-
What teaching techniques work best?
·
1–2 minutes·
No comments on What teaching techniques work best?The Education Endowment Foundation has produced a very readable evidence-based list of the best ways to improve teaching and learning. The top two methods? Useful feedback and metacognition and self-regulation, aka. ‘learning how to learn’. Both are cheap, effective, and are backed up by solid evidence.
-
Disneyworld Day 2: Blizzard Beach, Epcot, Boardwalk
The free intra-resort bus service has pretty good thus far. In some cases it’s been faster than an Uber, since the buses can usually get closer to the actual entrance of the park. But on average, I think the buses are about 10-15 min slower than Uber, which is not bad given the savings. My…
-
Brain Training Games Don't Work
A few days ago, 73 scientists signed a letter asserting that brain training games – which typically feature puzzle games and mental exercises on smartphones, tablets, PCs, or handheld devices – do not successfully increase general measures of intelligence or memory. I have long had my doubts about the efficacy of games like Brain Age…
-
The UK is not the same as the US
In Louis Menand’s insightful article about why we have college in this week’s New Yorker, he highlights the increasing selectivity of private US universities (in contrast to the very accommodating nature of public universities) and reinforces his point by comparing them with Oxford and Cambridge: In 1940, the acceptance rate at Harvard was eighty-five per…
-
University tuition fees, and private schools
Here’s what the government is currently saying about the change in university fees: Allowing universities to charge students anywhere between £6000 to £9000 will create competition, leading to better value and higher quality education. These fees – which can’t be paid upfront – shouldn’t be considered like normal kinds of debt since they don’t need…
-
A Civilized Education
I’ll say it: I don’t think Civilization is all that educational. It’s more educational than most videogames, certainly, but that’s not saying a lot. There are four arguments made by the pro-educational camp: Firstly, that Civilization teaches people about technologies, cultures, buildings, leaders, and of course, civilizations, from all over the world and across the sweep…
-
Educational games from 3500 years ago
Freeborn children [of Greece] should learn as much of these things as the vast throngs of young in Egypt do with their alphabet. First as regards arithmetic, lessons have been devised there for absolute beginners based on enjoyment and games, distributing apples and garlands so that the same numbers are divided among larger and smaller…
-
The Unbidden
If you’re a parent, you want the best for your children. You want them to eat healthily, to do their homework, to keep fit, and to be well-mannered. You may go a step further and carefully study nutritional information to make sure they receive the right balance of calories, protein, and vitamins. You’d hire a private…
-
The Quick Rise of Reading
A mere two weeks after I wrote about The Long Decline of Reading, which drew largely on the US National Endowment of Arts’ (NEA) 2007 data, the NEA promptly released a report (Reading on the Rise) showing that fiction reading rates significantly increased from 2002 to 2008. Not just for certain age groups or ethnicities,…
-
Ernst Choukula
There’s been some ruckus about a History class at George Mason University in which students created a hoax about an ‘Edward Owens’, the “Last American Pirate”. They made a blog, put up some YouTube videos, and most annoyingly, created an article on Wikipedia. I find these hoaxes tiresome. We all know that it’s easy to…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
mssv 