Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it.
This list provides examples of literary terms, primarily in videos and images, though there are a few written texts here for now. Page updates will happen. Hopefully this helps define, work with, teach, and learn these terms.
A Short History of Progress is a book-length essay penned by Ronald Wright and published in 2004. Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization itself: a 10,000 year old experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. He examines the meaning of progress and its implications for civilizations - past and present - arguing that the twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology that has now placed an unsustainable burden on all natural systems.
"Presented in an easy to use and understand format, this teacher observation and evaluation tool is a modern day answer for high performing teaching staff developers, instructional coaches, peer coaches, and school principals trying to improve classroom instruction in their schools."
Asymptopia Crossword Builder is a JavaScript education application that runs in any modern internet browser but does not require an internet connection. The simple controls allow teachers or parents to create unlimited math crosswords, or supply their own word:hint pairs.
Support has recently been added for French, Spanish, pt-Brasillian, Kiswahili, and special characters (accents, tildes etc), in general.
Some suggested uses include: cities, countries, lattitudes and longitudes to teach geography and spherical trig, simultaneously; Periodic table word:hint pairs; Language[i]:Language[j] word:hint pairs, for foreign language learning exercise; Terminology practice with virtually any other subject.
"The Educational and Mobile Learning site highlighted a great step by step iPad task tutorial by the folks over at iSupport. They outline five tasks that "every modern teacher" should be able to do and use in their classrooms.
It's a great list:
A PDF
A presentation
An interactive book
A podcast
A movie
I really like how they put together an easy way to see how using iPad tools can lead kids through low level to high levels of thinking and doing.
But the list isn't comprehensive. And it might start past the point where some teachers are right now.
So I've added five extra iPad basic skills that I think every teacher using iPads needs to have:
Edit Photos"
"This post is about a topic and app close to my heart. Computer programming is the engine of modern life and dream maker for tens of thousands. More and more countries are introducing the subject as compulsory schooling at surprisingly young ages. The UK is introducing a national school programme in september this year whilst also funding yearofcode.org to increase momentum. Code.org is pushing an international message with big-name endorsement. Even small countries like Estonia have their 5-year-olds taking their first steps into logical problem solving. A site I've used for years is codecademy.com"
"ATTENTION deficit hyperactivity disorder is now the most prevalent psychiatric illness of young people in America, affecting 11 percent of them at some point between the ages of 4 and 17. The rates of both diagnosis and treatment have increased so much in the past decade that you may wonder whether something that affects so many people can really be a disease.
And for a good reason. Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking - a trait that had, until relatively recently, a distinct evolutionary advantage. Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and understimulating.
To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don't match the expectations of our contemporary culture."
"Programming may be one of the newest skills we are bringing into modern classrooms, but it can be a difficult topic to introduce. Lines of complex code can not only be quite intimidating but it can also be devastatingly boring for students new to the subject. This is where the POP app can be an excellent introductory tool to turn your students ideas and enthusiasm into interactive app prototypes. Using a tablet or phone's inbuilt camera, POP allows students to photograph their sketches and begin designing their app before any coding is needed at all."
"Phrases like "random acts of kindness" and "pay it forward" have become popular terms in modern society. Perhaps this could be best explained by those who have identified a deficiency in their lives that can only be fulfilled by altruism.
It seems that we just can't get enough of those addictive, feel-good emotions -- and with good reason. Scientific studies prove that kindness has many physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. And children need a healthy dose of the warm-and-fuzzies to thrive as healthy, happy, well-rounded individuals.
Patty O'Grady, PhD, an expert in neuroscience, emotional learning, and positive psychology, specializes in education. She reports:
Kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness. Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it. Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it.
A great number of benefits have been reported to support teaching kindness in schools, best summed up by the following."
"As both hardware and software design improve, the possibility of mobile learning is increasingly accessible.
Video is undoubtedly at the core of a modern mobile learning experience. (As opposed to, say, an early 20th century "mobile" experience that was likely hands-on, place-based, and experiential.) To actually be useful beyond the cool-video-as-a-writing-prompt-every-once-in-a-while stage is going to require smarter tools. Teachers need to be able to capture, upload, download, edit, slow down, speed up, annotate, curate, share, and otherwise "own" video content so that is fully merges with everything else.
With that in mind, below are 25 of the best resources for teaching with YouTube. Some are web-based, some are apps, and others are guides or tips. Let us know in the comments what your favorites are that we might've missed!"
"You think you want your news pinged to you on an app, delivered by tweets, foisted on you by posts. But you don't. Not really. You just think you do. You want to be seen as modern. In reality, you want to browse, to take it at a leisurely pace, to absorb it. You want it delivered on the age-old technology of your forefathers. You want it by email.
No matter what you think, email, good old email, is still a reliable, portable, readable way of getting your news. Curated by someone who knows more than you, with content written by people who know much more than you.
So forget your high-tech snobbery and sign up for these - the best EdTech email newsletters to subscribe to:"
"Jackie Gerstein's User Generated Education is a favorite of ours, with her ideas on self-directed learning, connectivity, experiential learning, and other strands of progressive teaching and learning very much in aligned with our own thoughts on what a modern learning experience should look like.
At the core of Gerstein's thinking is the idea of making-hands on creation of compelling stuff that reflects what's important to students. She has recently released a new book on this idea, The Educator as a Maker Educator. Among the ideas offered up in the book is exactly what you might expect from the title-reenvisioning the role of the teacher, this time as a "maker educator.""