Skip to main content

Science of Smart

American RadioWorks
A recent podcast/documentary by American RadioWorks, “The Science of Smart,” explores how research on learning can be applied to instruction and improve outcomes for students. Segment two, “Learning to love tests” and segment three, “Variation is the key to deeper learning” present concepts that can work well with adult learners.

The podcast can be found at the American RadioWorks website:




I also enjoyed the first segment on dual language immersion programs and the new findings that students in such programs actually do better, not worse, than students who are receiving instruction in one language. Years ago, I planned to enroll my sons in the local elementary school's bilingual magnet program. As it turned out, the program was primarily a magnet for students who spoke Spanish rather than English. Such students did not do well on standardized tests given in English, so that particular elementary school had average test scores lower than others in the district. Because the test scores seemed to count for so much and prevented the school from achieving "Distinguished School" recognition, the bilingual program was eliminated before my sons could enroll. Within two years, the school's ratings had improved, they received the Distinguished School recognition, and the principal was promoted and moved on.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blackboard Podcasts

I've been searching for podcasts about Blackboard and have come across a few. Some are too site-specific while others could use a little more polish before I would recommend them to others. However, one podcast I did find to be useful and high quality is Teaching with Blackboard by Jason Rhode at Northern Illinois University. Episode 5, posted last week, discusses how to incorporate RSS feeds into Blackboard using Feed2JS , a website and tool for converting an RSS feed to JavaScript which can be copied and pasted into your Blackboard course. This gives you a relatively easy way to add dynamic content to a course. For many instructors, RSS may be a foreign language, but I think if you listen to the five minute podcast, you will learn enough to get the idea. If you want more, Jason's previous podcast covers RSS and podcasting in more detail.
2 comments
Read more

QuickSource Guides to Blackboard

The Resource Network in Harrisonburg, Virginia, publishes fold out guides to various software applications like MS Office, WordPerfect, Adobe Acrobat and more. They have student and instructor guides to BlackBoard for $4.00 each. Prices are lower if you buy in bulk. I got mine yesterday and they look nice and are easy to read. Each one covers the important things you need to know to use Blackboard as a student or instructor. They are also available through Amazon.com for $4.95 each.
Post a Comment
Read more

Tracking in Moodle forums

Tracking is a feature in Moodle forums which will highlight unread forum messages so you can easily see what is new to you. You can turn tracking on and off for individual forums, but in order to use it, you must first turn it on in your profile. Instructors have the option of turning tracking on or off or making it optional for each forum they create in a course. This means if your instructor turns off tracking, you won't be able to track posts in a forum. The default setting is optional, so each student can decide whether or not to track posts. If you turn on tracking for a forum and you are also subscribed to that forum (receiving copies of posts via email), you will notice that posts you've been emailed will be marked as read once you return to the forum in Moodle. There is no communication between the email message and Moodle –– as long as you are sent the post via email, Moodle will mark it as read. If you aren't going to read forum posts via email, you may want to tu...
Post a Comment
Read more