Archives: October, 2008

If you’ve already competed Blackboard Training with LEARN NC, you still have time to get trained in Moodle for free. We’re offering free “Moodle Transition Training for Blackboard Instructors“ for everyone who has completed LEARN NC Blackboard Training, whether you took it in person or on the Web.

This training program is self-paced to allow you to quickly move through sections you’ve mastered. A LEARN NC facilitator will be available to answer any questions you may have. If you haven’t completed Blackboard Training with LEARN NC, you can sign up for our standard “Moodle Training“ course.

Please remember, Moodle Transition Training for Blackboard Instroctors will not be available after December 31, 2008. For a full course description or to register, please click here.

We’ve published a number of best practices articles lately about teaching students from different cultural backgrounds. The first three are part of an initiative to overhaul our education reference; they’re detailed, research-based articles that begin with the history and theory of an idea and conclude with a variety of specific suggestions for the classroom:

• critical literacy
• culturally relevant teaching
• code-switching

Two more recent articles address specifically the needs of immigrant students from Mexico:

• Bridging the differences: Cultural background of Mexican students entering U.S. schools
• The middle school challenge for English language learners of Mexican origin

We’ve been busily adding to our collection of lesson plans for teaching about world cultures using multimedia. Incorporating audio recordings and photographs from countries around the world, the lesson plans cover a variety of curriculum areas, grade levels, and topics. Recent highlights include:

• To Market, To Market: Photograph Analysis, which encourages students to analyze photos of markets in Bali, Ecuador, India, Mexico, and Vietnam in order to understand the cultural significance of markets and the elements that unify geographically distant locations.
• Bounce Into Rubber: Natural Latex from Thailand, a science plan in which students examine various plant species to determine whether any produce natural latex, and explore the rubber production process in Thailand through photos and audio recordings.
• Bullfighting in Colombia, in which students students study the history of bullfighting in Spain and Colombia as an example of how cultural traditions can be transferred from one place to another.

Still more of these are on the way, so stay tuned. And if you like what you see, let us know!

MCNC will be hosting their annual Community Day December 4 and 5 at their campus in the Research Triangle Park. This year’s theme will be, “The Power of Virtual Communities.” Demonstrations of several internet-based applications such as Google Apps, iTunes U, NC LIVE and Muse will take place December 4. The following day, presentations will be held by North Carolina educators, as well as those from around the country. Discussion topics will pertain to the relationship between technology and education. For more information or to register, please visit their Web site.