Learning By Observation

"To really understand animals and their behavior you must have an esthetic appreciation of an animal's beauty. This endows you with the patience to look at them long enough to see something." - Konrad Lorenz

Observation is one of the most important tools for innovative thinking, although it is not a simple matter to teach. When observation is done well, it's often because of love, 'flow' or a bit of obsession. If delight isn't there or worse if it's coerced, then it may be just a little bit of going through the motions.

It's not a simple process learning how we learn through observation. In a previous post (here), we've seen how experts can abstract information more quickly through observation, but in other experiments, these researchers also saw how an expert artist was able to direct his seeing (using infrared tracking of eye movements) in a way that might yield more information as well. Compare the infrared tracking movements of the artist vs. non-artist below. Look how different the artist viewed the face, encircling the eyes and face, almost like brushstrokes.



Now here's another interesting tidbit we can learn about learning by observation - it's not always conscious. In the McGill study below, researchers found that distraction did not interfere with people's ability to learn a motor movement by observation. The resesarchers hypothesize that the learning process somehow involves the development of internal representations - so that even if you're distracted while you're watching, it can be demonstrated that you still are able to learn. It's interesting to think about the sort information that comes in that is not entirely conscious - perhaps its this sort of information that gets kicked up with insight-based or non-deductive thinking.



Learning By Observation McGill pdf>
Newsletter About McGill Study>
Artist Seeing Infrared

Disappointing Trial with Phonomena

We just had an opportunity to try out the new software Phonomena, and we're sorry to say that it is disappointing. Apparently Mindweavers is interested in making adjustments in their program in the future, but in its current form we would not recommend it. There is no on-screen help for a child, no separation of games into manageable levels, and a loud and very irritating buzzer that will be difficult for many children to tolerate. If you miss a 'b' or 'd' sound, the programs blasts this grating sound at you. Apparently there's not even a way to turn it off? Are the folks at Phonomena aware that people with auditory discrimination problems may also have auditory hypersensitivities? We hope that Phonomena is able to make adjustments in their program because a low cost option to Fast Forword is very much needed. For now, though, Earobics might be the only option, but this program has its limitations as well. (Phonomena - if you're reading, we'd be happy to re-review your software if any changes are made to it).

Brain Break: Knossos Games

Knossos Games (mazes, classic puzzles) are originally from the Johns Hopkins Center for Talent Development magazine, Imagine. Have fun and have a great weekend.
Knossos Games

Visualizing Intelligence?

In this recent Neuroimage paper, Geake and Hansen raise the possibility that creative analogical thinking and crystallized intelligence (IQ) are not as different as one might think. using the Copycat Project (Hofstadter and Mitchell), researchers found that sites important for the generation of insightful analogies were ones that are already known to be interesting - the frontal lobes (reasoning, deciding), parietal lobes (imagery, representations), and cingulate (conflict, selection)..yellow arrows added below.



But what was surprising was how areas associated with fluid analogies (frontal, parietal activation) correlated with verbal IQ.



Fluid Analogies Paper
Analogies in Gifted Education - Making Connections
Humor, Analogy, and Metaphor in Teaching
More Technical Paper on Analogical Thinking

Eye Contact in Autism

Here's an interesting study that found that autistic subjects experienced greater amygdala (emotions) activation with direct eye gaze than non-autistic subjects. The study also found that autistic subjects were not more likely to look at 'mouths' than 'eyes' as had been found in a different study looking at motion pictures. See a previous post on the Visual Side of Autism here. Direct eye contact can also overwhelm young children's visual working memories. This may happen to some people with autism as well.

Strong Amygdala Activation in Autism

Saving the Family Dinner

The research is in. Having dinner regularly together with your kids seems to be good for every good thing - lower risk of depression and suicidal thoughts, low risk of smoking, alcohol, or marijuana use, higher likelihood of healthy eating, fewer eating disorders, and better grades.

According to a Harvard study, family dinners were more important than play, storytime, or other family events for building vocabulary. And "families that engaged in extended discourse at the dinner table, like story telling and explanations, rather than one-phrase comments, like 'eat your vegetables,' had children with better language skills, said Dr. Catherine Snow, a professor of education at Harvard and the researcher of the study. Parents should be encouraged to use adult-level vocabulary and encourage back-and-forth conversation with their kids. It also helps social skills. Today, 65% of families with kids under the age of 6 have dinner together 5 or so nights per week, but that drops to 50% if a family has kids age 12 to 17.

As a kid, we always got together for family dinners at our house. My dad was a big storyteller and with 4 kids, it really got busy with everyone debating current events and defending opinions. We could also try out new ideas, tell jokes, and see what everyone else was up to. These dinners were great.

Once I had my own family and both of us were working, it was harder than I thought. Ultimately we fought for it, and we won. For some families, especially in the teen years, this gets harder and harder to achieve. Stick to your guns as much as possible though. Your kids may surprise you. They may begin inviting their friends to the dinner too.

Families that dine together
Vocabulary and Family Meals
Less Substance Abuse, Depression, School Failure

Seeing WASL Results

The Seattle Times recently reported that parents are permitted to see their children's WASL reports. This may be important for children who were surprised by failing scores. In general, it may be helpful seeing why children are having trouble on standardized or regular classroom tests. Sometimes it is because of poor test saavy, including 'careless' mistakes, bad time planning, or the need for accommodations in the setting of disabilities. Don't forget too, that OSPI is releasing a third of WASL items every year - so students can practice on actual items and become more familiar with the format and expectations of the test.

Seeing WASLs
Released WASL Items

Caffeinated Cola May Make Kids Hyperactive

Highlights:

"As little as three-fourths of a can of caffeinated soda makes kids act out," says researcher Alan R. Hirsch, MD, neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.

On teacher questionnaires, first graders were much more likely to be 'squirmy', impudent and sassy, and attention seeking if they drank caffeinated soda. The caffeine also made the children want to drink more too. So, no caffeine!

Caffeinated Cola May Make Kids Hyperactive

Different Ways to Visualize and Visualization in Education

The reference below is a recent paper by Marcel Just's group finding that the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is more strongly activated by geometric imagery determinations (shape, size), compared to other imagery involving touch like roughness or hardness. The IPS is a region of interest for various developmental happenings including dyscalculia, the math disability which can be seen in association with dyslexia and finger confusion. These different networks for imagery are helpful for understanding why paradoxes in individual people abound - how come he's such a strong 'visual learner' but he can't do origami or tie his shoes? Why is she so hypersensitive to touch and texture, but so nimble playing the violin?

But as we learn more about visualization, we not only learn more about individual patterns of strengths or weaknesses in people, we also gain a greater understanding for the different components of visualization and imagery, so that it makes us more conscious of the processes and different aspects of its usefulness in problem solving or expression.

We are spotlighting a few other fascinating spatial and visualization links below. First, a fabulous 36 page newsletter from SIGGRAPH which includes an article from Pat Hanrahan talking about his computer visualization course at Stanford, an article from Susan Varnum talking about how she came into Web-based learning from computer animation, and Sue Blackman about Serious Games.

Another neat website is a Visual Thinking course website from Spalter and Van Dam from Brown. It includes 'visual literacy exercises', examples of bad web design, and other great links.

Another terrific course website from MIT (Thank you, Open Courseware) - takes visualization into another domain: Social Visualization - "Millions of people are on-line today and the number is rapidly growing - yet this virtual crowd is often invisible. In this course we will examine ways of visualizing people, their activities and their interactions. Students will study the cognitive and cultural basis for social visualization through readings drawn from sociology, psychology and interface design and they will explore new ways of depicting virtual crowds and mapping electronic spaces through a series of design exercises."

More conventional K-12 lesson plans form encouraging imagery (visual, auditory, movement) are listed below.

It goes without saying that visualization and spatial learning are terribly neglected in standard K-12 learning, but it is the wave of the present and the future, and it's ironic that many of the most talented spatial students could be struggling in verbal-dominant classrooms, unaware of their gifts.


Different Patterns for Geometric vs. Other Tactile Imagery
Learning Through Computer Visualization
Visual Thinking course
MIT Social Visualization
VisualizingLessons
Geometry K-12
Scientific Visualization Lessons

Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas

Came across this interesting post from Scott Berkun, author of The Art of Project Management. Topics include: success at defending bad ideas, death by homogeny, thinking at the wrong level, killed in the long term by short term thinking, how to prevent smart people from defending bad ideas, and find a sane person to listen to.

Why smart people defend bad ideas - scottberkun.com

Flashes from the Past: "He was bright and intelligent and bursting with energy, but he was unable to read or write..."

From a very early age, he dreamed of becoming a military hero, but his parents pulled him out of school when teasing over his poor writing became too intense. Biographer Martin Blumenson would later write, "There was a strong bond between father and son. The father spent many hours reading to him and his sister..."

Eventually he was able to enter the Virginia Military Institute, but the going seemed rough. In his first letter from home, his father wrote: "That must have been pretty embarrassing when you could not read the "no hazing pledge." How did you get out of it?...I do not see how you are going to over-come this difficulty except by practicing reading all kinds of writing. Do not give it up, but when you start to read anything, keep at it till you work it out. You misspelled hazing. The verb is "to haze" and you should remember the general rule--to drop the final "e" before "ing."

Who was this boy who struggled with reading and writing? This was "Old Blood and Guts," or George S. Patton, the colorful WWII general who spearheaded the spectacular sweep of the 3rd Army from Normandy across France. He was one of the Allies' most tactically brilliant generals.

One Favorite Patton quote: "Success is how high you bounce when you've hit bottom."

On this Memorial Day Weekend, we remember and thank all the brave men and women who serve or have served our country.

Patton Society

Girls, ADHD, and the News

Here's a little exercise in critical thinking. Dr. Biederman and his group at Harvard found that girls diagnosed with ADHD are much more likely to be diagnosed in their teens with depression and anxiety, and smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs.

In the USA Today article, Biederman apparently says "it underscores the importance of early diagnosis and treatment," but in the WebMD article we find that 9 out of 10 of the girls in his ADHD study were being treated with "usually a combination of drugs and counseling." So the behavorial, mood, and substance problems were occurring in girls appropriately diagnosed and treated by his group. Hmmm. that's not good.

What can we learn from the study? It is an important observation that girls diagnosed with ADHD are at risk for co-morbidities like anxiety and depression, and later at increased risk for substance abuse and conduct disorders. But the next step is to find what therapies are most effective and improving eventual outcome for them.The high co-morbidities again with ADHD diagnoses show how poor the existing criteria are for distinguishing similar appearing conditions.

There are unfortunately are few resources available for parents seeking more information about the presentation of ADHD in girls. Dr. Nadeeau and colleagues have some easy-to-read and practical guides available here) from Amazon.com, though.

USATODAY Teen girls with ADHD
Girls With ADHD Web MD

Reasoning and Real-Life Decision Making

Reasoning is at the heart of critical thinking and problem solving, but it rarely gets mentioned in K-12 curriculums or is required for University or graduate students. But it's never too late to learn. If we don't examine how we arrive at decisions, then we will make more mistakes and be more we susceptible to being misled by others. Reason is not infallible, nor is it the only guide to decision making, but it is a tool to use in every job we do.

A common criticism of formal logic is that it is far removed from practical decision making, but that is true only if the principles are not really understood. Real-life decision making considers evidence (with various amounts of reason, depending on who is doing the reasoning), but it also takes place within context of life experience and preexisting expectations.

Today's paper looks at this 'Real-Life Decision Making',and in fact you can see two different systems that become activated depending on whether you make a decision based on presented evidence that agrees with what you expected to see, or disagrees with your prediction.



The researchers were interested in the possibility of different systems because of its implications for decisions made in the courtroom, but the implications are much broader than that. The line between bias and the wisdom of experience can be difficult to draw.

We've included some other nice sites for logic and reasoning below.

Causal Reasoning fMRI pdf
Logic in Argumentative Writing
Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies
Intro Math Reasoning
Gr 3-5: Math Reasoning and Proof
Gr 6-8: Math Reasoning and Proof

Psychiatry's Call to Revise the DSM

In the JAMA issue that arrived today in the mail is a provocative commentary by Dr. Paul McHugh, Psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins. It's sure to raise some blood pressures.

Excerpts:

"The DSM currently admits close to 300 mental and behavioral disorders. Given that clinical appearnces forge diagnoses, a particular patient can satisfy the criteria for several disorders and many dissimilar patients can meet criteria for the same disorder. Because the manual fails to identify what underlies the symptomatic expression of condition, it cannot suggest intelligible principles relating one disorder to another or illuminate why certain of them bunch together."

He also make the good observation that the DSM is dramatically different from the physicians ICD - The ICD is organized around disorders causes like cancers, infections, or autoimmunes diseases, not behaviors or symptoms like stomach ache or irritability.

"The DSM is not systematic in that way. Being appearance driven, it is similar to a naturalist's field guide with the advantages and disadvantages of such...They enhance accuracy of identification; therefore, they are reliable but do not explain distinctions."

What we are seeing in the epidemic of behavioral diagnoses among school age children is a direct consequence of this. Very diverse groups of children diagnosed by behavioral checklists as having ADD or ADHD, PDD-NOS or Aspergers, bipolar, or OCD are not frequently missed for the differences they have, they can be cornered into inappropriate pharmacological treatments.

McHugh wonders whether psychiatrists have not revised the DSM along more etiological grounds because "they await further advances in the basic sciences." But surely a stronger drive toward distinguishing different etiologies could only be helpful?

Great Parents Who Read to Their Kids & the Difference Between Listening and Reading

It's no accident that that the NCES study (posted here) found that having > 100 books in the home was the strongest predictor of whether a child was a good reader in the 3rd grade. But throughout history, there have been some wonderful parents who cultivated their family reading time and inspired their children.

Too often we make the mistake of stopping our evening or bed time read-togethers as our children get older and can read for themselves. But if we do, we'll miss out on wonderful opportunities for sharing, deepening family 'culture', and inspiration.

Marie Curie's father was a teacher who suffered greatly under Russian-occupied Warsaw. He lost his job and his families finances were in ruin, but every Saturday night, from seven to nine, he read and recited Polish prose and poetry with his family, a time that delighted all of his children.

Robert Frost lived a simple life on a farm in New Hampshire, but his evenings were filled with his mother's read alouds of Ossian, Poe, Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Bryant. In fact, you often can't get far in biographies of gifted or talented individuals without finding strong references reading and the powerful influences of home environment on talent development.

In Developing Talent in Young People (here), family read alouds were mentioned frequently, but particularly among the families that nurtured world famous mathematicians and scientists (other groups were Olympic swimmers, professional tennis players, concert pianists, famous sculptors).

The advantage of being read to - is that conceptually children (or young adults) can be exposed to concepts, literary patterns, and words and word patterns far in advance of actual reading ability. In addition, read-alouds help bring drama and voice to text (modeling active reading for kids) and imagery, in addition to opening up many opportunities for shared fun, laughter, and probing discussions.

The figure below is from a study that found that the pathways for understanding text by reading and by listening in adult learners are different. Researchers also found that at least in this group of competent readers, listening required more intellectual 'work' when complex sentence structure was used, than reading.



Different Pathways for Comprehending Text - Listening vs. Reading

ADLER : How to Mark a Book

If you need encouragement to become more actively engaged marking up your book, read Mortimer Adler's How to Mark a Book, and check out the example below.

ADLER ARCHIVE: How to Mark a Book
Mark Your Books

Science Site: The Why Files

We accidentally came across this nice science site: "The Why Behind the News". There are some nice interactive animations (good for demonstrating the influence of scientific factors on phenomena, but technically simple), and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker story. The ant trap is a marvel of insect engineering, but the picture kind of gives me the creeps.

The Why Files

Sentence Structure and Everything: Comprehension, Test-Taking, and Persuasion

Sentence structure seems a dry and unglamorous topic, but it powerfully impacts on almost all aspects of reading and learning, communication, performance, and even personal persuasion. Overblown? Don't think so. Winston Churchill rightly praised the consequences of his being trapped in remedial English for three terms in a row: "I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence-which is a noble thing."

Syntax is defined as the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences. Simple enough, but it can bedevil everyone at some point, but particularly older students with dyslexia, auditory processing difficulties, and those with limited auditory working memories.

A student's slide may be insidious beginning in the upper elementary school years or maybe middle school. It's not a problem in the early ages because sentences are fairly straightforward. It only develops when clauses become more complex and sentences start having multiple nouns. Like, "The Toyota that hit the Chevrolet spun out of control." - Which car spun out of control?

Look at the extra brain work (slowed reaction times) required to comprehend the following two sentences: "The janitor who frustrated the plumber lost the key on the street." "The janitor who the plumber frustrated lost the key on the street." In this study, researchers also looked at the influence that grammatical complexity had on solving easy vs. more demanding (larger numbers) problems.



Math word problems are hard because the grammatical demands are great (passive tense), information cannot be filled-in by context (like understanding what's being studied in class or looking and visual explanations), and complex calculations may have to be performed as well. Here's a sample question from one of the released items from the WASL here:

"A team has won 10 of the 15 games it has played. The team has 25 games left to play. The players figure they will make the playoffs if their winning percentage for the season is 60%. How many of the remaining games must the team win to have a winning percentage of 60% for the season."

Bright children with dyslexia or other learning challenges may overcome obstacles with reading only to find themselves failing again because of misinterpreting essay questions or word problem questions. The most exasperating part is that they might have known the work or had the right answers - but they misunderstood the question. It's not hard to see how problems with understanding sentence structure can affect everything - from knowing what's going on in class (worse with a rambling teacher or one who is fond of long sentences), misunderstanding assignments, and expressing oneself poorly.

We've put some links to helpful sites for Sentence Comprehension on the Internet. Please share any sites or books that you like in comments (we'd like more people to leave comments). Diagramming looks just dreadful to some people, but it can be illuminating to others because it puts language into visual language. Check out the first link below - particularly if you have Powerpoint and can look at the 'slideshow' on diagramming.

Finally, those of you who are in the persuasion business for a living (CEO, advertising, guru), are probably already aware of the structural tricks of verbal persuasion...it can be very helpful studying great speeches and writing. The bottom link is to a journalist's article on writing with parallel constructions.

Diagramming Sentences
Sentence Comprehension: Connection to Reading
Syntax, Math, and Working Memory
Diagramming Sentences
Persuasion Analysis & Classroom
Parallel Lines and Persuasion

Brain Break: Archimedes Game Site

Time for a brain break? Check out this Archimedes Game Site. Our kids especially liked seeing optical illusions they hadn't seen before, but there's a lot here - visual and spatial puzzles, math and word puzzles.

Archimedes Games

Resource for Idioms

Here's a nice site for learning idioms. Idioms are difficult to comprehend for children with language learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism spectrum disorders, and other conditions. Idioms are important for pragmatic or every day speech and jokes. Drawing pictures with the idioms or acting them out can help some children remember them better.

English Idioms

Controlling Feelings: Implications for OCD, Anxiety, and ADHD

'Talk therapy' has been around for years, but being able to 'see' the benefits on brain imaging is now very motivating to professionals and patients alike. When Jeffrey Schwartz had his breakthrough with OCD and CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy (The Mind and the Brain), it was apparent that many OCD sufferers were relieved to see that their problem resulted from excessive activity in the brain. It helped some visualize their problems so they could more readily ignore the false worries when they arose.

The power of CBT is now proven in a whole range of emotional and mood disorders including ADHD, Anxiety, and OCD, with many labs now trying to 'push the envelope' figuring out why some subjects respond to CBT, while others don't, and deducing most effective strategies.

The figure below shows the change that can be seen when subjects try to reduce their negative feelings upon seeing 'negative' photographs. The green areas 'switch on' in order to keep emotions in check, while the red spots are emotional areas that become regulated.



If a child is going to begin cognitive behavioral therapy, make sure she knows the rationale behind it, and how it can really work. Most kids like understanding how their brains work, and they are interested in seeing how training, therapy, or learning can change the working of their brains.

Brain-computer interfaces of this sort are not available clinically yet - they are research tools - but they are on the horizon.

Here's a diagram of the brain-computer interface at Columbia:



Mindfulness and OCD
Cognitive Control of Feelings
CBT and Meds for Panic-Abstract only
Combined ADHD Treatment Lowers Need for Drugs
Adaptive Brain Computer-Interface

Resources for Critical Thinking: "Debatabase" and More

The Debatabase is a nifty resource for middle and high school students examining controversial issues. This may be helpful for introducing older students to critical thinking as well. Most students (hey, even adults) are poorly trained at examining their own assumptions, bias, and arguments. So it helps to have pro and con positions written on for both sides, so they can really be understood. Many students may have to read many before they begin to recognize the pattern of providing support for statements and format for communicating their ideas.

For younger children, check out the critical thinking article below about Fairy Tale ethics. Elaine Lindy looks at the 'trickery' of Puss n Boots and 'stealing' in Jack and the Beanstalk.

Finally, check out the classical critical thinking approach that employs 'progymnasmata': "A set of rudimentary exercises intended to prepare students of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice orations (gymnasmata or declamations)." The progymnasmata begins by rewriting Aesop's fables as a preparation for the systematic thinking, writing, and presentation of rhetoric. The last link below has some sample original and rewritten Aesop's fables.

Debatabase
Fairy Tales & Ethics
Progymnasmata
Progymnasmata Exercises

Do the Math - The Numbers Guy

Doing the numbers - Carl Bialik, former math-physics major now has a numbers column on the Wall Street Journal - He confesses an interest in how "numbers are used, and abused, in the news, business and politics."

Topics include school rankings, estimate of those who listen to rap, the fuzzy math of salary calculators...

WSJ.com - The Numbers Guy

Why Behavioral Checklists for ADHD and Autism Stink

More reasons to believe that behavioral checklists are a lousy way to diagnose ADHD and Autism- two recent studies have now found that perinatal stress (or mild birth injury by implication) greatly increases the likelihood a child will be diagnosed with ADHD or Autism. Hmmm - is this a coincidence? Probably not. Both ADHD and Autism use cafeteria-style checklists to diagnose children, and the overwhelming number of children are never examined by a neurologist who might detect specific patterns of neurologic disability that suggest an injury from birth.

Does it matter? Absolutely. As it turns out there are many different ways in the brain that a little patchey injury can cause unwanted behaviors like hyperactivity, inattentiveness, poor eye contact, or poor social interactions, but many differences as well. And its these differences that require different interventions and recommendations as well as resulting in very different outcomes. The problem today is there is so much that is getting lumped under the ADHD and Autism diagnoses (or Aspergers or PDD-NOS) that inappropriate placement and educational decisions, and even parenting decisions are made.

Both research reports are available as full text below.

The ADHD study looked at risk factors within families - so comparing children to unaffected family siblings - and this was a good idea. ADHD was highly associated with neonatal complications (p < 0.006) and in addition it also correlated with significantly higher mean scores on the total CBCL (72.0 vs. 66.4). Neonatal problems were also associated with higher externalizing scores - including impulsivity, and poor performance on the CPT. Specific neonatal risks were seen with NICU hospitalization, oxygen therapy, general anesthesia, and surgery.

The Autism Report saw lots of perinatal risk factors again - being premature resulted in a 2.5x increased risk of autism, low Apgars (birth stress, poor breathing) was almost 2x an increased risk of autism, breech birth 1.6x increased risk, and parental psychosis 3.4x increased risk for autism.

Do these look like a single thing to you?

Risk Factors for ADHD
Risk Factors for Autism Res Paper
WebMD article autism
PsycPORT.com autism article

Creativity as an Elusive Factor in Giftedness

We found this nice article by Joyce VanTassel-Baska. And it looks like we will be giving a presentation on Problem Solving and Creativity in Gifted Students for the NAGC meeting in Kentucky in November. Should be fun!

Joyce makes a number of good points, including a remark about how "too much conventional learning in an area where the ideas of others become so crystallized as to block innovative thinking in the domain." She adds "There is also evidence that much of the learning of high creatives is obtained independently of traditional schooling. Autodidacticism may be the norm among this group where the impetus, nature, and extent of learning is self-governed."

Creativity as an Elusive Factor in Giftedness

Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

If you like considering back-and-forth debate, check out the Edge as it takes on Science and Gender.

GENDER AND SCIENCE

The Power of Analogical Thinking

"Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have." - Samuel Butler

Analogical thinking is well recognized for its importance in higher level creative thinking and successful problem solving, but it receives little formal consideration in conventional school curricula. We would even like to see it employed more in e-learning situations or the video gaming industry especially they may be the most common shared experience of young people (but that's for another post...).

In the study below, researchers visualized the difference between semantically and analogically related words, and it is a remarkabledifference. The green below indicates areas of brain activated when subjects see semantically related words like 'note' and 'scale' and 'rain' and 'drought', but look at how much brain and how many more areas get activated with analogous words like 'bouquet' and 'flower' and 'chain' and 'link'(analogy in red, common areas in yellow).



Analogy is properly the domain of higher order thought because it requires fluency - lots of ideas - and integration across multiple representations. Analogy is also more simply thought of as flexible pattern recognition, the process involved in all those good things that should be emphasized in education - critical thinking and deduction, inference, and solutions by insight.

Analogical Reasoning

Speed Reading in Adult Dyslexics

It was great to see more research on this clinical phenomena we have seen for quite a while - the "Faster is Better" paradox for well-compensated or gifted dyslexics. Since 1997, research studies have documented the "acceleration phenomenon" in which dyslexics made to read 10-20% faster than their 'routine' reading rate could markedly increase their decoding accuracy and comprehension.

Most of the dyslexic lawyers and professionals we know have discovered this (as well as many younger gifted dyslexics) - but at last there are more studies dissecting out why this happens. The link below takes you to the research paper which is a bit technical, but it relates many nice points. Among them:

- "There is growing support for th notion that word reading fluency may reflect sub-processes other than phonology and can thus be conceptualized as a separate factor for the reading deficit."
- "...reading intervention studies have also indicated that while intensive training in phonemic awareness could improve decoding and word identification in poor readers, there were only minimal gains in reading fluency..."
- "However, the most surprising result...was that the acceleration of reading (i.e. the same task performed at the fast rate) resulted in a relative normalization of the brain area engagement patterns in the dyslexic readers..."

Other comments to add - the study reinforces the foolishness of phonics-only approaches to dyslexia, and it underscores the importance of reading fluency as a dyslexia-associated condition.

The speed reading-dyslexic creates a lot of confusion in the school system (for example, how can letter reversals and spelling errors be dyslexia if the reading comprehension is so good?) and problems with kids failing to receive appropriate accommodations. In order to efficiently speed read, students need to have learned a sufficient body of words recognized by sight. Also, some dyslexic lawyers have shared with us that if they have to read every word of some printed material, they will speed read the document several times to make sure they have not missed anything.

Faster is Better - University Student Dyslexics

The Math Circle

Check out this offering for young gifted math enthusiasts: for 9-11 year olds there's knots, game theory, concurrency and collinearity, Pythagorean triples, mathematical origami, Steiner points... The history reads: "Disturbed by the poor quality and low level of math education in the country, the three of us...

The Math Circle

Tape Loop or Visual Sketch Pad? It'll Affect Your Multi-Tasking

Some of you will remember this from The Pleasure of Finding Things out - Richard Feynman found he couldn't count and talk at the same time, while a colleague couldn't count and read at the same time. Why was this? The answer is a surprisingly helpful tidbit for understanding your as well as others' different ways of taking information 'in'.

"Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people's heads when they think they're doing the same thing--something as simple as counting--is different for different people...(when) Tukey was counting...he was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by...(whereas)I'm "talking" to myself when I'm counting, so I can't speak!"

What Feynman discovered was the Tape Loop and Visual Spatial Sketchpad - the most different routes for storing information. Most people prefer one route much more over the other and some may only effectively have one, but know what you have available can be a powerful tool.

One the most important reasons is that working memory can often get jammed when too much information is coming in at once. If you can flexibly switch modes (depending on the multi-tasking needs at the time), then you take information in more efficiently and multi-task. Always the tweaker, Feynman also began to play with sensory-motor or kinesthetic memory and spatial imagery:"After that discovery, I tried to figure out oa way of reading out loud while counting-something niether of us could do. I figured I'd have to use a part of my brain that wouldn't interfere with the seeing or speaking departments, so I decided to use my fingers, since that involved the sense of touch. I soon succeeded in counting with my fingers and reading out loud. But Iwanted the whole process to be mental, and not rely on any physical activity. So I tried to imagine the feeling of my fingers moving while I was reading out loud. I never succeeded. I figured that was because I hand't practiced enough, but it might be impossible..."

Check out this nice article (with excerpts) about the newly released letters of Feynman from his daughter (here). We were especially moved by his letters of encouragement to others and the letter that concludes the article.

Learning to Think Like a Child

Here's some research showing where kids better than adults: children are better recognizers of the visual differences (the study used pictures of different animals). It may be that everything is more novel to them and they more interested, but reflects Ohio State University researcher Vladmir Sloutsky, "As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences." Interestingly, adults regained that child-like memory for differences if they were shown novel and completely imaginary figures.

This like those "child-like" creative geniuses you read about biographical accounts. These men and women have a "child-like" way of seeing familiar things as if for the first time.

Science Daily article
Sloutsky paper 2005

MIT World: Videos on Innovation

Another amazing resource for University-based lectures. This one is MIT World and the link below takes you to a lecture on Educational Innovation. Included in this talk is Henry Jenkins arguing for more and better video games in education. 1/3 of MIT entering freshman admitted to playing video games during class. The answer, says Jenkins, is getting the teacher to play more games during class.

MIT World: Focus on Educational Innovation

National Report on Early School Experiences (NCES)

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has now released its report on Early School Experiences.

Take-home points:

- 'Interest' in reading correlates with achievement (So if you can't read well, you probably won't like it)
- Full vs. half day kindergarten doesn't affect achievement
- By the end of the 3rd grade, kids can identify words, but struggle with inferences
- Only 29% of 3rd graders can make inferences beyond the literal text (27% public, 37% private)
- By the end of the 3rd grade, boys are better at word problems, but girls are at reading
- Private school students outscored public in reading, math, and science
- African American students showed the slowest rise in achievement from kindergarten to the 3rd grade
- "Full-day kindergarten is not randomly distributed; rather, children at risk of school failure are more likely to attend such programs (Walston and West 2004)"
- Highest scoring kids in reading have parents with highest level of education and the most books at home (> 100)

Executive Summary, From Kindergarten Through Third Grade
The Condition of Education 2004

SAT Writing Scores - Not Ready for Prime Time

Check out the New York Times article below:

Fewer than half of the country's colleges and universities are requiring applicants to submit SAT writing scores, and says the College Board spokeswoman Chiara Coletti, "We have never recommended that schools use it in admissions decisions right away. Since this is a new test, it makes sense to be careful in how it's used the first year." Said Steven Syverson, Dean of Admissions at Lawrence University, "When we heard the test-prep industry say it would add $200 million a year to coaching revenues, we just said, 'That's it. It's out of line, it's out of whack, and we don't want to be part of it.' "

SAT Essay NY Times

The Research Channel - Extensive Video Library

Check out the free streaming video resources at the Research Channel (University Consortium). Here's a link to Johns Hopkins Spaghetti Bridge Building (engineering), but there the library is extensive: other titles include autonomous robots, digital media design, and oh - plenty of brain stuff.

ResearchChannel: Spaghetti Bridge Building

What Today's Students Can Learn from IDEO

What is IDEO? IDEO is a world reknown and innovative design firm that helped develop Apple Computer's first mouse, the Palm V, the insulin pen, the first stand-up toothpaste tube, and overhauled the consumer experiences of Kaiser Permanente Hospitals and high fashion dressing rooms.

So why would this mean anything to students? With the Information Revolution, facts and information base are not the essential commodity any more. It's no longer vital to "know that", but rather to "know why" and "how to make better." And these skills are right up IDEO's alley. What IDEO may help specifically with is a more systematic approach to teaching and encouraging problem solving.

While reading Kelly's The Art of Innovation, we found the following ideas for the classroom:

- Innovation Begins with the Eye: Ala Training Tweakers, IDEO is also a big fan of the Critical Eye. IDEO encourages creative critique by direct experience, interviewing, reflection on opinions and gut feelings, and finding problems that others hadn't seen before.

- Model Fluency with Ideas: IDEO has a number of tips about how to conduct good brainstorming sessions, including ideas for modeling fluency. First, IDEO likes to number their ideas to encourage generating lots of ideas, even off-the-wall or half-baked ones. Second, provide concrete examples of solutions that other people have devised ("One of the best brainstormers I ever attended at IDEO was an exploration of alternative wine beverage containers. Before the brain-stormer, we covered a conference table with bottles, closures, materials, and mechanisms ranging from the retro porcelain Grolsch beer bottle stopper to an elegant black Japanese sake flask..."). This sounds a little like Einstein working in the Patent Office. Brainstorming sessions don't just 'happen', they also have been well researched. Having examples readily in hand can be stimulating for more ideas.

- Cultivate Hot Groups: Carefully select groups and recognize diversity and contributions of different personalities. Students would benefit from learning about different creative personalities and different successful roles in innovative groups. Why should instruction in group interactions wait until they have entered the workforce?

- Make Prototypes: Draw and physically make something from your ideas, then test it out in the field. Get physical, "sketching, mind mapping, diagrams, and stick figures..." and make a model with available parts (the first mouse was prototyped using the cover of a butter dish).

- Cross-Pollinate and Jump Barriers: Teach students that the best ideas may be found from beyond the group or from a different field. Suggest analogies from different disciplines. Change experience and points-of-view. Cursory exposures to problem solving in the classroom may defeat the purpose of the lesson. Don't allow cheats or predictable answers. Encourage far out ideas and interdisciplinary thinking.

ThePower Of Design
ideo.com

Dutch Science Free & Activating Your Brain

Bravo to the Dutch scientific community. Against the objections of Dutch publishing giant Elsevier, academics in the Netherlands have banded together to publish all scientific work to the worldwide community on the Internet. All Dutch research is now available at: DAREnet. A similar movement was afoot in the U.S. (all taxpayers fund the research, why shouldn't the results be accessible to them?), but the NIH blinked and as a result, not most NIH-funded reports are not freely available to the public.

One of the Dutch reports (here) now freely available shows an fMRI of a 28 year-old controlling his cingulate cortex activation through brain-computer interface or bci. The cingulate, as you may remember, is an interesting area for its implication in ADHD, reward, motivation, and decision-making.

Very cool. What did this fellow use to 'activate' his brain? Apparently he found that thinking of winter landscapes, snowboarding, and social interactions turned his anterior cingulate 'on'.



For more on the ADHD and Reward pictures, check out Money, Motivation, ADHD, and the Brain.

Importance of Visual Spatial Imagery in Algebraic Word Problem Solving

In this study, entitled "An fMRI study of the interplay of symbolic and visuo-spatial systems in mathematical reasoning", researchers found that successful solution of algebraic word problems required activation of parietal areas classically associated with visual spatial imagery. These areas were also activated when subjects were told to mentally construct a number line.



The important finding is that the imagery areas were important regardless of whether students solved problems using a picture strategy or a representation (make another equation) strategy. "This means that constructing an equation, which apparently is a symbolic task, recruits the visuo-spatial system."

Language areas were activated under both conditions, but not more active under symbolic vs. picture conditions. Other interesting points raised in the paper were observations that instruction in pictorial representations helped solve word problems more easily, and that poor performances correlated with 'direct translation' strategies rather than visual imagery.

There are other studies to support the importance of parietal imagery areas in verbal, tactile, and visual problems solving ( for instance, here and here), but visual or spatial strategies for teaching are often less common in the K-12 classroom perhaps because of the verbal learning style of many teachers. Hmmm. Think, think, think.

Visual Spatial Imagery and Algebraic Word Problems

Cultivating Kid Critics: Different Versions and Star Wars Revelations

An easy way to cultivate kid critiques - is to have them watch or read / watch different versions of the same story. For the toddler set this could be cartoon versions of familiar tales (cartoons are ripe for this - Christmas Carol, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc.), or for the older set, various remakes. Talk about what worked and what didn't. Compare and contrast.

And now for the Star Wars set, there's an ambitious Star Wars Fan movie (written, acted, produced by fans) that's available for download at the link below (HT: collision detection). Because it's a big file, you'll have to either use Bit torrent file sharing, or be patient with the conventional download as a quicktime movie. It's amazing. They even made some "Behind the Scenes" clips. Bravo! Maybe even movies can become an "interactive medium" like the blogosphere.

Star Wars Revelations

Why Branding Matters - Influencing Perception

It makes a difference how you deliver the news. This is an important point regardless of whether you're a parent, teacher, CEO, or advertising guru. These studies show that perception is affected by prior knowledge - whether it's branding in the case of Coke vs. Pepsi, or a placebo effect from people being told they were trying out a new pain-relieving cream.

The first study:"...brand knowledge (at least in the case of Coke in our study) biases preference decisions and recruits the hippocampus, DLPFC, and midbrain...". So taste alone does not affect the choice of Coke over Pepsi - a preconceived preference "had a dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on the measured brain responses."



Or check out this second study - all the areas of red showed correlated with greater pain than in placebo trials.


So what should be the take home point for education or parenting? Think about how you present information to your kids. Take the time to increase their interest, reduce their fear, or build their curiosity. It's not hype or frill. How you present information influences the quality of information that gets in, and the richness of its memory.

Coke vs Pepsi and fMRI
Placebo Reduces Perception of Pain

Interview with Bram Cohen of Bit Torrent, Re: Asperger's

We came across this nice interview with Bram Cohen (BitTorrent ) about his experience with Aspergers.

Excerpt:
"I hated school, and dropped out of college. I got picked on a lot in school, and had a lot of trouble making friends... One thing about school - I always had this attitude that I was in school to learn, and attempted to do whatever was involved in that process, while school had this attitude that I was there to earn grades, which I couldn't care less about. Unsurprisingly, my grades weren't very good..."

Interview with Bram Cohen

(HT:Blogdex)

Game Fluency at Carnegie Mellon

"The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away." - Linus Pauling

Check out this principle in action at the Experimental Gameplay Project at Carnegie Mellon: the goal is to make a game in less than 7 days by yourself.

Experimental Gameplay Project, Carnegie Mellon University

When Five Senses Become One - Sensory Integration and Virtual Rehabilitation

Gemma Calvert's review begins, "The past decade has witnessed a growing shift of emphasis away from the study of the senses in isolation and towards an understanding of how the human brain coordinates the unique sensory impression provided by the different sensory streams..." New technology has provided researchers with a glimpse of complexity of how primary senses interact, integrate, and are coordinated with each other. It looks like there are sites that integrate signals from different sensory modalities (like sight and sound) early in the processing pathway, in addition to late actors that coordinate the different received signals to convey a 'gestalt' view of the outside world.

The research itself is fascinating, but be aware that it will take years for the information to trickle down to many medical professionals, educational experts, and the public at large. With many sites for the integration of sensory signals to be affected, the clinical presentations are diverse. Look at the figure below.



There are some areas that are relatively selective for visual, auditory, or tactile motion processing, but other areas that seem to process various combinations of inputs. Knock any one out, and the others are affected. The computing brain will now receive inaccurate signals about motion, the result being mistakes in the gauging of self-movement (may act clumsy), the movement of others, and errors of sight (moving people, read text on a page) or sound etc. localization.

The downside of multisensory integration is that if one sensory modality is defective, there's a high likelihood that other senses can be affected too. In some cases this is good - like hearing becoming more sensitive in the setting of visual deprivation - but in others, the compensations may cause problems of their own (e.g. auditory hypersensitivity, hyperactivity from tactile, proprioceptive, or movement-seeking behaviors).

Interestingly, some of the new research technologies might also prove extremely valuable to future rehabilitation techniques. Researchers have already been able to demonstrate that functional imaging can visualize changes in brain activation when subjects voluntarily direct their attention toward or away from sensory stimuli (thereby affecting sensitivity and reaction times) but rehabilitation researchers want to carry the work a step further, for instance learning the best 'tweaks' optimize multisensory integration as well as motor recovery.

Multisensory Research (technical)
Multisensory Perception of Movement pdf
Multisensory Integration During Motor Planning pdf
Believable VIrtual Environment

Cultivating Kid Critics: Was the Moon Landing a Hoax?

From the homeschooling family that wrote The Fallacy Detective, here is a short article about the possibility fallacy and the Moon Hoax. Even young children are amused by hoaxes and 'tricks', and by incorporating these lessons in their education, you can encourage them to think more carefully and critically.

Possibly vs. Probably - Was the Moon Landing a Hoax?
Response to Moon Hoax
NASA's Answer to the Moon Hoax

How to Reduce the Math Gender Gap

The gender gap in math is widening, with young women lagging men in numbers and performance beginning in the middle school years, through college, into graduate education, and on to tenured faculty. What are possible causes of this discrepancy and is there anything we can do about it?

First the data: In early elementary school, girls and boys achieve at similar levels. By middle school and high school, however, the gap appears. Boys consistently outperform girls on the Math section of the SAT, the AP Calculus, Computer Science, and Physics exams, and at the college level, in one federal study, 44% of male science majors chose engineering, compared to 12% of females. The trend holds among advanced degrees and tenured faculty.

What are possible factors at work?

1. Social and Environmental Factors

Do you remember when "Teen Talk Barbie" briefly said "Math Class is tough!" before she was removed from the shelves? Not surprisingly, there are both home and school (peer, teacher) social factors that can discourage girls from higher level mathematics. In this study from Penn State, a father's "gender stereotype" regarding math ability appeared to correlate well with a child's interest:


The amount of time mothers spent doing math activities with their children, didn't seem to account for the difference (mothers spent more time with their daughters doing math activities in the early grades), although by late elementary school, both parents were more likely to be purchasing math and science items for their sons rather than their daughters.

2. Biological Factors

Biological factors got Harvard University president Larry Summers into hot water, but perhaps that was more for his extrapolation and clumsiness than anything else. The truth is, we are all biologically different, and understanding how differently we perceive and learn material provides valuable information about how to design individualized learning approaches.

There are some gender-related differences in the way information is processed, and these results should be properly understood as averaged results from small groups. fMRI studies should never be mistaken for large scale population studies or genetic imperatives. Check out the fMRI results below for men and women navigating their way out of a virtual maze.



The different areas of brain that light up suggest that an averaged group of men and women tended to undertake different strategies to navigate their way out of a virtual maze.

What about that other study, you ask? - the one that, using a slightly different task, found that women and men both used the hippocampus to recall position? Well, on close reading of the methods of that study (sorry, only abstract online), this study was different because the researchers were more directive in telling their subjects how to learn the routes (e.g. "notice where the vehicles come from") and a second task directly tested recall of an aerial map.

So it may be that in general, when asked to navigate their way out of a virtual maze, women are more likely to use landmarks ("I'll make two left turns after the white house") than picture an aerial map, but when more directly instructed, they can use the aerial strategy just like most male subjects. The distinction is an important one - because the aerial map would appear to be a better approach. If you miss one of the landmarks or turns, you may still find your destination by geometry.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice

Finally, there are various lines of data that suggest that by the time young men have chosen their careers, they have had more spatial practice than women. Boys are more likely to play video games, tinker with building projects, and have models or mechanical gadgets as hobbies (the latter could also account for the buying preference of parents). These types of practice could account for the lead men have in studies of imagined rotation of objects (verified in many different research paradigms). Interestingly, the gap between mental rotation performance in men and women can be narrowed if women are provided with more spatial practice (computer simulation or sketching). This suggests that more training and 'playing' with hand and eye activities may narrow the gender gap in mathematics and math-related disciplines.

The Gender Gap in Math and Science
Educators Revisit Girls Loss of Math, Science Interest
Boston.com Women and science: the real issue
Penn State Gender Issues and Math
Gender and Spatial Navigation
Scaffolding Female Engineering Students in Spatial Reasoning
Sketching improves Spatial Visualization for Men and Women

Improving Science Reading Comprehension

Here are good practical recommendations for helping to improve Science Reading Comprehension. In this NSTA article, the authors recommend Pre-Reading, Key Words, and Active Reading strategies like anticipatory questions and responding personally to the information. Students also often benefit from learning how to focus on important information - captions, figures, and summary questions. Paraphrasing the reading afterward also serves to consolidate the information so it can be stored in long term memory.

Improving Science Reading Comprehension

19th Century Mind Your Manners

Here's a cute little online game using 'role play' to give kids a sense of the change in social customs since Victorian times. Hat tip: MetaFilter.com

Mind Your Manners Game

Greene & Greene, Hands-On Learning, and Patterns from Nature

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius

We just got back from a weekend in Quinault's Rain Forest, and patterns from nature and the education of Charles and Henry Greene were on our mind. The picture below is from the Greene and Greene's Gamble house and a pattern we found on a fallen tree.



Not surprisingly, nature one of the most common sources for creative ideas in art, invention, science, or writing. Some ideas are found by closer or unconventional inspection; while analogy is useful in other situations.

The Greene brothers were remarkable architects who helped give create the American Arts & Crafts movement in the early part of the 19th Century. Interestingly, the Greenes attended an innovative school that was built on the premise that "the well-educated man should work with his hands as well as his mind." At the Manual Training High School, operated by Washington University St. Louis, the hands-on learning was not seen to be vocational, but rather a way to instill the practical applications of principles and formulae that students were learning.

Hands-on learning is a way to test out or verify ideas, make predictions, play around with ideas (prototyping), and develop visual and spatial imagery. It's interesting that another hands-on educational theorist, Frederich Froebel, had Frank Lloyd Wright as a student. Wright would later recall Froebel blocks fondly as,"the smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: so form became feeling."

Interior photographs of The Gamble House
Greene & Greene Virtual Archives: About The Greenes

Sensory-Motor Dysgraphia Mis-Diagnosed as Underachievement

In our practice, unrecognized dysgraphia is a common cause of 'underachievement' and 'oppositionally-defiant disorder' in school age children, particularly boys. For some reason, dysgraphia has not garnered the attention of 'attention deficit disorder' or or other learning disabilities, and therefore children who are struggling with undiagnosed disabilities are mistaken for being lazy or defiant.

A child who is lame, rarely will be scolded or told to run extra laps at home, but a child with fine motor or other causes of dysgraphia is may be publicly disgraced about 'sloppy work', told to finish work at home (though it could take hours or be practically impossible), or denied recess on a regular basis to 'finish work.'

There are several types of dysgraphia, but in this post, we will discuss motor dysgraphia, or difficulty writing due to impaired fine motor or sensory-motor coordination.

In the figure below, are a variety of dysfunctional hand grips that occur in a variety of clinical settings - but most often mild birth injury or prematurity. Though motor / sensory-motor dysgraphia is remarkably common in today's classroom (perhaps because of rising prematurity or greater survival of high risk pregnancies), teachers receive little instruction in its occurrence, and accommodations are woefully underutilized. Dysfunctional grips often have the pencil tipped forward or out of the webspace. The first three fingers are not brought together in a pinch, but rather fisted or awkwardly positioned with the sides of fingers. When children are forced to writing with very dysfunctional grasps, then pain or even repetitive stress injuries can result. Often children develop behavioral problems like task or school avoidance. Occupational therapy may help many children, but sometimes time and accommodation are needed to allow handwriting to develop to a functional level.



The first link below is to a paper describes how brain-based injury to sensory-motor systems causes individuals to press harder than normal to compensate for their loss of control. The paper concludes, "When sensory information is degraded, an increase of grip force is interpreted as a compensatory strategic increase of the safety margin to protect against unexpected load perturbations that cannot be rapidly and accurately sense ands responded by a reactive grip force increase."

What we see this translated into in children with mild neurological injury, is a very tight grasp on the pen or pencil that results in heavy pencil pressure, poor writing endurance, and hand cramping. Some teachers or administrators fear that providing a student with appropriate dysgraphia-related accommodations will result in a child "never learning to write"; however, this is not true. In fact, by denying children appropriate accommodations, these students may never be given adequate practice with higher order writing tasks like paragraph organization or redrafting, because they can't get much down on the page by hand.

Tighter Grip to Compensate for Lack of Control
Pencil Grasps

Flashes from the Past: One Remarkable Mother

He said that his mother was "an inventor of the first order and would, I believe, have achieved great things had she not been so remote from modern life and its multifold opportunities. She invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her. She even planted the seeds, raised the plants, and separated the fibers herself. She worked indefatigably, from break of day till late at night, and most of the wearing apparel and furnishings of the home was the product of her hands."

As a young man, this genius from the past had many bad habits and got into difficulties. He was expelled from college and then from the city because of "playing cards and leading an irregular life." When his mother scraped together enough money to attend University in another city (his father was not talking to him), he wasted the chance again. Then, he recalls, one day "when I had lost all my money and was craving for a game, she came to me with a roll of bills and said, 'Go and enjoy yourself. The sooner you lose all we possess the better it will be. I know you will get over it.' She was right. I conquered my passion then and there..."

His mother's belief in him at that moment convinced Nikola Tesla to give up his life as a wastrel. He gave up gambling and he gave up drinking. Tesla went on to educate himself by auditing courses and reading in the library at the University. He would go onto register over 700 patents and discover fluorescent light, the laser beam, wireless communications, remote control, robotics, Tesla's turbines, and vertical take off aircraft. His alternating current induction motor is considered one of the ten greatest discoveries of all time. His mother was also quite some lady.

Have a Happy Mother's Day.

Tesla Website

If you want to read a book biography about Tesla, check here.

Speech and Language Games

Check out this nice site for free online practice with many aspects of language - including word retrieval, idioms, homonyms / antonyms, semantics, and syntax. Tracy Boyd is a speech language pathologist.

Quia Boyd Speech Therapy Games

Visual Spatial Decision-Making

Good decisions are the foundations for problem solving, and this additional study adds more details about the steps for solving multi-stepped visual spatial puzzles. Here the researchers found that efficient problem solvers of the Tower of London task were able to activate a larger area of their right prefrontal cortex, an important area for pattern recognition and pattern sorting . Other brain areas that were necessary, included regions associated with visual spatial attention, motor and visual spatial imagery, and spatial working memory.

For those who like keeping up with the cingulate cortex (area associated with selective attention, ADHD, reward / punishment), there were additional details about how the cingulate appeared to be activated not just when an error was detected, but when it appeared that brain needed to generate other alternatives (replan) in presence of incorrect solutions.

Some links below to extend thinking about how to foster or cultivate efficient decision making. Decision-making should be fostered from an early age, but often the ends (results, facts mastered) are emphasized over process. The pattern of efficient visual spatial decision-making suggested that the best problem solvers were superior at other subtasks such as pattern recognition and pattern sorting.

When Planning Fails Abstract
Overview of Decision Making
Basic Guidelines to Problem Solving and Decision Making
Decision Making Techniques- Mind Tools
Tower of London 2003

MIT Professor Blasts SAT Writing Test

The link will take you to the NYTimes, but reading the whole article requires free registration. An MIT Professor who sat on a panel for the new SAT writing test says: "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score," Dr. Perelman said. A man on the panel from the College Board disagreed. "He told me I was jumping to conclusions". But Dr. Perlman apparently went on to complain about the fact that students are not downgraded for factual errors. "An essay on the Civil War, given a perfect six, describes the nation being changed forever by the "firing of two shots at Fort Sumter in late 1862." (Actually, it was in early 1861, and, according to "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson, it was "33 hours of bombardment by 4,000 shot and shells." Hmmm.
New York SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors

World Building with Dr. Viau

We accidentally came across this website while surfing topics related to tropical rainforests (we're visiting our own Washington temperate rain forest soon). The Elizabeth Viau site is a wonderful imaginative scientific romp into designer 'worlds'. The computer technology is fairly low tech, but the science is intriguing. Great ideas here for problem-based learning in astronomy, geology, biology, and environmental science in general. Students gain practice at identifying questions and making predictions.

World Builders Lessons