Does this count as Student Engagement?

I came across this video, and thought it was hilarious, and a great way to bring humour into a classroom.

 The teachers name is Matthew Weathers, and he has a number of different videos where he plays video "pranks" on his students, what a great digital project.

Self Directed Learning in the "Age of Information"

This was an infographic that was posted to the PIDP forum on "The Self Directed/Determined/Regulated Learner" by Adam Neave.

 

 Initially I was going to post on how I thought it was a great model for vocational training, but as I read the article it came from, it drove me to pursue a topic that I feel is quite controversial, which is cell phones in the classroom.

"One research paper suggests the majority of schools are still treating cellphones as a scourge and banning the devices outright both in and out of class.
But that study and a growing number of boards say they’ve had more success once deciding to stop fighting the technological tide and find ways to incorporate cellphones into schools."

Outright bans on cellphones are not practical and almost impossible to effectively enforce.
So the question is how to manage the use of them in the classroom, to minimize their distraction, but still make them available to tap into as a resource.

One example of this is allowing students to have their phones on silent, face down, in plain sight.

A number of tools exist to help facilitate the use of phones in the classroom through apps that allow instructors to give assignments, quizzes, feedback, and even poll the students on topics.
Socrative, Verso, Google Forms, Infuse Learning, Kahoot, etc... are all examples of tools that utilize phones not only in the classroom, but also outside of the classroom.

It also creates a tool with access to an infinite amount of information. There are few questions in life that cannot be answered with a simple Google search, and encouraging students to utilize ALL of the tools available to them makes them better learners. This can be as simple as looking up the definition of a word they don't understand or finding complex formulas they don't remember "off the top of their head".

Properly managed, cell phones and other technology can be a powerful resource in learning, both for students as well as teachers. It facilitates the bridge between teaching and self-learning.

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/self-directed-learning/the-four-stages-of-the-self-directed-learning-model/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/should-schools-welcome-cell-phones/

How memory works.

This was a great video posted by another PIDP student. Here is a link to his blog.
While it comes across as a kids explanation, it summarizes the whole process pretty well.

While it is pretty accurate, here is a great article that breaks down the explanation and elaborates on some of the theories that are shared in the video.

Can we learn to remember?

There is an interesting conversation going on regarding memory in the PIDP forum, and I just happened to come across this article on the BBC around the same time.

"A good memory is something you could learn and you could train (for)," 

"And if you use these strategic mnemonic training memory strategies you can really considerably increase your memory, even if you have a very bad memory at the start." - Dr Martin Dresler

In this article they teach the memorization skills of "World Memory Champions" to regular people and found that with the right training the regular people could develop memorization skills equal to the "pros".

They also did brain scans of participants to compare the brain activity of the two groups, but found only subtle differences in connectivity patterns across a large number of brain regions...no single region stood out.

Their conclusion was that the neurobiological differences between memory masters and normal people are not different, and that we can learn to remember.
This was done in a control setting, and the researchers cautioned, "it remains to be seen whether people experience global improvements in everyday memory".

So can memory be taught and learned? Or is the brain a muscle that just needs to be exercised?

High thinking standards

This is a great info-graphic that was shared in one of the discussion threads in PIDP 3250.

Intellectual standards and critical thinking are not limited to the classroom, but are integral in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

While understanding the thinking process is important, what is more critical is where we are getting our information from, and how accurate it is. It is hard to discuss any topic without certain biases playing a role in how the information is presented, and often times, it can be hard to discern fact from opinion.

Regardless of how much we agree with a answer or outcome that aligns with our thinking outcome, there is strong resonance in the old adage, "Take it with a grain of salt".

Perspective - AI Moderating "Toxic" Speech

Google has made a program that analyzes online discussions and allows users to filter out "toxic" comments.
It learns by monitoring discussions moderated by humans and is being promoted as a tool to tackle online security dangers such as extremism and cyberbullying.

With the online forum utilized in PIDP, and two of the recent topics being "debates" and "discussions", it was serendipity when I came across this article, as many of my fellow PIDP students/Instructors felt that discussion or debate getting out of hand was a reason to avoid it.

Learning from Mistakes - Christopher Lowe

This is a video by a fellow PIDP student that was shared on one of the discussion forums.
It does a great job of explaining how mistakes are part of the learning process, how we need to change out attitude towards failures, and embrace them as opportunities to become better.

Learning from Mistakes - Christopher Lowe