Group items tagged

the lecture is no longer the only way to transfer important information. “Ever since the Middle Ages, the primary vehicle for conveying information was the lecture,” he said. “But this is the 21st century, and there are so many ways to convey information, it’s not the necessity it once was.” Students don’t learn by listening, they learn by doing

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.

students performed equally well on a twenty-question multiple-choice comprehension test whether they had read a chapter on-screen or on paper. Given a second test one week later, the two groups’ performances were still indistinguishable.

“We cannot go backwards. As children move more toward an immersion in digital media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply there.”

Maybe her letter writers’ students weren’t victims of digitization so much as victims of insufficient training—and insufficient care—in the tools of managing a shifting landscape of reading and thinking.

In a new study, the introduction of an interactive annotation component helped improve comprehension and reading strategy use in a group of fifth graders. It turns out that they could read deeply. They just had to be taught how.

multitasking while reading on a computer or a tablet slowed readers down, but their comprehension remained unaffected.

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.

So Finland might not be so great after all, partly because its centralised curriculum has ignored certain concepts that are not tested in PISA.

choice is extensive

Shirky almost completely ignores pedagogy in this article. While this paragraph addresses learning and course structure, he doesn’t address or attempt to justify the learning modes that banning laptops is meant to protect. The assumption of his argument is that the classroom is a place where mostly lectures (and some discussions) happen. I do not doubt that portable electronics provide unique challenges to lecturing; but is this narrow definition of the classroom — a place where an instructor delivers knowledge to students who must pay attention — one we should be defending from these increasingly ubiquitous technologies?

Yet, what goes unremarked on in the study is how abysmally all of the students did on the comprehension tests.

Students didn’t start being distracted in class with the introduction of laptops, so instructors are better off addressing the root problem: making their courses engaging and interesting.

why must we ask the 21st century to wait outside our classes? Is it just to protect the lecture? We know what a classroom designed around lectures, notes, and quizzes can do, and it is not impressive.

Perhaps by embracing the new forms and structures of communication enabled by laptops and other portable electronics we might discover new classroom practices that enable new and better learning outcomes.

what is the value of pedagogies like lecturing? What is the value of attention-structuring activities like note-taking?

I’m not for banning lectures, either. What I am for is pedagogies that are nimble and responsive to a range of needs and outcomes for both instructor and student. The lecture has its place. Asking students to close their laptops has its place. But, failing to explore new possibilities for education prompted by emerging technologies does not serve the interests of either group.

Cell phone radiation is more powerful than that emitted by Wi-Fi devices and the predominant concern is brain cancer, since people tend to hold cell phones against their heads. If cell phones caused brain cancer, the scientists say, we should already be seeing an increase in overall cases. We don’t.

If you have spent your time in class trying to write things down rather than listening fully, of course you won’t remember what was said, and will feel later like you have to rely on your notes.