e-holyhead

SCITT-GTP 09

2009-04-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

2008-11-11T13:16:00.001-08:00

Get a Voki now!

Use power teaching with college students

2008-10-04T11:50:00.001-07:00

Power Teaching in College

Power teaching

2008-10-04T11:48:00.001-07:00

Introduction to Power Teaching

Perseverance Tai Chi

2008-09-21T08:35:00.001-07:00

Visualiser Use

2008-06-15T04:37:00.001-07:00

INowCU

2008-05-30T05:33:00.001-07:00

Cheap laptop

2008-05-21T14:06:00.001-07:00

$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

Feedback

2008-05-20T13:39:00.001-07:00

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.

The art of changing the brain

2008-05-19T14:48:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

Brilliant three minute video
where 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

2008-05-19T14:33:00.003-07:00

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?

2008-05-19T14:33:00.001-07:00

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.

Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity

2008-05-10T16:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

Learning is simple

2008-05-10T15:39:00.001-07:00

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http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/245

Tom Peters

2008-05-09T16:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.tompeters.com/freestuff/index.php

tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management

Systems Thinking - John Seddon

2008-04-26T14:01:00.001-07:00

It's time to dump targets and replace them

I
seek to demonstrate - with case studies - that targets actually
undermine achievement of purpose, which is improving public sector
performance. I shall also illustrate an alternative approach, which is
to make capability measurement the corner stone of public sector
improvement. I shall describe what these measures are, how they differ
from targets and how they are used to understand and improve
performance in a sustainable way. The case studies show significant
performance improvement using capability measures and I shall ask the
reader to reflect on whether this level of improvement could ever have
been achieved within the current targets regime.

Scribefire

2008-04-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

Scribefire 2.00

Now I've blogged about
this before but the recent upgrade of this firefox add on that allows
you open a rich text blogging tool in the lower half of your browser
screen. It was great before but the new version supports

tabs that allow mutiple blog postings at the same time
Easy flickr photo embedding
YouTube video embedding

I
havent made it exciting but it is a great tool and the tab allowing
sharing of blog posting via stumble upon,facebook reddit etc etc go on
have a look its a great tool. plus abilty to bookmarket on delcious
from within the tool
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730

Can You Count Great Maths Teachers on One Hand?

2007-11-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

Problem with maths - maths teachers

I suggested in my last post that algebra does more harm than good in teaching maths but there's another factor at work - maths teachers.

1. Maths needs to be enlivened by better than average teaching.
2. Maths teachers tend to be weak on social and communications skills.
3. Good mathematicians tend to do things other than teaching.

'Maths is boring' is the usual summation by kids at school. It's also the experience of most of us who went to school.

Maths graduates and specialists tend not to be great communicators, and if a subject that is admittedly as dry as maths is to be taught well should we consider using people who are high on communications skills and moderate on maths.

On top of this the subject can be enlivened by the use of good e-learning. Look at the success of Nintendo's Brain training - mostly simple arithmetic. people actually pay £100 for a console then £20 upwards for this simple piece of software that related maths to your life (brain age) - and its fun. The MyMaths site and Bitesize are also pretty good, better than much teaching I'm sure. Yet how much of this stuff is even known by teachers, never mind used.
posted by Donald Clark at 8:12 AM 0 comments
Saturday, October 13, 2007

Numeracy - counts for little
Is all this fuss around numeracy really warranted? I met a trainer in a government department who had to put his staff through a Level 2 numeracy test. He was surprised to find that many failed - as he regards them as good at their jobs.The claim is that 13.5 million people are 'stressed out' by their poor numeracy.

But when did you last hear anyone tell you that they're 'totally stressed about my algebra skills'. The second claim is that 15.1 million have poor numeracy skills (equivalent of G or below at GCSE). This made me think.Is it right that the standard here is the Maths GCSE. I have known lots of happy, successful people who handle money and numbers and bets who have no GCSE in Maths.

Numbers - While I accept that much of the 'number' content in the national Curriculum is sound, even here, knowing about prime numbers, square and cube roots etc seems remotely useful.
Shape and space - OK, working out the area of a rectangle I get - we all have to buy carpets and paint etc. But trigonometry? The volume of a sphere? Vectors? Transformations? It's mostly useless, except for a small minority of people.

Handling data - Some of this is useful but not all. Have you ever seen a stem or leaf table? Simple probability is fine - but calculating mutually exclusive events? It's over-engineered.

Algebra - This is where it all goes wrong. Here's a quote from Roger Schank who looked into the dodgy history of why algebra became so embedded in curricula, "I'm a math major and a computer science professor, and algebra has never come up in my life, maybe it has in yours." I'd argue that little or nothing in algebra is useful for the vast majority of people in work. In fact it is so conceptually difficult and of such little practical use that most of us who master it forget it soon after we've passed the exam.

When was the last time you used a simultaneous linear or quadratic equation?

Algebra is bad for our kids - Even worse, could algebra be damaging our kids approach to maths? I suspect that algebra is the single most damaging cause of poor numeracy. As soon as kids face this useless challenge they are turned off the subject. It kills any interest in maths stone dead. They instinctively know that it's useless knowledge.

What counts can't always be countedIn truth we need a simple standard in the 'real world' application of maths that is free from the Maths GCSE. Simple mastery of arithemetic, calculating areas, percentages and reading graphs would do. We need to produce adults who love to learn, not adults who avoid all learning because it reminds them of the horrors of school and algebra.

Donald Clark

Animoto demo Video

2007-11-21T03:52:00.001-08:00

A 7 year-old today ...

2007-11-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

Digital Native Photo Of The Day
By Karl Fisch
I know many folks are not enamored anymore with the digital natives versus digital immigrants analogy, but that was the most apt description I could come up with for the photo I’ll share with you in a minute.

As many of you know, I have a seven year old daughter. Most folks assume that since she’s my daughter, and because I’m perceived to be technically adept, that she must be immersed in technology. Well, she’s not. She uses a computer some and she does have a blog that she occasionally posts to, but I would guess that she’s less technologically literate than the average seven year old. Actually, I should clarify that comment; she’s less technologically literate than the average American, middle class seven year old. She’s certainly more literate than the millions of seven year olds in the U.S. and around the world that have little or no access to technology, but that’s a topic for a different post.

But she now has a new interest in the computer because a little over a week ago her friend (also seven) introduced her to Webkinz and my daughter decided to spend some of her savings to purchase a Webkinz (in her case, a black lab she named Jack). If you aren’t familiar with Webkinz, the 20-second description is that you purchase a stuffed animal, but you also go online and virtually take care of your Webkinz – play with it, feed it, play games to accumulate Webkinz money to buy it food, furniture, etc. This happened to be two days before we were leaving town for a week. (My wife and daughter are on fall break and my school feels guilty for me working basically all summer so lets me take a week off during the year if I want.)

We went to visit my in-laws in Florida. They live full-time in an RV and spend the winters in Orlando (where they lived before they retired to the RV), so we stayed at an apartment for guests on the RV campground. Like many RV campgrounds, you can get high-speed, wireless Internet access for a fee (often it’s free, but it cost us $20 for the week). I took a laptop with me so that I could do a little work each night after she went to sleep, and we thought that she might like to wind down each night after very full and active days at Disney/Sea World/the beach by spending a little time in Webkinz World.

Well, she did want to do that and that worked pretty well. But on about the third night, her seven year old friend calls on the cell phone and wonders if Abby would like to get on Webkinz World and see her “room” (the room she’s built for one of her Webkinz). So, that led to this picture (not posed). Take a look and then I’ll talk some more about why I thought it blog-worthy.

So, we’re in Florida. Abby’s seven year old friend is in Colorado.
They are talking on the cell phone.
Abby is sitting in an RV campground using a Dell laptop connected wirelessly to the Internet. Her friend is sitting at home on an iMac that is connected wirelessly to their cable Internet connection.
And they are interacting in Webkinz world, with Abby’s friend talking her through a few things since Abby is a newbie and the friend has at least several months of experience (“It works better in Firefox.”)
At one point I had to help with something, so I get on the phone and Abby’s friend talks me through it – much to the amusement of my father-in-law.
The rest of the time the girls were fine on their own.

Now, this is not an exceptionally powerful example of an educational use of technology (although from what I’ve seen so far, Webkinz World doesn’t look too bad).

But it brought home to me once again what a different world my daughter is growing up in compared to the world I grew up in.

Her world at seven: cell phone with free long distance, laptop, wireless broadband access, interactive web-based software. (And if I’d brought a webcam they could’ve videoconferenced as well.)My world at seven: wired phone (I think just one in the house), we didn’t use long distance except for very special occasions because it was so expensive, no computer, no Internet (much less wireless, broadband, or web-based software), and certainly no videoconferencing. (Coincidentally, when I was seven, Intel released what’s generally considered the first microprocessor – the 4004 with 2300 transistors. Today, Intel is about to release the Penryn chip with 820 million transistors.)Some folks may argue that they prefer my world at seven, but that’s not what this post is about.

What this post is about is the fact that none of this fazed Abby. She doesn’t think it’s fantastic or outrageous, cool or amazing – it just is.

She just thinks this is the way the world is – she can connect pretty much effortlessly to others across space and time - and she’s right.

That doesn’t negate the fact that she had a great time at Disney/Sea World/the beach, or that she would’ve enjoyed the vacation just as much if she hadn’t happened to be introduced to Webkinz just before we left.

But I think this is hugely important as we think about her education, her expectations, her capabilities, and what’s going to be possible as she grows older.

She's a native. She's connected. It just is. Shift Happens.