New Study: Engage Kids With 7x the Effect
In education literature, "engagement" is a linchpin word, routinely cited as essential. Yet many experts offhandedly provide vague definitions of the term, or skip defining it altogether. So what exactly is engagement? It depends on whom you ask. By adding the word "engaged," we mean to distinguish between the skilled by rote and unsophisticated kind of academic literacy that many "successful" students master, and the more analytic, critical, and discipline specific ways of making meaning emblematic of engaged learners. Adam Fletcher’s definition is succinct: "Students are engaged when they are attracted to their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work." The origins of the term hail back to its mid-17th century association with fencers. Benefits of Engagement According to multiple research studies, engaged students . . . In contrast, disengagement . . . Research-Supported Methods to Engage Students Tell us how you engage students.
Text Messaging in Class May Affect College Students' Learning | Global Digital Citizen Foundation
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2012) www.sciencedaily.com College students who frequently text message during class have difficulty staying attentive to classroom lectures and consequently risk having poor learning outcomes, finds a new study accepted for publication in the National Communication Association's journal Communication Education. "We know from our past research that college students who are regular text users habitually engage in text messaging during class lectures," said the study's principal author, Fang-Yi Flora Wei, Ph.D., assistant professor of broadcast communications at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. "Now we see that in-class texting partially interferes with a student's ability to pay attention, which prior studies show is necessary for effective cognitive learning." In the new study, University of Pittsburgh-Bradford students who were enrolled in selected undergraduate general education classes completed an anonymous questionnaire at the end of the semester.
Taking Notes By Hand May Be Better Than Digitally, Researchers Say
Laptops are common in lecture halls worldwide. Students hear a lecture at the Johann Wolfang Goethe-University on Oct. 13, 2014, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images Laptops are common in lecture halls worldwide. As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. "When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can," Mueller tells NPR's Rachel Martin. Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. But the students taking notes by hand still performed better.
Autism: How Taylor Swift helps Fletcher, 8, learn
Updated Like most kids, Fletcher Cox loves pop music. Key points: The number of kids registered for home schooling has doubled in some statesMost special needs schools only admit children with an IQ below 70Some families of children on the spectrum say home schooling is their only choice But for this eight-year-old, who is on the autism spectrum, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande are his whole world. So much so that his mum Sarah-Jane Cox has built his home-school curriculum around his music idols. "If I were to say, 'we've got four oranges and six oranges. "But if I said to him, 'Madonna's on the stage. The decision to remove Fletcher from mainstream school two years ago was not an easy one for Ms Cox. "I did it out of desperation. "It was just really sad. "If you'd have seen the fear and absolute anxiety in my child — the actual terror of sending him to school — I couldn't do it again." Now she can educate Fletcher in a way she believes works for his mind. "I understand him.
Memory palaces, mnemonics and music — how you can build a magnificent memory
Imagine you're at dinner with friends and you've just been introduced to the person next to you. Would you remember their name? Before she began to train her memory, Australian memory champion Anastasia Woolmer says she would have had no chance. She worried that she had a shoddy memory in general. "At school, I was always the kid who didn't feel like I picked up the information, to an extent where I didn't even try because I was just completely away with the fairies," she says. So, how did she go from "away with the fairies" to becoming one of Australia's top memory athletes? Inspired by a book Ms Woolmer says her path to a magnificent memory began when her husband brought home a book called Moonwalking with Einstein, written by journalist Jonathan Foer. The book was about memory competitions — where people battle to see who can remember the longest strings of random numbers or shuffled playing cards. "I definitely didn't think that [memory] was something that you could change. Download 40 MB
