the Sam Jackson College Experience

all the exciting parts, none of the heavy debt burden

Graphic Feminism @ Yale: a blog and poster project

Yalies who thought that gender issues were a relic of the past should have had a rude awakening last year, after the mess surrounding some highly public misogynistic frat behavior known as the ‘we love yale sluts’ incident [YDN]. However, after the anger at the Zeta Psi pledges and hatred towards the Women’s Center had subsided, things seem to have gone back to normal – issues of sexism and the question of gender in general subsided once again into the background, consigned to the shadows again.

At the same time, the class of 2012 now seemingly holds a record for the greatest gender gap in Yale admissions history, or something close to it– 2,281 more women than men applied to Yale for the class of 2012, but men were 68% more likely to be offered a spot. The adjusted admissions rate: 9.8% for men, 7.5% for women.

students slide naked across the women's table, but kiss the toe of woolseyIt’s in this climate that a great new blog popped up, called Graphic Feminism. The authors talk about feminism as it applies to higher education and Yale, but also are putting up some really well done posters around campus on a weekly basis highlighting certain issues that seem to go unmentioned, unquestioned, and undiscussed. There was a really powerful one called ‘Your Comments Here‘ which reprints in full form many of the comments from that YDN article — and it is shocking, horrible, and deeply informative all at the same time.

Definitely worth checking out — just some pictures you can look at quickly, won’t take much of your time! I’m having a meeting this weekend with some other Yale bloggers to talk about the future of blogging at Yale. More updates to come soon.

Carnival of Education #160: Tools and thought provoking discussion for students, educators, and more

blogcarnivalfair.jpgHello everyone! This is my first time hosting a blog carnival, but it is the 160th Carnival of Education! I got a lot of submissions for this week and chose the best ones to share with you today. Welcome to the February 27, 2008 edition of the carnival of education, let’s get started! When you’re done with these links, be sure to check out all the higher education content you can find right here on my site : )

General Education

Alvaro with the Brain Fitness Center at SharpBrains gives us some helpful suggestions for how to keep our brains in tip top shape–he also hosted the 159th carnival!

Should parents pay for college (in whole or in part)? An interesting question… and one that I’m glad my parents answered basically in the affirmative.

Phil says that, paying for college or not, parents should do more to teach their kids patience. It took too long to read everything he wrote so I’m not quite sure, however, of what the entire post was about–I guess I’m just in such a rush all the time!

Noirlecroi is a big fan of blog carnivals, which is good, because it makes me want to link to their review of Mosaic of Thought, a book about teaching comprehension, that much more.

The Daily Grind provides a suggested Student Code of Ethics… what do you think about it?

Matthew K Tabor writes about the links between baseball and education, and they’re more compelling in the context of the UFT than you might have imagined.

Great for Educators and Teachers

When, and if, to use if instead of when: tips from So You Want to Teach? about just that–teaching.

For more tongue twisting fun, consider the post about questioning questions, or at least the way teacher-questioners question. Lead from the Start ponders this and more in the context of preschool.

In case these other posts were sounding too cheery, read about this nightmare situation from Scenes from the Battleground, a blog about teaching in tough situations.

On the note of troublesome students… Siobhan has a teaser about what he’s doing dealing with tough COLLEGE students.

But we shouldn’t always blame the students! What about when parents make it difficult for students to stay in class by constantly moving? Bluebird’s Classroom tells us about this unfortunate trend in certain seventh grade classrooms.

Any history teachers reading? History is Elementary has a post about hundreds-of-years-old fashion styles as it relates to teaching. Check it out.

Speaking of history–over at Scheiss Weekly we have a post asking whatever happened to the unsung heroes?

Does school kill poetry? Read Jennifer Ward’s take on it.

Social Commentary about Education

The relationship between New York education policy, great apes, and why the teachers wants Joel Klein to understand more about teaching. All this and more at Under Assault, now!

They’re not the only ones with complains about New York City schools: check out what Education Notes has to say on the subject.

SwitchedOnMom says that there should be more field trips. I totally agree.

EduWonkette wants to ask you what you think of different approaches to mitigating the achievement gap… and also to remind you to try to avoid being food poisoned.

Which brings us to Dave’s commentary on some problems with metrics for measuring high school drop out data in California. What lessons can be learned from different measurement techniques?

General Educational Resources

SarahSpy has a great listing of free / pay-whatever days at a long list of NYC museums. Definitely worth checking out, sending along.

Life. Money. Development, writes about the seven habits of highly effective students… and how to acquire them. By clicking that link, presumably.

 

Web Tools for Students, Educators, and More

OEDb has some excellent (50!) tools for students and educators alike for use on the web, for research and learning. Check out their top 50 tools for researchers and students.

Bill Ferriter, 6th grade, teacher, is encouraging teachers to use RSS, in Pageflakes for Teachers, a good informative post.

CollegeDegree.com mentions 25 excellent tools for librarians. While most of these are fairly commonsensical, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of some avenues that might be missed; worth looking at for others in a similar situation.

Some fun math games, courtesy Let’s Play Math.

Successful Teaching writes about blogging in the classroom– always a great subject.

_ _ _ _ _ _

And that’s it for this edition of the carnival… Submit your blog article to the next edition of the carnival of education using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. The next edition is currently set for March 12. Thanks for reading, and be sure to have a look around my site before you go!

[Brief note on my selection methodology, since concerns have arisen in the comments: some people thought I was overly selective with this carnival, but I put in almost every post that was about education... if you or someone you know was left out, it was most likely not intentional. I volunteered to host this carnival after another, for March, was already ticketed; this means that if you submitted a post BEFORE my carnival for this date was open, it may have been directed there instead and so you might not have been left out at all, you might just have to wait two weeks.]

College Blogs: Mine and others

It would seem that these days, just about everyone has a blog dedicated to America’s higher education system. The Democratic Party has a website representing its college arm; even CosmoGirl has a blog to go alongside their college guide, where I am told I will get the “inside scoop” on “all the best schools!” as determined by, apparently, a miniature poodle. Then again, the internets always give mixed results.

Back to me, though. I made a lot of posts about college and the college process on my personal blog in the past, and I decided while walking down the street last week (no really) that I should separate the two so that each would be more accessible. The target audiences are pretty mixed (one has search engine crawlers, the other one has… search engine crawlers, as primary constituents), but this will allow me to frequently update both without burying too much information in the archives!

I’ve imported those posts from my own blog which I feel are relevant and worthwhile.

Look for updates here either daily, or every other day. I’ll do my best to post very frequently, but remember: I’m in the middle of the college admissions process! Rising seniors have a lot to do.

additionally: if anyone would like to contribute here, and by “anyone” I mean people who I know are excellent writers and are my peers and who know me personally in real life, then please contact me!

[tags]blogs, college, college blogs, websites, memes, trends, hipsters, fashionistas, college admissions, sam jackson[/tags]

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Who is Sam Jackson?

photo headshot sam jacksonI'm currently a junior at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale. I just got back from studying abroad at Peking University this past Fall 2009 in Beijing, China! Click here to read my 'about' page.

Kind words about my blog:

Andrew Careaga calls it “a service to all of us in the higher ed marketing business.”

Christian Long says it has “dramatically inspired college admissions folks to take notice

Bob Johnson says “I like [it] because I agree with so much of what he says.” and that “Paying attention what Sam writes will let you focus more closely on students who will actually attend your school.”

Karine Joly says my witty and fresh style “offers a rare glimpse at the mind of our elusive prospective students

and TargetX calls my blog “good reading” and me “wise-beyond-my-years.”