Meetings/Events

Oct 26, Mon	- RCOE Administrative Council, 10-12, Greene-Oakes
Oct 27, Tues	- RCOE Swing for Scholarships Golf Tournament, all day, Rock Barn
Oct 29, Thur	- FIRE DRILL AT 2:30 – Teacher Education Council, 3:30-5, Rm. 03
Nov 2, Mon	- New Faculty Reception, 4:30-6, Chancellor’s Home
Nov 9, Mon	- RCOE Advancement Board, 11-2, Hickory Center
Nov 10, Tues	- RCOE Administrative Council, 10-12, Greene Oakes – HPC Counseling Student Poster Session, 2:30-4, Rm. 225
Nov 12, Thur	- RCOE New Building Furnishings Committee, 9-11
Nov 13, Fri	- RCOE International Activities Committee, 10-11, Greene Oakes
Nov 14-15, Sat-Sun	- ASU Scholars Weekend, Camp Broadstone
Nov 16, Mon	- Graduate Council, 3-5, John Thomas Building
Nov 19, Thur	- Teacher Education Council, 3:30-5, Rm. 03
Nov 20, Fri	- Doctoral Program International Symposium, 03
Dates to Save	– Oct. 27: Annual Swing for Scholarships Golf Tournament, Rock Barn (information: Dolly Farrell, Advancement Officer - Nov. 7: Education Day (football game and recognition of Education alumni as well as student winners of the Mountaineers Reading Program)

Sympathy

The RCOE community extends its sympathy to Robin Groce (C&I) on the loss of her grandmother.

Graduate Assistant Opportunities

Graduate Assistantship openings are available within the Division of Student Development for the 2010-2011 academic year.

As you mentor students into graduate school, please keep Appalachian State University and assistantships within the Division of Student Development in mind. The updated assistantships website (following link: www.assistantships.appstate.edu) provides information for prospective graduate students.Candidates can also view open positions and access the Student Development Assistantship Application Guide at this location.

The deadline for priority consideration is January 15, 2010. GAPP Interview Weekend is scheduled to take place February 18-20, 2010. Below is the tentative time line for the 2010-2011 recruitment process.

• November – December 2009: Complete necessary entrance exams (i.e. GRE)
• January 15, 2010: Priority Application deadline for Graduate School and Graduate Assistantships
• January 29, 2010: Initial invitations to GAPP Interview Weekend extended
• February 5, 2010: Last day applications are considered for GAPP Interview Weekend
• February 18, 2010: GAPP Interview Weekend begins @ approximately 11:00 a.m.
• February 20, 2010: GAPP Interview Weekend ends @ approximately 6:30 p.m.
• March 1, 2010: Initial offers extended

Special Education Impact

Recent changes in national and state requirements will have significant impact on teachers with special education licensure who are the “instructor of record” for classes in mathematics, English, history, science, etc. The following is text of a letter that school districts are required to provide to parents. The federal No Child Left Behind law requires that Title I schools inform parents if their child is assigned a teacher for four or more consecutive weeks who is not considered to be Highly Qualified as defined by the federal law.

The federal law defines a Highly Qualified teacher as one who is fully certified and/or licensed by the state; holds at least a bachelor’s degree from a four-year institution; and demonstrates competence in each core academic subject area in which the teacher teaches. Core subject areas include: English, reading, language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, social studies, economics, arts, history, geography, and kindergarten through Grade 6 (K-6).

Although our state has demanding certification requirements, these requirements do not automatically mean that every teacher meets the Highly Qualified standard, even if he or she has been teaching for years and has been performing at high levels.

As of this writing, your child’s teacher, [teacher's name], has met the Special Education certification requirements, but has not completed the subject matter competency requirement in [list subject]. This matter has arisen because of a ruling by the U.S. Department of Education (USED) stating that special education teachers must hold certification in both special education and in all subject areas in which they teach. Until this ruling issued by USED in September, your child’s teacher was considered by the State of North Carolina to be highly qualified to teach core academic subjects. Your child’s teacher acted in good faith to complete the requirements as they had been outlined to them prior to this ruling. Staff from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction will be working with your school on strategies to address this issue.

Note: School districts are currently reviewing the status of their teachers and will be working with DPI to find ways to address this most recent federal regulation. The impact of this ruling will be felt most significantly at the high school level where a special education teacher may be the teacher of record for a math class, English class, history class, etc. As long as a teacher remains the teacher of record, he or she will have to show competency in the content area; at present, the only way to do this appears to be taking the appropriate PRAXIS II test in the content area and meet the state’s cut-off score. We are monitoring this situation closely and will do whatever we can to assist the districts as they address this issue.

Twitter

Teachers at one private school in Virginia are using the short-form social-networking tool Twitter in the classroom to distribute assignments and to encourage students to work together. But while some teachers have had good initial results using the technology, which keeps messages at a maximum of 140 characters, some experts wonder what effects the technology will have on learning. "It will take a decade to answer that question," said one psychology professor. Education Week (EdWeek.org) (10/21)

OMG! Texting and IM-ing doesn’t affect spelling!

By Margaret Shapiro Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Washington Post

Parents, u r gonna be surprised by this, but a study from the University of Alberta says that the abbreviated and unpunctuated language commonly used in instant messaging and texting probably has no effect on your child’s spelling abilities. If anything, says psychologist and study lead author Connie Varnhagen, the language variations commonly used in instant messaging and cellphone texting should be viewed as a new language or at least a dialect with its own set of rules for spelling and writing.

Those findings, recently published in the journal Reading and Writing, suggest that parental worries that kids who use "chatspeak" will become bad spellers or never learn how to write well are unfounded. "Young people can compartmentalize their language," Varnhagen said. "They have language that they use on the playground and then school language. They know how to speak in classrooms without sounding like goofballs."

The study was proposed by a group of third-year psychology students who surveyed roughly 40 students ages 12 to 17. The participants were asked to save their instant messages for a week. At the end of the study, the participants completed a standardized spelling test.

Varnhagen said the researchers were pleasantly surprised by the results. The young people surveyed seem to know, without any sort of instruction, that there are "correct" ways of spelling in chatspeak. For instance, "probably" is abbreviated as "prolly," but never "proly"; "want to" becomes "wanna," never "wana" or "wanta"; "should’ve" is always "shoulda" and never "shuda."

"Kids who are good spellers [academically] are good spellers in instant messaging," she said. "And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging."

The findings come from a very small group of subjects, but they are in line with other recent studies. One report published in the March issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology said that children who use "textisms" on mobile phones may in fact be helping their literacy. Editorial note: I would like to see much more evidence longitudinally before jumping to any conclusions.

Major Educational Speech

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently gave a major address on teacher preparation at Teachers College in New York City. In his speech he recited previous criticisms of education schools, but unlike his recent speech at the University of Virginia, where he was quite critical of teacher education programs in higher ed—referred to them as “cash cows,” a label that I suspect caused a good deal of laughter in budget strained institutions–he balanced criticism with acknowledgement of reforms underway in education schools. The speech has received significant media coverage.

Paper Use

The use of paper nationally and internationally remains a major industry and has, of course, corresponding impact on a number of resources; for a quick view of this impact, go to

http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/watch/9/the_secret_life_of_paper

E-Books

Much is being made of the possible roles for e-books in higher education. However, students have some views on the readiness of such devices for prime-time in classes. Kindle, for example, shows promise but needs improvement, say students Students liked having access to a semester’s worth of reading in one book-sized device but did not like taking notes on its keyboard, according to feedback from college students using the Kindle e-reading device. Kindle devices loaded with digital textbooks were provided to 200 college students this fall by Amazon, which hopes to adapt the technology for academic textbooks. According to the students, other areas for improvement include bookmark organization and pagination that corresponds to the hard-copy textbooks. Google/The Associated Press (10/13)

Accelerated Degree programs

The idea of accelerated degree programs has been around for some time and a number of higher education institutions offer them in varying formats; most of these occur at relatively small private schools. Alexander Lamar, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, writing in Newsweek, proposes the idea of taking the concept to scale, especially at a time when tuitions are high and student monies are low. Among the pros of the three year degree as Alexander proposes it are reduced overall tuition cost, quicker entry into a profession, increased student commitment to learning; among the cons—not everyone responds well to such pressure, tends to diminish the “full” college experience, and there is a lack of evidence that students who complete in three years do any better academically than those who take four or five. See http://www.newsweek.com/id/218183

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“Change is a Journey, not a Destination.”
—M. Fullan