Group items tagged

"This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it's change for the better."

"When you move an entire district into a digital environment a lot of things change. What doesn't change is the fact that everything revolves around academic achievement."

"The development of new technology continues to have an impact on learning. While on the one hand, new technology allows schools and instructors to offer learning in new ways, educators nonetheless continue to face limitations imposed by technology, and sometimes the lack of technology. While access to the internet has increased greatly over the last decade, some schools continue to experience bandwidth shortages and most schools do not have enough computers for every student. Yet, this is changing, and the pace of this change will continue to accelerate."

The article was published in 2004 and it foresee that Connectiviism would be the future of the education. Knowledge and learning has underwent significant changes after the emergence of current technologies. Learners are more likely to move into multiple and unrelated field. Besides formal education at school, informal learning become a more significant aspect and learners acquire knowledge through technologies, communities, work environment. Learning become a long lasting changed state because of the interaction between people and own life experiences.

"Something else you can do to keep your brain fit is to take advantage of neuroplasticity. Just as the muscles in your body get stronger when you exercise them, our brains benefit from activities that cause it to change and adapt."

"As methods of imaging the brain improve, neuroscientists and educators can now identify changes in children's brains as they learn, and start to develop ways of personalizing instruction for kids who are falling behind."

"Student-centered classrooms include students in planning, implementation, and assessments. Involving the learners in these decisions will place more work on them, which can be a good thing. Teachers must become comfortable with changing their leadership style from directive to consultative -- from "Do as I say" to "Based on your needs, let's co-develop and implement a plan of action.""

"Adolescents assigned to a mindfulness meditation program appeared to have improvements in memory in a recent study."

In this article, I argue that today will always be the best day to try or learn something new. You can't teach an old dog new tricks (well you can, but it's hard) Neuroplasticity is the brain's way of reprogramming itself based on what it does. Your brain actually changes structure with new experiences.

"Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward."

The TED talk further distinguish tasks into two types, and reveals that incentives doesn't work with the type of work requires cognitive skills. It points out that intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose will work better to enhance efficiency. The situations in my classroom clearly backup this statement. Every time when I am doing simple translation word to word with my students in a timed situation, incentive such as candies, points work perfectly. Students performed well under that simply reward system. But when the task change into creating sentences with the given vocabulary, students' attentions shift from getting rewards to proving their ability or mastery. As a language teacher, I understand that as the difficult of the content increase, the effect of rewards decrease accordingly. To increase students' intrinsic motivation, cultivate self-motivated students is the key to success.

"The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains"

Found another video on brain based learning. This video is almost 15 minutes long. This video is about Learning about the brain changes everything by David Rock at TEDxTokyo.

I found the comments on how we get emotions wrong very interesting. The idea that emotions effect intelligence and memory. How should I as an instructor use that information to provide learning experience to my students?