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we found that whiteboard animations have a positive effect on retention, engagement and enjoyment, although we do not rule out the possibility that some of this result is due to novelty

While animations have a long history in the realm of education, and there is a plethora of research on instructional animations, attempts to measure their impact on educational outcomes have been inconclusive and often contradictory (Betrancourt, 2005)

For practical applications, however, the relevant question is not whether animations affect learning, but rather when and how animation affects learning ( Höffler & Leutner, 2007; Mayer & Moreno, 2002)

Teaching for conceptual change primarily involves 1) uncovering students' preconceptions about a particular topic or phenomenon and 2) using various techniques to help students change their conceptual framework

However, outside of school, students develop strong (mis)conceptions about a wide range of concepts related to non-scientific domains, such as how the government works, principles of economics, the utility of mathematics, the reasons for the Civil Rights movement, the nature of the writing process, and the purpose of the electoral college

Conceptual change is not only relevant to teaching in the content areas, but it is also applicable to the professional development of teachers and administrators

So in claiming that learning styles do not exist, we are not saying that all learners are the same. Rather, we assert that a certain number of dimensions (ability, background knowledge, interest) vary from person to person and are known to affect learning. The emphasis on learning styles, we think, often comes at the cost of attention to these other important dimensions.

However, when these tendencies are put to the test under controlled conditions, they make no difference—learning is equivalent whether students learn in the preferred mode or not. A favorite mode of presentation (e.g., visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) often reveals itself to be instead a preference for tasks for which one has high ability and at which one feels successful.

However, in order to persuade us to devote the time and energy to adopt a certain kind of differentiated teaching, the burden of proof is on those who argue for the existence of that description of students' cognitive strategies

This is hard to do—it requires both pedagogical and math concept knowledge, but it can be learned

Droujkova says one of the biggest challenges has been the mindsets of the grown-ups. Parents are tempted to replay their "bad old days" of math instruction with their kids, she says.

Unfortunately a lot of what little children are offered is simple but hard—primitive ideas that are hard for humans to implement,” because they readily tax the limits of working memory, attention, precision and other cognitive functions

his is a helpful thought in a society that has placed more attention on the fact of digital technologies (the new iPhone!) than on what we do with them

but all technologies, to some degree or another, are enmeshed in what Langdon Winner calls ‘regimes,

Design of tools has—as Illich pointed out—been accomplished in the absence of any consideration of their effects on social, cognitive, and political regimes. Designers can be better educated. And so can the users of their tools

“I don’t buy into the fact that we can get a system – and this is not a popular belief – that can do the full analysis of what students need,” he said

“I value the teaching profession and I think they need to look at the data that’s put out in front of them, the information that’s cut in different ways and use their ‘neck top computer’ [brain] to make some sort of valued judgement as to what the data is saying.

“Information can give black or white positives or negatives, but without the analytical mind of the teacher over the top understanding the student, what’s happening at home and in the classroom, they [IT] actually miss some of that analysis.”

But that's the crux of the problem right there: lecture-demonstrations. Although there's a tech component here that makes this appear innovative, that's really a matter of form, not content, that's new. There's actually very little in the videos that distinguishes Khan from "traditional" teaching. A teacher talks. Students listen. And that's "learning." Repeat over and over again (Pause, rewind, replay in this case). And that's "drilling."

They point to studies that find while students receive these sorts of videos positively, they are actually learning very little or learning very superficially

Physics teacher Frank Noschese, for example, contrasts the video of Khan's explanation of force with a video documenting his students' exploration of force through hands-on experimentation.

Whether it is solving a differential equation on the motion of charged particles or keeping track of a nuts-and-bolts inventory, the digital computer functions fundamentally as a numerical transformer of coded information. It takes sets of numbers, processes them as directed and provides another number or set of numbers as a result

Among the characteristics that make it different are the flexibility with which it can be adapted generally to logical operations, the blinding speed with which it can execute instructions that are stored within its memory, and its built-in capacity to carry out these instructions in sequence automatically and to alter them according to a prescribed plan.

Despite its size and complexity, a computer achieves its results by doing a relatively few basic things. It can add two numbers, multiply them, subtract one from the other or divide one by the other. It also can move or rearrange numbers and, among other things, compare two values and then take some pre-determined action in accordance with what it finds.

blogging is a great way of expanding the immediate classroom community

teachers are able to incidentally include the development of keyboard / typing skills, teach about copyright and Creative Commons, allow students to develop their navigation and research skills, and foster the smart, safe and respectful methods of electronic communication; thus giving the students the potential to become more literate with technolog

Research also shows that students often juggle homework and entertainment.

At Woodside, as elsewhere, students’ use of technology is not uniform. Mr. Reilly, the principal, says their choices tend to reflect their personalities.

The technology has created on campuses a new set of social types — not the thespian and the jock but the texter and gamer, Facebook addict and YouTube potato. “The technology amplifies whoever you are,” Mr. Reilly says.

As learning gains are predicted by study hours, not by class hours, this argument would hold up only if lectures were good at increasing the former and they are not: indeed, the more lectures there are, the fewer learning hours each generates.

There are alternatives to lecturing that have a much better record of generating learning hours, and some cost nothing. The only potential problem is that they may require more effort from students

Those studies about the wonders of handwriting all suffer from the same set of flaws, namely, a) that they don’t actually work with students who have been taught to use their laptops or devices for taking notes. That is, they all hand students devices and tell them to take notes in the same way they would in written form. In some cases those devices don’t have keyboards; in some cases they don’t provide software tools to use (there are some great ones, but doing it in say, Word, isn’t going to maximize the options digital spaces allow), in some cases the devices are not ones the students use themselves and with which they are comfortable. And b) the studies are almost always focused on learning in large lecture classes or classes in which the assessment of success is performance on a standardized (typically multiple-choice) test, not in the ways that many, many classes operate, and not a measure that many of us use in our own classes. And c) they don’t actually attempt to integrate the devices into the classes in question,

I have plenty of conversations with students about how to take notes already. Most of the time their problem isn’t which device (pencil, laptop, phone, quill) they use to take those notes, but how to take them and how to use them to learn based on their own experiences, learning styles, and discipline