Friday, 30 May 2008
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Cheap laptop
$75 laptop breakthrough
The $100 green plastic laptop had a Toys R Us feel to it, but the new model, at $75, is stunning.The
OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project has produced a book-like device
with two hinged touch screens. It’s smaller, lighter and looks like a
book.
You’ve got to admire those guys at MIT
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
Feedback
- The most important thing to remember about feedback is that it is generally beneficial for learners.
- The second most important thing to remember about feedback is that
it should be corrective. Typically, this means that feedback ought to
specify what the correct answer is. When learners are still building
understanding, however, this could also mean that learners might
benefit from additional statements describing the “whys” and
“wherefores.” - The third most important thing to remember about feedback is that
it must be paid attention to in a manner that is conducive to learning. - Feedback works by correcting errors, whether those errors are detected or hidden.
- Feedback works through two separate mechanisms: (a) supporting
learners in correctly understanding concepts, and (b) supporting
learners in retrieval. - To help learners build understanding, feedback should diagnose
learners’ incorrect mental models and specifically correct those
misconceptions, thereby enabling additional correct retrieval practice
opportunities. - To prepare learners for future long-term retrieval and fluency,
learners need practice in retrieving. For this purpose, retrieval
practice is generally more important than feedback. - Elaborative feedback may be more beneficial as learners build
understanding, whereas brief feedback may be more beneficial as
learners practice retrieval. - Immediate feedback prevents subsequent confusion and limits the likelihood for continued inappropriate retrieval practice.
- Delayed feedback creates a beneficial spacing effect.
- When in doubt about the timing of feedback, you can (a) give
immediate feedback and then a subsequent delayed retrieval opportunity,
(b) delay feedback slightly, and/or (c) just be sure to give some kind
of feedback. - Feedback should usually be provided before learners get another chance to retrieve incorrectly again.
- Provide feedback on correct responses when:
a. Learners experience difficulty in responding to questions or decisions.
b. Learners respond correctly with less-than-high confidence.
c. All the information learned is of critical importance.
d. Learners are relatively new to the subject material.
e. The concepts are very complex. - Provide feedback on incorrect responses:
a. Almost always.
b. Except:
i. When feedback would disrupt the learning event.
ii. When it would be better to wait to provide feedback. - When learners seek out and/or encounter relevant learning material
either before or after feedback, this can modify the benefits of the
feedback itself. - When learners are working to support retrieval or fluency,
short-circuiting their retrieval practice attempts by enabling them to
access feedback in advance of retrieval can seriously hurt their
learning results. - When learners retrieve incorrectly and get subsequent well-designed
feedback, they still have not retrieved successfully; so they need at
least one additional opportunity to retrieve—preferably after a delay. - On-the-job support from managers, mentors, coaches, learning
administrators, or performance-support tools can be considered a
potentially powerful form of feedback. - Training follow-through software—that keeps track of learners’ implementation goals—provides another opportunity for feedback.
- Feedback can affect future learning by focusing learners on certain
aspects of learning material at the expense of other aspects of
learning material. Learners may take the hint from the feedback to
guide their attention in subsequent learning efforts. - Extra acknowledgements (when learners are correct) and extra
handholding (when learners are wrong) are generally not effective
(depending on the learners). In fact, when feedback encourages learners
to think about how well they appear to be doing, future learning can
suffer as learners aim to look good instead of working to build rich
mental models of the learning concepts.
Some of the concepts and language in the above recommendations may
not be obvious until you actually read the research report. You can do
that by clicking the link below.
Monday, 19 May 2008
The art of changing the brain
I've been dipping into The art of changing the brain
by James E Zull (Stylus, 2002) for some time now. The subtitle of the
book, 'Enriching the practice of teaching by exploring the biology of
learning,' pretty well sums it up - this is neuroscience for teachers,
written by a Professor of Biology and Director of the University Center
for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve
University.
If you want to explore and validate the
neuroscience, then you'll have to read the book I'm afraid. However, if
you just want to know what the main recommendations are, then here's a
summary of the notes I took:
Main premise:
"Learning is change. It is change in ourselves because it is change in
the brain. Thus the art of teaching must be the art of changing the
brain" Or, more accurately, "creating conditions that lead to change in
a learner's brain."
Perhaps surprisingly for a book based on
neuroscience, Kroll structures the book around David Kolb's 1984
experiential learning model - a cycle of sensory experience,
reflection, generating new ideas and then testing these ideas out:
"Little true learning takes place from experience alone. The must be a
conscious effort to build understanding from the experience, which
requires reflection, abstraction and testing the abstractions."
Zull
recommends a balanced approach. We can over-do the play in learning:
"We can find ourselves stressing action and creativity at the expense
of scholarship and information. We can make the classroom into a
playroom but lose track of the intense concentration needed for true
accomplishment. We risk trivialising learning."
Learning is
essential for survival and therefore the body rewards it: "We enjoy
real learning and we want to learn. In order to survive we had to want to learn."
On
the other hand, "Because (learning) is so serious, no outside influence
or force can cause a brain to learn. It will decide on its own. Thus,
one important rule for helping people learn is to help the learner feel
she is in control."
Relevance is fundamental:
"If people believe it is important to their lives, they will learn. It
just happens." And, therefore, "if we want people to learn, we must
help them see how it matters in their lives."
About rewards and motivation:
"When we try to help someone learn by offering an extrinsic reward, the
chances are that learning will actually be reduced." Why? "The first
thing our controlling brain sees in a reward or punishment is a loss of
control." So, "we devise all sorts of ways to get the reward without
carrying out the learning." On the other hand, "extrinsic rewards can
get a learner started on something. Often people do not actually know
what they are going to enjoy." And, "Extrinsic rewards can also sustain
a learner at times of pressure and difficulty."
About memory:
"If we don't use or repeat things, our memory grows dim. And yet, if
something made sense to us or engaged us emotionally, we can also
recall amazing amounts of detail."
About prior knowledge:
"All learners, even newborn babies, have some prior knowledge. Prior
knowledge is persistent - the connections in these physical networks of
neurons are strong. They do not vanish with a dismissive comment by a
teacher." Also, "prior knowledge is the beginning of new knowledge. It
is where all learners start. They have no choice." And once more for
emphasis: "No one can understand anything if it isn't connected in some
way to something they already know."
About the order in which we teach:
"A teacher's best chance is to begin with concrete examples."
Unfortunately, "teachers do not necessarily start with the concrete.
Our deeper understanding of our fields can lead us to start with
principles rather than examples. WE start where we are, not where they
are."
About the importance of practice:
"Synapses get stronger with use. The more they fire, the more they send
out new branches looking for more, new and more useful connections."
About experts and novices:
"Whether we are an expert or a novice, our brains basically sense the
same things. The difference is that the expert knows which part of his
sensory data is important and which part isn't."
On visualisation:
"Vision is central to any concrete experience that we have. In many
ways our brain is a 'seeing'' brain. Images are by far the easiest
things for the human brain to remember." However, these images do not
have to be specially constructed by a teacher: "The experience itself
provides by far the richest images. These are undiluted and direct,
rather than transported or filtered through text, film, TV or lecture."
Nevertheless, "if we can convert an idea into an image, we should do
so." By the way, the origin of the word teacher is an old English word,
techen, which means to show.
On sound:
"We cannot focus on a particular sound to the exclusion of all others
for long. The brain expects movement in sound. Eventually we begin to
ignore it; we literally do not hear it ... This is called habituation
... Nothing demonstrates habituation more than a lecture. Unless we
break up the sound every few minutes, we are almost certain to induce
habituation."
On reflection: "Our task as
teachers is to give assignments that require reflection and that induce
learners to reflect on the right things." Why? "Even the quickest
learner needs time for reflection. She must let her integrative cortex
do its thing. If she doesn't, her ideas and memories will be
disconnected and shallow. They may be adequate for the moment (to pass
a test, for example) but still transitory and ultimately unfulfilling."
How? "When we reflect, we seem to do better if we shut out sensory
experience. That way our brain is not distracted by receiving new
information at the same time it is working with old information."
On overload:
"We should be careful not to overload working memory. A classic error
of college teachers is to keep shoving information in one end of
working memory, not realising that they are shoving other data out the
other end." Breaking things down into simple components is not dumbing
down: "When we are new at something, we are all basically in
kindergarten. We can only start with what we have, so if our students
already have prior knowledge about the subject, they can easily attach
new things to those old networks. But if they are asked to hold new
things in isolation, then working memory is engaged, and working memory
does not expand with maturity or experience."
On testing out our ideas:
"Testing our ideas through action is how we find out we are on the
right track. The only pathway that seems unproductive for learning is
the pathway that excludes testing of ideas."
About stories:
"Stories engage all parts of the brain. They come from our experiences,
our memories, our ideas, our actions and our feelings. They allow us to
package events and knowledge in complex neuronal nets, any part of
which can trigger all the others."
I think I'll stop there,
because I'm in danger of copying out the whole book. As you can see,
there's lots of good stuff here and in the book it is backed up by
concrete examples and the evidence. I'd recommend you take a look.
Boring lecture interrupted by singing student
Brilliant three minute videowhere some students stand up in a lecture to deliver a musical
complaint to the lecturer about boring teaching. It's fun but really a
plea from one generation to another to stop boring them to death.
Interesting
that the student shows innovation and performance skills then the
smartness to get this on Google Video. How many lecturers would be
brave enought to record and distribute their lecture?
LYRICS
I've got a question -- what I mean is. . . it's just. . .
We come to class everyday it seems, we all fall asleep we've lost all our dreams.
There is no inspiration.
But when did we become this way, so disillusioned? So blasé?
I can't make the calculation.
Can I borrow your TI-83?
Have you thought for a while
about the impact that you have on us?
I think it's high time that you tried
to extend your learning on to us and reach!
Are you with me classmates?
What about that guy over there? Why aren't you taking notes? Don't you even care?
This is your education.
This girl sitting over here, she talks a lot in class but her thoughts are never really quite clear.
So much mental masturbation
Is it we..who are to blame.
All the professors in movies and TV
like "Dead Poets Society,"
and they risk their very professions for the chance
to be inspirations to kids like me!
It's no wonder why we're here.
You must think we only party and drink beer.
But all we need is just one chance...
to be treated as your equals and to dance.
It's no wonder why we're here.
You must think we only party and drink beer.
I think it's high time that you tried
to extend your learning.. on.. to.. us.. and REACH! TEACH! ...
Amazing 1954 prediction
Text says:Scientists
from the RAND corporation have created this model to illustrate how a
"Home Computer" could look like in the year 2004. However, the needed
technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also
the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet
invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific
progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface
and the FORTRAN language, the computer will be easy to use.
This prediction, in 1954 shows how wrong one can be!
Computers: Masculine or Feminine?
Sorry - I'm in a funny sort of mood today.............
A
language teacher was explaining to her class that in French, nouns,
unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as
masculine or feminine.
For
example, "House" in French, is feminine - "la maison", "Pencil" in
French, is masculine - "le crayon". One puzzled student asked, "What
gender is a computer?"
The teacher did not know, and the word was not in her French dictionary.
So
for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by
gender, and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be a
masculine or a feminine noun.
Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that computer should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computer"), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later review; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ('le computer"), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves.
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Learning is simple
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245
Friday, 9 May 2008
Tom Peters
http://www.tompeters.com/freestuff/index.php
tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management
