Archive for July, 2007

Spammers cut

Published by admin on 28 July 2007 in Administrivia. 2 Comments

For a long time I had no problems with spammers who ran scripts that sign-up bogus users for my blogs. But recently, there’s been a spate of them. Yesterday, I eliminated these accounts:

ID #51: barsikjak, ID #52: barsikjal, ID #55: beepbeek, ID #54: beepbeet, ID #58: derisgun, ID #50: barsikjan, ID #48: chuchundra, ID #49: chuchundrra, ID #44: Delmarbbq, ID #47: goorooro, ID #42: JacomoR, ID #46: ritalinB, ID #63: bortycuz, ID #60: gortusbig, ID #61: grofvuri, ID #59: trusaerus,

I also activated a software resource (”plug-in”) that will trap most of them at the time of requesting an account, so I shouldn’t have to hassle as much with this.

Anyone else seen an increase in such activity recently?

Who visits?

Published by admin on 27 July 2007 in Administrivia. 0 Comments

Folks, I don’t use a fancy stats package and, even if I did, I’d only have a passing idea of who visits Teach Effectively. So, I’m running a poll for the next week or so in which I’m asksing visitors to indicate their connection to education in general and Teach Effectively specifically. Please click on the page marked “polls” and explain yourselves (both of you, please).

Creativity

Published by JohnL on 27 July 2007 in Musings, News and Written Expression. 1 Comment

Over on Kitchen Table Math Catherine Johnson has a note about several articles on creativity she’d read recently. Upon seeing the entry, I remembered that there are several very interesting—at least to me—behavioral studies of creativity. So I slipped over to the site for the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and ran a quick search. Here are some of the results (with links to the abstracts; one can download the full article by following the link to the abstract):

Maloney, K. B. & Hopkins, B. L. (1973). The modification of sentence structure and its relationship to subjective judgements of creativity in writing. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 6, 425-433. The present study objectively defined and manipulated some compositional variables in 10-sentence stories written by fourth- fifth- and sixth-grade students, and related these operationally defined variables to subjective judgements of cr….

Glover, J. & Gary, A. L. (1976). Procedures to increase some aspects of creativity. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 9, 79-84. Instructions, reinforcement (team points) and practice were applied to four behaviorally defined creative behaviors of eight fourth- and fifth-grade students. All four aspects (number of different responses, fluency; number of verb forms, flexibility; number of words per response, elaboration; and statistical infr….

Parsonson, B. S. & Baer, D. M. (1978). Training generalized improvisation of tools by preschool children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11, 363-380. The development of new, creative behaviors was examined in a problem-solving context. One form of problem solving, improvisation, was defined as finding a substitute to replace the specifically designated, but currently unavailable, tool ordinarily used to solve the problem. The study e….

Glover, J. A. (1979). The effectiveness of reinforcement and practice for enhancing the creative writing of elementary school children. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 12, 487. Reinforcement (team points) and practice were applied to the written work of 16 fifth graders on three operationally defined components of creative writing, fluency, flexibility, and originality. These three components were assessed via five response measures. Fluen….

Read to Ms. Johnson’s post.

A whale of an education

Published by JohnL on 22 July 2007 in Musings and Policy. 1 Comment

Sometimes things just get away from me. In this nifty parody of debates about education from the Onion, there are some fun pokes at familiar arguments. I’m not sure which one is my favorite; people will probably consider different ones funnier than others. And, although it’s not really a parody, I like the singing at the end.

Testimonials don’t count

Published by JohnL on 15 July 2007 in Administration, Arithmetic and mathematics, Musings, Parents, Reading, Research and The press. 1 Comment

Sometimes it just gets to me.

Learning Upgrade may have fabulous products that produce wondrous outcomes for students (I do not know whether the company does), but I’m not buying those products on the basis of testimonial evidence. The Web site’s blog offers testimonial statements (e.g., “Reading Upgrade Helps Texas 3rd Graders Avoid Retention” and “Teenager with Learning Difficulties Makes 3 Years Growth With Comprehension Upgrade“) that are no more than anecdotal evidence.
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Factors affecting teachers’ effectiveness

Published by JohnL on 9 July 2007 in Administration, Musings, News, Policy and Research. 0 Comments

The Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) is a project that conducts research on a variety of questions, including factors that affect teachers’ effectiveness. CALDER is a collaboaration among researchers at the Urban Institute’s Education Policy Center, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of Florida, the University of Missouri, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Washington. Funded by the US Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences
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