Seeing Through New Eyes

The last couple of weeks have brought up some interesting conversations about students re-using papers for other classes. It is an interesting idea that when you think about it, and I'm not sure where it is a good or a bad thing. I know there are some professors who would balk at the idea. Why would you do that in the first place? You'll become a better writer to write more original works. But these ideas also brought up authors citing other authors incorrectly. I was advised to only cite another article if I have read it and come up with my own interpretation of what is being said. Don't just go off of what others have written. They could be wrong. Of course this is something I find fascinating. Why would you cite something like a seminal article in a field if you haven't read it yourself? Why take the chance of citing it incorrectly? Hmmmm, I see a possible conceptual idea here that could become a nice paper.

The reading this week Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources brought out some good points for me. This is certainly something I'm going to need to read a couple of times to pull out all the useful information for myself and my work. The first point that caught my eye said, "OER projects can expand access to learning for everyone, but most of all for non-traditional groups of students, and thus widen participation in higher education. They can be an efficient way of promoting lifelong learning, both for individuals and for government, and can bridge the gap between non-formal, informal, and formal learning." I hadn't really thought of OER's doing all of that. Of course I knew that an OER is great for expanding dissemination of a resource and/or the information in that resource, but the lifelong learning point hits home to me since that area of research interests me and fits right into an idea I am researching at this moment, problem...

In your opinion, is the "right to education" a basic human right? Why or why not? In your opinion, is open *access* to free, high-quality educational opportunity sufficient, or is it necessary to *mandate* education through a certain age or level? The "right to education" as a basic human right is a sticky situation. The readings for this week introduce this idea as one that is important to consider. I believe everyone should have the right to be educated, but how to do this throughout the entire world is complicated for many reasons (one of these reasons being that the people of the world do not all agree on what a basic right is). As Tomasevski says we must look at the economic, political, and cultural impacts this question opens. Of course one of my first reactions to this question is that everyone in this world deserves to be educated, but educated in what? Their culture, the world, politics, reading and writing (in what language?), some curriculum that has been...

The time is quickly approaching where I need to get a graduate committee put together (even if it is temporary). I am starting to focus in much more on where I want to go with my dissertation and what cognates I want to be studying before I embark on that ship. It's funny how some days I feel very confident in what I am doing and the next day turns right around to be just the opposite. But I learned (at least I observed) a very valuable lesson last night as I took a break from school and attended a midnight movie with my husband and colleagues from school. I observed my professor interacting with his daughter and taking the time to not talk (as much as possible) about school and just have some fun with part of his family. Lesson learned: take the time to do things with those who are the most important. I just need to do what is necessary for school and let go of all the other things I know I'll never get too.

I have been reading more and more about this lately. Since I am working on a meta-analysis with my professor Andrew Walker here at Utah State University I've been exposed to a lot of literature on the subject. But recently I have found that others are seeing the benefits this teaching strategy has for the K-12 area and how it benefits students so they can be better learners. This is so fascinating to me. I want younger people to be prepared to learn their entire lives. I want them to value learning and be motivated to learn. I am starting to see where PBL can be a great strategy to accomplish this. Now I just need to do some research on it and prove with empirical evidence that it is helpful...

Ok, so I have been terrible at keeping up this blog. I thought for sure I'd do it during school. Well, that didn't happen did it. Here's my attempt to begin going better. The last two semesters, which have been my first in the doctoral program, have been tough. It took me a while fall semester to get into the swing of things, but I think I've got the procedure down now. This semester hasn't been quite as bad. I am working on a meta-analytic review of the problem-based learning (pbl) literature. My professor Andrew Walker and I are coding pbl articles that display cognitive outcomes between traditional and pbl groups inside and outside of medical education. We have a presentation at AECT in October in California. I have learned so much about pbl, research, and meta-analysis by working with him. With everything else I am volunteering with a research group who has created a simple software called Instructional Architect . It collaborates with the National Science Digi...