Eclectic Technology

This post begins "Have you checked your assumptions about student learning at the door?" It then provides 31 research findings that may make you pause and reconsider some of your beliefs. 

* Are there any benefits to "playing scary and violent video games"?

* Can video games impact "disruptive behaviors and enhance positive development in ADHD children"?

* Is it best to teach very young children how to play with a toy or should we allow them to explore on their own?

An additional 28 findings) are provided in this post. 

Through the Wild Web Woods is an online game for teaching basic Internet safety in a fun and friendly fairy tale environment. The game is available in 14 European language versions.

"Decades of research clearly demonstrate that for novices direct, explicit instruction is more effective and more efficient that partial guidance. ..Small group and independent problems and projects can be effective – not as vehicles for making discoveries, but as a means of practicing recently learned content and skills..."

Are mistakes a part of the learning process? If they are, what does this say about our current education system? This post explores these ideas, asking the following questions and following each with a number of responses that explores each question in greater detail. The first section has two questions:

* Why are mistakes important to achieve engagement and learning?

* Why do we avoid mistakes in our current model?

The second section, Turning Mistakes into Learning Opportunities asks one question:

* How can we use learning errors to our advantage?

At the beginning of this post the author speaks of James Joyce, and also does so at the end where she states (referring to Joyce) "a true genius sees all learning as an opportunity to improve and discover. Errors are taken at will. In making mistakes, we can reach new heights and find our true genius." Will schools move in this direction?

Did you know there are more than 1.4 billion students on Earth?

This is just one of the 20 education facts found on this infographic. Learn how many educators there are globally, the number of students in pre-k to high school, the number of jobs expected to require some technology skills in the next decade and much more.

"What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather gnomic answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know."

This article looks at research in this area and provides a list of questions that one might use to have "students assess their own awareness." It also refers to the PISA report, stating “Students who use appropriate strategies to understand and remember what they read, such as underlining important parts of the texts or discussing what they read with other people, perform at least 73 points higher in the PISA assessment—that is, one full proficiency level or nearly two full school years—than students who use these strategies the least."

Prof. James R. Stone argues that the U.S. needs to organize learning opportunities to provide rigorous, world-class technical education to the many disengaged youth now suffering through ever-increasing academic requirements.