Mobile Learning Proves to Benefit At-Risk Students Digital Tools Teaching Strategies Wireless Reach/Qualcomm As we explore the potential of mobile learning, especially as it relates to reaching out to disenfranchised students, the most recent results from Project K-Nect seem that much more relevant. The pilot program based in North Carolina, which we covered here on MindShift, was designed to make math more engaging for low-income kids with the use of mobile phones in Onslow County School System. This is just a math program. Imagine how it could play out with other subjects. In its third year, the program has more than proven successful. By the end of the fall 2010 semester, 89 percent of the Algebra I students reported they are more motivated to learn math compared to 76 percent at the beginning of the semester. 90 percent of the Project K-Nect students in Algebra I and 100 percent of the Algebra II students demonstrated proficiency on their end of course exams. And this is just a math program. Related
"Economics in Denial" by Howard Davies Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space PARIS – In an exasperated outburst, just before he left the presidency of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet complained that, “as a policymaker during the crisis, I found the available [economic and financial] models of limited help. Trichet went on to appeal for inspiration from other disciplines – physics, engineering, psychology, and biology – to help explain the phenomena he had experienced. So far, relatively little help has been forthcoming from the engineers and physicists in whom Trichet placed his faith, though there has been some response. These are fertile fields for future study, but what of the core disciplines of economics and finance themselves? George Soros has put generous funding behind the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). Some of the recommendations that emerged from that conference are straightforward and concrete. I am sure they learn fast at HSBC.
Teaching Creativity – The Case for Mind Mapping If thinking is about making connections between pieces of information, then creative thinking is making the connections that no one else has seen. However, when we tell students to find relationships between seemingly disparate ideas, we often get blank stares—why? According to thinkers like Ken Robinson, it’s because our education system kills creativity. It is no wonder that students can’t make connections between ideas when they reach college. We have strong evidence that Da Vinci, Descartes, Darwin and virtually every other iconic thinker traversed disciplines and distant plains of inquiry to reach powerful insights. Teaching Mind Mapping? I believe they can, particularly if they get access to helpful technology. Back in the 1980s, I became familiar with old fashioned mind-mapping back, and I used it to analyze and prioritize personal projects. And students value this too. Image from ConceptDraw Mind Map Web Page Can the tools we use to teach lead to creative thinking?
Review: The Edupunks' Guide, by Anya Kamenetz I have now had the chance to read The Edupunks' Guide and can now form some opinions based on what I've seen. And if I were forced to summarize my critique in a nutshell, it would be this. Edupunk, as described by the putative subculture, is the idea of 'learning by doing it yourself'. The Edupunks' Guide, however, describes 'do-it-yourself learning'. The failure to appreciate the difference is a significant weakness of the booklet. Let me explain. By contrast, the edupunk way is to cook Thai food, and in so doing, learn how to be a good chef. Now based on the discussion that has already taken place in this iDC forum, I would expect Anya Kamemetz's first response to be something along the lines of "I know that; I do encourage learning by doing." A simple example is learning to make pizza. But watching a video instead of watching a person (or taking a class) isn't what makes something edupunk. What DO we mean by education, exactly? That's very good. Oh, and how. Should I go on?
A Preventable Massacre Thirty years later, the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila camps is remembered as a notorious chapter in modern Middle Eastern history, clouding the tortured relationships among , the United States, and the Palestinians. In 1983, an Israeli investigative commission concluded that Israeli leaders were “indirectly responsible” for the killings and that , then the defense minister and later prime minister, bore “personal responsibility” for failing to prevent them. While Israel’s role in the massacre has been closely examined, America’s actions have never been fully understood. This summer, at the Israel State Archives, I found recently declassified documents that chronicle key conversations between American and Israeli officials before and during the 1982 massacre. Israel’s involvement in the Lebanese civil war began in June 1982, when it invaded its northern neighbor. By Sept. 16, the I.D.F. was fully in control of West Beirut, including Sabra and Shatila. In Tel Aviv, Mr.
70 Tools And 4 Reasons To Make Your Own Infographics Infographics are everywhere. Some love them. Some hate them. But however you feel, it’s fun to learn a little bit in a short period of time. Why Should Classrooms Use Infographics Before we dive into the list, let’s talk about WHY you might want to make an infographic: 1) you run a blog or website that you want to display visually-engaging information and grab the attention of your readers. 2) you want to grab the attention of students by boiling down theories and content into key concepts that can inspire more in-depth learning. 3) you’re a student who wants to show off your understanding of concepts by analyzing, digesting, and then remixing it all into an elegant infographic. 4) you’re a teacher who wants to get students engaged and doing new projects. What Makes A Good Infographic? Tools To Make Your Own Infographics These tools are just the beginning.
Wired Campus A Web-based game that uses the brainpower of biology novices to understand molecules key to life and disease is producing working designs of those molecules in a Stanford University laboratory—and the process could influence the way scientific discovery works. RNA molecules—DNA’s single-stranded relative—play key roles in cell function. Those roles depend on RNA shapes, the way the shape of a key determines which lock it can open. And that’s where things get tricky. RNA shapes depend on how the molecules’ components fit together, but the rules that govern what fits where are not well understood. The game EteRNA, which was started by the Stanford biochemist Rhiju Das and the Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Adrien Treuille, allows researchers to farm out some of the intellectual legwork behind RNA design to 26,000 players, rather than a relatively few lab workers. The community of players then votes for the blueprint it thinks will have the best chance of success in the lab.
You Won't Need a Driver's License by 2040 | Autopia Photo: U.S. DOT The timeline for autonomous cars hitting the road en masse keeps getting closer. GM’s Cadillac division expects to produce partially autonomous cars at a large scale by 2015, and the automaker also predicts it will have fully autonomous cars available by the end of the decade. But while we know that robo-cars are coming, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently released predictions that autonomous cars will account for up to 75 percent of vehicles on the road by the year 2040. IEEE envisions an absence of traffic signs and lights since highly evolved, self-driving cars won’t need them, and it believes that full deployment could even eliminate the need for driver’s licenses. While this all sounds sci-fi, we’re already starting to see separate threads of this autonomous-car future being weaved in current real-world tests. It’s been assumed that the largest hurdle for autonomous cars is building the infrastructure.
Super Resources Introducing Glogster Glogster [31UGEB] Glogs: a Timeline Tool: and More Ideas: Things to think about: What makes a good poster? Other Possible Tools: Are you Curious? Engage: Meet RoVen. Explore: In small teams, drive the rover and calculate the distance traveled in a particular amount of time. Elaborate: Using Create A Graph, develop a digital graph of data to display results. Evaluate: Gallery walk. Extend: Calling all learners— when your graph is complete, check out the link of your choice! Additional Teacher Resources: Sequence of Events: Instead of having kids put Billy and Susie’s trip to the store in order, what about having them investigate the steps the rover goes through to land? Online video lessons flipping classrooms left and right In soothing tones, he explains everything from chemistry to credit default swaps, from algebra to economics, to about 2 million students a month, imparting roughly 200,000 lessons a day. And Salman Khan never loses his voice. As an educator, he's just now finding it, as the improbable creator of a free, Web-based video library whose pitch-perfect approach to bedeviling concepts has vaulted him into the education reform conversation — in Colorado and worldwide. "It's weird for me," says the 34-year-old Khan. "You don't expect people to recognize you, especially when you make math videos on YouTube." That task has expanded a bit since he first lashed together an online algebra lesson to help a cousin. Using technology to reach schools and homes around the world as either a stand-alone curriculum or a supplemental tool, the nonprofit Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) has doubled its users from over just three months ago and increased its audience 10-fold over last fall. Start of a legend?
Fact-Checkers Howl, but Both Sides Cling to False Ads Todd Heisler/The New York Times Fact-checkers said Representative Paul D. Ryan’s speech at the Republican convention contained many questionable claims. There was one problem: the quotation was taken so wildly out of context that it turned Mr. Obama’s actual meaning upside-down. The truncated clip came from a speech Mr. PolitiFact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking Web site, rated the advertisement “Pants on Fire,” its most deceptive rating possible, but it achieved what the Romney campaign had hoped: people started talking about the sluggish economy and how Mr. “We’re not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” Neil Newhouse, the Romney campaign’s pollster, said this week during a breakfast discussion at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., that was sponsored by ABC News and Yahoo News. Every four years there are lies in campaigns, and at times a blurry line between acceptable political argument and outright sophistry.
Classroom Freebies Too: Classroom Management Idea Our first grade team met with our kindergarten teachers for a sharing session. They had just attended a Nellie Edge seminar and came back with a wealth of ideas. This one's such a simple classroom management idea, but I think it's so USEFUL. Have students leave a "reserved" sign to save a place or materials they are using. This works well at center time, math time, or any other time when students are using materials and temporarily leave an area. I created Reserve My Spot! Download the packet HERE.
"High-Tech Fun: The Best of Online and Face-to-Face Learning" Henry J. Eyring Author Henry J. Eyring (Rexburg, ID) serves as advancement vice president at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He was invited to BYU-Idaho in 2006 by Kim Cl... There is a timely lesson for today's education innovators in an Isaac Asimov short story that this year will celebrate its sixtieth birthday. The story's young protagonist, eleven-year-old Margie, comes upon a real book found by her older friend Tommy in the attic of his house. Even more amazing to Margie is the idea that these students of long ago didn't stay at home to learn from their personal mechanical teachers. Upon reflection in her own private study room, though, Margie begins to imagine the unique benefits of this old style of learning: All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. And the teachers were people... Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days.