Physical Activity Associated With Better Academics in Boys
9/15/2014
Research published in PLOS One entitled, "Associations of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior with Academic Skills – A Follow-Up Study among Primary School Children" concludes that boys showed a correlation between the level of physical activity and academic performance. To clarify, boys with higher levels of physical activity had better academic performance. http://http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0107031
Simple Instructions Can Change Student Performance.
8/10/2014
Research published in Memory and Cognition concludes that when students are expected to teach a topic to another student they perform better than if instructed that they will be taking a test. It appears that this simple statement of instruction can boost student performance whether they actually teach the material or not. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/wuis-ett080814.php
Internet Co-Creator Shares Facts About the Internet
7/20/2014
Co-creator of the Internet, Vint Cerf talks to Stephen Colbert about the Internet and how Al Gore did, in fact, help invent the Internet.
ActivePresenter for free Screen Recordings
6/4/2014
Recently, I saw that Adobe was releasing Captivate 8, which is software that builds learning environments using multimedia. After watching some introductory videos on Lynda.com, I went to Google to see if there were any open source alternatives to Captivate since it is a bit pricely; although, it is an awesome program. While doing my search, I came across some really great programs that were good, but weren't Captivate 8. However, I did find one program that I thought was a good program for the price: ActivePresenter by Atomisystems at http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/. You'll notice that the web address says "free edition". Yes, they have a free edition that works great for creating and editing screen captures. It does all the other stuff as well, but leaves a watermark on them. On the videos, it doesn't leave a watermark.
Fit Children Have Better Language Skills
6/3/2014
According to recent research from the University of Illinois at Urbana using an EEG that measures brain waves, children who are more physically fit as measured by oxygen uptake during exercise showed "...higher amplitude N400 and P600 waves than their less-fit peers when reading normal or nonsensical sentences. The N400 also had shorter latency in children who were more fit, suggesting that they processed the same information more quickly than their peers." Researchers still do not know exactly why more physically fit children showed these attributes in the EEG readings; however, the correlation is strong between exercise and cognitive performance. Previous research on exercise and the brain by researcher Tracy Shors demonstrated that exercise doubles the generation of new neurons in the brain and that learning retains those nuerons.
Conclusion
Physical activity is important to learning.
- Press Release at Eurekalert.org
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uoia-bsl060314.php - Saving New Brain Cells by Tracy Shors
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~shors/...
Article on Peer Instruction is Ignored
5/27/2014
Recently, Bloomberg News posted a largely unnoticed story about how Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics (Harvard), developed a method of teaching called "peer instruction" 20 years ago. Sadly, the recent article was never posted on the listings in the main page at Bloomberg, so no one really saw it. The article starts by pointing out the Mazur won an award of $500,000 for his teaching method that is more effective than traditional instruction. Read more about Mazur's work here.
- Bloomberg Article
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-20/harvard-s-mazur-wins-500-000-award-for-global-teaching-theory.html - NPR Story About Peer Instruction
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/01/144550920/physicists-seek-to-lose-the-lecture-as-teaching-tool - Eric Mazur's Book About Peer Instruction
http://www.amazon.com/Peer-Instruction-A-Users-Manual/dp/0135654416
Check Your Basic Computer Skills
5/24/2014
Back in 2009, I created an Adobe Flash based test of basic computer skills to test students' computer skills. The test is timed and does a good job checking skills. It is geared towards MS Windows, using Outlook email, and editing a document. You don't have to enter anything but your name to take the test and your results are provided at the end of the test.
http://learningengineer.com/BasicComputerSkills/BasicComputerSkills.html
Education, Big Data, and The Economist's Dreams
5/11/2014
The Economist would love to change education. And, so would I; however, our views are a bit different. The Economist thinks, no, imagines that "Big Data" will solve everything. They think it will make teachers accountable. That unions will oppose it, which is their favorite bogeyman. Their concern is that parents will have privacy issues; and, that is the big question on big data. What happens with the data?
Here is the problem with the love of Big Data. It is only big because you collect a lot of data. What happens when you spend more time collecting data than you do providing instruction?
http://econ.st/1rklUsB
Best Essays: Some of My Favorite Essays
4/20/2014
- "Second Thoughts on Certainty: Saint Jean de Brebeuf among the Hurons"—Tobias Wolff
- From the Book Tremor of Bliss
- "A Bag of Possibilities and Other Matters of the Mind"—Robert Fulghum
- From Newsweek Fall/Winter 1990
- "The Missing Ingredient"—Hernando de Soto
- From the Economist 9/11/1993 p.8-12
- "Obituary:Norman Borlaug"
- From the Economist 9/17/2009
- "In Her Defense, I'm Sure the Moose Had It Coming"—Aaron Sorkin
- Reflections on the Revolution in France—Edmund Burke
Educational Research
4/16/2014
click here for Professor of Cognitive Psychology Dan Willingham's take on educational research
Educational research is too often used to promote snake oil products that do not do what they claim. For example, charter schools are often touted as doing a better job than public schools. However, this is a false assumption because most educational research does not pass the science test: they are not randomized double-blinds. First, most studies dealing with education, especially charter schools, do not randomly select students from the general school population. Instead, students are randomly selected from a pool of students who already motivated to go to a charter school, which means that they are biased. This will skew the results because these students are more motivated than the average student would be. Second, the students and the teachers are both aware who is getting the treatment known as the charter school. In a real scientific study, they would need to be blind to who is going to a regular school and who is going to a charter school. If student and teacher both know who is getting the treatment, the placebo effect comes into play, which can account for up to a 30% improvement in performance. This too skews the results in favor of charter schools, giving the charter school the false appearance that it is doing better than it really is.
APA Formatting in MS Word
4/7/2014
click here for the PDF version
APA formatted documents can be difficult to create because of the fact that the header on the first page is different than pages that come after it, and after doing some searching, I found that there really aren't any printable documents demonstrating this. Therefore, I created one.
How not to start an essay, article, or paper
3/15/2014
click here to go to the Economist article.
An Economist article titled "On your marks," which is about teacher accountability, begins with a quote from the movie Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz. Yes, that is right. It starts with a quote from a comedy about teachers. Generally, using fiction is a bad idea when writing about a real world topic. Imagine if we decided to base the policies used to judge doctors or police officers based on comedic movies about their professions. Should I quote any number of Police Academy movies or from the show Scrubs? If you want to be taken seriously, start with facts and not fiction.
The SAT and Assessing College Entrance Abilities
3/15/2014
click here to go to the Scientific American article.
In a recent Scientific American blog (March 12, 2014), author Scott Barry Kaufman reflects on college entrance exams and what they predict or measure. He points out that tests like the SAT measures one's ability to select the correct answer as determined by experts and not necessarily the correct answer. He also looks at what college entrance exams don't measure. Things such as active learning strategies, persistence, interest, and self control. They don't measure creativity, which is more and more important in our content based world.
The Effects of Computers: We think we are smarter than we are.
3/7/2014
click here to go to the Scientific American article.
The article makes two very interesting points. The first is that if people think they can just look something up, then they don't remember the information as well. But more importantly, people think that the computer's abilities are their abilities and delude themselves into thinking that that intelligence is theirs. In other words, if a student thinks they can look words up whenever they want, they then know what the word means and how it is spelled even though they don't. It would seem that putting computers in schools and colleges only makes people think they are smarter without it actually being true.
Kids and Social Media
2/10/2014
click here to go to Science Friday to listen to the podcast.
Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd spent a decade interviewing and learning about how kids use social media and interact with each other.
How We Learn from Scientific American Mind
2/10/2014
click here to go to Scientific American and read.
Last year, Scientific American did a "Special Report" on "How We Learn" that features information on what study techniques and which don't.
- Here is what works
- Self-testing or Quizzing Yourself
- Distributed Practice or Spreading Out Your Study Over Time
- Elaborative Interrogation or Asking Why
- Self-Explanation or Explaining What you Learned to Yourself
- Interleaved Practice or Mixing Up Study Subjects
James Dyson On Failure at ScienceFriday.com
1/26/2014
click here to go to ScienceFriday.com and listen.
Recently James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum, stopped by ScienceFriday and discussed the inventing process and the importance of failure with Ira Flatow. Mr Dyson pointed out that he had failed more than 5000 times before finally coming up with his patented vacuum that eliminates the need for filters and bags thus extending the life of the vacuum and saving billions in waste and waste products.
Free public education that pays for itself?
1/19/2014
London, UK (January 09, 2014) Education funding, particularly at university level, is tighter than ever under current austerity measures. A new study published by SAGE in the journal Theory & Research in Education proposes a radical new approach that offers affordable higher education to all, and yet avoids additional government spending.
"Public higher education should be absolutely free at the point of entry for everybody. What would be required from each student is a promise," says the author, Dr Mark Reiff, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Manchester, UK.
This promise means that students would commit to paying a fixed percentage of their income (6%) during their prime earning years (35-54 for example) to the university that awarded their degree. Reiff's proposal sees these student promises for a given university cohort bundled and sold to investors as "education securities." Investors would receive a share of the average income for the cohort.
Because average income moves with inflation, investors would be assured of getting their initial investment back plus whatever amount is necessary to cover changes in the value of their money. The securities could even be designed to include a real return (over inflation) of as much as 3%. Universities would be paid in full when the securities were offered, no one would be required to incur debts, and people both at home and abroad would have a new, safe place to put their money.
This debt-free system appeals to both the political left and right, and would relieve the government of the burden of financing public higher education. Students would be free to pursue whatever occupation they wanted, without the pressure of having to be sure they could pay off their student loans. The cost of their degree would directly relate to their ultimate earning power. And the percentage-based system means that nobody would pay more than they could afford.
"Instead of using the financial services industry to create weapons of mass destruction, we would be using it to create investment vehicles of mass education. And everybody will benefit from having an educated populace, for education, once obtained, can never be repossessed."
###
To find out more, read the full article entitled "How to pay for public education" published in Theory & Research in Education. The article can be freely accessed for a limited time here.
Theory and Research in Education, formerly known as The School Field, is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes theoretical, empirical and conjectural papers contributing to the development of educational theory, policy and practice. http://tre.sagepub.com/
How you practice matters for learning a skill quickly 1/7/2013
Practice alone doesn't make perfect, but learning can be optimized if you practice in the right way, according to new research based on online gaming data from more than 850,000 people. The research, led by psychological scientist Tom Stafford of the University of Sheffield (UK), suggests that the way you practice is just as important as how often you practice when it comes to learning quickly. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Stafford and Michael Dewar from The New York Times Research and Development Lab analyzed data from 854,064 people playing an online game called Axon. Players are tasked with guiding a neuron from connection to connection by clicking on potential targets, testing participants' ability to perceive, make decisions, and move quickly. Stafford and Dewar were interested to know how practice affected players' subsequent performance in the game. Some Axon players achieved higher scores than others despite practicing for the same amount of time. Game play data revealed that those players who seemed to learn more quickly had either spaced out their practice or had more variable early performance — suggesting they were exploring how the game works — before going on to perform better. "The study suggests that learning can be improved — you can learn more efficiently or use the same practice time to learn to a higher level," says Stafford. "As we live longer, and as more of our lives become based around acquiring complex skills, optimal learning becomes increasingly relevant to everyone." Using data collected from people playing games offers a new way for researchers to study learning, and has strong advantages compared to research on learning that is based in the lab. Game data provide insight into a real skill that people presumably enjoy practicing, and detailed data regarding all actions that players take as they learn to play are easily recorded. "This kind of data affords us to look in an unprecedented way at the shape of the learning curve, allowing us to explore how the way we practice helps or hinders learning," says Stafford. Stafford hopes to collaborate with game designers to further investigate the factors that shape optimal learning. ### For more information about this study, please contact: Tom Stafford at t.stafford@shef.ac.uk. The article abstract is available online: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/12/30/0956797613511466.abstract Axon was developed for the Wellcome Trust by game designer Preloaded. The game can be played http://axon.wellcomeapps.com/. Researchers inserted a tracking code that recorded machine identity each time the game was loaded and kept track of the score and the date and time of play. No information on the players, other than their game scores, was collected. Stafford and Dewar have made their data and analysis code publicly available for anyone who wishes to replicate or conduct their own analyses. The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Tracing the Trajectory of Skill Learning With a Very Large Sample of Online Game Players" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
Catholic Schools Are Not Superior to Public Schools
12/18/2013
The latest research published in the Journal of Urban Economics from the University of Michigan shows that Catholic school students start kindergarten with an advantage; however, that advantage goes away over time while public school students show more improvement. This means that Catholic schools are under-performing.
"Math scores for Catholic students dropped between kindergarten and eighth grade, while math scores for public school students increased slightly. In addition, Catholic students saw no significant increase in reading scores or better behavioral outcomes between kindergarten and eighth grade."
The Hype of the Flipped Classroom
11/29/2013
The latest hype in the field of education is the "flipped" classroom, which means that students are supposed to read the chapter or watch a video before coming to class. Then, in class, they should be ready to discuss concepts and test their knowledge. First off, this isn't anything new. My historiography teacher expected us to do exactly this in the mid 1980s. So, it isn't new.
The "flipped" classroom doesn't work because the student won't find meaning in the lesson until they have tried and failed. Only then, does the lesson become relevant.
The idea is whenever you tell people the answer and then let them practice, they learn significantly less than when you let them practice and then tell them. You can imagine that one of the reasons is, if I tell you the answer and then I give you some lab equipment, you think you already know the answer, so why the heck are you doing experiments? You’re less engaged. And that is exactly the opposite of the flipped classroom. In flipped classrooms, you watch a video at home and then do stuff at school. We are now proposing “the flipped flipped classroom,” where you do the experiment first and then watch a video.
A High School Lab As Engaging as Facebook By Anna Kuchment | November 29, 2013 http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/budding-scientist/2013/11/29/a-high-school-lab-as-engaging-as-facebook/
Are Teachers Overpaid?
11/28/2013
Are Teachers Overpaid? (http://www.aei.org/article/education/k-12/higher-pay-than-private-sector/) If you want to see how a research paper shouldn't be written, this paper is an excellent example. It would never be published in an actual research journal with standards.
Here are the horrible highlights of Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers upon which Are Teachers Overpaid is based.
1. Falsely assumes that markets set accurate prices. If markets accurately set prices there wouldn't be asset bubbles such as the housing bubble, stock market bubble, or tech stock bubble. Markets require honesty and transparency to work, neither of which has ever happened and will probably never be.
2. Uses lots of anecdotal evidence to support predetermined conclusions -- also known as dogma.
3. Cites non-peer reviewed sources, including a blog on page 7 citation #18.
4. Asserts without evidence that the better grades of education majors are a by product of low grading standards instead of the improved effectiveness of people who are experts at instruction or the ineffectiveness of instructors who have no expertise in instruction. (Page 7 paragraph 6).
5. Uses anecdotal evidence to deny statistical evidence that teachers are in fact underpaid. On page 6, they state that, "In other words, public-school teachers receive salaries that are 19.3% lower than non-teachers who have the same observable skills." That is the statistical evidence. Now here is the anecdotal evidence, "If we added an indicator for architects to the regression, for example, we would find that architects receive a wage premium over similarly skilled workers. Yet, few people would immediately conclude that architects are 'overpaid.'" Few people? Who are these people and where did Mr Biggs find them?
6. On page 6, Biggs asserts that experience does not have an impact on teacher quality without evidence to back up his assertion. In reality, the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance states that expertise requires approximately 10,000 hours of effortful practice. Hardly something a new teacher would possess. Teachers work approximately 200 days a year. Multiply this by seven hours a day of instruction, and you get 1400 hours. It would take about seven years to put in the appropriate number of hours to be an expert and that is under perfect effortful practice conditions, not necessarily a classroom.
The dark side of animation
Could animated slides be stifling learning
From Eurekalert.org
11/9/2013
We've all sat through one of those presentations where the animated slides are more interesting than the speaker. Bold and brassy titles slide into view, tasty slices of pie chart fill the screen one by one, and a hail of arrows spikes the points the lecturer hopes to highlight.
But, are these custom animations and slide fades and dissolves actually adding anything to the lecture, or do they have a dark side that detracts from the message and impacts negatively on the message being presented?
Microsoft PowerPoint has, over the last couple of decades, become the tool of choice for creating instructional slideshows. Long gone for most are the overhead projector with its fickle fan and its high-temperature and temperamental bulb, the smudgy marker pen, and the transparent plastic sheet.
Instead, lecturers, speakers and anyone else with a visual message to present with their talk uses PowerPoint and its ilk to present their digital slides. According to the authors of a study in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning published this month, many instructors use these options regularly with the impression that such effects enhance student learning by allowing concepts to be introduced incrementally.
Stephen Mahar of the University of North Carolina Wilmington and colleagues have explored the impact of custom animation in PowerPoint lectures and examined the idea that custom animation may, in fact, negatively impact student learning.
To test their hypothesis, the team recorded two versions of a PowerPoint lecture. The presentations differed only in the presence of animation to incrementally present information. They then showed students either the animated or non-animated lecture and then tested the students recall and comprehension of the lecture.
The team found a marked difference in average student performance, with those seeing the non-animated lecture performing much better in the tests than those who watched the animated lecture. Students were able to recall details of the static graphics much better. Animated slides meant to present information incrementally actually require greater concentration, which makes it harder to remember content as well as reducing overall exposure time to the "complete" slide, the researchers found.
Although students appear to like the use of animations in lectures delivered using PowerPoint, there is now strong evidence that animation is nothing more than an entertaining distraction.
The team points out that their study was applied only to the teaching of new concepts. It is possible that teaching a technique might work more effectively with animated, rather than static, slides. Follow-up work will investigate that possibility.
### "The dark side of custom animation" in Int. J. Innovation and Learning, 2009, 6, 581-592
Learn About Memory from Stephen Colbert
11/6/2013
In this video, Stephan explains how Google effects what we chose to remember and what we don't.
Memory in the Age of Google with Stephan Colbert
What is the difference between Catholic Schools and Public Schools? The Students
11/3/2013
In a recent study published in the Journal of Urban Economics, University of Michigan economists discover that Catholic schools do not provide the superior education most believe that it does. In fact, according to associate profession Todd Elders, “But these findings suggest they’re not doing more with less – that they may, in fact, be doing less with less.” The reality is that Catholic school children start kindergarten already ahead of their public school peers because of socio-economic factors.
Digital Distractions in the Classroom
10/26/2013
In a recent article in the Journal of Media Education entitled "Digital Distractions in the Classroom: Student Classroom Use of Digital Devices for Non-class Related Purposes" Professor Bernard R. McCoy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln surveyed 777 students from six different university campuses and found that students are fully aware of the disadvantages that digital devices present and their power to distract from instruction. In fact, using the device for classroom activities came in third after "staying connected" and "fighting boredom". To read more of the study, look here.
How to fight the digital demons in class?
- Give students digital breaks.
- Give students extra credit points for turning their phone off during class.
- Make posting to Facebook or Tweeting about the subject matter part of the class.
http://en.calameo.com/read/000091789af53ca4e647f
Scientific American's Special Report: Learning in the Digital Age.
10/12/2013
In August, Scientific American published a psuedo-scientific report on learning in the digital age, though I am not sure which digital age they are referring to. The digital age in the 1980s? 1990s? 2000s? And did they do a report on learning in the analog age? Apparently, when you convert lectures from analog to digital, it changes everything. The report is a bit of a joke. Only in the field of education are non-experts allowed so much significance. There was very little science involved, but lots of anecdotes. Hopefully, when they do an article on climate science, they will interview a third grade teacher who doesn't know anything about climate science.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/editorial/digital-education/
10/4/2013
How We Learn
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-we-learn
In the most recent issue of Scientific American Mind, the magazine explores how we learn. The first article in the series is a quick look at the most effective methods of learning as well as those that aren't effective but popularly used like highlighting text. The issue also looks at recent research about how handwriting helps with memory. And how math can be taught so that it isn't so intimidating.
9/25/2013
Aliens Found In Ohio? The 'Wow!' Signal
From the story by Robert Krulwich at NPR.ORG
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/05/28/126510251/aliens-found-in-ohio-the-wow-signal
For Jerry Ehman, the big puzzle is: Why only one signal? If an alien intelligence is trying to send a message somewhere, wouldn't it make sense to send the message a few times? The signal landed once on Aug. 15, 1977. It never repeated.
"That's key in the scientific method," says Columbia's Scharf. "You want to see a repeat." That way, other scientists can confirm the finding.
More by Robert Krulwich
9/20/2013
Logical Fallacies - Appeal to Emotion
One of the most common types of logical fallacy is the appeal to emotion. It usually involves children or babies of some kind. In this video clip from the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, Stephan mocks a Cheerios commercial, which tries to Appeal to Emotion
http://www.hulu.com/watch/534547#i1,p5,d1
MOOC Review - Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps at Coursera
https://class.coursera.org/digitalmedia-001/class/index
I started my second MOOC course just this week. So far, it has gone fairly well. There have been a few glitches; however, the authors made corrections that are as standard as possible without adding too much complexity. The first week, for example, featured a lecture minus the computer screencasts, meaning that you couldn't really see what the instructor was seeing on their screen. So, they provided the same lecture as screencast only, which corrected the problem. I also had a problem with exporting to JavaScript: the audio wasn't working properly and I had to reset my default browser to Chrome.
As the name implies, this is about web programming. Web programming is great, but the fact remains that there are so many different ways of programming on the web that it is a bit overwhelming at times. You can use AJAX, JavaScript, JAVA, PHP, FLASH, Processing, Ruby on Rails, and now HTML5. I could use a class just to help me choose which one is best.
For this course, the University of London uses Processing 2.0, which can be found at http://processing.org. It is a programming languagerom MIT and it is opensource, so it is free. I had looked at Processing before, but I was concerned about limitations and complexity.
MOOC Review: Udacity - HTML 5 Game Programming.
I started this online course just today, and already there are problems. The explanations in the videos gloss over a lot of information that is important to understanding what is going on. For example, in the first quiz, they tell you to send the output to the console, but then don't provide an example or explanation of how to do that. However, it is shown in the answer after the fact, which seems strange.
The second quiz doesn't work at all. I read the questions below and everyone is trying to figure out what the correct answer should be, but I tried all of their examples and couldn't get any of them to work properly. It just goes to show that experts don't make for good teachers because the only perspective they have is their own.
I give this course an F.
https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255
Pretty graphics don't help learning.
A midst all the talk of technology and motivating students is the fact that they have to learn something. Being entertained is not the same thing as learning something, contrary to popular opinion. Just because a graphic has pretty pictures doesn't mean that it will actually improve outcomes. The problem is that if someone is learning something new, the high fidelity of the graphics can be a distraction to the student. They see the pictures and not the bar chart.
“Any unnecessary visual information may distract children from the very procedures we want them to learn.”
According to a study from Jennifer Kaminski and Vladimir Sloutsky, to appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, the only thing fancy graphics did was distract children. The study found that six thru eight year olds often learn to count the polka dots, stripes, or flowers in a bar graph, but didn't learn how to properly read the graph.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/prettyvisual.htm
Xerte 2.0 HTML5 Compatible
Xerte 2.0 is out and it is HTML5 compatible, which is great for those of us who are looking towards the future. Xerte is an excellent product, although the new version did take a bit of work to install. I had to go in and look at the files to get it to work; however, I have seen on the message boards that they are looking into it. Nonetheless, it still didn't take very long to install. Once installed you can use the HTML features, and it will work on your phone.
Check it out by clicking on the link below.
http://learningengineer.com/xerte2/play.php?template_id=2
The Myth of Summers Off
Teachers don't get summers off, contrary to the beliefs of many. Teachers are paid for the contract days they work, some teachers have simply agreed to be a creditor to the school or college and allowed them to spread their pay out over a longer period of time. When the teacher has completed 100% of the contract days, the school still owes them money.
Here is the language from my current contract:
Section B – Work Year
The work year shall consist of 185 contract days with 164 student contact days, ten (10) non-student contact days, seven (7) holidays, and twenty-eight (28) hours of value-added activities. The number of student contact days in any one semester shall not be less than eighty (80). Semesters may be divided into two (2) equal, approximately eight-week quarters; and an eight-week quarter may be held in the summer.
Online Learning is Different Because of the Distractions
Researchers at Harvard have discovered how online learning is different than learning in a classroom. From the research, we already know that online colleges and universities have graduation rates around 10%. So, how is online learning different? Too many distractions. So, researchers at Harvard have shown that short lessons of about five minutes, followed by a short quiz or test helps students focus better.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/04/online-learning-its-different/
The Seven Limitations of Expertise
- Experts are limited to their domain and that expertise does not extend to other domains.
- Experts over estimate their abilities when it comes to their field of expertise.
- Experts gloss over information that they believe is irrelevant; therefore, missing details that may be necessary to solve a problem.
- Without contextual clues, experts are not that accurate.
- Experts fail to predict how quickly novices will learn something and are poor at giving advice or providing advice.
- Experts are biased toward their domain.
- Experts can adapt but often prove inflexible when changes are deeply rooted.
Kipp Study from the Department of Education Misrepresents the Facts
The KIPP study put out by the Department of Education is flawed and incorrectly reported by the media. The study is flawed because the subjects are not randomly selected from the general population, but rather, from a biased group of children who want to attend another school. So, it isn't actually randomized. Also the children, parents and teachers know who is getting the "treatment" and are susceptible to the placebo effect.
Here is the Department of Education's own statement from its What Works Clearinghouse.
The current support of Charter Schools, The portion of the study that used a quasi-experimental design meets WWC evidence standards with reservations. The study established that KIPP and non-KIPP students were similar on measured characteristics such as baseline test scores and demographics, and controlled for baseline characteristics of students in the analysis. The study also presented results on student achievement and behavioral outcomes for a subsample of 13 schools that used a lottery to randomly assign students to attend KIPP schools. However, the WWC does not yet have enough information to determine a study rating for that portion of the study. A more thorough review (forthcoming) will determine the rating of the lottery portion of the study and report on its results.
Strange Research Results from the Medical Community
Imagine this, your industry does a "self-reporting" research study and finds that you should work more. I never would have guessed. Well, the medical community did one study and is now declaring that interns who work less and get more sleep make more mistakes. One study that used self-reporting. Hardly scientific. Interns self-reported getting less sleep, depression, and other symptoms. Yes, symptoms of being a workaholic.
Here is an example of what doctors do and how they justify it.
A poll of 150 attendees of an American College of Physicians meeting in 2010 revealed that more than half of resident physicians had worked with flu-like symptoms at least once in the last year. One in six reported working sick on three or more occasions during the year, according to the survey conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital. Notably, when asked whether they believed they'd ever directly transmitted an illness to a patient, nearly 10 percent of respondents answered yes. More than 20 percent believed other residents had passed on an illness to a patient.
From http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-06/uocm-dcc061812.php
Wyh cna we raed wrds even wehn they are jmbled up?
Research reveals why we can still read words when the letters are jumbled up. This obviously means that spelling is no longer important.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/esr-hcw031313.php