Nucleus Learning - The Heart of Creative Education

Classrooms and the Digital Frontier

Lindsey Harper Mac — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:43:44 +0000

The traditional lecture of yesteryear—complete with dusty chalkboards and bearded professors—long held a monopoly in the education industry, but with the advent of modern technology this standard has shifted. “The New York Times” recently reported on one of the newest phenomena in education, which involves using digital media called video-on-demand broadcasts (commonly referred to as "VODcasts") to give students engaging access to lectures from virtually anywhere. This online learning tool has not only increased the convenience and accessibility of education, but has also helped students become better acquainted with the technological media used to convey this information.

Catapulting the Classroom into the Future

Video podcasts are just the beginning of education's journey into the future, along with many other revolutionary techniques that employ technology to enhance the learning experience and make education more accessible to a larger group of people. One of the most unique trends that has brought education into the future is the growing use of mobile phones as learning devices. Over three-quarters of teens own a cellphone, and a substantial 40 percent own a smartphone. These figures are even more significant for college students.

Mobile phones offer the opportunity of "anytime, anywhere" learning, which can enable busy students to keep up with their studies, stay organized and maintain a strong line of communication with instructors and peers. Many schools even create their own applications to keep students constantly informed of important announcements, due dates and so on. In addition to mobile phones, many educational institutions are integrating a wide variety of different high-tech tools such as digital textbooks, cloud computing, video conferencing and even computer games as learning devices.

The Evolution of Education

Although some instructors may be reluctant to fully embrace technology's permeation of the education industry, the benefits of this revolutionary measure are easy for any forward-thinking person to see. Virtually every professional industry is headed toward a more technology-dependent future, which is why students must acquire a basic understanding of modern technology in order to offer valuable skills to potential employers in the future. Moreover, modern technology teaches students how to manage time more effectively and increase productivity levels.

Students who begin utilizing technological tools early are likely to be better equipped to keep up with the rapidly evolving state of modern technology. A failure to keep up with the most basic technological tools can result in some students being left behind in both the educational and professional circles. Communication is another notable benefit of the technological revolution in education, since the advent of email, video conferencing and social networking can keep students, instructors and peers connected more closely than ever.

With the increasingly common application of flipped classrooms and other technology-based teaching models, the future of education appears to be headed in a direction of exclusively digital teaching methods. The development of online institutions and the growth of online courses within traditional institutions offer promising results for this very possible outcome.

Keywords:

tools, techonology, education

The Value of an Engineer - Funny!

bogusia — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:41:43 +0000

I got this story by email. It's great. It also shows how laziness is at the root of all great inventions. Enjoy:

You don't have to be an engineer to appreciate this story.

A toothpaste factory had a problem. They sometimes shipped empty boxes without the tube inside. This challenged their perceived quality with the buyers and distributors. Understanding how important the relationship with them was, the CEO of
the company assembled his top people. They decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, and third-parties selected. Six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution - on time, on budget, and high quality. Everyone in the project was pleased.

They solved the problem by using a high-tech precision scale that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighed less than it should. The line would stop, someone would walk over, remove the defective box, and then press another button to re-start the line. As a result of the new package monitoring process, no empty boxes were being shipped out of the factory.

With no more customer complaints, the CEO felt the $8 million was well spent. He then reviewed the line statistics report and discovered the number of empty boxes picked up by the scale in the first week was consistent with projections, however, the next three weeks were zero! The estimated rate should have been at least a dozen boxes a day. He had the engineers check the equipment, they verified the report as accurate.

Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory, viewed the part of the line where the precision scale was installed, and observed just ahead of the new $8 million dollar solution sat a $20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. He asked the line supervisor what that was about.

"Oh, that," the supervisor replied, "Bert, the kid from maintenance, put it there because he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang."

Mirror-Image Writing in Young Children

bogusia — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:33:25 +0000

A couple years ago, my oldest son went to preschool. He was a bright kid, and also my first, so I spent a lot of time with him before hand, teaching him the letters, numbers, shapes, etc. By the time he started preschool, he knew all the letters, and of course he knew how to write his name beautifully. I was so proud of him, and was excited for him to go to school and continue his learning.

Of course, at preschool, they (re)taught all the letters and numbers. And at home I continued teaching him about letters, and then also about words, how they are composed of letters, and how each letter represents a sound, etc. By the end of preschool, he was able to read some words, especially phonetically.

Then, he went to kindergarten. Since he went to French school, the emphasis was on teaching oral French as opposed to written language. He still had me on his back with the writing and reading, and in Polish School (on Saturdays) he learned to write and even handwrite words. But at his daily school he wasn't even expected to write his name on his artwork. Later in that kindergarten year, the teacher finally started teaching the alphabet, and again, he learned his letters...

This time however, it was different. My son, having already known all his letters (uppercase and lower) for at least two years, started writing his letters and numbers backwards... I even saw some of his artwork with his name written right to left instead of left to right. Left and right didn't seem to matter anymore! Check out the Sudoku (above) he did at the end of Kindergarten: some 5's are right, others are flipped, same with the sixes. I asked some of the moms of my son's friends, and they too noticed that they were writing some letters backwards. So, I looked it up, of course, and found that this is a normal stage in children at their age:

"At about kindergarten age most children pass through at least a short period during which they confuse certain letters with their mirror images or rotated transformations. Reversals, along with other types of letter confusions, are apparently rare beyond age 8 (Davidson 1935; Gibson, Gibson, Pick, & Osser 1962; Hildreth 1932; Ilg & Ames 1950; Smith 1928; Wilson & Flemming 1938). Gibson et al. (1962) suggested that improvement with age is to be expected because reversal and rotational transformations are seldom significant for the identification of familiar objects until children are required to make graphic discriminations. When orientation becomes critical, children eventually learn to attend to invariant features that are peculiar to letters and help distinguish one from the other."

(Letter Reversals in Naming, Writing, and Matching to Sample Murray Sidman and Barbara Kirk, 1974)

But why does this happen? Why does writing the proper way before hand give way to the letter reversal in kindergarten? In fact, I have a second son, just started preschool yesterday, and he too can write his name properly. He never reverses letters (yet) and is very good about writing all his words left to write, even when he is not copying me. So why is there this stage of letter / word reversal? I have searched and searched, and there doesn't seem to be a good explanation. Here is my theory why this happens:

Young children, when they start learning to write, they only learn to write lines and patterns. They don't see letters as units. For instance, my younger son, when writing an E would think of writing a vertical line with three horizontal lines attached to it. He saw me do it, so he follows my example. It is a pattern for him, not one thing. My older son, however, after so much experience with letters, has already acquired a feeling for all the letters. He understands each letter as a "thing" and not a series of lines. He can flip it around in his mind, see it from every angle. And since he doesn't understand the importance of orientation as of yet (or distinguish between left or right), he has a hard time deciding which way to write the letter. Hence the confusion.

I read somewhere (I think it was "Scientific American") that it is not inborn to distinguish left from right, and this is why symmetry is so important in humans. That only after a lot of practice does that "symmetrical" orientation get replaced with left and right distinction. There was a study that was comparing non-dyslexic and dyslexic people and comparing their abilities at recognizing symmetry: the participants with dyslexia were much better at recognizing symmetry. Similarly, this can be said about young children. They are still in the "symmetry" phase, they have still not unlearned that natural inborn human trait.

(Another subquestion is why the kids don't mix-up "up" and "down" only "left" and "right"?)

Since the time I noticed this letter reversal I've been working with my son to show him that the direction of writing is important. Initially he didn't understand, because he said that if he draws a house with a chimney on one side or a house with a chimney on the other, it is still a house! I thought that was clever, and I never thought about it like that, but I guess that's what he was seeing: An F is still an F, even if it's written backwards, so what's the problem? I seemed to have convinced him that there is a difference, and that direction matters, but his letters are still sometimes reversed. Now he's in grade 1... hopefully he can be fully "asymmetrical" by the end of the school year.

For some interesting related readings, check these out:

Keywords:

education, letter, mirror-image, letter reversal in children

Should a child going to daycare also go to preschool?

bogusia — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 21:32:35 +0000

One of my friends has a three year old daughter. The girl goes to daycare. My friend recently asked me if it would be beneficial for her to go to preschool as well as her daycare. In her mind, I'm the authority on this kind of stuff, since I have four children, and they all went through some kind of childcare before they went to school. Here is what my children did:

My oldest son:

8 months - 18 months: Daycare
18 monhs - 4 years old: Dayhome (we moved to a different city so we had to find a dayhome for him)
4years - 5 years: preschool (full day preschool, so it was like a daycare as well)

My second oldest son:

14 months - 4 years: Dayhome
4 years - 5 years: Daycare (with preschool activities)

My third son:

8 months - 1 year: Dayhome
1 year - 2 years: Daycare
2 years - Now: Nanny (we moved again, so Nanny seemed like the best option financially) + Preschool

My fourth son:

12 months - Now: Nanny

So we had many different arrangements of childcare / preschool combinations. I think all my children did equally well, and the arrangements were very good. For my 4 year olds, I felt that the dayhome (which is like a nanny) was not enough stimulation. At the dayhome they were in, the kids were exposed to only one teacher and the same children all day every day. Also, a lot of the children were younger than my kids, therefore I didn't think they had age appropriate stimulation. So I looked for a preschool / daycare for them when I felt they weren't getting the right kind of socializing, and that they weren't learning / doing anything. But once I transferred them into the daycare / preschool, I didn't think twice - it was awesome.

Same goes for my Nanny. I really love her, but she has to deal with my baby, and the other two girls that come (we do a nanny-share), as well as feeding the kids, picking up after them, etc. I don't think she has time to arrange for "learning" activities. Also, I thought an exposure to more teachers and more friends in his age group would be beneficial for him. This is why I decided to enroll my third son in Preschool on top of his regular child-care.

So back to the original question: In my humble opinion, based on my previous experiences and thought that I put into this at the time, I think it is not necessary to enroll a child in preschool if they are already in a daycare. This of course is based on the assumption that the daycare splits up the children into age appropriate groups, and that the children do many activities throughout the day. Daycare is enough socialization.

Keywords:

Draw a Person Test (DAP) - a great way to tell a kid's intelligence

bogusia — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:12:47 +0000

Recently I went to the doctor for my son's yearly check-up. Our doctor is fantastic, and I am so lucky that I was fortunate enough to get him. Everytime we go, I learn something very interesting, this time was no exception.

The Doctor started asking standard medical questions: Was Jakub seriously ill this past year? Any ear infections? etc. Then he turned to his mental, social and physical development. And he asked me:

"Does Jakub know how to draw a person?"

I answered that probably yes, because he draws dinosaurs all the time, but I can't remember any people he drew recently... So the doctor gives Jakub (my 4 year old son) a piece of paper and asks him: "Draw a person". After a bit of shock and shyness, Jakub complies and draws a person. He started with a head, then a body, arms, legs, some eyes and mouth on the head - in their proper positions, and then also some hair. Nothing artistically pleasing, but just a stick figure (unfortunately I couldn't take the picture with me, as the doctor wanted to keep it in his records - the picture above is also Jakub's picture, from February 2008 - he was 3 years and 10 months old). The doctor said that was interesting, and started explaining the theory behind the "draw a person" test to me.

He said that at the test is very universal. Many studies show that the results are similar in all the corners of the earth. The way the kids draw the person determines at what mental developmental stage they are at. You can pretty much test for intelligence with a simple drawing. At the age of 3 kids start to draw circles and lines, but usually can't really make a stick figure look like a person. At the age of 4, they are supposed to start drawing people more like we're used to: head, arms, legs. But at the age of 4 (mental age of 4) most kids draw the arms and legs coming out of their heads - no body. Jakub didn't do this. His picture had a body. Even in the picture above - drawn when he was 4 months shy of four, Jakub drew a body. The doctor said that this was an indication that his mental development stage is more like a 5 year old rather than a 4 year old (I always knew my son was smart :)). At the age of 5, children start drawing bodies, arms and legs coming from the bodies. Then, between 5 and 5.5, kids start to draw more detail, including 3 fingers (not 5), clothes, etc. The doctor didn't go into more than this - figuring I'm not interested past my son's age anyway.

But when I got home, I wanted to know more about this cool non-invasive test: the Draw a Person test. I actually didn't know it was called that until I researched it online. Supposedly this test has been around for a whole century, and it's been used everywhere in the world, for children of many ages (up to 13 as I've seen in the few studies I read through), and by psychologists to analyze not only intelligence but also emotional stability of kids. It is the perfect test, because it is very simple and non-invasive, yet so telling of the child.

As I understand it, the procedure to administer the test is to tell the child: "Draw a Person" with not much more explanation. After that, there is a series of points the psychologist can award, depending on the picture's details (is there a neck? clothing? proportions correct? size of picture? etc.). Then, based on the child's age and the points of the picture, a mental age equivalence can be given. Cool!

A few days after my appointement, after picking up Jakub from Pre-School, I found a picture of two stick figures in his school bag. The hands and legs were coming out of the head. I was shocked... Jakub drew this? Did he regress in just a few days? I asked him: "Did you draw this?" He said: "No, a Emily drew this picture for me." He was so proud that his friend drew a picture for him, and I was happy to see that the DAP test is for real.

If you want to see some real studies (not on my child but on a statistical level) on this DAP test, here are some good sites I found:

This one is based in Pakistan, but is in english and has many sample drawings of the children's drawings and the analysis of them. The author of this paper also links culture and mental stability into the DAP test. Very interesting: STANDARDIZATION OF DRAW-A-PERSON test

This one is an exerpt from a book. I think eventually I will purchase this book, because this stuff fascinates me, but for now, this will do: Using Drawings in Assessment and Therapy

If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might want to check out these great resources:

Interpreting Psychological Test Data

Using Drawings in Assessment and Therapy: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals

Measurement of Intelligence by Drawings (Classics in Child Development)

The Silver Drawing Test and Draw a Story: Assessing Depression, Aggression, and Cognitive Skills

Update (August, 2011): I just got a hold of a scoring guide for the DAP test. I used it to score the middle figure in the picture above from my son's 3 year 10 month drawing. It got a score of 8. This corresponded to a mental age of 5 years old, which can be divided by my son's chronological age of 3.83 to give him an IQ of 130. Cool!

Keywords:

intelligence tests, IQ, emotional intelligence

Why is play important?

bogusia — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 23:14:31 +0000

A few years back I took a course on Expertise: how experts think, how they become experts, and what it means to be an expert. That course had a huge impact on my thinking. The huge revelation was that "Deliberate Practice" is the only thing that leads people to become experts in any field (Ericsson, 2006). So as the old saying says: "Practice makes perfect". But this practice needs to be "deliberate" which means several things, among them, there needs to be some sort of feedback mechanism (possibly a coach or a feedback of a musical instrument, or even a personal reflection). I always thought that practice is very important, but I never realized that this was really everything. There is no magic pill, no inherent talents, it's pure practice - 10 000 hours of DELIBERATE practice.

Of course there is much more to it than just saying: YOU NEED TO PRACTICE MORE! There needs to be the will to practice (motivation), the opportunity (appropriate environment), and of course there needs to be the appropriate feedback, so that the practice is deliberate. But when it boils down to comparing an expert and a non expert, the expert just put in more time into the field.

Ever since that revelation, I have a completely different view of the world. When I think about how my children learn, how they think, or if I read an interesting article about learning / teaching I go back to that idea, and then it all makes sense.

So it was no different when I read the article "The Death of Preschool" by Paul Tullis in a recent Scientific American Mind (Dec. 2011). The author discusses the recent trend in early education to move from a play-based curriculum to a more school-like environment of directed learning. However, he points out that "just playing" is in fact what nearly all developmental psychologists, neuro-scientists and education experts recommend for children up to age seven as the best way to nurture kids' development.

OK, but why is play so important? My answer is simple - it's practice!

When a child plays, he/she decides what and how to play (practice of decision making), how to solve relational problems with other children so that everybody is happy (practice of social skills), improvises with toys (problem solving practice), handles small and large toys (fine motor skills practice) etc. And on top of it all, they are doing it on their own - full of motivation! All we need to do is give our children a safe environment full of varied toys and friends, and then back off! We need to let THEM make the decisions, let them fight it out with their buddies / siblings, etc. They will practice to be independent thinkers, independent decision makers, independent learners. Once we bud in, their independence is shattered, and their practice is done.

Here I interject with a story from my personal life. A few months ago, my 7 year old son noticed that he never got to decide what we were doing on the weekends, that only adults were deciding everything for him. Because of his observation, we decided as a family to take turns on the family activities we do each Sunday. The first weekend was my son's. He wanted to go tubing for a long long time, and now it was his weekend, so he was excited for the whole week prior to that Sunday that he gets to choose for all of us to go tubing. My husband was not excited at all (he would have preferred to go skiing), but he was willing to go along with the plan. On the day of the trip, the weather turned horrible: -20C with a strong wind. My husband, since he wasn't excited about the tubing idea from the start, suggested to my son that maybe instead we should go to a brunch and go tubing another time. This one extra piece of information put my son over the edge. He didn't know what to do. I told him it was his weekend, and that we would do whatever he decided. But he just couldn't decide. He started panicking (I don't understand why) and was crying uncontrollably. I was stunned. How can making a decision be so traumatic for a child?

After that incident, my husband and I talked about our son's behavior to figure out what was going on. We came to the conclusion that he was afraid of failure. That if he decided wrong, he would somehow fail. That's really what decision making is about, right? You have to decide and then not regret your decision. With practice he'll learn to be a better decision maker I'm sure. But just like everything else, practicing decision making is essential. And what's a better way of practicing decision making than free play?!

If you read any of my other posts, you will know that I am all for direct learning. In order for the child to grow, there needs to be an adult showing the child the next level, opening their eyes to the world around them. But I think of this teaching as if I was giving them a new toy to play with. For instance, if I want my child to learn how to add, I will teach my child how to add, give them this skill as if I was giving them a set of lego or a doll. Once they master it, they make it their own, take the skill back to their "independent world". There they can do what they want with it, as they can with all their other toys.

In the end, I believe a balance between play and direct learning is ideal, with a slant towards playing in the early years. But playing should never cease, even in adults' lives. PLAY ON!

More reading:

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology)

Outliers: The Story of Success

Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth

How do we learn? (My personal model of learning)

bogusia — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:46:22 +0000

For a long time I really didn't understand how people learn. Since I am a teacher I see people learning all the time. How is it that some students understand what I am talking about when teaching them math, while others can't, or are only aware of it on the surface, or just pretend to understand at all. After a while, I wasn't satisfied with no explanation, so I decided to go back to school, and tackle this question. Every course I took, every article I read, every discussion I had during the course of my Masters, brought me closer to a full picture of how people learn. Here is the my model of learning:

As children are exposed to many environmental stimuli they make millions of connections in their brain. The more they are exposed to certain situations, the signal travels through those neurons and they get stronger, while the ones that are not used as much get weaker and after a while those weak connections are cut or "pruned".

An example of this would be the different sounds an English versus Spanish native speaker recognizes

and can produce with ease. I have a Cuban friend and she explained to me that there are only 5 vowel sounds in Spanish and therefore it is exceptionally hard for her to produce or hear the difference between all the different vowels in English. For example she can't hear the difference between the short "i" (as in sit) sound and the long "e" (as in seat) sound. Therefore she very regularly messes up those words. When she was a young baby, she had all the connections, but then the brain was pruned down, and specialized for the Spanish language. When a child is brought to an English speaking country young, the brain can diversify and all the nerves get enough attention, and thus do not get pruned away. The result is that a Cuban baby raised in an English environment would not have a Spanish accent.

Diversification of the brain is a lengthy and more energy draining process.

For example, a child will take a lot longer to learn a language if two languages are present in his life. Let's say a child is learning Polish and English at the same time (as it was with my children). The mother speaks Polish to the child and the father speaks English. Also, let's assume that this particular child needs to hear one word, such as "dog" 100 times to remember it - this means that the connections between the nerves responsible for the association between the object "dog" and the word "dog" become strong enough to survive only after seeing this association 100 times. In a purely English speaking family, the father would need to say it 50 times and the mother would say "dog" 50 times, and the child's brain would make the association. However, in the case of the bilingual family, the mother will say "pies" (dog in Polish) 50 times, and the father says "dog" 50 times, but the connection is not strong enough yet in either language. The father and mother need to say the word 50 more times each in order for both languages to have that same strong connection in both languages. But not only that, the baby needs to make more links: - Mother says "pies" for a dog, and father says "dog" for a dog. All those links take extra time to create proper connections. Therefore children learning two languages at the same time might take longer and more effort to learn the languages. In my family, I can attest to this phenomenon as well. All my children took a lot longer to learn to speak initially compare to their peers, even though they are very bright children now.

Although diversification is possible, sometimes there is a need to make shortcuts.

For example when a student is learning multiplication, a student will learn what it means: three times five means three groups of 5 means.5 and 5 and another 5, therefore 5 + 5 + 5 =15. It is great when math students understand a concept such as multiplication from basics, but at a certain point this needs to be abandoned, and instead memorization is required. For example when a student wants to divide two numbers, if the multiplication table is not memorized, simple division becomes a huge chore. Therefore as math teachers, we require multiplication to be a memorized process and not an understanding based process. So in the brain of the student, the connection between 3x5 and 5+5+5 is eliminated, and instead shortcut link is created between 3X5 and 15. Once this connection is strong, the reverse connection is very quickly accessed by the student, so 15 divided by 3 would be easily found to be 5.

Creating shortcuts is an important process for faster processing and for the student to gain more knowledge. In a 1956 seminal study, George Miller discovered that humans are only able to access seven (plus or minus 2) pieces of information at a given instant. This is called working memory. This means that only a limited amount of information can be used in learning. This includes the internal as well as the external stimuli. Therefore being able to access shortcuts or combining many pieces of knowledge into chunks gives students' the ability to use more information at one instant, thus having more complex thoughts.

There was a famous study done comparing chess grand masters to novices. It was hypothesized that chess grand masters have extremely developed memories, because they were able to scan a chess board for a few seconds and reproduce the arrangement on another chess board with ease. This ability seemed to contradict the 7 plus or minus 2 law of working memory, since there are more than seven chess pieces on a chess board. However, the researchers demonstrated that chess players see the boards in chunks, not as individual chess pieces: When the researchers placed the chess pieces on the board in a random fashion, such that there was no way the pieces could have arrived there through any chess game, the chess grand masters were no better at memorizing the chess arrangements than the novices. The grand masters could only memorize real game arrangements, leading the researchers to the conclusion that the grandmasters memorized the board arrangements as chunks, like patterns that they recognized from previous games. But thanks to this chunking, grandmasters have the advantage over novices since they instantly can recognize what is the best move for that situation, while novices have to think about each move separately, looking at each piece individually.

A related concept to chunking and creating shortcuts is transfer. This is what happens when a person can transfer their knowledge and / or skills from one domain to another. With transfer a student can import an already learned set of rules and knowledge and just adjust it to the new situation. Sometimes however transfer leads to misconceptions or poor form in the new situation, as the student might transfer too much and accept too much as given, not learning the nuances of the new situation.

For example a tennis player may have an advantage over a complete novice when learning squash. The tennis player may have a better understanding how to use a racket than someone without experience using a racket. Also, the movement or footwork could be similar between squash and tennis, therefore giving the advantage to the tennis player. The tennis player may learn squash more easily than the non-tennis player since they are able to transfer some of the knowledge / skill to the new sport. However there is a danger with transferring skills from one sport to another, one situation to another. For instance the tennis player may want to do a backhand shot with both hands, while this is not efficient in squash. People transferring skills / knowledge need to be careful not to over exaggerate the transfer, realize that the new domain has its own special rules, special skills, special knowledge.

There is however a way to extend working memory. There are two different modes of memory: visual and verbal. So if one can use both visual and verbal at the same time, and if the two modes are not processing redundant information, then the brain can actually tackle more information than one individual mode.

This dual mode processing is used in any audio-visual situations, such as movies, or teaching. This is one of the reasons learning is so well tuned when a teacher uses both visual aids and explains at the same time. The student can process more information at the same instant compared to just reading the textbook. Also, I believe this is the reason movies are so well-liked, and YOUTUBE videos as teaching tools are so popular. People can understand more if they can use both the visual mode and verbal mode at the same time. If they can access both the modes at the same time, there is less chance for overloading working memory.

Finally there are all the other pieces which are just as important as just the pure cognitive ones mentioned above. For instance no learning will take place unless a student is motivated to do so. Emotions play into the equation as well as the students' beliefs about the knowledge. Also, the type of feedback from the teacher, peers, or the environment is an essential part of the learning process.

Cool Electromagnetic Lab

bogusia — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:33:40 +0000

How does this work?

(If you can't see the above video, try this link: http://youtu.be/HeXV3Ic8phw)

Online Mathematics Tutoring - Great for homeschooled children

bogusia — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:17:44 +0000

My friend told my about an online mathematics tutoring site. Her son is homeschooled and a very bright student. She was the reason I contemplated homeschooling for my own kids (Should I home-school my kids?)I taught her son math and science before I moved away from Montreal, and now she found this online math teacher / tutor.

She has nothing but rave reviews about this teacher and the site:

...it’s an online teaching/tutoring thing. My son is in a class with only one other student right now (in the fall they were 5 or 6) - the other guy is in Montenegro, [my son] is here in Montreal, and the teacher is in Nevada (I think). He’s great. It’s “pre-algebra” but they do topics like exponential functions and completing the square (and last week he was talking about string theory which Cedric found extremely cool - now he wants to learn about anti-matter and I don’t know where to go…) so I’m not really sure where the “pre” part ends…but [my son] is learning a lot and I work with him through the week supporting the homework.

I'm impressed! Hope this idea takes off - why not bring the world closer together?! Can't find a tutor in your own town, well, there's a whole world out there full of awesome teachers! Check it out for yourself: www.mathperfect.net.

Grammar Nazis...

bogusia — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:45:05 +0000

At school I was never ever good at English. I was an awesome student, with high high grades, but when it came to English class, I was always terrible.

But just because I was poor in English, doesn't mean that I don't have good ideas... it just means that I was just not exposed to the proper grammar or proper spelling or ways of writing beautiful essays. Actually, it's probably due to a combination of things:

1. English was my second language, but I never had proper training in English grammar at school. So all the English I learned was by interacting and listening to my friends and teachers - at home I spoke Polish.
2. I hated reading stories when I was young (instead I loved to do puzzles, math, science), and so I didn't learn the proper way of writing "naturally" from books.
3. My strong "math" genes led me toward math and away from the humanities. Also my parents really focused their time on teaching me the sciences and really didn't emphasize the humanities.

In some previous posts on this site (for example: Teacher Pay Scale Across Canada) I received many comments. Many of them were very controversial. Lots of teachers were complaining how little pay they get, while non-teachers were complaining about teachers, and how they always complain. These typical comments are repeated everywhere. I complained about teachers before I became one, and now that I'm a teacher, I start hearing myself complain as teachers typically do.

Anyway, the debate is constant and probably will never end, but some comments were not aimed at the content, but at the "English" language of teachers. For me, this is a very low class comment: it doesn't add to the discussion - instead it hits below the belt. It's similar to a comment: "I don't like your shirt." If you can understand the content, then why bother with the "grammar" lesson.

A blog is a very very informal article - and comments are not supposed to be edited as if they were a book. It's a discussion, very much like a real life conversation. And just like in a conversation, the flow of words comes naturally, and not all grammatical structures / laws are followed. Therefore "bad grammar" comments are useless and a pet peeve of mine.

I am writing this entry because of a recent comment by one of these "grammar Nazis". Here is what my sentence was: (If you want to play along, figure out what's wrong with it.)

"This last year, I was making $30,000 less in Quebec than if I was working as a teacher in Alberta."

Here is what a reader, Ray von Schmalz, wrote:

"...if I WAS working as a teacher in Alberta"? Hmmm, try "if I WERE working" and you may be worth your extra $30,000.

And here is what I answered:

I don't know why people are so into correcting other people about grammar. I never told anyone that I am an English "grammar" teacher. I am a math teacher, and I often make fun of myself in terms of my lack of knowledge in English (spelling and grammar). My students often have to tell me how to spell something, but I pride myself that I don't "pretend" I know everything. This weakness of mine shows them that I am human, and I can only know a certain amount of things - and perfect English is not one of them. But I don't think that this takes from my ability to be an awesome teacher... You really think that all teachers in Alberta know about the "subjunctive form" of "to be"?
By the way, I looked it up ( http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-subjunctive.htm), and "if I was...." as opposed to "if I were..." is the correct informal language. Only formal English grammar requires "if I were...". Since this blog is very informal, please excuse me from this oversight!

What do you think? Is proper grammar really all that important, especially when we're talking about a blog or comment on a blog? Or should the focus be on the content and not the appearance of intelligence in the form of proper English?