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Katie Day

A Citizen Scientist Changes Our Understanding of Whales: Scientific American Podcast - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...episode.cfm

science inquiry whales flickr

shared by Katie Day on 17 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Using the photo-sharing site Flickr and a personal history of studying whale photos, she identified a picture, taken in 2001 by tourist Freddy Johansen in Madagascar, of an Antarctic humpback known to scientists as number 1363. Two years earlier, researchers had spotted 1363, a female, swimming alongside another whale in Brazil. Brazil to Madagascar. That’s a distance of 6,000 miles, nearly double any documented migration by a humpback.
  • The discovery led to her co-authoring a paper published earlier this month in Biology Letters, and earning her the esteemed title of citizen scientist. In the process, she changed our understanding of the humpback whale.
  • Katie Day on 17 Nov 10
     
    great little story of how a school teacher added to the world's knowledge of humpback whales thanks to her own ongoing passion and inquiry into whales AND the benefit of Flickr, where she could examine other people's photographs of whales
Katie Day

Student Learning with Diigo - 1 views

sites.google.com/...home

social_bookmarking diigo howto education technology

shared by Katie Day on 27 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 27 Feb 11
     
    a great website that introduces Diigo and its benefits for teachers and students
Katie Day

Coaching a Surgeon: What Makes Top Performers Better? : The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...111003fa_fact_gawande

coaching learning professional_development teaching

shared by Katie Day on 09 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Katie Day on 09 Oct 11
     
    Oct. 3, 2011 edition -- article by Atul Gawande -- on the benefits of coaching in different areas of life
Keri-Lee Beasley

Using iPad in Maths - 1 views

ideferrers.com/ivity-and-student-explanations

critical_thinking technology iPad mathematics

shared by Keri-Lee Beasley on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 01 Mar 15
     
    There is an argument for creating videos as a means of engagement, as an approach involving doing something a little different; something that will hopefully result in a higher likelihood of it being committed to long term memory. These are additional benefits. The real value in these tasks is their requirement for genuine higher order thinking skills, and the resulting assessment of student understanding that can be used in a meaningful way.
Katie Day

What Should Children Read? - NYTimes.com - 1 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...what-should-children-read

books reading recommendations longreads essays nonfiction usa standards

shared by Katie Day on 28 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • There are anthologies of great literature and primary documents, but why not “30 for Under 20: Great Nonfiction Narratives?” Until such editions appear, teachers can find complex, literary works in collections like “The Best American Science and Nature Writing,” on many newspaper Web sites, which have begun providing online lesson plans using articles for younger readers, and on ProPublica.org. Last year, The Atlantic compiled examples of the year’s best journalism, and The Daily Beast has its feature “Longreads.” Longform.org not only has “best of” contemporary selections but also historical examples dating back decades.
  • Adult titles, like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” already have young readers editions, and many adult general-interest works, such as Timothy Ferris’s “The Whole Shebang,” about the workings of the universe, are appropriate for advanced high-school students.
  • In addition to a biology textbook, for example, why can’t more high school students read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”?
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • What Tom Wolfe once said about New Journalism could be applied to most student writing. It benefits from intense reporting, immersion in a subject, imaginative scene setting, dialogue and telling details. These are the very skills most English teachers want students to develop.
  • In my experience, students need more exposure to nonfiction, less to help with reading skills, but as a model for their own essays and expository writing,
  • Common Core dictates that by fourth grade, public school students devote half of their reading time in class to historical documents, scientific tracts, maps and other “informational texts” — like recipes and train schedules. Per the guidelines, 70 percent of the 12th grade curriculum will consist of nonfiction titles. Alarmed English teachers worry we’re about to toss Shakespeare so students can study, in the words of one former educator, “memos, technical manuals and menus.”
  • Louise Phinney on 28 Nov 12
     
    "A striking assumption animates arguments on both sides, namely that nonfiction is seldom literary and certainly not literature. Even Mr. Coleman erects his case on largely dispiriting, utilitarian grounds: nonfiction may help you win the corner office but won't necessarily nourish the soul. As an English teacher and writer who traffics in factual prose, I'm with Mr. Coleman. In my experience, students need more exposure to nonfiction, less to help with reading skills, but as a model for their own essays and expository writing, what Mr. Gladwell sought by ingesting "Talk of the Town" stories. I love fiction and poetry as much as the next former English major and often despair over the quality of what passes for "informational texts," few of which amount to narrative much less literary narrative. What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call "narrative nonfiction": writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways."
  • Katie Day on 01 Dec 12
     
    "What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. "  Totally supports my belief that nonfiction longreads are out there on the internet and are not being taken advantage of by teachers -- enough.
Sean McHugh

Do Violent Games Lead Kids Astray? - IGN - 0 views

www.ign.com/...violent-games-lead-kids-astray

learning games gaming violence

shared by Sean McHugh on 24 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • dialogue is far removed, however, from the intensely heated conflict that exists at the smaller, more personal scale. On the one hand you have the millions of Americans who play games, whether on a console or a smartphone, and have been raised in a time where such things are ubiquitous. On the other is a (generally older) population whose exposure to games has been limited to the most visible examples of the medium, including billion-dollar series like Call of Duty and notorious time sinks like FarmVille that paint a limited portrait of gaming's full range.
  • "You’re not wrong to be concerned about the time your son spends playing video games," wrote Moody. "But let me ask you this: If there were no video games here, wouldn’t there be some other stimulus that could threaten his time by diverting his attention away from, wait, what did you call it? 'What I feel are much more worthwhile and ultimately rewarding pursuits.’ 
  • fears about video games are understandable. Like anything else, they can become the focal point of unhealthy behavior all too easily, a point Moody is quick to emphasize. As Moody says again and again, though, that’s hardly the fault of video games.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Video games actually encourage problem solving and memory skills in young people. "[Children] have to discover the rules of the game and how to think strategically,"
  • Even video games that can horrify with their grisly depictions of violence have benefits that individuals like ADCP are unaware of due to an unwillingness to engage the material.
  • some studies are finding that video games can help improve people’s quality of life for longer.
  • their results point to the need for more study. They don’t know for sure if it’s the games that improves mental health in seniors, or simply the mental activity they stimulate.
  • Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that’s followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century.
  • This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective.
  • Sean McHugh on 24 Mar 13
     
    "Video games are just tools, outlets for people to express themselves in as vast a variety of ways as anything else. They are still relatively new creations, and the unknown can frighten anyone, hence the uproar that's followed games for years. The same uproar and indignation that followed rock and roll in the '50s and novels in the 19th century. This is why the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 is ultimately a good thing. It will lead to, ideally, a deeper understanding of how we interact with games. For parents, children, players, academics, and everyone else with a vested interest in a gaming future, the most important thing is to maintain perspective."
Keri-Lee Beasley

How Might Video Games Be Good for Us? - 0 views

www.bigquestionsonline.com/...w-might-video-games-be-good-us

gamechangers gaming mcgonigal article technology games

shared by Keri-Lee Beasley on 12 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • What is it about games that is transcendent? Perhaps it’s the fact that games are optional, they are obstacles that we volunteer to overcome. Games are what we choose to do. They are what we are drawn to when we have a choice about how to spend our time and energy.  Games are freedom.
  • There is something transcendent about playing games that lifts us up and out of the tedium and pain of everyday life.
  • When we ask “Are games good for us?” we should take more seriously the idea that games helps us feel better, in the moment, and that this is important work. Reducing the time we spend experiencing negative emotions and increasing the time we spend experiencing positive emotions is a fundamental good in and of itself. Even if games don’t change anything else in our lives, the power to change how we feel in the moment is a very good thing indeed.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Parents who spend more time playing games with their kids have better relationships with them
  • improve children’s ability to manage difficult emotions
  • Children who spend more time playing videogames score higher on tests of creativity.
  • Gamers of all ages perform better than non-gamers on tests of attention, speed, accuracy, and multi-tasking.
  • Scientists have found a wide variety of cognitive, emotional and social benefits to gaming
  • Is gameplay good for us?
  • Sean McHugh on 12 Feb 13
     
    Based on research not just opinion. What is it about games that is transcendent? Perhaps it's the fact that games are optional, they are obstacles that we volunteer to overcome. Games are what we choose to do. They are what we are drawn to when we have a choice about how to spend our time and energy.  Games are freedom.
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 04 Mar 13
     
    Article with lots of links to research around the subject of games being good for us.
Keri-Lee Beasley

Using Technology to Break the Speed Barrier of Reading - Scientific American - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...k-the-speed-barrier-of-reading

visual_literacy literacy technology comprehension reading

shared by Keri-Lee Beasley on 12 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Unfortunately, the system of reading we inherited from the ancient scribes —the method of reading you are most likely using right now — has been fundamentally shaped by engineering constraints that were relevant in centuries past, but no longer appropriate in our information age.
  • search for innovative engineering solutions aimed at making reading more efficient and effective for more people
  • But then, by chance, I discovered that when I used the small screen of a smartphone to read my scientific papers required for work, I was able to read with much greater facility and ease.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • hen, in a comprehensive study of over 100 high school students with dyslexia done in 2013, using techniques that included eye tracking, we were able to confirm that the shortened line formats produced a benefit for many who otherwise struggled with reading.
  • For example, Marco Zorzi and his colleagues in Italy and France showed in 2012 that when letter spacing is increased to reduce crowding, children with dyslexia read more effectively.
  • A clever web application called Beeline Reader, developed by Nick Lum, a lawyer from San Francisco, may accomplish something similar using colors to guide the reader’s attention forward along the line.  Beeline does this by washing each line of text in a color gradient, to create text that looks a bit like a tie-dyed tee-shirt.
  • one aims to increase the throughput of the brain’s reading buffers by changing their capacity for information processing, while the other seeks to activate alternate channels for reading that will allow information to be processed in parallel, and thereby increase the capacity of the language processing able to be performed during reading. 
  • The brain is said to be plastic, meaning that it is possible to change its abilities.
  • people can be taught to roughly double their reading speed, without compromising comprehension.
  • Consider that we process language, first and foremost, through speech. And yet, in the traditional design of reading we are forced to read using our eyes. Even though the brain already includes a fully developed auditory pathway for language, the traditional design for reading makes little use of the auditory processing capabilities of the brain
  • While the visual pathways are being strained to capacity by reading, the auditory network for language remains relatively under-utilized.
  • Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper.
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 12 Sep 15
     
    "Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper."
Keri-Lee Beasley

Students Speak Up in Class, Silently, via Social Media - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...13social.html

nytimes benefits online backchannel social social_media technology

shared by Keri-Lee Beasley on 16 May 11 - No Cached
  • Keri-Lee Beasley on 16 May 11
     
    "The 11th graders in Mrs. Olson's class said the backchannel had widened their appreciation of one another. "Everybody is heard in our class," said Leah Postman, 17. Janae Smith, also 17, said, "It's made me see my peers as more intelligent, seeing their thought process and begin to understand them on a deeper level." "
Jeffrey Plaman

bPortfolios: Blogging for Reflective Practice | The Sloan Consortium - 0 views

sloanconsortium.org/...s-blogging-reflective-practice

blog blogging eportfolio reflection research

shared by Jeffrey Plaman on 31 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Jeffrey Plaman on 31 Oct 11
     
    This is a nice site illustrating the benefits of student blogging linked to research findings.
Sean McHugh

The Scientific Case For Teaching Cursive Handwriting to Your Kids Is Weaker Than You Think - 2 views

nautil.us/...ting-and-other-education-myths

teaching handwriting research

shared by Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • here is ample evidence that writing by hand aids cognition in ways that typing does not: It’s well worth teaching. And I confess I’m old-fashioned enough to think that, regardless of proven cognitive benefits, a good handwriting style is an important and valuable skill, not only when your laptop batteries run out but as an expression of personality and character.
  • if they have the time and inclination.
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
       
      But should we be dedicating swathes of curriculum time towards this? Surely not.
  • what teachers “know” about how children learn is sometimes more a product of the culture in which they’re immersed than a result of research and data.
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
       
      Never were truer words written.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • What does research say on these issues? It has consistently failed to find any real advantage of cursive over other forms of handwriting
  • our real understanding of how children respond to different writing styles is surprisingly patchy and woefully inadequate
  • Evidence supports teaching both formats of handwriting and then letting each student choose which works best for him or her
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
       
      Shouldn't we include touch typing here as well?
  • So was cursive faster than manuscript? No, it was slower. But fastest of all was a personalized mixture of cursive and manuscript developed spontaneously by pupils around the fourth to fifth grade
  • They had apparently imbibed manuscript style from their reading experience (it more closely resembles print), even without being taught it explicitly
  • While pupils writing in cursive were slower on average, their handwriting was also typically more legible than that of pupils taught only manuscript. But the mixed style allowed for greater speed with barely any deficit in legibility.
  • The grip that cursive has on teaching is sustained by folklore and prejudice
  • for typical children, there’s some reason to think manuscript has advantages
  • freeing up cognitive resources that are otherwise devoted to the challenge of simply making the more elaborate cursive forms on paper will leave children more articulate and accurate in what they write
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
       
      Likewise if they can touch-type instead of wrestling with ascenders and descenders...
  • the difference in appearance between cursive and manuscript could inhibit the acquisition of reading skills, making it harder for children to transfer skills between learning to read and learning to write because they simply don’t see cursive in books.
  • There’s good evidence, both behavioral and neurological, that a “haptic” (touch-related) sense of letter shapes can aid early reading skills, indicating a cognitive interaction between motor production and visual recognition of letters. That’s one reason, incidentally, why it’s valuable to train children to write by hand at all, not just to use a keyboard.
  • even if being taught both styles might have some advantages, it’s not clear that those cognitive resources and classroom hours couldn’t be better deployed in other ways.
    • Sean McHugh
      Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
       
      In other ways... the time it takes for kids to learn cursive, spread over years, compared to the relatively short time it takes to master touch-typing being a case in point.
  • that cursive is still taught primarily because of parental demand and tradition, rather than because there is any scientific basis for its superiority in learning
  • inertia and preconceptions seem to distort perception and policy at the expense of the scientific evidence
  • How much else in education is determined by what’s “right,” rather than what’s supported by evidence?
  • Beliefs about cursive are something of a hydra: You cut off one head, and another sprouts. These beliefs propagate through both the popular and the scientific literature, in a strange mixture of uncritical reporting and outright invention, which depends on myths often impossible to track to a reliable source.
  • the reasons to reject cursive handwriting as a formal part of the curriculum far outweigh the reasons to keep it.
  • This must surely lead us to wonder how much else in education is determined by a belief in what is “right,” unsupported by evidence.
  • it’s often the case that the very lack of hard, objective evidence about an issue, especially in the social sciences, encourages a reliance on dogma instead
  • There needs to be wider examination of the extent to which evidence informs education. Do we heed it enough? Or is what children learn determined more by precedent and cultural or institutional norms?
  • Sean McHugh on 01 Oct 16
     
    There needs to be wider examination of the extent to which evidence informs education. Do we heed it enough? Or is what children learn determined more by precedent and cultural or institutional norms?
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