Student Guide Corner

Have you ever been in a situation where you recognize the person you are talking with but just can't place how you know them? It happened to me recently, walking my dog at the park. I encountered someone but just couldn't place him. Fortunately, he recognized my memory failure and explained we were members of a town committee. Out of context, I didn't recognize him. Context is important. Not only in face to face encounters. It's also important when spell checking our written work. Google Docs offers a feature which relies on context; it's a feature which makes the use of Google Docs especially helpful for our students who struggle with spelling. They call it " Intelligent Spelling ," where spell checking looks at the words in context in the sentence and offers suggestions. Many people rely on the spell checker built into Microsoft Word, but it does not have contextual spell checking capabilities. Want to see this in action? Here's a video which demonst...

First:   this blog went over 59,000 page views a couple of days ago.   I am always amazed by the number of people who find this site.   My guess is that many of those readers discovered the site because someone else mentioned it to them.   As always -- thanks a million (and a half) to everyone for passing along the information to anyone who is interested in teaching and anyone who is interested in thinking about how to get better as a teacher. ** I have made the point previously that I believe a college education would be more valued (rather than being under a full scale attack as it currently is) if more faculty members worked as mentors for the students rather than just teachers.   Several of my blog entries this summer have talked about going beyond the conveyance of information to a relationship where you help the students grow as people (my story about best books and attending the opera, for example).   Consequently, here ...

Not long ago, I friend of mine who teaches English here at the University of Richmond asked me �is it possible that we are all in the buggy whip business and we don�t even know it?� In other words, has education changed so quickly and so dramatically that many of us are going to get left behind?  (or, have already been left behind?) It is easy to dismiss that idea (because we want to dismiss that idea). Of course, the times are changing. Everyone can obviously see in the newspapers, television, and Internet that the world of education is evolving. But there will always be room in this world for the kind of college teaching that you and I do. The core of a college education has not really changed much since I was a freshman in 1966. Some version of that model will surely continue on forever. Surely it is sustainable? Surely? Or maybe not. A friend of mine here at Richmond sent me a link to two videos at www.epic2020.org. I only watched the first one (I�m in the middle of preparing t...