Group items tagged

For teachers in Australia the year is drawing rapidly to a close. It is a time for packing away classrooms, taking down displays of student learning and saying farewell to students as they move on to new classes. At the ending of one year it is worth taking a moment to ponder what is so remarkable about teaching as a profession.

"Kids who struggle with reading get an early lesson in one of life's more sucky realities; the earlier a person falls behind, the harder it is to even want to catch up. Their classmates move on to more interesting books, write stories that get noticed and get rewarded for finishing their work fast. Meanwhile the slower readers can barely make sense of the activity sheet in front of them. When a child can't read, school becomes either a huge, grinding drag or a very efficient confidence-removal machine. Usually both. Reading is not a natural ability. The vast majority of humans don't just pick it up; they have to be taught it quite explicitly. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type, most people had little use for reading, just as now the vast majority of people have no use for weaving. And for some, acquiring this essential skill is an incredibly frustrating experience. Education experts are not of one mind about how much of the population has a diagnosable reading disorder such as dyslexia, but it's clear that while kids all read at different ages and stages, some otherwise average-intelligence people find reading an unusually hard slog."

With the end of the year approaching and holidays looming for some now is the ideal time to share some suggestions for books and papers to read. A great book can provide the inspiration required to begin the new year positively and this list includes some of my favourites from 2015. In no particular order here is my list of top ten reads to inspire quality learning and promote discussion.

How might we define intelligence? What do we mean when we speak of intelligence and what evidence do we seek when we look for it? Is it a singular, fixed attribute determined at birth or does it vary across time and environment?

The start of a new year brings the perfect opportunity to consider the time ahead and make some predictions for what might be the next big thing. With change as inevitable as taxes a new year is likely to see new ideas bubble to the fore and some old ways of doing things shift into the background.

"Can't locate that file you were working in a few days ago and can't remember what you called it? Here are some places to look."

"Plays can be bought for pennies and delivered in bulk, inflating videos' popularity and making the social media giant vulnerable to manipulation."

""What do you want to be when you grow up?" When I was a kid, I dreaded the question. I never had a good answer. Adults always seemed terribly disappointed that I wasn't dreaming of becoming something grand or heroic, like a filmmaker or an astronaut. In college, I finally realized that I didn't want to be one thing. I wanted to do many things. So I found a workaround: I became an organizational psychologist. My job is to fix other people's jobs. I get to experience them vicariously - I've gotten to explore how filmmakers blaze new trails and how astronauts build trust. And I've become convinced that asking youngsters what they want to be does them a disservice."

""Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President"; "ISIS Leader Calls for American Muslim Voters to Support Hillary Clinton." These examples of fake news are from the 2016 presidential election campaign. Such highly partisan fabricated stories designed to look like real reporting probably played a bigger role in that bitter election than in any previous American election cycle. The fabrications spread on social media and into traditional news sources in a way that tarnished both major candidates' characters. Sometimes the stories intentionally damage a candidate; sometimes the authors are driven only by dollar signs. Questions about how and why voters across the political spectrum fell for such disinformation have nagged at social scientists since early in the 2016 race. The authors of a new study address these questions with cognitive experiments on familiarity and belief."

"Are you spending hours managing social media? Looking for a way to shave hours off your day? We have the tools to help! Below you'll find the key elements of a social media marketing strategy, plus the tools that will improve your efficiency and performance."

"A.I. that responds to your voice. Next-generation wireless networks. If this year's biggest consumer technology trends have a familiar ring, there's a reason for that."

"In the latest issue of Nature Human Behavior, Przybylski and coauthor Amy Orben use a novel statistical method to show why scientists studying these colossal data sets have been getting such different results and why most of the associations researchers have found, positive and negative, are very small-and probably not worth freaking out about."

"This is Zora. It may not look like much - more cute toy than futuristic marvel - but this robot is at the center of an experiment in France to change care for elderly patients."