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Teenage Brains

Teenage Brains
Although you know your teenager takes some chances, it can be a shock to hear about them. One fine May morning not long ago my oldest son, 17 at the time, phoned to tell me that he had just spent a couple hours at the state police barracks. Apparently he had been driving "a little fast." "That's more than a little fast," I said. He agreed. He did, however, object to one thing. "Well," I huffed, sensing an opportunity to finally yell at him, "what would you call it?" "It's just not accurate," he said calmly. " 'Reckless' sounds like you're not paying attention. "I guess that's what I want you to know. Actually, it did make me feel better. My son's high-speed adventure raised the question long asked by people who have pondered the class of humans we call teenagers: What on Earth was he doing? Through the ages, most answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect the teen. Ten-year-olds stink at it, failing about 45 percent of the time. This view will likely sit better with teens.

Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next – Pew Research Center Quiz See How You Compare to the Millennial Generation Take our 14 item quiz and we’ll tell you how “Millennial” you are, on a scale from 0 to 100, by comparing your answers with those of respondents to a scientific nationwide survey. Politics & Values Democrats’ Edge Among Millennials Slips 18 Feb 10 The “Millennial Generation” of young voters played a big role in the resurgence of the Democratic Party in the 2006 and 2008 elections, but their attachment to the Democratic Party weakened markedly over the course of 2009. people-press.org Media & Digital Life Social Media and Mobile Internet Use 3 Feb 10 A new Pew Internet Project report reveals a decline in blogging among Millennials but a modest rise among adults ages 30 and older. Demographics & Social Trends Millennial’s Judgments About Recent Trends Not So Different 7 January 10 As might be expected, members of the Millennial generation are enthusiastic about the technological and communication advances of the past decade.

Common Core State Standards College and Career Readiness Illinois joined more than 40 states in a collaborative effort to raise learning standards and improve college and career readiness for all students, regardless of where they live. The new Common Core State Standards establish clear expectations for what students should learn in English language arts and mathematics at each grade level. By emphasizing depth over breadth, the Common Core ensures that students have comprehensive understanding of key concepts. Illinois has developed The Professional Learning Series (PLS) which is a repository for professional development resources and tools to assist with the various aspects of common core implementation. Twenty-six states are working together in the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. These 26 states have adopted the new K-12 Common Core State Standards in English and math and are pooling their resources for an internationally benchmarked assessment system. PARCC Resources

Re-thinking the Middle School So teens are either, depending on need and mood, in a great rush, or moving very slowly. Sometimes they run to things without much forethought, other times they need 15 minutes with a mirror, or staring out a window. Sometimes they're up at dawn, more often they really are not functioning before 10 in the morning. And in space, teens seem - to both my observations and memory - to need equal parts touching each other, and being quite isolated. Our Middle Schools frown on all of these needs. In all, our Middle Schools are a recipe for disaster. Our early adolescents need something completely different. First of all, teens need ownership, they need to believe that spaces and programs are "their's" not "our's." Well, begin by stopping your references to how your middle schoolers don't respect "your things" or "your room." Finally, adolescents need a curriculum which engages. Is there any reason that any adolescent would care about what you are offering? This is a microeconomic decision.

McCann on Millennials, Social Media, and Brands Call them the FB generation. McCann Worldgroup’s newly completed global survey “The Truth About Youth,” which polled 16-to-30-year-olds, concludes that millennials live in a new “social economy” in which the power of sharing and recommending brands cannot be overstated. (Past generations defined themselves by material possessions or experiences.) This group, according to the study, lives outloud, emphasizing public self-definition, life narration, and broadcasting via blogging platforms, digital cameras, and cheap editing and design software. In the words of one study respondent: “If there are no pics, it didn’t happen.” McCann also found that respondents in Brazil, China, and India, where emerging consumers are forging fledgling brand loyalties, feel most strongly about telling friends about brands they like. The agency’s takeaway: Brands should follow the top five traits young people said they look for in their social friends. The biggest mistake marketers make?

6 Quick Brain-Based Teaching Strategies Posted by Eric Jensen in Brain-Based Teaching on 01 13th, 2010 | one response So many teachers want the quick strategies they can use the very next day. Unfortunately, many of those are just more of the same. Sometimes what makes a strategy work (or not work) is HOW the teacher “sets up” the activity. In short, it not about just the strategy. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. photo credit: :Bron: Also read Working memory William Donius, Author of Thought Revolution HOW TO UNLOCK YOUR INNER GENIUS What Makes Millennials Happy? As if life weren't complicated enough in an era of technological and economic flux, today's 18-25-year-olds must also cope with unpredictable shifts in gender roles. It's one aspect of the culture wars in which no one is granted the safety of non-combatant status. However, a newly released survey of millennial-generation adults by Euro RSCG makes it clear that the tensions don't reliably play out the way you might guess. The survey finds female respondents (and many of their male counterparts) taking it as a non-negotiable given that women's role as the "second sex" is a thing of the past. Women who wish for a persistence (or revival) of such distinctions ought to be pleased by many findings of the survey, which found plenty of differences in the attitudes of American millennial women and men. WHAT 'FREEDOM' MEANS TO THEMThe freedom to get and spend is what some of the men—and markedly fewer of the women— have in mind. Then again, one shouldn't overstate the gender difference here.

The Talking Page Literacy Organization - The Twelve Principles for Brain-Based Learning Principle One: The brain is a parallel processor. Thoughts, intuitions, pre-dispositions, and emotions operate simultaneously and interact with other modes of information. Good teaching takes this into consideration. That's why we talk about the teacher as an orchestrator of learning. Return to Top Principle Two: Learning engages the entire physiology. This means that the physical health of the child -- the amount of sleep, the nutrition -- affects the brain. Principle Three: The search for meaning is innate. This means that we are naturally programmed to search for meaning. Marian Diamond's work is groundbreaking in the sense that she demonstrates that animals that were in an enriched environment, that is, they had lighted cages, more attention, a chance to play in the fields or jump over hurdles, showed a greater amount of brain cell growth. We want to know what things mean to us. Principle Four: The search for meaning occurs through "patterning." Patterning is everywhere. Conclusion

The Big Enigma #1: Binary Memory Wheel | The Big Enigma Quick. Grab a pencil. Some crayons. Share a photo of your solution in the comments thread. McCann Worldgroup - Truth About Youth Virtue Now Permits Sin Later, Says Your Brain What's the Latest Development? The more virtuous we act now, the more likely we are to engage in self-destructive or anti-social behavior later, says new research into the darker side of goodness. In a study completed in Taiwan, doctors gave sugar pills to 74 smokers, telling half the group they were taking vitamin D. After completing an unrelated survey, the smokers were told they could smoke if they desired. Individuals who believed they had taken a healthy dose of vitamin D smoked twice as many cigarettes as those who knew they had taken a placebo. What's the Big Idea? According the study's authors, the smokers were exhibiting a concept known as the licencing effect, meaning they consciously or subconsciously thought their previously good behavior justified less than exemplary behavior later on. Photo credit: shutterstock.com

Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives Overview of responses In a survey about the future of the internet, technology experts and stakeholders were fairly evenly split as to whether the younger generation’s always-on connection to people and information will turn out to be a net positive or a net negative by 2020. They said many of the young people growing up hyperconnected to each other and the mobile Web and counting on the internet as their external brain will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who will do well in key respects. At the same time, these experts predicted that the impact of networked living on today’s young will drive them to thirst for instant gratification, settle for quick choices, and lack patience. These findings come from an opt-in, online survey of a diverse but non-random sample of 1,021 technology stakeholders and critics. The survey question about younger users was inspired by speculation over the past several years about the potential impact of technology on them.

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