Russian Students Launch Lanterns to Mark ‘Day of Knowledge’ Russian students launch paper lanterns during a flashmob action marking ‘Day of Knowledge’ in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 1. The Day of Knowledge marks the beginning of every school year in Russia. (Anatoly Maltsev / EPA) The tracks of launching sky paper lanterns seen in this time exposure photo in St.Petersburg, Russia, late Thursday, Sept. 1 with the Savior of Spilled Blood Cathedral in the background. Some hundreds of lanterns were launched into the sky from Mars field as a flashmob action. (Dmitry Lovetsky / AP) Spread your love! Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? | People & Places. Learning Styles Debunked: There is No Evidence Supporting Auditory and Visual Learning, Psychologists Say. News Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner?
Chances are, you’ve pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. And you’re not alone— for more than 30 years, the notion that teaching methods should match a student’s particular learning style has exerted a powerful influence on education. The long-standing popularity of the learning styles movement has in turn created a thriving commercial market amongst researchers, educators, and the general public.
The wide appeal of the idea that some students will learn better when material is presented visually and that others will learn better when the material is presented verbally, or even in some other way, is evident in the vast number of learning-style tests and teaching guides available for purchase and used in schools. Nearly all of the studies that purport to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity.
Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade. If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent. Chances are just that good that, in spite of anything you do, little Oliver or Abigail won’t end up a doctor or lawyer — or, indeed, anything else you’ve ever heard of. According to Cathy N. Davidson, co-director of the annual MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competitions, fully 65 percent of today’s grade-school kids may end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet. The contemporary American classroom, with its grades and deference to the clock, is an inheritance from the late 19th century. So Abigail won’t be doing genetic counseling. For those two-thirds of grade-school kids, if for no one else, it’s high time we redesigned American education. As Ms.
In her galvanic new book, “Now You See It,” Ms. Don’t worry: She doesn’t conclude that students should study Photoshop instead of geometry, or Linux instead of Pax Romana. Ms. What if, indeed. Life on a piece of paper. “If you want to kill a child’s passion in anything, set them an exam on it” I think it was the late Professor Ted Wragg who coined that phrase. About ten years ago I wrote an article moaning about the culture of exams in the UK. This was around the time I was approaching what were nominally to be my university finals. This was to be my tenth summer in a row that I had faced one sort of examination or another – five of which involved a public exam of one sort or another For those of you not familiar with the impact that all of these exams can have on children, have a look at some of the exam-related posts at In the run up to my GCSEs, I’d been schooled into believing that a successful life was something along the lines of: Born – nursery – good school – great college – top university – graduate job – promotions – marry – children – retire – die.
This mindset also meant that falling off said path condemned a person to a life of failure. Like this: Video. The true nature of Steiner (Waldorf) education. Mystical barmpottery at taxpayers’ expense. Part 1. The part 2 is The Steiner Waldorf cult uses bait and switch to get state funding. Part 2. The part 3 is Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3. The problem of racism. I have to admit that until a few years ago I had thought of Steiner schools as being rather cuddly experiments in progressive education.
Perhaps a bit like Montessori schools or A.S. But then I discovered that they advocate "biodynamic farming". Faceless dolls used in Steiner schools. The matter has acquired new urgency now that Steiner schools are seeking government support via the Tory’s "free schools" programme. I’ve wanted to write about it for a while, but was deterred by the sheer amount of information. "Anthroposophical medicine: followers of the mystic barmpot, Rudolf Steiner, for whom nothing whatsoever seems to strain credulity" Luckily I became acquainted with two of the most knowledgeable people on the topic.
The true nature of Steiner Waldorf education "..what do you want your school to be? Anthroposophy Follow-up. Why a school beats Facebook: how behaviors spread through networks. We all spend much of our days engaged in social networks, whether it’s online, at work, or out with our friends, and we have a tendency to pick up new habits through these connections. A new study in Science set out to determine how behaviors travel through these social networks, and how the topology of the networks affects the diffusion of the behaviors. The experiment studied two different structures of social networks. In "random" networks, individuals are connected to others scattered throughout the network by connections that are called "long ties. " In more "clustered" networks, social ties exist mostly between individuals that are close together in the network; there are few (if any) long ties connecting individuals from different topological areas.
In some situations, such as disease transmission, spreading occurs more efficiently in a random network than it does in a clustered network, since the long ties promote quick spread throughout the network. Then, the experiment began. How to become a big e-learning nerd by mistake « Finite Attention Span. Inherit a class. Inherit a class containing a really, really, really dully, repetitive, and entirely necessary component. One that the students must repeat ad nauseam, because rote-learning is the only thing that’s going to make a difference. Anything involving students learning how to drive a piece of software will be perfect. Teach that class for a decade. Serve out another year of repetition, swearing to yourself that This Will Be The Last Time, Damn It.
Choose a suitable moment during the summer months to crack. Watch your colleagues savour the idea. Gird your loins to achieve this thing. Get recommendations. Cultivate your Learning Development people. I mean, failing that, there are a gazillion text and video tutorials out there, not to mention some enormously helpful people on Twitter. Recognise that you are on a learning curve. Swear. Become a virtuoso of the panic-save, performing Ctrl+S reflexively in your sleep, every three minutes. Attend a workshop on Adobe Captivate. Wrong.