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I have written several posts before on the importance of making presentation meaningful and interesting. Not just creating a PowerPoint because it's the easiest tool for you to create a visual representation of your content. Comic books are what I consider to be attention grabbers. After bringing out several samples, you now have the student's attention. It's what you do with that attention that really matters. For this post I thought I would share some great web 2.0 tools that allow you and your students to make comic books. I urge you to make these assignments interesting, and relevant. Make sure that they are strongly tied to important curriculum standards and benchmarks. Just because the form of presentation and activity creation is "fun" does not mean that the substance in the curriculum is not important.

Attention Alert: A Study on Distraction Reveals Some Surprises Distractions from our brains hurt as much or more than those from our tech!

"One such intervention: "We have to expand our notion of what productivity means," said Lehrer. "Right now we are grooming our kids to think in a very particular way, which assumes that the right way to be thinking is to be attentive, to stare straight ahead-which is why we diagnose 20 percent of kids in many classrooms as having attention deficit disorders, when the research is actually more complicated.""

iPads helping or hindering infants? http://t.co/hkiCAD9y via @canberratimes #mobilelead Dr Kaufman said the study, which had so far tested 46 children aged four to six, involved examining the attention and problem-solving capabilities of children after using an iPad compared to using real toys. For example, as part of the study, children are being asked to solve a problem using a physical wooden model. They are also asked to solve the same problem using an iPad app. After they have played, they are given a test to assess their attention. Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/digital-life/tablets/ipads-helping-or-hindering-infants-20120809-23xc9.html#ixzz2HdGhnTld

If we are feeling distracted, we should pay attention to that distraction.  It may be telling us that there is something better elsewhere, something more deserving of our attention.  Or it may be telling us we are on the wrong path, just when we thought we were zooming in to that perfect conclusion of a paragraph or a project.   Or it may be telling us we need better tools, that the set-up we have is not fully appreciating the particularities and peccadilloes of our own work life and demands.  Or it may be telling us that we need better partners, or a better method, someone or something to help us over the hurdle.  Or it may just be telling us we are working too hard and we need to put down what we are doing and go outside for a walk, or stop for a cup of tea, or go for a run, or maybe just check out Facebook for a while.  Distraction is our friend because it reminds us that we are fully human, not just workers, and that our lives are complex and, trying to shut out the complexity, may in fact turn out to be the least productive way to lead a life.

Really interesting information on being a better online reader. The author suggests the following: "Maybe the decline of deep reading isn't due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention. (Interestingly, Coiro found that gamers were often better online readers: they were more comfortable in the medium and better able to stay on task.)"

Editor's note: An extraordinary number of species-from squid to lizards to humans-engage in play. But why? In this article, adapted from Dr. Sam Wang and Dr. Sandra Aamodt's book Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College (Bloomsbury USA, 2011; OneWorld Publications, 2011), the authors explore how play enhances brain development in children. As Wang and Aamodt describe, play activates the brain's reward circuitry but not negative stress responses, which can facilitate attention and action. Through play, children practice social interaction and build skills and interests to draw upon in the years to come.

increases a child's memory capacity, computer and simulation fluency, helps with fast strategic thinking, hand eye coordination, benefits children with attention disorders, helps particular skill development 

Gorgeous looking CVs and resumes

"Media is everywhere. TV, Internet, computer and video games all vie for our children's attention. Information on this page can help parents understand the impact media has in our children's lives, while offering tips on managing time spent with various media. The AAP has recommendations for parents and pediatricians"

Coaching is a highly sophisticated form of reflective practice. When done well, it can transform a person's professional, and often personal, life, and provides many benefits to the employer in sustaining high performance and morale. The question is, however, whether it's the coaching itself that produces the results, or if it's down to an enlightened management team, which believes in people's development and so encourages coaching, which in turn produces results. When coaching is done badly, though, it has the power to decimate a person's sense of professional worth for years into the future and to incur substantial cost while returning no benefits, or worse, significant professional damage. Leadership can become cynical about the coaching process.  Money is wasted.  Time and attention are frittered away.  Ineffective coaching is counterproductive and should be stopped as soon as it is recognized.

If we value coaching, and we do, the question then becomes: "what are the elements of effective coaching that we can train, support, measure, and improve" - especially those that have the highest leverage for shifting those being coached perspectives and practices. The more I come to understand the power of coaching the more I appreciate that the best leaders see their primary role within an organisation as an influencer and coaching as the structure behind the myriad of interactions. I think an enlightened management team would not only be encouraging coaches but utilizing coaching strategies themselves on a regular basis.

"Most of us are in groups all the time. But are these groups learning groups? When does a group become a learning group? Can a group construct its own way of learning? Can documenting children's learning lead to new ways of learning? These are some of the questions addressed in the research project, Making Learning Visible (MLV). MLV draws attention to the power of the group as a learning environment and documentation as a way to see and shape how and what children are learning. MLV is based on collaborative research conducted by Project Zero researchers with teachers from the Municipal Preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and preschool through high school teachers and teacher educators in Massachusetts."

"A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning. Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones "encourage student creativity and personal expression." In addition: 96% agree digital technologies "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience" 79% agree that these tools "encourage greater collaboration among students" According to teachers, students' exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts.""

PISA, the OECD's triennial international assessment of 15 year olds in math, reading, and science, has become one of the most destructive forces in education today. It creates illusory models of excellence, romanticizes misery, glorifies educational authoritarianism, and most serious, directs the world's attention to the past instead of pointing to the future.

Article on kids, technology, multi-tasking, and attention.... refers to recent research in cognitive science re children and digital device use

Cathy N. Davidson on experiments at Duke University in instigating digital devices and teaching ..... what the students learned and what she learned....

Article re how the color and shape of rooms affects the thinking that goes on inside the rooms... "They tested 600 subjects when surrounded by red, blue or neutral colors-in both real and virtual environments. The differences were striking. Test-takers in the red environments, were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory. Though people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on tasks requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy. In fact, subjects in the blue environment generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red one. Why? According to the scientists, the color blue automatically triggers associations with openness and sky, while red makes us think of danger and stop signs. (Such associations are culturally mediated, of course; Chinese, for instance, tend to associate red with prosperity and good luck.) It's not just color. A similar effect seems to hold for any light, airy space."

many wonder how to make the jump from passive teacher lectures to truly interactive and engaging lessons.