A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network - Online Learning By Derek Bruff Last fall, for my first-year writing seminar on the history and mathematics of cryptography, I posted my students' expository-writing essays on our course blog. The assignment had asked students to describe a particular code or cipher that we had not already discussed—how it came to be, how it works, how to crack it, who used it. They described more than a dozen codes and ciphers. It seemed a shame that I might be the only one to read such interesting content, so I asked the students to read and comment on two papers of their peers. About a week later, one of my students arrived at class excited. Online Learning: The Chronicle's 2011 Special Report BROWSE THE FULL ISSUE: News, Commentary, and Data BUY A COPY: Digital and Print Editions at the Chronicle Store Research by Richard Light, the author and Harvard University scholar, and others indicates that when students are asked to write for one another, they write more effectively. Social bookmarking. Back channels.
Teaching the Ten Steps to Better Web Research Why Do Some People Learn Faster? | Wired Science The physicist Niels Bohr once defined an expert as “a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” Bohr’s quip summarizes one of the essential lessons of learning, which is that people learn how to get it right by getting it wrong again and again. Education isn’t magic. Education is the wisdom wrung from failure. A new study, forthcoming in Psychological Science, and led by Jason Moser at Michigan State University, expands on this important concept. The Moser experiment is premised on the fact that there are two distinct reactions to mistakes, both of which can be reliably detected using electroenchephalography, or EEG. The second signal, which is known as error positivity (Pe), arrives anywhere between 100-500 milliseconds after the mistake and is associated with awareness. The experiment began with a flanker task, a tedious assignment in which subjects are supposed to identify the middle letter of a five-letter series, such as “MMMMM” or “NNMNN.”
Culture in Economics and the Culture of Economics: Raquel Fernandez in Conversation with The Straddler Culture in Economics and the Culture of Economics: Raquel Fernández in Conversation with The Straddler On October 17, 2011, The Straddler met with Raquel Fernández at her office at NYU, where she is Professor of Economics. Fernández has been a leader in the study of culture's impact on economic outcomes. Fernández, October 17, 2011 The interaction between culture and economic outcomes did not exist as a legitimate area of work ten years ago. Now this field has really taken off. The methodology of economics is so strong that we have had a large impact on many fields, from political science to sociology and even neuroscience. There is a beauty to the models in and of themselves. So all of the models are going to be flawed, and hopefully policy is going to be the best that you can do given current knowledge. But the people who go and give advice usually end up with a very bad rap in economics. Take the argument we’ve been having recently. Economists don’t have to be free-marketers.
Guide to iMovie <div class="greet_block wpgb_cornered"><div class="greet_text"><div class="greet_image"><a href=" rel="nofollow"><img src=" alt="WP Greet Box icon"/></a></div>Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to <a href=" rel="nofollow"><strong>subscribe to the RSS feed</strong></a> for updates on this topic.<div style="clear:both"></div></div></div> The following steps are included in the “Video” chapter of the forthcoming EPUB eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” This is an example of “quick-edit” videography, which can compliment “no-edit” videography in support of the “ethic of minimal clicks.” This final video, “Learning About NASA Mission Control in Houston,” is available on YouTube. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. On this day..
How to learn to concentrate | Brainframe I wish I had a pound for every parent who said “If only he would just learn to concentrate.” It’s a comment that appears frequently and seems to be at the root of all learning. The fact that “my child can’t concentrate” is blamed for all the problems. There have been studies involving diet, exercise and a number of other factors. For most of us the major cause of lack of concentration can boil down to environment and expectation. It seems obvious to turn off the TV in order to aid concentration. There are few jobs that require absolute concentration. How can we then expect our children to concentrate? I’m not suggesting that every subject is contained in 10 minute blocks but the ability to concentrate is learned over a period of time. Sometimes it seems that “thoroughness” has been overtaken by “learning objectives.” That confidence leads to increased concentration. Small steps each day can lead to giant leaps. I’d much rather see a student who knows multiplication thoroughly.
Six Feet Under: Mapping Tangled Transit Networks Underground Maps Unraveled: Explorations in Information Design is a weighty volume, both rich in content and high in poundage. The author, Maxwell J. Roberts, is a British psychologist who has conducted usability studies of underground rail system maps for over a decade. The book is based on the premise that schematic rail transportation maps, as epitomized by Henry Beck’s groundbreaking diagrammatic 1933 London Underground map, help users more effectively navigate transit systems by simplifying tangled routes and interchanges into a clear gestalt. Given this basic premise, the author has set forth to systematically explore methods for improving the design of diagrammatic transport maps. Henry Beck’s 1933 London Underground map. As a signage designer, I was especially interested in the book’s early chapters on the evolution of the London Underground’s signage, maps, architecture, and publicity into a coordinated whole, thus blazing the trail for contemporary brand identity programs.
Apps in Education Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Are Great for Creativity | Wired Science Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that the false arithmetic statement below becomes true. Did you get it? In this case, the solution is rather obvious – you should move the first “I” to the right side of the “V,” so that the statement now reads: VI = III + III. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people (92 percent) quickly solve this problem, as it requires a standard problem-solving approach in which only the answer is altered. Here’s a much more challenging equation to fix: In this case, only 43 percent of normal subjects were able to solve the problem. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should take a hammer to your frontal lobes. This helps explain a new study led by Mareike Wieth at Albion College. A man has married 20 women in a small town. And here’s another classic puzzle: Marsha and Marjorie were born on the same day of the same month of the same year to the same mother and the same father, yet they are not twins. Did you solve these brain teasers?
Inside TED: the smartest bubble in the world 103inShare Jump To Close Imagine, if you will, a snow globe. What’s inside the snow globe? That snow globe metaphor helped me to understand the TED conference (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design), a yearly happening focused on “ideas worth spreading.” Before I physically went to TED, my only real impression of what the event was like came to me through those short videos. Sticky TOC engaged! Making a snow globe from scratch Making a snow globe from scratch The anarchist and writer Hakim Bey described a Temporary Autonomous Zone (or T.A.Z.) as being "like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it." Those two sentiments don’t describe TED in exact detail, but they come dangerously close. But TED has structure Bey didn’t detail, and a form that is unmistakable and repeatable. Entering the globe
CoSketch.com - Online Whiteboard Collaboration Concentration Exercises for Training and Focusing the Mind By Remez Sasson Concentration exercises sharpen the mind and improve the ability to concentrate. Read the article first, or go right to the concentration exercises below. The Power of Concentration - Practicing Concentration Exercises Sharpening the needle of concentration requires practice, like everything else in life. Do you go to the gym? Have you studied a foreign language? It is the same with developing your concentration. Your mind does not like discipline, and will resist your efforts to discipline it. The choice is yours, to be mastered by the mind and its whims, or to be its master. Below, you will find a few simple concentration exercises. You are not the mind, nor the thoughts that pass through it. Most people believe that they are the mind, and erroneously believe that controlling the mind means holding themselves back and denying their freedom. How to Focus Your MindDoes your attention often wander away? The proof that we are not the mind comes with training.