Well today is day 10 of the 30 days to being a better blogger challenge. I have managed to keep up. Day 4 I updated my creative commons license. Day 5 I globalized my blog by adding a Google translation widget to my side bar. Day 6 I asked non-blog readers to look at my blog and give me feed back to its look, feel and ease of use. Day 7 I invited a colleague to be a guest blogger,…
I received this information in a comment on another post. Passing it along. Dear Madam: I’m a senior in high school in the United States and I am doing a project about technology use in other countries. I am trying learn about the types of technology that have had the greatest impact on our world as a whole, over the last 10 years, instead of just seeing how technology plays a role in the United States. I am hoping that…
The following is just a brain dump as I try to develop some workshop material on Digital Citizenship and communicating. Just thought I would share. Back in the day when I started teaching I used a ditto machine, occasionally a copy machine, phone and the US Postal service. There were no mobile phones, texting, email, discussion boards, internet, among others. Somehow we managed. Now there is a large number of ways we can communicate and connect, to some this is…
Rule # 12: We are powerful and natural explorers. I set out to post my notes on Brain Rules and I finally made it to chapter 12. This chapter deals with our curiosity and wonder. As a parent I have observed my children wonder, explore and learn, we are designed for this. We need to capitalize on this as educators. “For little ones, discovery brings joy, Like an addictive drug, exploration creates the need for more discovery so that more…
Rule #11 Male and female brains are different. This must have been delicate chapter for John Medina to right. Some time political correctness can run amok. Men and women are physically different, would it not make sense that are brains and therefore brain function might also be different. Add to this the idea of nature verses nurture and the subject of gender and learning can get pretty complex. What is known is the men and women’s brains have different structures,…
Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. On of the principles I base my work on is Universal Design in Learning. We pay greater attention to things that move. We pay attention to and remember images. Animation combines these and there for is a powerful tool for a teacher. This is one of the foundations of universal design in learning. The more ways to access information the more likely there will be success in learning. Text, sound, images, animation should…
Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses. We are sensory driven creatures. We gather all information through a variety of senses. The more senses we involve the mores information we gather, the better our integration and understanding of this information. When information is presented multisensory (seeing and hearing) it is retained better then when presented using a single sense. In some experiments the improvement to recall was 50-75 %. IF you involve more then 2 senses learning improves even more….