Gwen Mueller is an IT Professional, #dnd Gamer-girl, #coffee drinker, geek in Secondary Education, editor on tumblr #education, curating #science, and #tech resources to inspire lifelong learning with 1/4 cup of #fun.
And, in a separate, ongoing study of nearly 500 preschoolers, Ms. Cameron found about a third tested high in both executive-function skills—such as following directions amid distractions—and visual-motor skills, such as cutting paper. Children who performed well in either or both executive-function and visual-motor skills achieved well in both math and reading achievement and class behavior later on in the early-elementary grades.
“It’s the children who are low in both who are struggling,” Ms. Cameron said. The more quickly children become automatic in mentally coordinating an action or repeating a design, the more they can free up working memory and organize their thinking for more abstract problems.
As more and more foundation money floods into K-12 education, it is being channeled to fewer and fewer groups, according to new research presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting here last week.
Researchers also found that foundation money is moving away from traditional public schools and toward “challengers to the system”—primarily charter schools—and that the funders in general are becoming much more active in shaping how those challengers develop.
“The stakes for our children’s educational and professional futures are high, but we should not forget the question who are you should be more applicable to a person’s character than their professional identity.”
One in six U.S. high school students reported being electronically bullied within the past 12 months, according to a new study.
The study also found that almost one-third of high school students spend three or more hours each day playing video games or using a computer.
“Electronic bullying of high school students threatens the self-esteem, emotional well-being and social standing of youth at a very vulnerable stage of their development,” said Andrew Adesman, M.D., F.A.A.P., of Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York and lead author of the study.
The study found that students motivated by a desire for autonomy and competence tended to earn higher grades and show a greater likelihood of persistence than did other students.
VideoNotes is a neat new tool for taking notes while watching videos. VideoNotes allows you to load any YouTube video on the left side of your screen and on the right side of the screen VideoNotes gives you a notepad to type on. VideoNotes integrates with your Google Drive account. By integrating with Google Drive VideoNotes allows you to share your notes and collaborate on your notes just as you can do with a Google Document.
New research, published in the journal Mindfulness, suggests practicing meditation before class can help students focus and lead to better grades.
Researchers randomly selected students for basic meditation instructions before a lecture and discovered that the students who meditated before the lecture scored better on a subsequent quiz than students who did not meditate.
A new research study finds that widespread use of media among freshman college students may compromise academic performance.
Researchers determined that freshmen women spend nearly half their day — 12 hours — engaged in some form of media use, particularly texting, music, the Internet and social networking. Investigators discovered that media use was generally associated with lower grade point averages (GPAs) and other negative academic outcomes.
However, there were two exceptions as newspaper reading and listening to music were actually linked to a positive academic performance.
A new study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, suggests that relatively simple twists on the familiar high-speed, high-pressure math quiz can level the field of classroom competition.
When a child with autism copies the actions of an adult, he or she is likely to omit anything “silly” about what they’ve just seen. In contrast, typically developing children will go out of their way to repeat each and every element of the behavior even as they may realize that parts of it don’t make any sense.
The findings, reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 8, are the first to show that the social nature of imitation is very important and challenging for children with autism, the researchers say.
“The data suggest that children with autism do things efficiently rather than socially, whereas typical children do things socially rather than efficiently,” says Antonia Hamilton of the University of Nottingham. “We find that typical children copy everything an adult does, whereas autistic children only do the actions they really need to do.”
FreeTech4Teachers is a great resource for teachers and edtechs like me. This post in particular had a number of links to iPad usage studies, something I’m very interested so I’m putting it here for you, too.
The iPad as a Tool for Education is a study based on iPad use at Longfield Academy, Kent, England . There is strong emphasis on interpreting the data generated by surveying students and faculty.
Family dinners do more than just bring parents and kids up to date; a new study suggests the fellowship inherent in such gatherings contributes to good mental health in adolescents.
Frank Elgar, Ph.D., a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, discovered family meal times are a measurable signature of social exchanges in the home that benefit adolescents’ well-being – regardless of whether or not they feel they can easily talk to their parents.
“More frequent family dinners related to fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors towards others and higher life satisfaction,” said Elgar, whose research centers on social inequalities in health and family influences on child mental health.
It’s well known that talking on your cell phone compromises your ability to perform simple tasks like walking and driving. Now it turns out cell phones impact cognition in bystanders as well: listening to another person talk on their cell phone isn’t just incredibly annoying, it also interferes with your memory and concentration.
