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Beyond the Brain - NYTimes.com - 7 views

  • This is what’s happening right now with neuroscience.
  • you get captivated by it and sometimes go off to extremes, as if understanding the brain is the solution to understanding all thought and behavior.
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    "It's a pattern as old as time. Somebody makes an important scientific breakthrough, which explains a piece of the world. But then people get caught up in the excitement of this breakthrough and try to use it to explain everything." Good to read and raise your radar. Simplistic arguments for a complex topic. He offers 2 alternative views. What's that about?
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Visible Thinking - 12 views

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    Visible Thinking includes a number of ways of making students' thinking visible to themselves, to their peers, and to the teacher, so they get more engaged by it and come to manage it better for learning and other purposes. When thinking is visible in classrooms, students are in a position to be more metacognitive, to think about their thinking. When thinking is visible, it becomes clear that school is not about memorizing content but exploring ideas. Teachers benefit when they can see students' thinking because misconceptions, prior knowledge, reasoning ability, and degrees of understanding are more likely to be uncovered. Teachers can then address these challenges and extend students' thinking by starting from where they are.
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Educational Leadership:Creativity Now!:The Case for Curiosity - 2 views

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    But what we admire and what we deliberately cultivate aren't the same. When researchers dig deeper, they find that many adults think of curiosity as a trait possessed by some but not others. Or they think that as long as the environment isn't too repressive, children's natural sense of inquiry will surface (Engel, 2011). In fact, when Hilary and I asked teachers to list which qualities were most important without giving them a list to choose from, almost none mentioned curiosity. Many teachers endorse curiosity when they're asked about it, but it isn't uppermost on their minds-or shaping their teaching plans.
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WebTool Mashup - FlipSnack - 12 views

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    Web 2.0 Tool correlated to Blooms and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences - share with teachers!
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The News Literacy Project - About Us - 6 views

  • The News Literacy Project (NLP) is an innovative national educational program that mobilizes seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.
  • The project teaches students critical-thinking skills that will enable them to be smarter and more frequent consumers and creators of credible information across all media and platforms
  • NLP shows students how to distinguish verified information from spin, opinion and misinformation
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  • Students are being taught to seek news and information that will make them well-informed and engaged students, consumers and citizens.
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    The News Literacy Project (NLP) is an innovative national educational program that mobilizes seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.
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Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong | Video on TED.com - 1 views

  • So what I want to do today is, first of all, talk about why we get stuck inside this feeling of being right. And second, why it's such a problem. And finally, I want to convince you that it is possible to step outside of that feeling and that if you can do so, it is the single greatest moral, intellectual and creative leap you can make.
  • Augustine understood that our capacity to screw up, it's not some kind of embarrassing defect in the human system, something we can eradicate or overcome.
  • This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly.
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  • But when it comes down to me, right now, to all the beliefs I hold, here in the present tense, suddenly all of this abstract appreciation of fallibility goes out the window -- and I can't actually think of anything I'm wrong about.
  • You know, we're already wrong, we're already in trouble, but we feel like we're on solid ground. So I should actually correct something I said a moment ago. It does feel like something to be wrong; it feels like being right.
  • according to this, getting something wrong means there's something wrong with us. So we just insist that we're right, because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe.
  • The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.
  • when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption: they know the truth, and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes.
  • trusting too much in the feeling of being on the correct side of anything can be very dangerous.
  • most of us do everything we can to avoid thinking about being wrong, or at least to avoid thinking about the possibility that we ourselves are wrong.
  • So by the time you are nine years old, you've already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits -- and second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes.
  • The first thing we usually do when someone disagrees with us is we just assume they're ignorant. They don't have access to the same information that we do, and when we generously share that information with them, they're going to see the light and come on over to our team.
  • And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
  • And the thing is," says Ira Glass, "we need this. We need these moments of surprise and reversal and wrongness to make these stories work." And for the rest of us, audience members, as listeners, as readers, we eat this stuff up. We love things like plot twists and red herrings and surprise endings. When it comes to our stories, we love being wrong.
  • This internal sense of rightness that we all experience so often is not a reliable guide to what is actually going on in the external world. And when we act like it is, and we stop entertaining the possibility that we could be wrong, well that's when we end up doing things like dumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, or torpedoing the global economy.
  • I've spent the last five years thinking about being wrong.
  • When that doesn't work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do and they still disagree with us, then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they're idiots.
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     if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, "Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong."
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Molly Crockett: Beware neuro-bunk | Video on TED.com - 0 views

  • the insula, a region they say is linked to feelings of love and compassion. So they concluded that because they saw activation in the insula, this meant the subjects loved their iPhones. Now there's just one problem with this line of reasoning, and that's that the insula does a lot. Sure, it is involved in positive emotions like love and compassion, but it's also involved in tons of other processes, like memory, language, attention, even anger, disgust and pain.
  • You've probably heard of it. So, Dr. Love bases his argument on studies showing that when you boost people's oxytocin, this increases their trust, empathy and cooperation. So he's calling oxytocin "the moral molecule."
  • Trial or no trial, these claims are front and center on their label right next to a picture of a brain. And it turns out that pictures of brains have special properties. A couple of researchers asked a few hundred people to read a scientific article. For half the people, the article included a brain image, and for the other half, it was the same article but it didn't have a brain image. At the end — you see where this is going — people were asked whether they agreed with the conclusions of the article. So this is how much people agree with the conclusions with no image. And this is how much they agree with the same article that did include a brain image. So the take-home message here is, do you want to sell it? Put a brain on it.
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  • So what I'm going to do is show you how to spot a couple of classic moves, dead giveaways, really, for what's variously been called neuro-bunk, neuro-bollocks, or, my personal favorite, neuro-flapdoodle.
  • Now these studies are scientifically valid, and they've been replicated, but they're not the whole story. Other studies have shown that boosting oxytocin increases envy. It increases gloating. Oxytocin can bias people to favor their own group at the expense of other groups. And in some cases, oxytocin can even decrease cooperation.
  • We haven't found a "buy" button inside the brain, we can't tell whether someone is lying or in love just by looking at their brain scans, and we can't turn sinners into saints with hormones. Maybe someday we will, but until then, we have to be careful that we don't let overblown claims detract resources and attention away from the real science that's playing a much longer game.
  • Ask the tough questions. Ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told. The answers shouldn't be simple, because the brain isn't simple. But that's not stopping us from trying to figure it out anyway.
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     Ask the tough questions. Ask to see the evidence. Ask for the part of the story that's not being told. The answers shouldn't be simple, because the brain isn't simple. But that's not stopping us from trying to figure it out anyway.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation | Defending your rights in the digital world - 1 views

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    About EFF From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990-well before the Internet was on most people's radar-and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.
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Glean Comparison Search: An Information Literacy research tool to compare search result... - 3 views

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    Researchers need the skills to explore all sides of their research topic. Young researchers often search exclusively for material that confirms their pre-existing notions of their topic. This results in confirmation bias. Even experienced researchers can fall prey to this bias. Use comparison searching as a tool to help your students become aware of confirmation bias. Comparison searching enables students to develop more thoughtful and nuanced understanding of their research topics and the way they themselves ask questions and search for information. The process asks students to actively consider and evaluate two or more disparate results sets.
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The News Literacy Project - 4 views

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    The News Literacy Project (NLP) is a national educational program that taps experienced journalists to help middle and high school students "sort fact from fiction in the digital age." According to its website, the project teaches students critical-thinking skills that will help them become smarter consumers and creators of information across all types of media. It shows students "how to distinguish verified information from spin, opinion, and misinformation-whether they are using search engines to find websites with information about specific topics, assessing a viral eMail, viewing a video on YouTube, watching television news, or reading a newspaper or a blog post." Working with educators, students, and journalists, NLP says it has developed original curriculum materials "based on engaging activities and student projects that build and reflect understanding of the program's essential questions. The curriculum includes material on a variety of topics … that is presented through hands-on exercises, games, videos, and the journalists' own compelling stories."
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Can neuroscience inform management accountants? | CIMA Financial Management Magazine - 1 views

  • In business we regularly have to consider what level of risk is acceptable to the organisation. Management control systems typically assume that people adhere to some rational decision rules and are able to estimate the probabilities and values of future outcomes.
  • Pre-neuro behavioural studies have shown that this is most often not the case. Moreover, the way in which alternatives to a decision are presented to people affects their opinion about them and their choice between them.
  • Behavioural economics shows that if alternatives are framed as gains, decision-makers usually opt for safer options, thereby exhibiting risk-averse behaviour, but they reverse their choice when alternatives are framed as losses.
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  • Management accountants need to consider what kind of presentation of information may reduce hidden fear and anxiety.
  • Management accountants need to provide management with overviews of the inter-temporal consequences of managerial decisions
  • People simply have such a strong preference for sooner rather than later (positive) outcomes that it appears to be hard to change that.
  • people barely make a difference between two outcomes that lie in the distant future.
  • Neuroscientific research may provide a starting point in the analysis and solution of this problem, as its results suggest that humans’ preference for short-term outcomes is the consequence of the emotional system’s strong response to immediate, rather than to delayed, rewards.
  • When applying neuroscientific methods for fundamental or applied research, management accountants have to deal with at least four challenges.
  • First, neuroscience requires a mastery of observation techniques that are not the normal repertoire of social researchers
  • Second, given the technological complexities of neuroscientific research, it is crucial to develop cooperation in multidisciplinary teams consisting of neurologists, economists and psychologists, as well as management accountants.
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    A new pilot study has been looking at how neuroscience can be used to understand how business decisions are arrived at, and the role it can play in management accountancy by evaluating the decision-making process and the role that emotional responses play their part in this
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Real-world math problems are everywhere | - 3 views

  • Mathematically proficient students can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace.” But I wonder if we often try too hard to create real-world problems when, if all we did were look around and ask “what do you wonder?” and “what do you notice?”, we would find that math problems are everywhere.
  • “I know that teachers are asking, “Are there any questions?” and “Do you understand?”; however, I’m not sure how many teachers are asking, “What do you notice?” or “What do you wonder?” So many times, teachers will ask if there are any questions, or whether students understand, only to be met with blank stares. This leads to nobody’s “needs” being met.”
  • “Asking good questions is key to any well-functioning classroom. The CCSS include students’ ability to communicate mathematically. Asking good questions gets conversations started. Simply by asking students what they notice and/or what they wonder, students will begin to communicate mathematically. Asking them what they notice and what they wonder puts the ownership back on the student, encouraging them to think and communicate about math.”
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    We hear this everywhere - students should be doing "real-world" math and they should be applying what they learn in math to "real-world situations."
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The Adolescent Brain | Conversation | Edge - 1 views

  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are
  • the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are.
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  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers.
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • e brain is so
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
  • The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood
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    "The idea that the brain is somehow fixed in early childhood, which was an idea that was very strongly believed up until fairly recently, is completely wrong. There's no evidence that the brain is somehow set and can't change after early childhood. In fact, it goes through this very large development throughout adolescence and right into the 20s and 30s, and even after that it's plastic forever, the plasticity is a baseline state, no matter how old you are. That has implications for things like intervention programs and educational programs for teenagers."
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There Is No Digital Divide - Technology Review - 1 views

  • I think we've all sort of accepted the "digital divide" framework, but there are some real problems with that.  First of all, saying there is a "digital divide" presumes a shared understanding of that term and there's not one.
  • Given that in the original research, the middle- and upper-classes, whites, and men were more likelyt to have access to technology, those sorts of questions about the characteristics of the "have-nots" just point us to old ways of thinking about class, about race, and about gender."
  • My research finds that Black/Latina/o LGBT youth who are homeless - in other words, the very people who should be on the "other side" of so-called the "digital divide," are in fact, quite adept at technology and most have smart phones. They use this technology to survive - to find work, social services, avoid police or report police misconduct.
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  • Instead of "digital divide," other scholars have talked about "digital fluency," or even "digital entitlements" which I like better.
  • I found that while they were very adept at some things (opening multiple browser windows, locating things online quickly), they weren't very good at some other, important tasks. For example, they weren't good at deciphering "cloaked" sites from legitimate ones. 
  • I'd point to the work of my friend Howard Rheingold and his new book "Net Smart," which is an excellent guide for how to be a digitally fluent user of all the technologies we have available to us now.  It's an excellent book and I think the FCC should include it in their plan for training the digital educators going into schools!
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    a recent New York Times piece, "Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era" (or, as Gawker put it, "Poor People Are Wasting Time on the Internet!") asserts that while all kids are spending more time with media, those with lower socio-economic status were spending even more of it, and on activities like Facebook that aren't exactly conducive to learning. In other words: even when you give poor people access to technology, they don't know what to do with it! Might as well give a paleolithic tribe access to a chip fab, pffft. Jessie Daniels, Associate Professor of urban public health at Hunter College and CUNY and author of a forthcoming book on Internet propaganda, tweeted her displeasure at the piece. (There's even a Storify of all her comments on it.)
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Truth is the foundation of trust | PostIndependent.com - 1 views

    • David McGavock
       
      Something I agree with
  • Sometimes it seems as though all the infighting is self destructive and financially draining.
  • Well, $14 trillion of debt later, I wonder if she still likes the sound.
    • David McGavock
       
      Written with no acknowledgement of the situation that was handed to him. I would like to see the Ross Talbott plan for avoiding a depression.
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    • David McGavock
       
      Truth, truth, truth. He repeats the need for truth and for relationship. At the same time he provides no basis for the arguments he makes. Truth requires evidence.
  • Who then, are the wise? Are they the ones who liked the way he sounded? Are they the ones who believe the lies?
    • David McGavock
       
      It would be helpful to have the details here rather than the chant that we can hear from "the press".
  • A famous saying is, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” The opposite of truth is the lie, and the lie creates bondage and death. The lie is so dangerous because it is presented as truth by impressive and convincing people. The real truth is often initially painful but is always liberating. Truth is the light at the end of the tunnel.
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    One man's version of truth sans evidence.
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Species diversity refutes the theory of evolution | PostIndependent.com - 1 views

  • Species diversity refutes the theory of evolution
  • Somehow, I always understood that the concept of evolution was the proof that there are no miracles.
  • Evolution presupposes that somehow some accidentally formed primordial soup
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  • the universe had a point origin extremely hot and of incredible speed.
    • David McGavock
       
      Changing topics - now we're on to saying that there is an infinite supply of fuel burn. Talk about spending (consuming) above our means...
    • David McGavock
       
      To say that a miracle is outside of science or that science cannot see the miracle is uninformed.
  • oil is not a “fossil fuel” and there is some process deep within our planet that is producing it.
  • When you compare that time against the $14 trillion-plus of the U.S. debt, it is comparatively a short time.
  • That understanding destroys the leverage politicians use to scare us into the idea that we are running out of oil.
  • incredible complexity deeply challenges any idea that it is the result of spontaneous generation.
  • volution was a foundational belief of Hitler
    • David McGavock
       
      The belief in evolution is the "cause" of nazi germany? I think not.
  • The rest of us are also somehow sub-human and must be conquered and/or killed
    • David McGavock
       
      And the arabs are fervent believers in evolution???
  • The concept of evolution is an effort to demonstrate that there is no God. That being the case, there are no eternal consequences. Evil is just what the government says it is.
    • David McGavock
       
      Evolution = no god = no eternal consequences = evil government. I'm not sure how all this ties together.
  • one thing that did not come into existence without a purpose and a creator.
    • David McGavock
       
      Christianity doesn't have the patent on creation. All faiths have a creation story describing causes.
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    "Species diversity refutes the theory of evolution"
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http://www.ace-ncc.org/47L/CKW/?ID=7655524654&C=90109&E=1&T=B - 3 views

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    What You'll Learn Critical thinking is a vital component of every part of the school day. With each activity that students engage in, they are utilizing critical thinking skills - skills that must be fostered and encouraged by educators so students can perform at the highest level possible. This module will teach educators to employ various strategies and tactics that will ensure that they are continuously cultivating critical thinking skills in their students throughout the day so that student achievement is constantly being emphasized. In this course you'll learn how to encourage critical thinking and active learning, as well as tactical and structural recommendations to enhance your lessons, different approaches to thinking, and how to drive thinking through questions. You will discover: The intrapersonal components involved in critical thinking The role of critical thinking in student interactions How to incorporate critical thinking strategies into every activity and lesson plan The various approaches to thinking
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How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's - Howard Rheingold -... - 1 views

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    Editor's note: The following essay has been adapted from Howard Rheingold's new book Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, which offers Rheingold's insights on how to find quality information on the web, and then how to piece that information together "intelligently, humanely, and above all mindfully." The book was published in April by MIT Press.
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