The traditional lecture of yesteryear—complete with dusty chalkboards and bearded professors—long held a monopoly in the education industry, but with the advent of modern technology this standard has shifted. “The New York Times” recently reported on one of the newest phenomena in education, which involves using digital media called video-on-demand broadcasts (commonly referred to as "VODcasts") to give students engaging access to lectures from virtually anywhere.

Keywords: 
tools, techonology, education


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


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

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

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

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

 

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

My oldest son: 

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

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

Keywords: 
intelligence tests, IQ, emotional intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How does this work?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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