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It's a really informative video which explains project based learning. I liked its clear guiding questions to make students reach the solution just like experts.

This link contains a small writing of Roy Pea, learning sciences pioneer. Putting on emphasis on the guidelines of mathematical education it also shares some ideas on how to use technology for mathamatic teaching. I find it interesting that although this is a 31-year-old document, ideas about teaching is quite up-to-date. Article contains ideas on the aim of the mathematical education which is to nurture problem solving skills and suggests softwares should be harmonious with this fact instead of drill and practice softwares.

En büyük sorun itibar kaybı :(

Teachers are the ones we always put blame on!!! They don't prepare students very well for the university entrance exam, they don't implement the curriculum effectively, they resist innovation, changes etc. In Turkey, teaching is mostly a profession of last choice. Losing reputation is not a problem, it is a result. Restoring it can not be done by increase in wages, providing facilities for them etc. When education becomes a prior area for all of us, teacher's reputation will be restored then, I think.

Based on Evrim Hoca's questions, while googling I came across this. While considering the motivation we disregard one important point I guess. What about the social and economic status of learners and its influence on motivation? Here the news tell us about the accesibility problem. If some are not able to access can we talk about the motivation?

I am studying on learning environments in socioeconomically disadvantaged schools Yelda, :) May be I can provide some information during the course. Thanks for sharing this :)

Yelda, I have no idea about the target population of MOOCs when they first broke out..But I know they have many pros like no-cost for students (mostly), quality (some Ivy League universities are leading), opportunity for who has no chance to enroll a famous university, no presequities like diplom and chance of discussing things through an online platform (diversity)..So motivation is not one of the pros but cons. Because those MOOC institutions does not offer any college credit but a certificate which does not help you for employment and they are free, nothing forces you to complete..Anyway I have already enrolled a 6 weeks Cryptography Course (I am a Courseran now) offered by a Stanford Professor.

A good illustration for flow.

That is the image Csikszentmihalyi showed and talked about it and I totally agree that the danger zone is "apathy" Most of the teachers should have experienced lots of problems with their students as they have apahty.

I am curious about what you think on this. Do you agree?

While reading I felt that the author is somewhat close to new ideas coming from other people, other thinkers, actually coming from the rest of the world. I mean as I understood at some parts, he is not open to accept the judgements or theories of some thinkers because what they said were already out there, they did not bring anything new. However I would name these people as men of action and thinkers ahead of their time. Because they draw attention to critical points that were ignored or missed by others. Maybe yes what they put forth were already out there or maybe some of their methods are not sufficient compared to our current methodologies but still they were the ones to see the complete picture and summarize things.

Thank you Evrim Hocam:) I strongly believe in community, wikinomy, we have to share, we can learn from each other in an informal environment but social constructivism is not working on me:) As he wrote "At University I learned almost everything in the quiet of my own room and the library. In corporate life, I relished the opportunity to learn on trains and planes, havens of forced isolation, peace and quiet. To this day I blog a lot and enjoy periods of intense research, reading and writing. It's not that I've learned everything in these contexts, only that they go against the idea that all learning needs to be social." I always got successful with deliberate practice and with "Learning by Doing". I don't like social media as well, there are many damages than benefits and I'm not so introvert, maybe a little:) but it's not about being introvert or extrovert, it's about talking or doing... I want to tell a real story of my friend who was a novice programmer in a company. There were many experts, novices and they were taking courses, online, offline, with collaboration every time. Everybody were sharing, commenting, discussing but he began a real life project first week by himself and after 6 month they were still asking to each other but he finished his project. After one year he was the best programmer in the company. And everyone began to ask to him. I asked him, he told that he believes in working until suffering and just doing:) And he added this interesting sentence "You will learn and you will be successful when you will be so related, so suffering that one day you will see dreams and solve problems about the topics in your sleep" My friend's opinions are maybe a little bit dramatic but I believe in "doing" too, at least it's working for us:)

The paper explains Learning by Design based on the guidelines case-based reasoning and problem-based learning with many implications to pedagogical tools and practices.

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

The article is on the integration of case-based reasoning to problem-based learning, it is an example to a merging of them. Examples of science instruction can be found and CBR in detail is explained by Kolodner and her colleagues.

The article has talked about the importance of communication with parents for learning as well as what problems we as educators may confront with by asking parents to help their children in order to enhance learning.

Thanks for sharing this:) Actually, it is not only important but also vital to include parental communication into education procedure. I think school, parents and the student himself/herself compose the core family in education process rather than the biological family of the student. In the literature about this issue, it has been put forward that there is a positive relation between parental communication and student learning or achievement both academically and psychologically.

One of the most difficult tasks that educators are to achieve is ensuring positive parental involvement in education. As parents are very sensitive about their children's education, nowadays most of the teachers have difficulty to create fruitful communication with parents. Parents question and crticize everything at school as they do not have confidence in educators because of improper practices they experienced or witnessed. Having training sessions, meetings and home visits can be useful in this framework. In this way, parents will be informed about the activities at school and can be involved in decision making process which will change their perceptions in a positive way.

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.

Here is the reminder of 12 different learning styles and how they intersect with Multiple Intelligences

The existence of learning styles is debatable if I am not mistaken or at least there are researchers arguing against categorizing learners according to these styles. Also there exists different categorizations for them. However it is also true that they are useful in the instruction process and teachers can make use of them if used effectively.

Yeah, I think most of the learning theories to some extent depend on or connect to the said learning styles such as problem-based learning, inquiry based learning or project-based learning. We cannot separate them from our instruction methods.

While giving super brilliant girl's example who has a problem in visiual process,she highlights awareness of students' deficiency signals and their acting outs. This explains why teachers should know about neuroscience and work with neuroscientists.

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.

This excerpt is taken from the book "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education" Game-based learning have been increasingly used in educational settings in the last 10 years and there is a lot of research on this subject. I wonder if there is any on game-based learning how experts and novices solve certain problems in the game environments. Sounds a promising research area.

The example of Making sale in differentiating novices and experts is stunning.While novices focus on making the sale , experts develop relationships. The former aims to think, organize information for a limited time for that thing only.However the latter thinks more elaboratelly, develop ways for a long period of time for future connections which is wiser.Thus, we can see that experts know how to use their long term memory effectively compared to novices.

A nice book enjoyable to read, which includes interesting ideas about thinking, computers and cognitive sciences

Yes, now I have reached the book:) thank you for sharing this with us. Reading on such creative people and getting to know them more is great.

Thanks. In my reading list now.

David Perkins has conducted long-term programs of research and development in the areas of teaching and learning for understanding, creativity, problem-solving and reasoning in the arts, sciences, and everyday life. He has also studied the role of educational technologies in teaching and learning and has designed learning structures and strategies in organizations to facilitate personal and organizational understanding and intelligence. His inquiries reflect a conception of mind that emphasizes the interlocking relationships among thinking, learning, and understanding. The three depend deeply on one another. Meaningful learning aims at understanding and depends on thinking with and about what one is learning. Effective thinking in the subject matters and in general involves understanding the resources of the mind and learning to deploy them sensitively and systematically