Reaching their full potential

By Roger Phillips
Record Staff Writer
May 11, 2013 12:00 AM
Article from http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130511/A_NEWS/305110316

STOCKTON - Yael Castillo slipped on a prosthetic arm the other day and flexed the device's two prongs to pick up tennis balls and toss them into a bucket, to lift a can of soda and drink from it, even to grasp a pen and sign his name.

Was there anything he couldn't do with the artificial limb?

"Maybe use a touchscreen phone," Castillo said.

The prosthesis cost $19.44 to build. It was designed and constructed by Castillo and fellow Stagg High School students Brooklyn Omstead, Anthony Nichols and Gabriel Zuniga. Today at University of the Pacific, Stagg's prosthetic arm just might pick up one more thing. It might grab the Math Engineering Science Achievement, or MESA, state championship.

"For less than $40, they had to design something to replace the arm and hand," explained Stagg's MESA teacher, Andrew Walter.

Last year, Stagg students including Omstead won the national MESA championship with the wind turbine they built. This year, MESA participants nationwide were called upon to design and build prosthetic arms that could be of use to the roughly 65,000 people in the United States who annually undergo an amputation. If Stagg's team wins today, it will try to repeat its MESA national championship next month in Portland, Ore.

The Stagg foursome designed and built its prosthetic device, starting in November, over the course of more than 700 hours. As if designing the gadget wasn't enough, MESA competitions require students to write a seven-minute speech about their creation and to create a display board and a PowerPoint. Writing and presentation skills are as important a part of the MESA process as the scientific aspect.

"They turn out to be a fairly well-rounded group by the time they're finished," said Walter, whose MESA program has about 130 participants.

Stagg's prosthesis was fashioned from 26 different items, none of which cost an arm and a leg because the MESA projects are required to be built with thrift in mind. Stagg's students used duct tape, air tubing, a bit of sofa cushion, PVC pipe, football padding, fishing line and 20 other materials.

Though all of Stagg's supplies were donated, the students were required to price the items online and provide documentation of the total cost of building their arm. Walter said the students also received another donation: a spare prosthetic arm from a Stagg teacher who is an amputee. From this, Walter said, the students were able to do "reverse engineering" as they conceived their own prosthesis.

Stagg High students are among more than 1,500 elementary, middle school and high school students from the region who receive support from Pacific's MESA center. The Stagg teammates competing today say learning by working on a project is vastly more engaging than sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture. They say the active learning develops their brainpower.

"It gives you a new way to look at things," said Omstead, a 16-year-old junior. "It teaches you to problem-solve. You can take that and use it in other situations and be more effective in the way you think."

There's also a practical benefit, Walter said, to getting students excited about science, technology, engineering and math - STEM for short.

"STEM fields is where it's at," Walter said. "STEM is where the United States unfortunately is falling farther and farther behind, and that's where most jobs are opening up."

Walter's students worked collaboratively to prepare for today's event. The 18-year-old Castillo, a senior, was the lead builder with assistance from Nichols, a 17-year-old junior. Omstead designed the team's academic display board. Zuniga, a 16-year-old sophomore, did the technical writing. In developing their prosthesis, the students learned about kinetic and stored energy, kinesiology and anatomy, among many other things.

"You get to test your ideas and see whether they work or not," Nichols said.

Zuniga added, "It's fun, and at the same time you get to learn new things."

Contact reporter Roger Phillips at (209) 546-8299 or rphillips@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at www.recordnet.com/phillipsblog.

Roger Phillips
Record Staff Writer
May 11, 2013 12:00 AM
Article from http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130511/A_NEWS/305110316

Writing like a historian: developing students' writing skills

Using Michael Halliday's theory of functional language, history teacher Lee Donaghy transformed his students' speaking and written work


From http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/

Writing like a historian: Lee Donaghy uses English to help his students' express their knowledge and understanding of history in language. Photograph: Alamy

"Why are we doing English in history, sir?" came the question as I asked my year 9 history class what kind of word disarmament was. Having anticipated this kind of reaction I had an answer prepared: "Do we only use language in English lessons?"

The question was anticipated because I have heard it from other classes, and indeed other teachers, since I began to include an explicit focus on language development in my history lessons 18 months ago. And the question goes to the heart of what I believe is a fundamental reason for the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their non-free school meal counterparts in Britain; the misalignment of these pupils' language use with that which is needed for academic success and the need for teachers to explicitly address this misalignment in their teaching.

My year 9 class are typical of many classes I've taught over the nine years of my teaching career; enthusiastic, bright, of limitless academic potential. But when it came to marking their written work I would be left tearing my hair out at their inability to express their understanding clearly. I wanted my pupils to be able to read, speak and write like historians; to be able to express their knowledge and understanding of history in language. After all, we would cover the material in class, I would check their understanding through various exercises and careful questioning and then I would give them frameworks for writing answers, using sentence starters and model answers. Yet, this had always been something of an elephant in the room for me as a history teacher, an issue whose cause and therefore solution I could never quite unpick: why can't I teach my students to write properly?

My answer arrived 18 months ago when I was introduced to the ideas of Michael Halliday and his theory of the functional model of language. Halliday describes language in terms of a 'register continuum' from everyday, informal and spoken-like at one end to abstract, formal and written-like at the other. It's at this latter end where the language of school subjects operates, but the other end where the majority of my pupils operate.

So, I began to focus on shifting my pupils' language use explicitly from everyday to abstract, from informal to formal and from spoken-like to written-like. One very important aspect of this was to use classroom talk and discussion as a way to bridge the gap between pupils' exploratory talk in pairs or groups and their individual written work. Paying conscious attention to the language they use to express understanding in different contexts, from discussion to reporting back to presenting, is a powerful way of scaffolding pupils' ability to write accurately and effectively.

In practice this means two things: developing pupils' knowledge of technical, subject specific vocabulary, like disarmament, and giving them a framework for talk in the classroom. To give you an example, when considering the impact of the Wall Street Crash and the subsequent Great Depression on levels of international co-operation, I divided pupils into six groups. Three groups were given information about international co-operation in the 1920s and three were given information about the same topic in the 1930s. Each group had to discuss the information and be ready to feedback to the class their judgement on the level of co-operation in their period. I emphasised to the pupils that each group only had half of the information needed to answer the question.

As a result of this information gap, each group investigating the 1920s had to explain clearly and explicitly to the 1930s groups what their judgement was and which information they had used to come to it, and vice versa. By feeding back to the rest of the class in this way pupils were pushed to produce longer, fuller and more explicit stretches of language.

This move provides a bridge for pupils into writing. The longer stretches of language with explicit explanation help them to reproduce this on paper. They then begin to speak like historians – although they hated me describing them as historians at first – and then in turn find it easier to write like historians. Consistently using this formulation has increased my pupils' confidence and for my year 9s it has now become second nature to answer questions and report back from discussions formally and at length, with noticeable impact on the quality of their writing.

All of which means marking their books should no longer lead me into premature baldness.

Lee Donaghy is an assistant principal at a secondary school in Birmingham.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/

2013: The Year of the Online Writer

From: http://www.copyblogger.com/2013-online-writer/

We’re coming up on seven years since I started Copyblogger. That alone is hard for me to wrap my head around, and yet … here we are.

Since day one, it’s been about content. Not just words that fill up a webpage, but valuable information that attracts attention, drives traffic, and builds businesses.

But there’s another thing Copyblogger has always been about, and that’s the people who create the content. For the most part, especially for us, that means writers.

The last several years (and especially 2012) you’ve heard a lot about content marketing. 

Some might say too much, but trust me, it’s not going away. We won’t go back to straight pitches, clever commercials, and filler website copy after being offered strategic content with independent value – the Internet-empowered prospect won’t tolerate it.

On the other hand, there hasn’t been as much celebration of the people who create the blog posts, white papers, video scripts, and infographic copy. That’s about to change, especially around here.

2013 will mark a shift in both the perception and the fortunes of Internet-savvy writers. Here are three big reasons why the writer runs the Internet show:

1. Online Marketing is Driven by Content

Content marketing isn’t a buzz phrase, and it isn’t a fad. Rather, people are starting to realize that content is the foundational element of all effective online marketing. This is very good news for writers.

From the allure of building a direct relationship with prospective customers and clients, to smarter pay-per-click strategies, to social media sharing, to SEO – content is what works.

The increased demand for talented content creators means compensation and respect for the writer will rise … as long as you understand and assert your own value in the marketplace. Don’t worry, we’ll keep reminding you, and giving you smart tips for staking the claim of your choice.

2. Google Authorship Elevates the Writer

Google made talented writers more important with the Panda and Penguin updates. Instead of weak content and “unnatural” link building, now sites need strong content that attracts links organically.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Now who creates the content, and who does the linking out matters – which is why Google wants to know who you are via your Google+ authorship profile. What’s been dubbed Author Rank has the potential to be the biggest algorithmic signal for SEO since the hyperlink itself.

The days of lame anonymous content are over. Even better, rock star writers with demonstrated success and strong social followings will command the highest compensation and equity positions.

Think about that.

3. The Writer as Entreproducer

So, the rest of the business world might start to realize just how much great writers are worth. Well, a lot of writers have already realized it, and have clued in to the fact that they don’t need a job, or perhaps even clients, to succeed at doing what they love.

The boom in online content marketing will drive thousands of writers to control their own destinies. Not just as in-house staff or freelancers, but as owners of consulting firms and agencies.

Add to that the self-publishing boom with ebooks and other digital goods, and the writer truly can run his or her own show. Some might even start software companies. 

We’re Excited About You in 2013

Here at Copyblogger, we finally feel like the rest of the world has caught up with us, and more importantly, you.

Content makes the Internet work, but without the writers and other content creators, it wouldn’t happen at all. Never forget that, and never underestimate how much you’re worth in this brave new world of a content-driven, convergent medium.

So, we’ve got big plans for our favorite people next year. Here’s a slight teaser before we wish you happy holidays, and the very best to you and yours in 2013.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and CEO of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Brian on Google+.

From: http://www.copyblogger.com/2013-online-writer/