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Sean McHugh

Lumosity's Brain Games Are Bullsh*t - 0 views

  • Recently, a coalition of nearly 70 researchers spoke against brain games like Lumosity, signing a letter of consensus posted by the Stanford Longevity Center that lambasted the brain training community for promising a kind of mind power boost that just isn't provable.
  • Often, however, the cited research is only tangentially related to the scientific claims of the company, and to the games they sell.
  • In 2009, a consumer group in the UK asked a panel of scientists to look into brain-training games, including Lumosity. These scientists explicitly debunked Lumosity's claims, and they are not alone.
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  • "The bottom line is that there is no scientific consensus that brain training works. All that can be concluded at this point is that time and money spent on brain training is, as likely as not, time and money wasted,
  • there is still plenty of excitement about the possibilities of brain-training programs in general. Even in the Stanford letter dismissing the current brain-training claims, the scientists acknowledge that several isolated studies have had promising results, and they deserved to be looked into further. And the concept that the brain is malleable, even for super old people, isn't just wishful thinking: It is true.
Sean McHugh

pr0tean: It's About Time. 4 Transformational Tech 'Training' Techniques. - 0 views

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    "What are the most effective strategies for overcoming the barriers to the authentic integration of digital technologies in schools? The enquiry considered barriers to ICT (information communication technology) integration, and possible enabling solutions. Traditionally, the development of ICT expertise is facilitated by the provision of 'training courses'. However, for the duration of this enquiry this approach was suspended, in order to explore more learner-centred, collaborative approaches for managing teacher development; utilising opportunities for teachers to learn through interactions with their colleagues and with their own students. "
Sean McHugh

U.S. Navy: Video Games Improve Brains, "Fluid Intelligence" - 0 views

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    "Perez credits games and game-like simulations with giving people the ability to more quickly adapt new mental strategies for problem-solving. He says that, for 50 years, it was believed that no training could improve a person's "fluid intelligence" - the ability "to work outside your present mindset, to think beyond what you have been taught, to go beyond your experience to solve problems in new and different ways.""
Sean McHugh

Girls Should Play More Video Games, And Other Thoughts On "Cognitive Balance"... - 0 views

  • Girls should play more video games.
  • spatial skills matter: The ability to mentally manipulate shapes and otherwise understand how the three-dimensional world works turns out to be an important predictor of creative and scholarly achievements
  • spatial skills can be improved by training; these improvements persist over time; and they “transfer” to tasks that are different from the tasks used in the training
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  • the informal education children receive can be just as important as what they learn in the classroom. We need to think more carefully about how kids’ formal and informal educational experiences fit together, and how one can fill gaps left by the other.
  • The informal learning environments of television, video games, and the Internet are producing learners with a new profile of cognitive skills.
  • playing an action video game “can virtually eliminate” the gender difference in a basic capacity they call spatial attention, while at the same time reducing the gender difference in the ability to mentally rotate objects, a higher-level spatial skill
  • As kids grow older, much of the experience they get in manipulating three-dimensional objects comes from playing video games
    • Sean McHugh
       
      This is such a critical observation!
Sean McHugh

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study | ... - 0 views

  • the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay
  • Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group.
  • the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?”
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  • Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day
  • players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game
  • so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts
  • The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks
  • Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant
  • the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games.
Sean McHugh

No, Fortnite Isn't Rotting Kids' Brains. It May Even Be Good for Them - Education Week - 0 views

  • we see little to be concerned about with the game
  • Granted, kids’ enthusiasm for Fortnite can be a little much, but we are old enough to remember Garbage Pail kids and have played Pokémon.
  • one of the best things educators can do is bystander training. That is, we can teach kids appropriate ways to respond when they see distrustful, harassing, or hateful behavior.
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  • Can we really blame kids for being so taken by Fortnite? The game itself—a combination of army guys, building forts, and king-of-the-hill battles—would have taken place with sticks or toy guns in the vacant lots or wooded strands that are increasingly designed out of today’s suburban neighborhoods
  • look beyond the immediate content of the game (its characters and themes), and focus more intently on what kids are doing with it
  • Although there are no established links between games and violence, there are some obvious connections between gaming too much and wider problems
  • Wrangling over what extent games are the cause or the symptom somewhat misses the point; unhealthy game play can be a signal
  • Rather than focusing on what games kids are playing, we should attend more to who they are meeting and gaming with online, what type of talk they are engaged in, and what kinds of groups they are becoming a part of
  • just like offline ones
Sean McHugh

Let's Ban The Classroom Technology Ban. - 0 views

  • The claim that the students who didn’t use tablets performed better academically is based upon exam scores, which were only one-third of a standard deviation higher for the non-tablet crowd than the others. Some might see this as a large difference; I do not, and I doubt a majority of statisticians would either. But hey–why let the fact that this was a superficial study conducted with a small sample size of atypical students examining only one type of technology deter you from claiming that all technology in the classroom is bad? This is what people in the psych business call “confirmation bias,” I believe.
  • no mention of pedagogy at all
  • They don’t even acknowledge, much less control for, pedagogy.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Although to be fair in terms of the study all students would be experiencing the same learning environment and would be equally "disadvantaged". Given that the actual impact of the technology was negligible this would explain why, the technology wasn't really able to be much of an advantage in that kind of teaching and learning environment.
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  • If students in a large lecture course with no laptop or device policies are doing poorly, is it because they’re on Facebook or because they’re in a cavernous auditorium with several hundred other captives, being talked at by someone who’s likely had no formal pedagogical training whatsoever?
  • unilateral bans on technology in the classroom accomplish nothing but demonstrating an off-putting rigidity and an adversarial view of students.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      "Adversarial" the tone of the entire study clearly spoke to this as the dominant perspective when considering tech use in classrooms.
  • If you’re the grumpy faculty member who kvetches about students not being taught penmanship in primary school, and who makes their classes take notes by hand to build character or whatever, take a step back and think about what you’re actually saying to your students: that some are inherently deficient, that they will fall short, and that your way is the only possible way to learn.
  • But if two-thirds of the class is doing non-class related stuff on a laptop or cell phone, why is that happening? Are they incorrigible internet addicts, or is it a pedagogical issue? If they’re not getting to where you want them to be, is it Twitter’s fault? Or is it the side effect of a lecture-based, passive pedagogy that doesn’t engage anyone?
  • Let’s be real: it’s not as if students paid rapt attention to everything faculty said until the smart phone was invented.
  • Of course, there are situations where you’ll want your students to not use devices. But there will also be occasions where you’ll want to encourage their use (quick polling, checking something online). That’s the whole point–there are no hard and fast rules, nor should there be. Good pedagogy is, above all, flexible. And, rather than an end unto itself, technology is a tool that can support good pedagogy if it’s used appropriately.
  • Rather than banning the tool because of an instance where someone used it improperly, we should work to prevent the processes which led to that instance. Our students need to be our allies, not our adversaries, if genuine learning is to occur. Students cannot experience the transformative effects that higher education can and should inculcate if we refuse to treat them as responsible agents who are the co-architects of their learning.
Sean McHugh

Opinion | Don't Go Down the Rabbit Hole - The New York Times - 0 views

  • the way we’re taught from a young age to evaluate and think critically about information is fundamentally flawed and out of step with the chaos of the current internet.
  • It’s often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an unknown source, and people can be led astray by false information
  • the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere, a concept called lateral reading.
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  • Whenever you give your attention to a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention from better treatments of an issue, and give them the opportunity to warp your perspective
  • Internet users need to learn that our attention is a scarce commodity that is to be spent wisely
  • four simple principles:1. Stop.2. Investigate the source.3. Find better coverage.4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.Otherwise known as SIFT.
  • The question we want students asking is: Is this a good source for this purpose, or could I find something better relatively quickly
  • We’ve been trained to think that Googling or just checking one resource we trust is almost like cheating,” he said. “But when people search Google, the best results may not always be first, but the good information is usually near the top
  • The students are confused when I tell them to try and trace something down with a quick Wikipedia search, because they’ve been told not to do it,” she said. “Not for research papers, but if you’re trying to find out if a site is legitimate or if somebody has a history as a conspiracy theorist and you show them how to follow the page’s citation, it’s quick and effective, which means it’s more likely to be used
  • Use Wikipedia for quick guidance! Spend less time torturing yourself with complex primary sources
  • instill a reflex that asks if something is worth one’s time and attention and to turn away if not
Sean McHugh

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking - Quillette - 0 views

  • critical thinking is not a skill that can be improved through practice—like a golf swing—nor is it a “general” capability. Instead, it is an abstract description of what humans can do as a result amassing a wealth of underpinning knowledge and skills relevant to the particular context in which thinking is to be deployed
  • young children are capable of thinking critically about subjects they know a great deal about, whereas trained scientists can fail to think critically in areas where they are less knowledgeable
  • not all knowledge is created equal. We need to differentiate between knowledge and information. Much of the information stored on the Internet is pictures of kittens or videos of people singing sea shanties. This can keep increasing exponentially without any need for school children to become acquainted with it
Sean McHugh

Being a Better Online Reader | The New Yorker - 0 views

  • there’s still no longitudinal data about digital reading. As she put it, “We’re in a place of apprehension rather than comprehension.” And it’s quite possible that the apprehension is misplaced: perhaps digital reading isn’t worse so much as different than print reading
  • they also need different sorts of training to excel at each medium. The online world, she argues, may require students to exercise much greater self-control than a physical book. “In reading on paper, you may have to monitor yourself once, to actually pick up the book,” she says. “On the Internet, that monitoring and self-regulation cycle happens again and again.
  • Maybe the decline of deep reading isn’t due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention
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  • The digital deficit, they suggest, isn’t a result of the medium as such but rather of a failure of self-knowledge and self-control: we don’t realize that digital comprehension may take just as much time as reading a book
  • It wasn’t the screen that disrupted the fuller synthesis of deep reading; it was the allure of multitasking on the Internet and a failure to properly mitigate its impact
  • some data suggest that, in certain environments and on certain types of tasks, we can read equally well in any format
  • We need to be aware of the effects of deeper digital immersion, Wolf says, but we should be equally cautious when we draw causal arrows or place blame without adequate longitudinal research
  • Deep-reading skills, Wolf points out, may not be emphasized in schools that conform to the Common Core, for instance, and need to meet certain test-taking reading targets that emphasize gist at the expense of depth. “Physical, tangible books give children a lot of time,” she says. “And the digital milieu speeds everything up. So we need to do things much more slowly and gradually than we are.” Not only should digital reading be introduced more slowly into the curriculum; it also should be integrated with the more immersive reading skills that deeper comprehension requires.
  • Wolf is optimistic that we can learn to navigate online reading just as deeply as we once did print—if we go about it with the necessary thoughtfulness.
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