Brain Based LearningWhere research and technology come together in support of education
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Playing games CAN be educationalJanuary 26, 2010A recent study has found that regularly playing the computer puzzle game tetris can boost planning skills, critical thinking, reasoning and language skills. The study followed a group of adolescent girls for a period of three months and also found growth in the brain cortex, which is a sign of increased grey matter. Sounds interesting! WatchKnow.org – Videos for kidsJanuary 19, 2010Watchknow.org is a website that aims to collect free, educational videos that can be used by teachers in schools and organize them by topic. This allows teachers to find pre-screened videos on specific topics instead of having to spend hours in front of Youtube to find appropriate materials. WatchKnow is a non-profit online community where anyone can create an account and add videos. Most, if not all, of the videos are hosted elsewhere, like Youtube or TeacherTube, and linked to with a brief review at WatchKnow. While the site is young and hasn’t yet hit it’s goal of “millions of great short videos, and other watchable media, explaining every topic taught in schools, in every major language on Earth” it does have a number of excellent, short videos that can be integrated into a lesson. As this site grows, I’m sure it will become an incredible resource for educators. Alice – Through the computer screenJanuary 19, 2010Alice is a 3D environment for easily creating animations using drag and drop tiles, where instructions correspond to standard programming statements. Students focus on understanding concepts behind what they are doing rather than memorizing syntax or debugging typos. Alice is a free program developed by MIT in order to encourage beginning programming students to get past the initial learning curve of programming and develop an interest in the possibilities programming can open up instead of getting stuck on baby steps. Alice was developed to be used by students in high school and college but has been used with children as young as 10. Storytelling Alice is a version that was developed for middle school students, to appeal especially to girls and encourage them to consider a career in computers. I haven’t worked a lot with Alice yet, but I showed it to my 8 year old and 10 year old and they not only thought it was incredibly cool but quickly picked up how to use it on their own. (Hey, what are kids for if not convenient experimental subjects? Anyone have any tips on teaching these tools? Got any student samples you want to share? | |
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). I am also planning a 3 week course this summer for middle school girls to teach them Alice and