iPad and the Future of Learning

The field of education is often wasteful and ineffective in its methods. One ray of light on the horizon: plans to use the iPad to deliver interactive "textbooks" that are much cheaper than standard textbooks, and are designed around evidence-based methods, such as John Sweller's cognitive load theory:

The iPad makes it possible to replace static images with interactive puzzles that MacInnis says burn important concepts in to students’ brains better and longer. He showed me a demo learning module that explained the biological concept of cellular mitosis. It starts with a real microscope image of a cell. A caption, simultaneously spoken by a voiceover (They call this karaoke mode. It turns out to help memory better than either text or speech by itself) instructs me to tap the cells nucleus three times to simulate its breakdown. Further steps in the mitosis process require me to pinch, drag or swipe components in the cell after identifying them. When I’m done, I have a memory of having walked through the process physically, rather than just scanning an illustration with my eyes.

The full article can be found here.

Soviet Space Art

The Soviet Union was a blight upon humanity, but credit must be given where it's due: the Soviet propaganda machine produced some great space art:

More here.

Three Generations of Excellence

1. Milton Friedman, Nobel-prize-winning economist, popular defender of free market principles, author of countless papers which influenced the discipline of economics.

2. David Friedman, economist, early defender of anarcho-capitalism, creative anachronist.

3. Patri Friedman, sea-steader, strategist for libertarian anarchism.

And the great thing is, each generation is more freaky that the last!

Rodeo Racism

Career-advice blogger Penelope Trunk tells a heartwarming tale of racism at a Wisconsin rodeo. The highlight: a dreadlock-wearing rodeo clown identifies himself as Barack Obama and makes jokes about not being a U.S. citizen.

Ah, the heartland.

Brain Rules

John Medina's Brain Rules is worthy of the heaps of praise it has been given.

Medina gives clear explanations of some recent brain research related to learning. He avoids the (extremely common) mistake of assuming that we know how to apply this research to achieve results in the classroom, in the absence of further research on the effectiveness of teaching methods inspired by the original brain studies. In other words, a brain rule is not the same thing as a teaching method.

The trick is to generate ideas of which teaching methods to test based on known "brain rules". Then the trick is to figure out how to get teachers to learn to use proven teaching methods effectively. (As you can see, evidence-based instruction still has a long way to go.)

In any event, I have already made two changes to my lectures based on Brain Rules. First, dividing lectures into "chunks" of no longer than ten minutes in length, because of research which shows that human attention lags after about ten minutes. Second, regaining students' attention between chunks using emotionally salient "hooks". (Sex, lies, and death are always good for that.)

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Truly scientific research on teaching is hard to come by. I have found three research programs in education that seem genuinely scientific. The first is John Sweller's cognitive load theory. The second is Robert Pianta's CLASS protocol. Most recently, it seems that Teach for America has adopted evidenced-based methods for assessing teacher performance, as explored in this article in the Atlantic Monthly.

Moscow's Stray Dogs

Via Arts and Letters Daily, an article about the selection pressures which have shaped Moscow's population of stray dogs.