Wimba

Well, I just spent 3 hours researching Wimba on the web and I am very impressed with it.  We have some training coming up at BSC so I will try to attend.  What I like about Wimba is you can IM all your students and setup online office hours.

EDUC 675 Jedi Knights

Hello Team,

Blogs are really easy to setup and can be a lot of fun.  As you can tell from a previous course I had we blogged on many educational topics.  Have a good day.

Blog #16: Hey Dad, Can I Have A Boy In My Room?

Alright, I know my title could have had a boy asking a mom but I tend to remember TV shows depicting the fathers as being a tad overprotective of their “little girls” when it came to their first date. Well, now parents have can one more thing to worry about when little Jonny and Sally go off to college, should my child have a roommate of the opposite sex?

The Associated Press is reporting that Columbia University will begin allowing men and women to live the same dorm room. Columbia University has traditionally been a more liberal leaning institution so this arrangement does not seem to bother many within the student body. One male student responded, “Yes, absolutely” when asked if he would consider living with a girl that was his friend. He repeated that response when asked if he would live with a female that wasn’t a friend. Similar answers were given by female students when asked the question with regards to male roommates.

The main force for this new dorm life is to make gays and lesbians “feel more comfortable” according to the reporter. The reporter did ask a gay male student his thoughts and he said, “I would feel more comfortable living with my girl friends then a my guy friends”.
Not all student’s agree with the change of policy on dorm living. Sada Ruffin commented, “I think allowing coed roommates you (Columbia) is condoning a certain behavior”. The only exception to the new gender neutral building is incoming freshman.

Columbia is not the first college or university to offer gender neutral housing. There are roughly thirty Higher Ed campuses that provide this type of living ,with Harvard allowing it if the student identifies themselves as transgender.

A question to my fellow bloggers:

1) Would it bother you if your son/daughter asked to live in gender neutral room with the opposite sex?

An ending thought:

1) Nowhere in the piece did the reporter even ask homosexuals IF they felt uncomfortable on the Columbian campus so I wonder if this isn’t a move by some campus to bring enrollments up.

2) Since the student is legally an adult is it up to the college to determine who they can and cannot live with it? I could see the parents stating their opinion if they are paying the tuition and rightfully so.

Blog #15: Express yourself in Oregon...well, not just yet.

Does your school enforce a dress code on you? Maybe it is business attire or maybe business causal or maybe just plain causal on jeans day. Whichever it is it is an issue that has a long history in the state of Oregon. Recently, in a USA Today article, House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, said he will push to "allow teachers to have the same religious free exercise rights as every other Oregonian" when legislators meet in February.


The issue at hand is a 1923 law that was put in place to keep Catholics from attending public school. The law was taken to the courts in 1986 and upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court. The ban outlaws the wearing of religious clothing or “garb”.

There are many interesting points to consider to this story. The first one is that the law is still in place and only 3 states of such bans on the books. Is your state one of them? The second item that caught my attention is that, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, which has long supported the ban, said the Legislature should not end it without enacting additional protections for Oregon students, according to the article. In a related issue the ACLU is fighting for the rights of students in Florida that were dismissed from school for wearing, “Islam is the Devil” t-shirts to class. The ACLU issued a statement that it is their right under the Bill of Rights and their freedom of speech, to wear such clothing. The Florida school district disagrees. We will see how that case plays out.

The last item that I found interesting in the Oregon case is that the “Oregon Education Association has not taken a position on the issue”, a spokeswoman said.

So what are your thoughts? If you were a teacher in Oregon which way would you push for? A ban on wearing religious clothing or no ban but I would assume then that teachers would have to follow some dress code. The dress code could be one that the students follow as many of you have said are in place at your schools OR it could be a professional contract stating what business causal is. I know from a previous blog by a classmate that some younger teachers don’t understand what business casual is but for the sake of agreement let us say they do.

I feel your employer has some rights to enforce a dress code on the staff and the students. I worked at a refinery and we had to wear safety boots, hard hats, and jeans or we wouldn’t have a job. It was a requirement that our company put in place. Why is it different in education? The district hires you to be a professional so why shouldn’t they be able to set the guidelines as to what they THINK a professional is? In this story I guess the people of Oregon are still trying to figure that out.

Blog 14: Advisor, “I need a fitness class to graduate.”

Do you remember which classes you needed to graduate from college? I do and physical education wasn’t one of them. In a aggressive move to curve the obsieity epdicmic facing the youth of our country, specifically the black community Lincoln Univeristy is requiring overweight students to take a fitness class. According to the USA Today article written by the AP, “Officials at historically black Lincoln University said Friday that the school is simply concerned about high rates of obesity and diabetes, especially in the African-American community”.

The requirement is a three credit fitness course that what put in place four years ago for all incoming freshman. It requires students to get tested for their body mass index, a measure of weight to height. If students are above a healthy weight then they are required to take a class that consist of , “Walking, aerobics, weight training and other physical activities, as well as information on nutrition, stress and sleep” said, James L. DeBoy, chairman of Lincoln's department of health, physical education and recreation.

In the article it stated that certain health experts agreed that something needed to be done but felt the move by the college is, “distasteful” because issues such as healthy choices in the vending machines could be addressed by the college.

Tiana Lawson, a 21-year-old senior, wrote in this week's edition of The Lincolnian, the student newspaper, that she "didn't come to Lincoln to be told that my weight is not in an acceptable range. I came here to get an education."

Again, I ask do you remember what requirements you had to take to graduate? Is this discrimination? Is this being proactive? Many colleges require students to take a diversity credit to enrich their minds so why not make requirements to improve the body?

I applauded this college for taking a stand on a sensitive issue, but I want to know what you think.

Blog # 13: Is out of state tuition for illegals a thing of the past?

In 10 states a student that is undocumented and/or illegal can be given in state tuition and the Common Wealth of Massachusetts is now considering a bill to do the same. What does this mean to higher education? Well, it means millions of dollars pumped back into colleges that are in and economic downturn. According to USA Today article, “The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation estimates that 400 to 600 students might enter Massachusetts schools as a result of the bill and that it likely would result in $2.5 million of extra revenue”.

The issue is a hot one in Massachusetts and a similar bill was voted down in 2006. A reason given by Rep. Demetrius Atsalis, D-Barnstable, “believes it will make the state's college fee structure meaningless and will take away the incentive for undocumented students to legalize their status”.

Recently, bills in states like Georgia (where some of our classmates live) have passed legislation that bans undocumented students to enroll in colleges using in-state rates. Steve Kropper, co-director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform, a group that seeks immigration restrictions, has stated, “"It doesn't make economic sense to us," Kropper said. "If they can't get a job when they're done (with college), then it doesn't make sense for the state to invest in them,” referring to the fact that they are not allowed to have drivers licenses in his state which makes employment difficult.

Since most states that have passed some sort of bill allowing in-state tuition to illegal’s are in conservative controlled states people cannot argue that is it a political issue for the left to gain votes. It really is an issue that both parties are tackling with illegal immigration at the fore front.

So what does this mean to you and me your wondering? Well, I see it as an unfair advantage given to undocumented individuals so colleges can cash in. It is no secret that colleges can make huge profits from out-of-state students attending. For example at Bismarck State College, residents pay $112 per credit hour while non-residents pay $299. The money made from non-residents cover a lot expenses for higher education.

On the other hand, one could argue that undocumented students need assistance to lift themselves up and start a new life in American and this is one way to do it. If that is the case shouldn’t citizens that are non residents be able to use the same agreement for improving their lives?

This isn’t about discrimination it is about what is fair to all students that want to attended college , tax dollars, and politics.

What do you think?

Blog #12: Are you teaching students to fail?

Well, if you are not teaching them to fail maybe you should, according to Justin Pope, of the Associated Press. In his latest article titled, “Analysis: College students need a lesson in failure”, Pope brings to forefront how colleges tend to bring in the best and brightest speakers to enlighten the student body. He states that the blogging being done about shamed ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair at the college of Washington & Lee University in Virginia will prompt colleges to rethink the issue of failure.

Pope says, “But if the cheap irony of a famous fabulist lecturing on ethics was too much to resist, perhaps it could also prompt colleges to think more seriously about something they often shy away from: the value of exposing students to, and preparing them for, failure”.

Is he right? Did your college expose you to failure?

I can’t think of one guest speaker while I attended University of Nebraska-Omaha that spoke about their failures or were even considered failures.

The article in USA Today goes on to Generation Y is intrigued by individuals who fail because they were always given the medal, always told how to succeed, and are frighten of being a disappointment. “That's understandable — but too bad. Teachers say failure is something so-called Gen Y students want to hear more about,” said Pope.

Of course teachers can talk about failure in literature and point students to people that are failures but how do you construct a lesson on failure? The key according to some professors is critically thinking and discussing with a class what that individual did and be honest about it, maybe they learned something from the failure or maybe they didn’t, should it matter? The exposure should be there.

Writer Timothy Noah lamented how many new college graduates were getting commencement advice from the accomplished but boring. Success is admirable but uninstructive, while failure is far more informative — and interesting.

"People typically have a much easier time recounting, in often vivid detail, where they screwed up in life than they do explaining what they did right," Noah wrote.

The only time I talk to my class about failure is when I am relating to a troubleshooting problem and it didn’t work the way I wanted to. I think it would be interesting sit down one day and discuss what failure means to students and then turn it into a learning experience by showing them failure is a part of life and how to accept it.

Maybe some of my classmates that teach in the English areas could help me come up with a good set of directions so is I would attempt a writing assignment I would recieve honest work.