How Technology Is Changing Our Brains
A while back, Bill Keller of The New York Times stirred up a hornet’s nest when he wrote a column worrying that joining Facebook would have a debilitating effect on his 13 year-old daughter’s intellectual faculties. Technology advocates, including me, pounced. Now there are new studies out that seem to support his argument. I think the question itself is misplaced. What Makes An Expert? We come into the world not knowing much. We learn virtually everything that way, by combining low order patterns to form higher order ones. Experts define themselves by learning the highest order patterns through what Anders Ericsson, calls deliberate practice. In much the same way, surgeons spend years learning the patterns of the human body and experienced firemen become familiar with the patterns of burning buildings. How Machines Are Taking Over The fear that new technologies lessen our ability to function is nothing new. Yet computers can absorb material much faster than we can. The Power To Choose
Why Professors Should Be Like Preachers - Tyler Cowen
... or coaches or therapists. The primary importance of motivating students in post-secondary education. At a good teaching school, a professor is expected to run the class and, sometimes, have a small group of students over to his house for dinner. As the former function becomes less important, due to competition from online content, the latter function will predominate. The computer program cannot host a chatty, informal dinner in the same manner. We could think of the forthcoming educational model as professor as impresario. It will become increasingly apparent how much of current education is driven by human weakness, namely the inability of most students to simply sit down and try to learn something on their own.
Mayday for America's middle class
In his fresh effort to put the economy back at center stage in Washington, President Obama has issued a new challenge to congressional Republicans on the crucial issue of why the American middle class is hurting and which side can best lift average Americans out of the rut. And the president has history on his side of the argument. Both sides agree that the middle class is financially squeezed. Obama is pushing the economics of growth. By contrast, Speaker John A. It's a vision with popular appeal, but history exposes the flaws in that reasoning. We have become two Americas — literally, the 99% and the 1%. We are still in the grip of that long-term trend. This split between corporate profits and middle-class living standards — call it America's "wedge economics" — had its roots in the late 1970s, with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House. For the previous 30 years, from 1945 through the 1970s, middle-class Americans shared in the nation's growing prosperity.
8 Common Thinking Mistakes Our Brains Make Every Day and How to Prevent Them
12.3K Flares Filament.io 12.3K Flares × Get ready to have your mind blown. I was seriously shocked at some of these mistakes in thinking that I subconsciously make all the time. Obviously, none of them are huge, life-threatening mistakes, but they are really surprising and avoiding them could help us to make more rational, sensible decisions. Especially as we thrive for continues self-improvement at Buffer, if we look at our values, being aware of the mistakes we naturally have in our thinking can make a big difference in avoiding them. Regardless, I think it’s fascinating to learn more about how we think and make decisions every day, so let’s take a look at some of these thinking habits we didn’t know we had. 1. We tend to like people who think like us. This is called confirmation bias. It’s similar to how improving our body language can actually also change who we are as people. Confirmation bias is a more active form of the same experience. 2. 3. 4. Well, no. 5. 6. 7. The lesson here?
What Makes a Great Teacher: Training? Experience? Intelligence? Grit?
If a teacher is successful in the classroom, does it matter how she got there, or how long she intends to stay in the profession? Should personal qualities like perseverance and grit count just as much as completing the requisite coursework in curriculum and instruction? Those are some of the questions being asked in the wake of a new study that reflects favorably on Teach For America’s corps members who teach mathematics in schools that have typically struggled to fill teaching vacancies. The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research for the U.S. The TFA aspect of the study looked at middle and high school students at 45 campuses in eight states, over two academic years. working paper by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research. As Politico’s Stephanie Simon pointed out in her reporting, “the gains weren’t miraculous,” with students climbing up to the 30th percentile from the 27th percentile. “The issue is people staying,” Weingarten said.
Systemic Malfunctioning of the Labor and Financial Markets
Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: Government has to step in and correct the imbalances of low wages and unregulated financial markets or a deeper recession and crisis is inevitable - Bio Professor Dr. Graduated in April 1976 in economics from Saarland University, Germany, concentrating on money and credit, business cycle theory and general philosophy of science; obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the Free University, Berlin, Germany in July 1987. 2005 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Hamburg. Employment started at the German Council of Economic Experts, Wiesbaden between 1976 and 1980, followed by the Federal Ministry of Economics, Bonn until January 1986; chief macroeconomist in the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin between 1988 and 1998, and State Secretary (Vice Minister) from October 1998 to April 1999 at the Federal Ministry of Finance, Bonn, responsible for international affairs, the EU and IMF. Transcript End Comments
5 Strategies For Creating A Genius Mindset In Students
How Can We Help Every Student Tap Their Inner Genius? by Zacc Dukowitz, Learnbop.com When we hear the word genius, certain people come immediately to mind—Albert Einstein in mathematics, or Warren Buffett in investing—but what exactly sets these people apart? It’s easy to simply shrug and say to ourselves, “Those people are just different. But the steps taken to arrive at a place of genius are actually more concrete, and have less to do with innate talent, than you might think. When it comes to cultivating intelligence, mindset is a huge factor. A study of preschoolers by Diamond, Barnett, Thomas, and Munro (2007) showed an increase in executive control through a low-cost training regime of giving children experience with tasks involving inhibition of responding.A study of adult working memory by Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, and Perrig (2008) showed a significantly higher “fluid intelligence” (ability to reason and solve new problems) through emphasis on mindset. What is “Mindset”?
When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning - Ben Orlin
I once caught an 11th-grader who snuck a cheat sheet into the final exam. At first, he tried to shuffle it under some scratch paper. When I cornered him, he shifted tactics. Looking back, I have to ask myself: Why didn't I allow a formula sheet? "What's the sine of π/2?" "One!" So I skipped ahead, later to realize that they didn't really know what "sine" even meant. Some things are worth memorizing--addresses, PINs, your parents' birthdays. Memorization has enjoyed a surge of defenders recently. Certainly, knowledge matters. I define memorization as learning an isolated fact through deliberate effort. First, there's raw rehearsal: reciting a fact over and over. Raw rehearsal is the worst way to learn something. Second, there are mnemonics and other artificial tricks--songs, acronyms, silly rhymes. Such tactics certainly work better than raw rehearsal. So what are the alternatives? First, there's repeated use. And second, there's building on already-known facts.
