Saturday, 16 February 2013

12:22:26

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”

― Plato

Train the Brain

 

HANDS up if your youth is behind you, to put it politely, and you have trouble from time to time remembering where you put your car keys, or the thread of a conversation, or why you entered a particular room.

There should be quite a lot of hands because most people are acutely aware when their powers of recall start to dull, which they inevitably do, albeit to varying degrees, once one's prime of life is firmly in the rear-view mirror.

Adding to the angst is fear, not just of forgetfulness but that the memory lapses may be the harbinger of something even more feared: Alzheimer's disease.

An analysis done last year for Alzheimer's Australia by consultancy firm Deloitte Access Economics estimated there were 266,574 Australians affected by the disease last year but that number will more than double, to 553,285, by 2030. By 2050, it forecast nearly one million Australians would be affected.

Source:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/train-the-brain/story-e6frg8y6-1226495664610

The principal of John Monash Science School in Victoria, Peter Corkill, says the assessment system is changing to include greater focus on advanced skills such as analysis rather than pure memorisation, but either way true learning has never been about teaching to a test or encouraging children to memorise blocks of meaningless information such as whole English essays or complete maths solutions.

''So if you've learnt something you can apply it but if you've memorised it there's no guarantee you can apply it in any context.''

Source:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/study-gains-train-the-brain-20120826-24uqu.html#ixzz2L0jgDqIQ

 

Microfluidic Ballet by Albert Folch's lab

(University of Washington, BioE dept., Seattle,Washington US )

Uploaded on 2 Jul 2010

Here we present a microfluidic ballet to the music of Dimitri Shostakovich. The "dancers" of this ballet are seven streams of food-coloring dye controlled by microvalves (bottom of the image). The device operates essentially as a flow equalizer: each of the seven microvalves opens when the music volume exceeds a set threshold in a given band of frequency arbitrarily assigned to that microvalve. Flanking the microvalves is a constant background flow of colorless water, which keeps the colored fluids focused in separate streams. Due to a microfabrication defect, the microvalves leak fluid even when closed, but that produces a pleasant artistic effect. We have displayed the movie in negative tone to convey the ambiance of a theater at night.

-- Albert Folch, Associate Professor of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, USA (afolch@u.washington.edu).

Thanks for joining us today!

Next: How does our brain learn information?

Sunday, 10 February 2013

14:14:32

L e a r n i n g L a b s

 

The London Knowledge Lab is a unique collaboration between two of the UK’s most prominent centres of research – the Institute of Education and Birkbeck. 

The Lab brings together computer and social scientists from a very broad range of fields, including:

•education,

•sociology,

•culture and media,

•semiotics,

•computational intelligence,

•information management,

•personalisation,

•semantic web

•ubiquitous technologies. 

This means that issues can be tackled from many different perspectives, and this is reflected in our mission, to

•Understand the place of digital technologies and media in our cultural, social and educational relationships with knowledge – finding, acquiring, creating, and sharing it;

•Design, build and evaluate systems, processes and interfaces that enhance these relationships; and

•Examine critically the assumptions about knowledge and learning that underlie the increasingly wide range of applications of digital technologies.

The ways in which we learn, and what we need to know, are changing.  Our research aims to explore and invent the roles of technology in this process, and to understand how technology relates to broader social, economic and cultural factors.

Source : Europa World of Learning 2012 Polestar Wheatons Exeter Great Britain Vol 1

Social Media in Education - Teaching Digital Natives in 2011

It is time to look at how some of our outdated teaching practices can be changed to help students learn more effectivel​y. Social Media can help us ...

 

Thanks for joining us today.

W h a t s a y y o u ...

Sunday, 10 February 2013

13:47:31

Bang Goes the Theory!

Enough talk – Novopay rescue package needed now

Friday, 8 February 2013, 1:40 pm

Press Release: Post Primary Teachers' Association 

8 February 2013

Enough talk – Novopay rescue package needed now

While investigations are being launched into who is responsible for the Novopay payroll disaster – schools, students, principals and administration staff are buckling under the pressure of a broken payroll system.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1302/S00041/enough-talk-novopay-rescue-package-needed-now.htm

Novopay: Hekia Parata - 'We are responsible'

When did it start?

How long has it taken?

How long will it continue?

These are the questions

Let us return to this in a methodical fashion and look at the solutions

 : Next Sunday

Thank you for joining us today!

a b o u t

Sunday, 10 February 2013

13:26:46

E d u c a t ì o n  ì n N e w  Z e a l a n d

follows the three-tier model which includes primary schools, followed by intermediate schools then secondary schools (high schools) which is compulsory.

Then tertiary education at universities and/or polytechs may follow and is optional.

The academic year in New Zealand varies between institutions, but generally runs from late January until mid-December for primary schools, secondary schools, and polytechnics, and from late February until mid-November for universities.

This site has been created to bring humanity into the technology equation and how would we do that?

Plans that go awry create problems which in turn can bring solutions and what sort of timeline is in place

We look at some of these issues.

How they affect the infrastructure of the education system.

What say the educational forum of New Zealand.

Thank you for joining us today!