NewsTrust - Global Literacy - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Aliteracy Anxiety

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time Passing - By Lance Strate - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Aliteracy may be the trend of the future. Reading limited to short bursts. Street signs. Restaurant menus. Headlines. Status updates and tweets. Short paragraphs online. And reading that is limited to the functional, reading for directions, for instructions, for getting tasks done. As opposed to reading for pleasure. And as opposed to reading as a cultural activity.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Minding the Campus - By Mary Grabar - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - After spending four depressing days this month at a meeting of 3,000 writing teachers in Atlanta, I can tell you that their parent group, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, is not really interested in teaching students to write and communicate clearly. The group’s agenda, clear to me after sampling as many of the meeting’s 500 panels as I could, is devoted to disparaging grammar, logic, reason, evidence and fairness as instruments of white oppression. They believe rules of grammar discriminate against “marginalized” groups and restrict self-expression.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Raymond J. Learsy: T.Friedman's Take On 'Wimps" and "The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Raymond J. Learsy - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - All this raises a much more fundamental question: Given our current structure of government and the way it functions, how are we going to compete, and to hold our own in years to come as we go head to head with societies that are far better equipped to deal with the exigencies of the future and the long-term planning that is essential is to meeting the challenges ahead? Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/tfriedmans-take-on-wimps_b_294370.html

NewsTrust Rating: 4.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Nut Graph | Scaling the language barrier

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

thenutgraph.com - By Wong Chin Huat - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - The standard of English has deteriorated in Malaysia, over the past decade, while the English language is enjoying increasing importance in a globalising world. Taking both these factors into consideration, isn't the call to abolish [the policy of English for Teaching Mathematics and Science] and reinstate the old status quo irrational and irresponsible? I don't think so.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The global achievement muddle

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

nwarktimes.com - By Sandra Stotsky - Jan. 31 (Opinion) - The Fayetteville Public Schools are very good because they are always trying to get better. But sometimes the best thing is to leave things alone. The Fayetteville Public Schools are now holding a series of workshops on Tony Wagner's "The Global Achievement Gap." As a curriculum expert who has taught third grade, served on the National Mathematics Advisory Panel and spent the past 30 years teaching teachers in this country and in Eastern Europe, I know that change can be good, but that fads are very bad. How can we tell the difference? Only by research and measurement. Wagner promotes seven "21st century" skills that he claims are not taught in our schools. These "survival" skills are also being promoted by advocacy groups like the National Educational Association. Wagner's list seems plausible. Who can argue against teaching students "agility and adaptability" or how to "ask good questions?" Yet these "skills" are largely unsupported by actual scientific research. Wagner presents nothing to justify his list except glib language and a virtually endless string of anecdotes about his conversations with high-tech CEOs.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Parental sine qua non

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

globecampus.ca - By Editorial Board - Jan. 30 (Editorial) - While parents cast about at great expense looking for programs to improve their children's brainpower, a magic bullet exists at low cost that has never quite received its due. It is a life-enhancing, literacy-inducing, time-travelling device, colloquially known as a “book.” It works optimally when a parent or two read it out loud. Best of all, it is free at public libraries, though woe betide the person who returns it late. This device – sold separately, as they say (the book and the parental reading unit) – is far, far better than a Baby Einstein video. Imagine, if it only had the name. Let's do the Baby Einstein before bed. Think how eagerly parents would embrace it. What parent-child reading needs is marketing. It is getting some. Beginning Friday, and ending Saturday, thousands of Canadian adults and children are attempting to enter the Guinness World Records, for “most children reading with an adult, multiple locations,” trying to grab the record of 78,791 from the Americans, who set it in 2006. At last word, Canada had 187,043 people registered. Everyone is reading the same five books by the Canadian author Robert Munsch. Corny? No.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Books Can't Compete

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Mark Bauerlein - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - Here’s a depressing and blunt comment from Larry McMurtry, speaking not only as a novelist but as a bookstore owner (it’s an interview): The end of the culture of the book. I’m pessimistic. Mainly it’s the flow of people into my bookshop in Archer City. They’re almost always people over 40. I don’t see kids, and I don’t see kids reading. I think little kids love to have stories read to them, but when they get to 10 or 11 or 12, they run into this tsunami of technology: iPod, iPhone, Blackberries. They don’t resist it, and it’s normal that they wouldn’t; it’s their culture. I’m not so sure they ever come back to reading. Some will, but most won’t. The tsunami metaphor is apt, and it points out the relationship between books and other media in kids’ lives. The list of options has grown, with books now joined by games, Web surfing, music downloading, Photoshop, YouTube, social networking, blogs, texting, IM, and the rest. Lots of folks think that the environment has grown more challenging and rewarding and enlightening, the addition of digital diversions fostering a rich plurality of texts and images and stories and sounds in which books maintain a central place.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Wikinews interviews team behind the 2,000th featured Wikipedia article

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wikinews - By Brian McNeil, Jon Beasley-Murray, UBC students - Apr. 13 (Interview) - Wikinews contacted Professor Jon Beasley-Murray, who agreed to be interviewed for this story. His responses can be found below. Included are sections soliciting responses from three students who took the class and helped create and bring El Señor Presidente to Feature Article status. Thus far the project has created seven good articles in addition to the 2,000th featured article.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer