to universities and there is no book or standard procedures to get along with such a disgusting events for a teacher.

Beginning April, if you didn't have the chance to get familiar with this note, Laurence Thomas a respected professor teaching Philosophy at Syracuse University, left his class in order to correct a misbehaviour of one of his Cuban female students.

Comments, opinions, the e-mails form the same professor were all out in the Internet. Some agree with Thomas and some others disagree completely. Even when Thomas has recognized he's an old fashioned instructor, what is being debatable is whether the old fashioned teacher will adjust to the cyberculture era or his students must correlate to their old school of correcting disciplinary actions.

Gerald Amanda is quoted in the Inside Higher Ed post about this topic. She supports the old fashioned way to address this kind of situations saying: "There’s only one person in that room who has the bureaucratic, legal, and moral authority to establish discipline — and that’s the instructor". But youngsters more familiar with the cyberculture media do not agree with the Philosopher way of solve misbehaviors such as text-messaging in class. One of Thomas' students complains, "We the students are the customers, the consumers, the ones who make the choice every day to pay attention or not...Does he think that this is the first time this has happened on any college campus? Had he acted like nearly 100 percent of the other college professors in this country, he would have shrugged it off and continued with his lecture,..."


I am a teacher and a blogger and many teachers are working hard to get students into technology and the positive workarounds to it, how is it possible we are training our students to know how to use technology just to block them up there in the university? I am not in disagreement with professor Thomas, of course, he has the right to manage his classes whatever he wants but I am talking about our output product getting prepared just now. Shouldn't we pay attention to investigation of the cyberculture being headed by Kurt Reymers?

Rebecca James from The Post-Standard of Syracuse in a post by Newhouse News Service makes a chronicle of what's going on at College Campuses and quotes experiences coming from different professors. One of them is Reymers, assistant professor in the Morrisville State College he explains himself in about the use of laptops and cellphones in class, "What is normal for us may not be normal for the up-and-coming 'millennial' generation."

How are you coping with your rude students?

Technorati: schools, college, education, syracuse

Extract from DigiActive:

"The goal of the campaign is to draw attention to the persecution of the university, a particularly difficult task since the mainstream media in Russia is all state-controlled and is ignoring the issue. For this reason, members of the university community are using alternative media to raise awareness of the situation."

If you are to support these students, please head over to this Livejournal Community!

As we wrote yesterday, tendencies in the near future are mobile and can be easily articulated with gadgets as the one you are watching on this post, the ISV PenandMouse [http://www.redferret.net/?p=10013]. You must be heard news about the free Wi-Fi service in Starbucks and other places in the States and this will be complete when this year a new chip, that includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules integrated in one, will make an appearance in gadgets and a broad range of devices by the middle of next year. Sizlopedia brigs the information and we quote which will be the benefits:

This means a consumer can use a mobile phone equipped with a Bluetooth wireless headset to make a call while using the same phone to simultaneously check information on the Internet via a WLAN network - without experiencing interference.

Also, by reducing two chips into one, will not only reduce the cost of devices, it will have effect on the power consumption as well, thus further enhancing battery live.

If this are the tendencies not only in technology but in the applications to the Higher Education then we should be looking out the development of the Phone Bridges considered as platform. Learningalliances.net makes a roundup of most platforms used by its effect and we think those might be used also in the eclassrooms, considering that bridge platforms can send "email announcements scheduling a call and make a recording of a call and serve up the recording to people who didn’t make it to the call."

The iPhone its only the beginning and while more and more students are having not only one cell phone, it's time to start searching for immediate application of mobile technology in the classrooms and as an instant medium of communication.

Are you using in any ways the phone bridges in the academic spectrum you are actually working?

Technorati: wi-fi, bluetooth, college, phone+bridge, gadgets

In a study released yesterday and conducted by MIT researchers among which is John Gabrieli, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, together with Trey Hedden, lead author of the paper and a research scientist at McGovern; Sarah Ketay and Arthur Aron of State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Hazel Rose Markus of Stanford University; people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks. American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception.

They asked 10 East Asians recently arrived in the United States and 10 Americans to make quick perceptual judgments while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner--a technology that maps blood flow changes in the brain that correspond to mental operations.

The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those individuals who identified more closely with their culture. They used questionnaires of preferences and values in social relations, such as whether an individual is responsible for the failure of a family member, to gauge cultural identification. Within both groups, stronger identification with their respective cultures was associated with a stronger culture-specific pattern of brain-activation.

Gabrieli, had pointed out:

Everyone uses the same attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks, but they are trained to use it in different ways, and it's the culture that does the training,[...]It's fascinating that the way in which the brain responds to these simple drawings reflects, in a predictable way, how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social relationships.”

I wonder whether Moira Gunn might have as guests to this select group from Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Source

Not a surprise Facebook has been elected the socialnetwork of the year, even when My Space still holds the most number on registered users. More than one person also has said that what it was the benefit of socialnetworks created and seated in communities like Facebook or Friednster, but whatever they say, socialnetworks has a great impact in the daily life of Gen Y people.

And companies had realized that and now they're pushing hard to get kids into the virtual worlds with websites masked as socialnetworks when the reality is they only are looking for promotion of consumerism. Look out for example at clubpenguin.com, webkinz.com or pixiehollow from Disney.com All of them aim to a 'quick growth' in our kids. What would happen to our kids if Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, estimations are truth; that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today!

I know you all read about the Gen Y but let me tell you that those youngsters are getting to the college right know and for them (not for us) almost everything it's been done online. Not we are those microcelebrities now blogger are talking about but certainly most of us, familiar with the Internet had googled our names and why not 'observers' who are looking for more background about our personal life. This is the case with applicants for college(pdf); high school students accustomed to social-networking Web sites have flocked to new online sites that let them send information about themselves to colleges in hopes of gaining an edge over fellow applicants. Websites such as admish.com, cappex.com, edsoup.com or zinch.com are playing a great role in the registrations this year. Scott J. Sech from edweek.org reports that more than "20 percent of colleges and universities sometimes review students’ social-networking profiles, and that more than a quarter sometimes look for information on students via search engines."

So, be careful what you have online. And please, before you google your name get to know what's going on in the blogosphere(http://www.profy.com/2008/01/04/analyzing-the-current-state-of-the-blogosphere/).

This is the speech Steve Jobs had to present in the Standford Graduation Ceremony '07. Pay attention to the histories he's being sharing with MB's rockies. The video is a bit old but I've just discovered and I think it deserves to be watched once again.





Unfortunatelly, this is a priveledge, Megan Meier won't have thanks to the issues with cyberbulling at some schools in North America.

When a person acts and reacts differently that the rest of his conrades then is pretty easily labeled as 'crazy'. Academics are in a very short number and it's hard to find one with whom you might want to share knowledge and experiences. When you see in the top left corner a "Friend Me' widget it means you can get in touch with us even without you being an academic, a journalism or a blogger. This is a open social network if you want to call it like that.

This is what Oh No a WoC PhD has to say about those rare circles. She's a black person and we are hispanics, you know what I mean:

I learned this week while doing the academic rounds, that I have finally learned to be quiet far too late in life, that I unlearned bravado just when I needed it most, and that if I do not put the books and the writing down regularly from now and repractice academese . . . Oh and of course, I also learned that no amount of sinking myself into my work makes me any less ready to bond with disenfranchised students and support them in an effort to get the revolutionary act of being respected as scholars of color accomplished.

Pushing Writing Literacy from W. Richardson says all:

I always ask how many of the teachers in the room are teaching their students to read and write in different modes, in hypertext, with art and photos, in audio and video, using all of them combined. I’m surprised if I get more than a hand or two going up.

A commenter in a post related to the digital divide was mocking about the concept and application for this paradigm in the Latin American reality. And delivering the understanding you are pretty much familiar with the digital natives, we want to share with you a compelling article from Education Week and written by Andrew Trotter where among other things is pointing out:

Critics of the “digital divide” concept say the problem has largely disappeared as low-income and minority families have acquired computers in greater numbers, and as state and federal money, from such sources as the E-rate program, has been used to redress technology imbalances between rich and poor school districts.

Yes, that might be truth for developed countries but what about those poor ones where not even Internet connection is known or available. The digital divide exists not only in America but in third world countries.

A report that ISTE released at the summit declares:

an exact definition remains elusive, the term ‘digital divide’ generally refers to the disconnect that occurs between those with access to technology and those without, while recognizing the myriad factors that can have an impact on that inequity

We all love the game can be built from our language and then some of the participants in the K12OnlineO7 preferred to talk about digital equity to mention and explain the digital divide discussion. "When considering the role of technology in development of the 21st-century learner, digital equity is more than a comparable delivery of goods and services, but fair distribution based on students’ needs."

Why are the same children losing out, as we keep redefining the digital divide? has asked Sylvia Rousseau. And she added:

In today’s schools,low-income children of color too often are using educational software that has them engage in skill-and-fact drills rather than in creative, “constructivist” experiences more often available to white and middle-class children...

However, in the US. school districts are spending their educational technology budgets on "drill and kill" tools because of the overwhelming pressure to meet federal requirements for test performance under the No Child Left Behind law, another attendant has said.

So, while in the US we have minorities black, Hispanics, Asian, Hindi's, etc the digital equity will be a problem for year to work on, not only because the 100 or 170 dollars computer wasn't built for Americans. Here people (those who think the digital divide is death history) can buy Toshibas, Macs, Ipods, PSP's and still can live 'without' such a inequity!

I haven't told you I am a frecuenlty reader of Teacher Magazine and now Teacher Leaders Network. While browsing around I've found in the Teacher Magazine an article from Anthony Cody where he tries to outline procedures to engage students in good behaviour while they really learn with the so called hands-on. Anthony points out:

The secret to behavior management is really about having the students fully engaged in the learning process, and it involves more than just rules and office referrals. After all, the whole point of getting the class to focus is to do some meaningful work—to reach new understandings, to create new expressions of their knowledge, and to build new skills. But we have to know how to manage our teacher-student relationships in order to get there.

Here his recomendations:

1. Post a short list of clear, unambiguous rules and enforce them consistently.

2. Learn how important it is to phone parents early in the year, with positive news if at all possible. When he had to call about some problems a few months later, parents were there to back him up 100 percent.

3. Balance a negative phone call with a positive one. It felt great to be able to point out that he was working with their parents in their best interests, and that he would make positive calls when behavior improved.

4. Learn to keep a record of student behavior, along with any referrals to the office, so that the problems you had with a few students were clearly documented.

5. Learn how easy it is to get into entertaining but fruitless dialogues with students when you are trying to enforce rules.

6. Learne it is important for students to understand that you care about their well-being, and that you are on their side.

7. Students refuse to memorize the textbook facts—they were bored with, and their behavior reflected their boredom. Look for different ways for students to demonstrate their understanding through more creative projects, and you will find the students become more engaged!