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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.

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 article totally reflects my opinions about blended learning. Technology integration is necessary but to what extent?

I agree with you Sermin, use of technology is considered as a must for effective instruction by most of the teachers nowadays. However, in some cases using traditional methods and techniques can be more feasible, cost-effective and practical.

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.

It is the most fascinating metaphor for learning according to neuroscientific view. Actually I do not have some much information about how learning takes place in our brains but this video made some parts clear for me. I do not whether it can be an appropriate conslusion from this video or not, but I think that learning without assistance of someone more competent than us could be very difficult, as the older man in the video helped the younger one. so that is why we, teachers are priceless ;)

What a good way of showing an unknown concept through known ways..Thank you, The bridge is a very well-selected metaphor:-) When we think about our own way of learning, isn't it the same? It's always difficult to make the first link but then everything becomes easier...step by step...

In the video, there exists a really interesting metaphor about how we learn. Through this video some neurological concepts and comments about learning became concrete in my mind. I think there is a smooth transition from difficulty to easiness in our brains during the learning process.

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.

The report focuses on advances in neuroscience with potential implications for education and lifelong learning. The report authors, including neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and education specialists, agree that if applied properly, the impacts of neuroscience could be highly beneficial in schools and beyond. The report argues that our growing understanding of how we learn should play a much greater role in education policy and should also feature in teacher training.

This is the webpage from the design based research conference 2012. You can find there some good ideas. You also can download the presentations and work-shop descriptions

I didn't know about this event. Hope they organize the next one. We can check some of the cases in class. I am particularly interested in how DBR is used in teacher education research context.

In this short paper, Caine&Caine present principles of brain that will help teachers reconceptualize their teaching.

Yelda I really like this article and also it says that eachc brain is unique so iI think this is similar with educators thoughts, every child is unique..:)

the videos and the interactives are really nice to see :)

Bu okulda öğrencileri okuldan soğutacak hiç bir uygulama yok. Özel okul statüsünde ancak kar amacı güdülmüyor. Bütçesi velilerin katılımıyla bir kooperatif tarafından karşılanıyor. İlk şubesi Bodrum'da açılan okulun ikinci şubesi için İzmir'de çalışmalar başlatıldı.

most probably you have heard that Summerhill School in England. It is a boarding school founded by A.S. Neill in 1921 and its basic principle is the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the child should be made to fit the school. I think the one in Turkey might be founded based on the Summerhill School. here is is website for more information; www.summerhillschool.co.uk

There is this point that I totally agree with Burcu about disadvantaged groups. Also whenever I think about examples like Sudbury Valley, I get impressed by the idea of getting rid of exam threat. But for our country, we have to change like everything, the belief systems, the culture, the attitudes. We have a lot do to in that respect, even if our main intention to make just a small change.

"Every child is a scientist!!!" Do you agree?

I wish he were not a scientist but eventually he is especially in the kitchen he can create different tastes he prepares coctails for himself and drinks it and tries new forms of chemical experiements and reaches different tastes it goes on like this :)

I totally agree with the idea. If you had a chance of observing little kids around you, you may have seen that they have lots of questions that even we as grown ups do not know the answer. also, the simple answers that you provide for them are never enough for them. Our professor Mr. Ok shared his experience with one of his colleague's daughter. a five year old girl learned from her parents that she came to the world as her father and mother loved each other so much. When she saw that our professor do not have a child she concluded that he doesn't love his wife so much :) and then her parents had to provide a new answer for her curiosity about how she came to world.

I would like to present and give information on Jack Mezirow who is known as the founder of the concept of transformative learning. According to his ideas, individuals transform their frames of reference through critical reflection on the assumptions upon which their interpretations, beliefs, and habits of mind or points of view are based. Personal frames of references in the learning process is underlined. He is now Emeritus Professor of Adult and Continuing Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

We spook about Mishra in class and Evrim Hoca gave some information about him. .
Punya Mishra is a professor of educational technology and director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program. He is nationally and internationally recognized for his work on the theoretical, cognitive and social aspects related to the design and use of computer-based learning environments. He has worked extensively in the area of technology integration in teacher education which led to the development (in collaboration with M. J. Koehler) of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, which has been described as "the most significant advancement in the area of technology integration in the past 25 years." He has received over $4 million in grants, published over 45 articles and book chapters and edited two books. Dr. Mishra is an award-winning instructor who teaches courses at both the masters and doctoral levels in the areas of educational technology, design and creativity. He is a gifted, creative and engaging public speaker, having made multiple keynote and invited presentations for associations and conferences nationally and internationally.
My dream is to work with him and Ann Thompson and also taking TPACK badge.:)

Yahya hoca is known with his works on education history in Turkey. He is the pioneer in History of Turkish education, especially teacher education in Turkey. His books on the link which are been sold. Here is his turkish CV: http://www.ekremyaman.com/2010/10/11/prof-dr-yahya-akyuz/

I had chance to visit some Montessori early education centers and got impressed by the way children learn. I am really looking forward to hearing your comments on this method.

Whatever they are named, there are many nice ideas-theories of edcation. Montessori method is one of the contemporary ones which seems to present many potentials for the teachers. One point which looks problematic about Montessori in our education sysytem is motivating students to be actively engaged in activities. The question is "Is there a way to connect activities and heavy academic knowledge?". In other words, Can we help our students to get ready for the exams by engaging them in daily activities? My answer is "not really" :(

I liked the school environment too much. As far as I can see from the video, Montessori method engages ownership in learning, self-management and authenticity which I most appreciate in a learning process. The students have the chance to relate what they learn with life with willingness and curiosity. But as İbrahim said, my question is "Can we apply this to our education system?". Our children are in a race from the beginning for a endless examination world. Unfortunately, this is a bit utopia for us. However, I think in kindergarten or pre-school period we can apply this. But for high-school or even primary school I am not sure.