Childhood Music Lessons ‘Leave Lasting Brain Boost’

“According to the study featured in this article on the NZ Stuff website, a child learning a musical instrument will retain brain benefits that last long into his or her adult life.”

via Stuff.co.nz

Learning a musical instrument as a child gives the brain a boost that lasts long into adult life, say scientists.

Adults who used to play an instrument, even if they have not done so in decades, have a faster brain response to speech sounds, research suggests.

The more years of practice during childhood, the faster the brain response was, the small study found.

The Journal of Neuroscience work looked at 44 people in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

The volunteers in the study listened to a synthesised speech syllable, “da”, while researchers measured electrical activity in the region of the brain that processes sound information – the auditory brainstem.

Despite none of the study participants having played an instrument in nearly 40 years, those who completed between four and 14 years of music training early in life had a faster response to the speech sound than those who had never been taught music.

The study took place at the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Illinois, US.

Lifelong skill

As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing. For instance, the brains of older adults show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speech.

It could be that learning an instrument in childhood causes a fixed change in the brain that is retained throughout life.

Or, music classes somehow prepare the brain for future auditory learning, say the researchers.

Past work by the same team found younger adults were better listeners if they had been taught an instrument as a child.

Experts also believe musical training – with an emphasis on rhythmic skills – can exercise the auditory-system.

But these studies are all relatively small and cannot ascertain if it is definitely musical training that is causing the effect.

Arguably, children offered the opportunity to learn an instrument, which can be expensive, may come from more privileged backgrounds and this may have an influence.

Commenting on the study, Michael Kilgard from the University of Texas, who was not involved with the research, said: “Being a millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference in the lives of older adults.”

The Digital Lives of Teens: The Key Word is Trust

Matt Levinson from Edutopia talks about engendering trust in monitoring the digital lives of our teens. From the article: ‘School communities need to create partnerships with parents through developing shared language, social media agreements, intervention steps, proactive curricular development and media literacy.’ Read on for more . . .”

via Edutopia

Are We Preparing Graduates for the Past or the Future?

“Are we preparing students for the past or the future? A truly powerful question that forces everyone involved in education (and the business sector, for that matter) to rethink the essential skills needed for success outside of the classroom in a job market where most students are preparing for a job that probably does not exist yet. The answer to the question is ‘no’! Despite the valiant efforts of teachers and administrators, the students are not prepared for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous future. Carol Carter at the Huffington Post shares her views on education and its need for change. She also shares wonderful resources to further study the needs of students now and in the future. ”

via Huffington Post

Two weeks ago, I spoke at the International Habits of Mind Conference in Malaysia alongside college and K-12 faculty from Southeast Asia and countries like Iran, New Zealand, and Australia. Outside of the conference, a question came up among some of the speakers:

Are we preparing students for the past or the future?

This question leads to even more questions: If education paradigms don’t shift to meet tomorrow’s needs, will high school and college graduates have the skills to find or create employment opportunities? Do schools and faculty have a responsibility to realize and adapt their lessons to our new economy’s needs and demands? If students aren’t in a learning environment where their gifts and talents can flourish, will they be able to participate in the rapidly changing global economy?

To understand how the working world has changed over the last few decades, let’s look at a typical work culture of the past:

• Orderly, predictable
• Single-skilled employees
• Hierarchical
• Big company based
• Individual-minded
• Corporate
• Local/national
• Hired for life

Now, compare that to aspects of the new work culture:

• Uncertain
• Multi-skilled employees
• Equal and flat structures
• Small business and start-up driven
• Collaborative
• “Work and lifestyle entrepreneur”
• Global
• Discrete jobs and tasks “for hire”

When comparing these two lists, I was reminded of a TED Talk by Dr. Randy Borum. He explained the changing demands we have for employees with the analogy of the hedgehog and the fox. Hedgehogs are anchored in their ways and will resize new ideas to fit their determined and singular way of thinking. In school and the working world, a hedgehog is someone who is knowledge focused, whereas a fox is someone who is learning focused. Borum further distinguishes how these two animals think using the following characteristics:

Hedgehog

• Has one organizing theory
• Deeply knowledgeable
• Self-confident
• Determined

Fox

• Can see through many lenses
• Broadly focused
• Self-critical
• Adaptive

We cannot be certain which specific skills the future will demand, but we can be certain that the ever-changing world will require people to navigate uncertain territory, often without a compass. This is why, Borum argues, the fox is more apt to succeed in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) future.

I agree with Borum to a point. Big business can’t rely on the same business method that grew success in the past. Large companies will have to value entrepreneurial thinkers and give employees the license to be “nimble and agile”–realizing opportunity in a timeframe that small companies can make happen — within the structure of a larger company. This will happen through partnerships, inter-company business incubators, and other novel approaches to foster ideas that promote change and growth.

Schools and colleges also need to add value to a student’s skill set by producing graduates who are agile thinkers. Today, the flipped classroom provides opportunities for students to prepare outside of class while using class time to collaborate, connect, and share their ideas with their peers as the teacher plays the role of coach. In the future, we’ll likely move beyond this model to real-life learning labs where students learn through experience; actively participate with content; match their learning with their interests, talents and abilities; and discover career paths that align with their strengths.

Dr. Peter Capelli, Director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School and Professor of Education, questions the future of the hedgehog mode of thinking in his recent article, ”Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire.” Capelli says that while some students choose career paths based on economic predictions, we simply cannot predict the future. Capelli believes that choosing the wrong career path can be worse than choosing no career path. A student who gets a degree in an emerging technology that pays well today, may find herself out of work in the future when her position is replaced by the next new wave. In theory, a communications major is more nimble – like a fox – with his transferable thinking skills and has potential to be more adaptive across the industries.

Where I differ in opinion from both Borum and Capelli is that the fox and the hedgehog analogy cannot be either/or. Instead, it is both/and. You want a brain surgeon who is a hedgehog, but you also want your brain surgeon to be adaptive, communicating options as a medical partner as well as expert. Or take the student pursuing a technology degree. She can both have a successful technical career and be nimble in adapting to new technology standards in her field. We need students who possess core knowledge in math, writing, and reading skills. But employers say they also need new hires with critical thinking, interpersonal, and problem solving skills. To produce graduates who are both knowledge and learning focused, we need faculty to teach core academic skills in the context of their students’ personal and professional worlds. Without these practical connections, we will continue to produce ill-prepared graduates.

If we can foster more students and graduates who develop ingenuous ideas and are undaunted by what they don’t know, support them with mentors to coach and challenge them, and encourage within them a bold vision backed with adaptive and strategic thinking, soft and hard skills, then we will have the players who can create a thriving, dynamic economy. When students and graduates with these qualities encounter setbacks, they will have the inner faith and wherewithal to regroup and forge a new path. If they can cultivate the “dispositions of success,” a phrase from Art Costa and Bena Kallick’s new book, then they will be ready for anything in the professional world regardless of their SAT score, where they went to college, or what their first job was out of college. If we can make these shifts, we can strongly prepare students for anything they might face in a VUCA future.

In my next blog, I’ll share how we can transform our schools to reflect this both/and thinking. I invite you to answer in the comments, are we preparing our graduates for the past or the future in traditional K-12 and college classrooms

Dan Pink: How Teachers Can Sell Love of Learning to Students

In his new book To Sell is Human, author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country. And with this growth comes the opportunity to change the way educators envision their roles and their classrooms. Guided by findings in educational research and neuroscience, the emphasis on cognitive skills like computation and memorization is evolving to include less tangible, non-cognitive skills, like collaboration and improvisation.

Jobs in education, Pink said in a recent interview, are all about moving other people, changing their behavior, like getting kids to pay attention in class; getting teens to understand they need to look at their future and to therefore study harder. At the center of all this persuasion is selling: educators are sellers of ideas.

Whether a teacher is presenting to her board or pitching a crowd of 12-year-olds on why Shakespeare was a genius, it’s all the art of persuasion. Though his new book has only been out a couple of weeks, Pink said he’s already received many messages from teachers who agree that, “Yes, I sell. I sell students on poetry, on calculus, on biology.”

In fact, the business world has a lot to learn from educators: what motivates people, how to inspire people to perform well. But educators can also take a lesson from the commercial world: namely, teaching the complicated skill of finding problems. In a recent study, Pink said school superintendents rated problem-solving as the top capability they wanted to instill. Corporate executives, however, rated problem-solving as seventh on their list of attributes in employees, but rated problem identification as the single most important skill. That is, the ability to suss out issues and challenges that aren’t necessarily obvious. And this is where students could benefit from educators — learning the process of identifying a problem.

“Standardized testing: totally easy, totally cheap, and scales. Convenient for politicians and taxpayers.”

“The premium has moved from problem solving to problem finding as a skill,” Pink said. “Right now, especially in the commercial world, if I know exactly what my problem is, I can find the solution to my own problem. I don’t need someone to help me. Where I need help is when I don’tknow what my problem is or when I’m wrong about what my problem is. Problem solving is an analytical, deductive kind of skill. The phrase ‘problem finding’ comes out of research on artists. It’s more of a conceptual kind of skill.”

So how do educators help kids become problem-finders when they don’t know what the problem is or where the next one might be coming from? “A lot of people hate this word but I think we have to take it seriously, which is relevance,” Pink said. “There’s something to be said for connecting particular lessons to something in the real world.”

For instance, application of math principles, which has real relevance in the real world. “Even with my own kids, to some extent I see math has become an abstract code designed to get a right answer rather than seeing that math explains why this building is standing up, or why the traffic is going slow right now, or why the 49ers are kicking a field goal rather than going for first down.”

DANGERS OF STANDARDIZATION

One of the big topics Pink tackles in his current book is the idea of moving from transactions to transcendence — to making something personal. That’s the best way to “sell” students on what they’re learning, Pink maintains. This has been a recurring theme in education: connecting what’s taught in classrooms to students’ personal lives. But, as evidenced by current school dynamics, that’s not the way the tide is moving.

“Most of our education is heavily, heavily, heavily standardized,” Pink said. “So, 11-year-olds are all together in one room. No 10-year-olds, and certainly no 13-year-olds. And [assuming that] all of those 11-year-olds are the same, we’re going to put them all together in a 35-kid classroom. Every educator knows that doesn’t work well. Every educator knows about differentiated instruction. The idea that you treat everybody the same way is foolish, and yet the headwinds in education are very much toward routines, right answer, standardization.”

Why is it moving this way? One of the reasons, Pink said, is the “appalling” absence of leadership on this issue. “One of the things that I see as an outsider is that so much of education policy seems designed for the convenience of adults rather than the education of children,” he said. “Start time is a perfect example. Why do we do that? It’s more convenient for the teachers. Why do we have standardized testing? Because it’s unbelievably cheap. If you want to give real evaluations to kids, they have to be personalized, tailored to the kids, at the unit of one. Standardized testing: totally easy, totally cheap, and scales. Convenient for politicians and taxpayers.”

With big changes coming in the form of Common Core State Standards, some fear the idea of standardized “one-size-fits-all” will become even more deeply embedded in education policy. While mastering a core set of literacies makes sense if it can turn students into effective citizens by becoming numerate and literate, Pink said the manner in which Common Core is implemented will determine its value. If Common Core is the only curriculum presented to students, then it runs into the danger of becoming “all about cramming facts.” Knowing for a test that the 5th Amendment is about self-incrimination does not necessarily result in good citizenship.

The same principle applies to the big trend in games and learning, which sometimes results simply in rewards for rote knowledge and memorization. Games have the potential to make math more relevant or engaging, Pink said, but if they lead to standardized thinking about getting to the one right answer, that can be problematic. It’s the carrot and stick thinking vestigial of a bygone era. If the only aim of a game is for points and badges, the game has little benefit for the player. For a game to be compelling and a good source of learning, it should be capable of providing rapid, robust, regular, and meaningful feedback. Social gaming, such as Minecraft, is one instantiation of this kind of salient feedback, Pink said.

The standardized model of education is in dire need of an upgrade, producing students with skills that won’t serve them well outside the boundaries of school. Students who are driven by external rewards (grades, trophies), will be fare worse than those who are self-directed, motivated by freedom, challenge, and purpose, Pink wrote in his earlier bookDrive.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “We have a lot of learned behavior of compliance, and hunger for external rewards and no real engagement. We have this belief that people perform better if we hit them with this endless arsenal of carrots and sticks: If-then motivators. To get to that engagement, people have to unlearn these deeply rooted habits. I defy you to find a two year old who is not engaged. That’s how we are out of the box.”

WHAT DRIVES US

As a student, Pink said he did what everyone else did — he wrote a paper for a class, wrote it neatly, on time, and for a grade. But when he started writing for the school newspaper, things shifted in his mind. He realized it would reach his peers, and suddenly he was motivated to improve his writing. The same goes for any student, he said. “Those clues are right in front of us,” says Pink.

That’s what Big Pictures Schools, a network of schools across the country, on which Pink serves as board member, are attempting to do. New students at these schools are asked questions about  their interests. They could be interested in martial arts, ballet, baseball. Then teachers take the information, and build a curriculum around those particular interests.

Another way of personalizing learning, among many others, are DIY report cards. Even a fifth-grader has the wherewithal to say, “This is what I want to learn; this is what I want to accomplish; this is what I want to get better at.” Then he can look for ways to get feedback on his performance, so he can see that he’s making progress and see that he’s getting better at something.

“An educator in upstate New York did these DIY report cards, and they changed the way he taught,” Pink said. “When students assessed themselves, they held themselves to a higher standard. This changed the way he looked at the kids.”

Explore: Dan Pink

Teaching Computers Common Sense

“Meet NEIL, an acronym for Never Ending Image Learning. NEIL’s advanced technology is the focus of an AI research project at Carnegie Melon that has it searching and comparing a wide database of images. The purpose? To see if NEIL can develop a little common sense! This Stuff article from Kevin Begos has more.”

via Stuff.co.nz

Researchers are trying to plant a digital seed for artificial intelligence by letting a massive computer system browse millions of pictures and decide for itself what they all mean.

The system at Carnegie Mellon University is called NEIL, short for Never Ending Image Learning. In mid-July, it began searching the internet for images 24/7 and, in tiny steps, is deciding for itself how those images relate to each other. The goal is to recreate what we call common sense – the ability to learn things without being specifically taught.

It’s a new approach in the quest to solve computing’s Holy Grail: getting a machine to think on its own using a form of common sense. The project is being funded by Google and the United States Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research.

“Any intelligent being needs to have common sense to make decisions,” said Abhinav Gupta, a professor in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.

NEIL uses advances in computer vision to analyse and identify the shapes and colours in pictures, but it is also slowly discovering connections between objects on its own. For example, the computers have figured out that zebras tend to be found in savannahs and that tigers look somewhat like zebras.

In just over four months, the network of 200 processors has identified 1500 objects and 1200 scenes and has connected the dots to make 2500 associations.

Some of NEIL’s computer-generated associations are wrong, such as “rhino can be a kind of antelope,” while some are odd, such as “actor can be found in jail cell” or “news anchor can look similar to Barack Obama.”

NEIL uses advances in computer vision to analyse and identify the shapes and colours in pictures, but it is also slowly discovering connections between objects on its own.

But Gupta said having a computer make its own associations is an entirely different type of challenge than programing a supercomputer to do one thing very well, or fast. For example, in 1985, Carnegie Mellon researchers programed a computer to play chess; 12 years later, a computer beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match.

Catherine Havasi, an artificial intelligence expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said humans constantly make decisions using “this huge body of unspoken assumptions,” while computers don’t. She said humans can also quickly respond to some questions that would take a computer longer to figure out.

“Could a giraffe fit in your car?” she asked. “We’d have an answer, even though we haven’t thought about it” in the sense of calculating the giraffe’s body mass.

Robert Sloan, an expert on artificial intelligence and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago, said the NEIL approach could yield interesting results because just using language to teach a computer “has all sorts of problems unto itself.”

“What I would be especially impressed by is if they can consistently say ‘zebra, zebra, zebra’ if they see the animal in different locations,” Sloan said of the computers.

Gupta is pleased with the initial progress. In the future, NEIL will analyse vast numbers of YouTube videos to look for connections between objects.

“When we started the project, we would not sure it would work,” he said. “This is just the start.”

Neither Mountain View, California-based Google nor the Office of Naval Research responded to questions about why they’re funding NEIL, but there are some hints. The Naval Research website notes that “today’s battlespace environment is much more complex than in the past” and that “the rate at which data is arriving into the decision-making system is growing, while the number of humans available to convert the data to actionable intelligence is decreasing.”

In other words, computers may make some of the decisions in future wars. The Navy’s website notes: “In many operational scenarios, the human presence is not an option.”

NEIL’s motto is “I Crawl, I See, I Learn,” and the researchers hope to keep NEIL running forever. That means the computer might get a lot smarter.

Or it might not.

10 Must-Watch Videos for Flipped Learning

“Meris Stansbury has compiled an offering of 10 great videos for fostering flipped learning, in the following eSchool News article. Is Pluto a real planet? How vast and uncharted is the world inside a drop of water? What do we really know about Vatican City? What if the Death Star actually existed? These burning questions and more are answered in the videos below.”

via eSchool News

From STEM videos to history lessons, YouTube can be a one-stop shop for flipped learning

If must-implement educational trends were narrowed down to a small group, flipped learning would be among the top contenders. But flipped learning doesn’t have to consist of videos of a hand on a whiteboard, and it doesn’t have to discuss how to multiply fractions in monotone—after all, there’s a whole YouTube world out there.

Part of the fun of flipped learning is introducing brief questions on relevant curriculum topics that students can discuss or use to create projects during class. For instance, based on historical definitions, should Pluto be a planet? If some products in the U.S. are identified through numbers, could replication of those numbers be made illegal? In other words, could a number itself be illegal?

It’s these types of short videos, based in research and made for education (with interesting animations and vivid explanations), that can be a solid foundation for inquiry-based learning. They also can provide real-world examples of what’s being taught in schools.

Do you have a favorite video you show your students? Do you think flipped learning can help in inquiry-based or project-based learning? Let us know in the comment section below.

1. Life in a drop of water (Science): A drop of pond water viewed through a microscope; filmed and edited with a smart phone. Ask students to try and identify what they’re seeing in the drop.

2. What if the Death Star was real? (STEM): Using dimensions and design specs from the Star Wars website, imagine how the Death Star might impact Earth. A bit of fun with Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham.

3. Illegal numbers (Civics/Math): Could some numbers be made illegal in the U.S.? This video features Dr. James Grime:https://twitter.com/jamesgrime

4. What if you were born in space? (Biology/Health): Delve into how gravity and other natural forces can affect the body once in space. Provides a look at current science research.

5. CrashCourse U.S. History Part 1 (History/World Culture): A very animated historian discusses the Native Americans who lived in what is now the U.S. prior to European contact. John Green also discusses early Spanish explorers, settlements, and what happened when they didn’t get along with the indigenous people. The story of their rocky relations has been called the Black Legend.

6. Vatican City explained (History/World Culture): Using drawings and historical photos, this historian simplifies world issues in a fun way, allowing for open discussion.

7. Super expensive metals (Science): Inside a Noble Metals factory, where even the dust on your shoes is too valuable to ignore! Make the Periodic Table of Elements come to life.

8. Grammaropolis noun song (English/Language Arts): Think of this as an updated Schoolhouse Rock.

9. Negative numbers introduction (Math): Khan Academy incorporates real world examples into a very basic math concept explanation.

10. Is Pluto a planet? (History/Science): Learn about how Pluto came to be called a planet based on historical definitions and scientific inventions, to its eventual fall from the planet category.

A Better List Of Ideas For Project-Based Learning

via TeachThought

At TeachThought, we’re huge fans of project-based learning.

While there is no magic bullet of practice, program, or framework that automatically produces progressive and effective learning, what makes project-based learning exceptional is its flexibility. As it is, first and foremost, simply a curriculum planning tool, so much other “good stuff” that can support learning (game-based learning, learning simulations, place-based education, self-directed learning, etc.) can all be “embedded” in project-based learning.

With PBL, there is no “either/or” proposition: anything from open-ended, play-based learning to data-driven, research-based instructional environments can all use PBL effectively.

While there are all kinds of great resources necessary to “run” PBL (including those from Edutopia.org), from apps to planning templates and more, the genesis of a great project is the idea itself–the purpose and/or audience of the project itself.

Below, we’ve shared dozens of ideas for projects, and we’re going to constantly update the list with new ideas, suggestions from our community, resources, etc. In that way, this page can become the ultimate guide for project-based learning in your classroom. The focus will be on the ideas for the projects themselves, but we’ll also include apps, tools, and other “stuff” you’ll need to effectively realize this approach in your classroom.

6 Posts To Get Started With Project-Based Learning

1. The Difference Between Projects & Project-Based Learning
2. 5 Types Of Project-Based Learning
3. 11 Tools For Better Project-Based Learning
4. 4 Keys To Designing A Project-Based Learning Classroom
5. 23 Ways To Use The iPad In The 21st Century PBL Classroom
6. 12 Timeless Project-Based Learning Resources

The Constantly-Updated List Of Ideas For Project-Based Learning

Note: This list will constantly be updated with new ideas, tools, and resources. As such, some fields will be empty, updated, or removed as we build and improve the list over time. Note that the list is intentionally not separated into “content areas,” as many of the projects could be approached from a number of angles (the math of design, the language of planning, and so on).

1. Idea: Create an interactive family tree with voice-overs from living family members, and added

Consider Using: VoiceThread, YouTube

2. Idea: Design an app with a specific purpose for a specific audience

3. Idea: Inventory the world’s most compelling apps in an elegant and browsable interface

4. Idea: Design a modern library using a problem-solution format, and annotate its critical features

5. Idea: Solve the problem of negative news

6. Idea: Using the best thinking of major world civilizations, design the perfect civilization. Identify critical characteristics, resources, and habits, etc.

7. Idea: Mash Reddit with facebook with YouTube (or any 3 social media channels)

8. Idea: Help local businesses increase environmental sustainability (e.g., reduce waste)

Audience: Your neighborhood, the businesses themselves

9. Idea: Identify, analyze, and visualize recurring themes in human history; then contextualize those themes in modern society

10. Idea: Make a compelling case of connectivism (student chooses “angle”: intellectual, recreational, etc.)

11. Idea: Make a compelling case for independence (student chooses “angle”: intellectual, recreational, etc.)

12. Idea: Leverage the wisdom of nursing homes

13. Idea: Artfully express, analyze the causes-effects of, or otherwise evaluate population growth

14. Idea: Debate the relationship between technology and humanity from a historical (Mary Shelley?) or modern (Steve Jobs?) perspective

15. Idea: Reverse global warming, or re-imagine major coastal cities in light of 6 degrees of warming

16. Idea: Measure the sociological impact of social media on local communities (using a self-selected parameter)

17. Idea: Design an alert system to halt the spread of deadly disease

Audience: Local, national, and international governments; local communities; medical professionals

Considering Using: Plague, Inc.

18. Idea: Plant and manage a garden to feed local homeless/hungry

19. Idea: Solve a personal problem. Brainstorm personal challenges by proximity to learner: first by individual, then family, neighborhood, city, state, and so on. Then have learner select one, design a scale for solving it, and sketch out a plan to make it happen.

20. Idea: Analyze the impact of great architecture–or lack thereof–on a community

21. Idea: Dissect the anatomy of viral web content

22. Idea: Help a local business that does “good work” market itself to younger audiences. Create a proposal, present to business, refine proposal based on feedback

23. Idea: Artfully illustrate the global history of civil rights

24. Idea: Visually demonstrate the galaxy’s behavior from changing a single parameter (e.g., the gravity level of a single planet)

Considering Using: The Universe Sandbox simulation

25. Idea: Design the next Google (the next method of content and data discovery)   

26. Idea: Re-imagine a popular social media platform based on the success of another; carry design through to prototyping and/or marketing phase

27. Idea: Plan a Mars colony using current data of the Martian landscape and atmosphere

28. Idea: Create a photo documentary, then turn that into a film documentary, then turn that into a short eBook

29. Idea: Define, Analyze, and Visualize an Abstract Concept (Wisdom, Freedom, Conflict, etc.)

30. Idea: Develop a feasible response to potential asteroid–> earth collisions

31. Idea: Analyze the cause and effect of low voter turnout on both democracy, and the health of the local community

32. Idea: Re-imagine the American Constitution–or similar governing documents–as if they were designed today

33. Idea: Perform a cause-effect analysis on consumerism

34. Idea: Create and publish a weekly or monthly podcast on a self-selected topic based on market data

35. Idea: Film a documentary on an under-served social issue few people see

36. Idea: Imagine and articulate a community where neighbor-to-neighbor and neighborhood-to-neighborhood interaction was necessary to survive

37. Idea: Design a better physical book

38. Idea: Identify an emerging musical genre, write a song that fits in that genre, produce a video, design a website to promote it

39. Idea: Design a school, including new content areas, grading, collaboration, and community involvement

40. Idea: Create and manage a YouTube channel for a self-determined and authentic purpose

Considering Using: YouTube

41. Idea: Solve your parent’s problem of being too busy

Audience: Your parents, of course.

Consider Using: A mini-documentary, analytics, etc.

42. Idea: Analyze, visualize, and socialize the long-term impact of coal on the environment

43. Idea: Revise the United Nations in some way, shape, or form to better respond to international crises

44. Idea: Answer the following question: What would (insert historical figure here) say about (insert relevant social issue here)?

45. Idea: Re-conceive iTunes as an aggregation tool and player for traditional literary forms (e.g., poetry, fiction, etc.)

46. Idea: Redesign your city to reduce the need for extended commutes

47. Idea: Research all modern tools sued to provide clean water access, then design a better tool

48. Idea: Study local land regions and resources to identify a geological-based response to the Zombie Apocalypse

Consider Using: Google Earth

How Do We Raise Critical Thinkers?

via Mentoring Minds

As we venture into the 21st century, we as a society are faced with more innovation and challenge than ever before. We now live in an interconnected world, where the Internet and global communications are simultaneously uniting and isolating us as a society. How do we raise critical thinkers to best face the challenges that face our modern society? What changes in education methods should be implemented to  create a better learning environment for these budding minds? Check out this great infographic by Mentoring Minds to find out!

Click here to download an 11X17 version of the “Developing 21st-Century Critical Thinkers” infographic.

Can Video Games Alter Society.. in a Good Way?

via Huffington Post

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

When I’m talking to people about why video games matter, I like to quote one of Woody Allen’s finest pieces of advice: “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” More than almost anything else, showing up matters. You can’t find your talent for football if you never touch a ball. You can’t make friends if you avoid other people. You can’t get the job if you don’t apply. You’ll never write that screenplay if you don’t start typing.

Games are about everyone showing up. In classrooms full of students who range from brilliant to sullen disaffection, it’s games — and often games alone — that I’ve seen engage every single person in the room. For some, the right kind of play can spell the difference between becoming part of something, and the lifelong feeling that they’re not meant to take part.

Why is this? Video games are a special kind of play, but at root they’re about the same things as other games: embracing particular rules and restrictions in order to develop skills and experience rewards. When a game is well-designed, it’s the balance between these factors that engages people on a fundamental level. Play precedes civilization. It spans continents and generations. It’s how we naturally learn the most basic mechanical and social skills — and how, at its best, we can build a safe space for discovering more about ourselves.

In classrooms full of students who range from brilliant to sullen disaffection, it’s games — and often games alone — that I’ve seen engage every single person in the room.

During her talk, Jane McGonigal discusses the top five regrets that people express at the end of their lives. People don’t long for money, status or marble monuments. They wish they’d worked less hard, been better at staying in touch with friends, and more fully expressed their hopes and true selves. They wish they had shown up for more of the stuff that truly matters — and one of the things that games like Jane’s do is create structures and incentives to help people focus on these things while they still have time.

Some people are suspicious of any attempt to manufacture this kind of experience — and I can understand why. I spoke at TED Global 2010 about the ways that video games engage the brain, and in particular the idea of reward structures: how a challenge or task can be broken down and presented to make it as engaging as possible. This can seem a slightly sinister idea: a manipulation that replaces genuine experience with boxes to tick and hoops to jump through. At worst, you end up with a jumble of “badges” and “achievements” dumped on top of a task in a misguided effort to make it fun.

Yet the best games — and the lessons to be learned from them — are far more than this. The world is already full of systems aimed at measuring, motivating and engaging us. And most of them are, by the standards of great games, simply not good enough. From exam grading to health education to professional training to democratic participation, paths towards self-realization and success in the world are often daunting and obscure: journeys only the privileged feel confident setting off along.

If there’s one lesson we should take from games, it’s that we can make this first step vastly easier and more accessible — and can, given sufficient care, prompt people of all backgrounds and abilities towards richer living. This isn’t to say that it’s easy, obvious, or that games embody any royal road towards contentment. What modernity’s potent mix of play and technology does offer, though, is an unprecedented opportunity to know ourselves better — and, in doing so, to master our regrets before they become our destinies.

12 Things You Should Never Do When You Teach Online

via WizIQ

You are never alone when teaching online. As a writer and teacher, I’m here to share my experiences and insights so that you will not hit the ground.

We all know there are a lot of great articles out there on the web that talk about what you should do when you teach online. But sometimes what a new online teacher really needs is a list of what NOT to do when teaching online.

Here are 12 things I recommend that online teachers do not do:

1. Do NOT Design Your Online Classroom like an Obstacle Course

There are a number of things folks need to know when they log-in to your online course for the first time. Students need to be able to see immediately what the course entails: what it covers, how long it takes, how much it costs, and of course, what they need to do to get a good grade or the certificate of completion you’re offering.

Sometimes getting this information out of an online classroom is like running an obstacle course. Students shouldn’t have to leap hurdles to find out how to succeed in a course. Nor should they have to scroll around for a half hour and emerge totally confused. Make your course easy to navigate. If you’ve never put an online course together before, sign up friends and family to check it out before you start teaching. Tell them you’re counting on them to be honest. Then take their comments seriously and rework the course. Remember, student satisfaction—for good or ill—starts in moment one!

2. Do NOT Design Assessments That Are Guaranteed to Fail

Learning assessments, however they are put together, need to be relevant to the material at hand, and they need to move the learning process forward.

About 100 years ago when I was doing my masters in higher education, I took a course from the test construction Prof in my department. It was a required course or I probably would not have taken it. To my surprise I learned a lot from him. He taught us how to construct test items, how to set up checklists for essay grading, and lots of other necessary things. But mostly importantly,  he also taught us how to think of assessment as an important part of the ladder towards end-of-course student success.

To illustrate how easy it was to get seriously off track, he told us a story about a physics Prof who routinely tested his class on the next lesson and not on the one they had just finished. This physics Prof thought he had designed a great test because only the three folks who read ahead got As and everybody else flunked. My test construction Prof tried gently and then firmly to get this physics Prof to see that he hadn’t designed a great test, he had designed anunfair test. And, to add insult to injury, the physics Prof was guaranteeing that he would never know whether his lectures and activities had been effective on a week-by-week basis.

3. Do NOT Minimize Student Choice or Punish Student Interaction

There are two things that most online teachers know about providing students with the opportunity for productive online learning:

1. Feeling as if you have some choice in how you learn, and how you express your learning gives a student a sense of ownership over the process.
2. Feeling as if you are not alone in the classroom framework, but the teacher and all the other students are part of a community to which you also belong helps a student commit to a shared journey towards a learning goal.

But some teachers build classrooms that are so rule-bound, so rigid that learning styles are not accommodated, creativity is not allowed, and collaboration is not encouraged or, even worse, is strictly forbidden.

But you don’t have to go to extremes to kill enthusiasm for your online course. Minimizing student choice can be as simple as refusing to let folks who hate to write film video or record audio responses instead. Punishing student interaction can be as simple as admonishing students every time they stray from course materials to personal experience in a discussion forum.

4. Do NOT Refuse to Answer Students’ Questions

Okay, so you’ve designed your course, and the students have signed up, and you think you have all the elements in place that the students need to get through your class, and then you get an email asking about something you think is clearly visible in the syllabi you uploaded to your classroom! It makes you want to gnash your teeth. I know: It’s frustrating. But should you growl at them and send them back to your classroom to figure it out for themselves? Well, no.

The best thing to do is just take a deep breath and help the student out. Imagine what a bond can be formed between you and your students by pointing them patiently to the link where the information is hiding. Imagine how much better your classroom relationships would be if you just tell them what they need to know and then point them to the link so they can explore further the info you embedded there.

Infinite patience not only breeds well-being in your classroom community, it can also make you feel better in the long run. Instead of giving into your frustration, you helped them when they needed you. That’s a pretty great.

5.  Do NOT Make Your Students Feel Unwelcome in Your Classroom

This seems like a no-brainer. You’re glad they’ve signed up. You’re excited to meet them, and then you do something that makes them wish they’d never gotten involved in your course. Giving in to Pitfall #4 is probably the number one way you can make a student feel unwelcome, but if you do some of the following, well, they’re going to get that same message, maybe even louder.

So, here are some more things you shouldn’t do if you want everybody to feel welcome:

1. Do NOT develop long lists of rules for the classroom that restrict the ways in which your students can interact with you and the other folks in the class unnecessarily.
2. Do NOT turn off the chat box in the live class.
3. Do NOT forget to set up a sharing forum or introduction discussion on the Coursefeed or in a forum on your Moodle or elsewhere on a social media site.
4. Do NOT forget to include a slide welcoming them in the Virtual Classroom or the class will launch and all they’ll see is a blank screen.
5. Do NOT be late to your own virtual class if you can possibly avoid it and especially if you do not have a welcoming slide.
6. Do NOT forget to say hello to the latecomers even if the speed at which your chat box flies by requires that you issue a periodic generic “hello” to the late arrivals.
7. Do NOT answer the folks who can’t hear you in the Virtual Classroom by talking instead of typing into the chat box because if you’re trying to tell them how to fix their problem verbally, well, uh, they can’t hear you.
8. Do NOT grump at your students in public.
9. And finally, as a wise Dean of Faculty once told me, when you have to criticize your students, do NOT fail to construct your criticism like a kind-hearted “sandwich” of feedback, that is, by preceding the correction or criticism with authentic praise and following it up with encouragement.

6. Do NOT Be Absent from Your Online Classroom

I once knew a very new online teacher who, when he was starting out, was just so busy that he forgot when his online class was supposed to start. Unfortunately half the students withdrew before one of the remaining students alerted the office that he was a “no show” in his own class. When the office got in touch with him and reminded him that his class had already started, he was mortified. Nonetheless, later on in the same semester, he lost track of time again. More than two weeks passed by the time the students alerted the office that he had disappeared again. Sheepishly he got into his classroom at once and did his best to make up for lost time for the rest of the semester. These days he’s not such an absent-minded professor.

Of course there are times when life intervenes unexpectedly and that can’t be helped—an “emergency” plan in place is a good idea to cover those times—but there are actually some online teachers who think it’s okay to set up an online course and then disappear for days, even weeks at a time. In reality, though, if an online teacher forgets that their first duty is to be there, the students start feeling very alone in the process. Most of them will pick up and leave, if they can, and that’s not a good thing for their learning, for the faculty member or for the school.

7. Do NOT Monopolize the Conversation

Other online teachers have the opposite problem; they seem to be in the online classroom 24/7, responding to every comment made by every student.

Even the Virtual Classroom version of this hovering behavior can be very problematic. For example, if you have set up a live class for 60 minutes, you have a series of points that you need to get through so that students can complete their assignments. If, instead, you spend the entire hour starting and stopping your presentation so you can respond to absolutely everything in the chat, your students are likely to come out of the experience feeling like they’ve been watching a never-ending pretty-much-pointless tennis match. If they got up at 4am for the class, they’re going to be really unhappy.

In a course management system, on the other hand, whether you’re on the WizIQ Coursefeed page or in a Moodle discussion forum, not only will you wear yourself out trying to provide a substantive answer to every single question, you will, more than likely, scare your students away. They will feel the pressure to contribute as much as you do to the classroom, and become overwhelmed with the amount of communicating they think you expect them to do. Or, worse yet, they will wonder why they’re bothering to respond at all, when you’re going to be there seven seconds later correcting them and elaborating on their points ad infinitum.

A community is a community. It’s not a single voice with an audience who grows increasingly afraid to speak.

8. Do NOT Ignore the Stragglers

Life happens. Some of your students are going to get behind. In a really large course, it’s hard to tell who they are, but in a smaller course or in a course that includes a Moodle classroom or another CMS with reporting functions, it’s really important to keep track of how frequently your students are getting into the mix. Having regular assessments or assignments can help with this too.

Don’t write the stragglers though and say “well, where in the world have you been?” Ask if you can help. See what’s up. It could be that life has gotten complicated for them, and all they need is a welcoming word to get back on track. In a really big class, you can issue periodic encouragement to those who haven’t yet participated in one way or another. You can put up a poll in your next live class, and see what’s up. Is something too difficult? Is something not clear? Is there some way you can help?

The stragglers will feel grateful that you’re as worried about them personally as you are about their progress. If it’s a really big course with very little built-in reporting and you have to issue those periodic, generic encouragements, the students who are keeping up will the course will see that you really care about all the students in the classroom. If they know some of the stragglers, they may be inspired to help get them back on track. It’s a good thing all around.

9. Do NOT Drop Your Guest Speakers or Your Student Presenters Off the Deep End

“Dropping someone off the deep end” is an English-language metaphor for pushing someone into a task that you are pretty sure they are not ready to do. It comes from the description of what happens when you force somebody who doesn’t know how to swim into water that is much deeper than the person is tall.

In a live class this can be a real time-waster. I’ve seen this happen when some otherwise amazing online teachers fail to take the time to familiarize their guest speakers or their student presenters with the WizIQ Virtual Classroom.

In the case of guest speakers, what usually happens is that the first 10 minutes—or more—of the live class is totally taken up with the teacher training the guest speaker to use the system. Sometimes the difficulties in completing this training are so problematic that the class is terminated early and rescheduled, or worse yet, continues on while students are complaining mightily in the chat box about all the lost time. Some guest speakers just can’t find the time to do a practice session before their lecture, but it’s worth trying to keep the training out of the live class whenever possible.

For student presenters there’s really no excuse. You’re in the online classroom with them on a regular basis. It’s easier to schedule a training session if they feel they need one. If they have do something other than run their slideshow and give a talk in the live class—like make an audio or a video file and upload it to the classroom—make sure you provide them with the tutorials and the links to get them what they need to accomplish the task.

Teaching folks to swim instead of dropping them off the deep end really pays off. Not only are your guest speakers and student presenters happier about their experience, but you also let all your students know that you’re thinking ahead about what people need to be successful. That kind of attention to detail on your part can strengthen the learning community you’re trying to build.

The Final Three Pitfalls

Once your class is over there are three things you must not do or your next online course will not be better than the one you’ve just completed. They are:

10. Do NOT Ignore Feedback on Your Performance

11. Do NOT Assume Your Content Knowledge Needs No Refreshing

12. Do NOT Assume You Have Nothing to Learn from Some More Online Teacher Training

The first one can be a killer. Getting a course evaluation from your students is key to improvement. Make sure your students are asked specific questions about the structure and design of the course, your attention to detail, your teaching techniques, the depth and breadth of the content you provided, the assessments you built in, what they liked and what they did not like. If you’re teaching a series of live classes on WizIQ encourage your students to give feedback anonymously as the last live class ends. Not getting feedback on your course will seriously hamper your ability to improve the course the next time you teach it.

Similarly make sure you’re plugged into the subject matter area that you’re teaching and get out there and see what’s new. Sometimes that’s as easy as taking somebody else’s course on the subject, or spending a couple of days reading around in your favorite journals or watching YouTube videos from colleagues and experts to make sure you’ve got a handle on how things changed while you were teaching.

As for making sure that you are also honing your craft as a teacher: Taking professional development courses is a wonderful way to maintain your own enthusiasm for what you are doing. Not only are you exposed to new technologies and techniques, or perhaps to new learning theory, but finding yourself in a learning community of your peers can help renew your commitment to what you’re doing. You can learn so much by just talking to folks even if what they’re doing is not quite the same as what you’re doing. There’s a lot of creativity out there.

And if you work to renew your commitment to your topic and your method after every class, you will find that your mastery of online teaching best practices will increase. Similarly, the likelihood that you will do any of the things on my list of things not to do will also decrease.

And Now You’re Ready for Best Practices …

For good advice on best practices, here are four sets of links to great discussions of how best to craft an online classroom. The first is put together in the form of a rubric for good teaching. The second one comes from theUniversity of Maryland-University College, an institution that has been in the distance education industry for a very long time. The third one comes from ane-learning course design site. And finally, the last one comes from a website called “Faculty Focus.”

I know you’ve got all those best practices in you! Happy teaching!

Dr. Nancy Zingrone

Dr. Nancy Zingrone has a PhD in psychology from the University of Edinburgh and an MSEd in Higher Education from Northern Illinois University. She is passionate about online education, having learned a significant amount of what she knows about teaching online from the incomparable Dr. Nellie Deutsch and the wonderful folks at WizIQ. Her work background includes more than twenty years in personal and individual differences research, publishing, higher education administration, and adult education.