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There are many theories in this page that we should be interested in in this page as learning sciences students. An example of two groundbreaking research results in learning sciences is (1) Entwistle's Phenomenography theory This conceptual framework focuses on the experience of learning from the student's perspective and is based upon a phenomenological approach to research. Entwistle explains: "Our task is thus to describe more clearly how learning takes place in higher education and to point out how teaching and assessment affect the quality of learning. From these descriptions teachers should be able to draw their own lessons about how to facilitate their students' learning" (Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1984, p.1). (2) Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

You can watch a deliberate practice experiment in action. Dan mcglaughlin who is trying sistematically test 10.000- hour rule. He want to an expert golfer. It is interesting and exciting an experience :)

Many UK children have become less confident about succeeding in life by the time they leave school, a report says. The study by think-tank Demos says some pupils feel school is just preparing them for exam success. It urges the government to help schools and colleges explore how self-belief, perseverance and resilience can be instilled in pupils.

I think that not only UK chidren but also our children less confident and unhappy in real life. If same research is done in Turkey, I think that similar results can be obtained. Students spend 12 years in school (primary school, secondary and high school). And they learn socialising, success, failure in school. In traditional classrooms, success is gaining high score in exam, ranked in first three in competition and failure is gaining lower scores on exam. When students leave the school, they face with new environment that is not similar to school. I think, therefore, they can not adopt to this new environment they feel unhappy and less confident. For this reason, schools should bring the skills and qualities that are needed for out of the school. Community service course, role playing, field works should be done in the schools to introduce real life experinces to students. In addition, changing the laerning activites, assesment procedures in school also can be helpful for real life experinces.

In several videos it was said that we start to prepare our pupils for jobs that are not invented yet. It is because there are lots of information production and exchange throughout world now, which makes lots of jobs become obsolete in short period of times. Our students need to have skills to locate, synthesis, and evaluate information and adapt theirselves to new contexts instead of having static knowledge about specific jobs.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." ― Benjamin Franklin In the area of adult learning, Ben Franklin turns out to be quite prescient.

That's true. Education is a social-emotional act. As I said in my personal learning theory, teaching humans is not like inserting lines of codes to series of robots to make them behave in a specific way. We all have emotions and our emotions to a specific event may not be same all the time as our point of views to an event are affected by our personal experiences, culture, philosophy, etc. In that sense, for a teacher, it is important to monitor students' feelings to a specific topic and to arrange learning environments in which students have positive feelings about a topic.

"Introduce failure into your learning design." something we appreciate less in our educational system.

It is an application for mobile phones which you can view elements as virtual from your screen. You can view all elements seperately and also, if you put together them, they can from a product that you can see from the screen. The principle is very simple, after you install the application to your phone you can download the pdf of element cubes from the websites. You can also, view the demo from the website of app; http://elements4d.daqri.com/#demo

I think this app looks fine to visualize an abstract topic which is elements. I agree with you Armağan about the necessity of appropriate curriculum. For example, an activity could be helpful that allows to students arrange the locations of elements based on their atomic radius in a periodic table. Therefore, the students can observe atomic radius of elements is increasing or decreasing when running left to right in rows and running up and down in columns of the periodic table. Like Selçuk said that those applications are used in other fields too. I've seen some works of Bilal Özçakır when I joined at a presentation. He visualizes the geometric shapes in 3D from QR codes. For example, you see a geometric shape from every perspective of it and you test yourself with how top or bottom perspectives of a geometric shape looks like by looking its one side. Thus, you have a realistic experience with virtual objects in immediacy.

I wrote at OdtüClass forum that interested people get learn from the beginning about developing at least basic applications. When I talked with Özçakır, he also said to me he learned the whole process from the online sources with his efforts. Of course, instead of open-source applications; the aim will be be to gain money but I think appearing more amateur applications cause many advantages at these areas.

This box can be informative and fun AR environment for primary or elementary school students to form topographies and simulate real time water flow in geology and science lessons.

I hated geography lesson when I was in high school and while I see those kinds of application, I wish studying at high school now with those technological tools :) I think it can be really beneficial and also gain creativity of students.

I thought besides making sand castles on the beach, primary or elementary students can play sand to learn topographies and water flow at the same time. And yeah why not, for high school students it can also be fun and beneficial for improving their creativity :)

Shared video is related to flow in education. It gives information about happiness, creativity, divergent thinking, and key elements of the flow. There are some statistical data for creativity, graphic of flow and examples from different fields. Enjoy :)

Although it is a kind of advertisement, I like this smart technology products and the idea of smart classroom. Small groups can be engaged very easily for collaborative activities and they can touch the multi touch screen at the same time. Also, teacher can connect it to smart table with a software.

I think it is basic but very effective application. Especially it is fun and when thinking the usage of it is for children, it is a great advantage.

For both the ones who encounter "Flow Theory" for the first time and the ones who have encountered before and had a notion about the theory, this video will be very helpful to see what Flow Theory says, and what are the moments that you experience flow.

"You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears. You forget yourself. You feel part of something larger." I really liked this quote of him. :)

When I was 1 st year undergraduate student in METU, We were using this online platform at my physic's course. Generally there were 10 problems assigned with sub-layers. It was offering rapid feedback, simulations and we were also graded.

Mustafa, It was really helpful from some aspects but I remember that I was frequently complaining about the software. It gave a chance to practice a lot what I had learnt previous class. It was good to have problems in a large scale of complexity ( from easiest to hardest). And sometimes questions were picturized and there were graphs etc. Mostly, they were for real life situations. We were trying to solve problems which we come face to face everyday.However, there were also drawbacks, for example the answers arranged in a way that they do not accept any other solution computer offers.Our answers had to be exactly same from decimals to points. This could sometimes let a disoppointment and robbed my motivation down.And there were fear of getting bad marks because in the and of the homework we were graded by our performance. All in all, despite its drawbacks, 7 years ago it was nice to have this different kind of method in our classess.

Thank you Ceren for sharing your experiences, you underlined very important points especially the one about answers.

The site gives an overview of Cognitive Tutoring experiences of K-12 Education teachers and students in Carneige Learning Centre. They talk about the benefits and so.

* Mix and match the components of Flow; * Keep the user's experience within the user's Flow Zone; * Offer adaptive choices, allowing different users to enjoy the Flow in their own way; and * Embed choices inside the core activities to ensure the Flow is never interrupted.

it seems that we will try to go to some Chinese Universities in ten years time, instead of Europe or States.

In my opinion education policy of the countries do not be planned based on the students' academic achievement. Real achievement of an education system could be observed as individuals' adaptation to life. For example the main vision of the elementary science curriculum defined by Ministry of National Education of Turkey [MONE] (2005) is that regardless of the individual differences of students, they are educated to become scientifically literate, the uniqueness nature of the learner; background and culture of the learners and motivation of the learners were taken into consideration in the development of the curriculum (MONE, 2005), but putting those in the practice is very difficult.

Also, as mentioned in the text "… those results come at the cost of one of the highest levels of student anxiety in the world." Anxiety is very important and big research area in educational psychology also the news in the link http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-04/10/content_9710997.htm exemplifies its importance in Chinese case.

Here, we try to answer your questions about the different integrating components of a design learning experience into familiar, pre-existing scenarios that play out in every school.

The article mentions key features of LBD from a practical perspective. But, I still have some questions about how to apply LBD effectively in traditional classroom environment while trying to keep up with the requirements of the curricula in practice. The current curricula are assumed to be designed considering the contemporary approaches and methods. But the more I learn about the current improvements in the field the more I question our " current curricula".

We are always trying to find ways to motivate sts, but don't you think that it is high time for sts to start motivating their teachers?

Şermin, most of the time I need motivation to motivate the students for learning English:) And also, I question why we ask them to learn something they dislike. I agree with Burcu, when students are demotivated, teachers lose their motivation to teach. But, if they are intrinsically motivated, teaching becomes a joy. For example, I loved teaching to 4th graders. They had such a high level of motivation that I experienced the flow while teaching them:)

I also believe that teacher motivation is mutual.The two parties have to affect each other.Unfortunately we as teachers have to be the stimulators in our classes no matter how we feel during the day.One of the solution to keep teachers improve their skills and better their practises can be initiating positive school climate that is keeping teachers morale high by respecting their identity both as a teacher and valuable person in the community. Social parties,cookie-days can be alternative for teachers to have space to socialize, learn from each other and the sense of belongingness would enhance.It worked for some teachers that I worked with earlier.

1. The purpose of this paper is to share reflections of the three authors on the process of instructional design and implementation of blended learning for teachers' professional development (PD) in rural western Kenya. 2. There are for different reserach questions but one of them is caught my attention as we have the same problem in our country I think; How appropriate is blended learning for teachers in a rural setting? 3. The design-based research methodology in the study comprised a number of research methods. The methods included ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews, narratives and documentation of design artifacts

LD is frequently mistaken as laziness or associated with disorders of emotion and behavior.

In my undergraduate education, I had chance to be involved in a project on the learning disability; dyslexia, problems of sounds and words. We gathered data from children in various elementary school children in Istanbul. This was a fruitful experience to learn on the topic learning disabilities.

I wanted to share a topic on learning disabilities as I have encountered such students studying at the college I work for and did not know what to do with them. When I tried to involve parents to acknowledge them they preferred blaming the education system or the school itself. It must be very difficult for a parent to accept it but as teachers we need to be more knowledgeable about what to do and how to deal with it to save these learners with learning disabilities from exclusion and failure.

I tried ''http://www.lumosity.com''. - 'Your brain's innate neuroplasticity gives it the ability to physically change in response to new, challenging experiences. Your Training Program is designed to harness this neuroplasticity and give your brain a personalized set of challenges.' I really would love to try the training programme, if it would be free :)

Famous article by Nicolas Carr. What do you think?

I like these sentences from the text: "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.". Because the way we read has changed with new strategies(scanning and scimming quickly) and a great deal of information. That's why we rather google it then reading hundreds of pages.(Or ctrl-f works pretty good in some cases:)) However, I do not think that we are getting more stupid. Our brain has been evolving with new technologies and habits and probably will keep doing that. So we are not so much eager to keep some information in our minds since we are sure that we can reach them anywhere anytime. For instance, children no longer memorize multiplying tables but it does not tell us that they can not solve multiplication problems.They have another instruments to save time and energy :)

I agree with the ideas of Afra and Sinem. Sometimes I experience this while reading articles for my thesis and I have to write the key points for myself. However, I believe that we are not getting stupid, because we are now in technology era. We cannot abstain from appyling google for any information. It is really cost-effective in terms of time and money. I think that we will have to face with more new technologies in future, but this cannot mean that we will get more stupid. It is the requirement of our era we live in and we have to adapt ourselves.

"Will the day come when educators have ready access to brain-imaging machines to assist them in diagnosing reading or attention problems?" This question is important to answer, as many groups of students experience attention disorders.