Recently found … 06/02/2015 (p.m.)

  • It’s well intentioned to raise standards, but the mistake it makes is that it fails to recognize that education is not a mechanical impersonal process that can improved by tweaking standards and regularly testing. … It’s a human process. It’s real people going through the system and whether the system takes into account who they are, what engages them, isn’t incidental. It is the core of what education is.

    tags: education reform

  • tags: learning educational technology

    • In a small experiment, researchers at Dartmouth College have shown that data automatically collected by an Android app can guess how students are spending their time — predicting their end-of-term grades with scary accuracy.
    • Slightly more surprising, students tended to perform better when they buckled down towards the end of the semester. After the midterm, “A” students partied less, stayed at home more, and spent less time in conversation. But what’s interesting is that this relationship held true whether they started out as relative extroverts or introverts. It wasn’t the absolute time spent partying, in other words, it was the ability to prioritize that really counted.

      Also of note: students with better grades studied in louder locations. Were they benefiting from study groups? Maybe.

    • If the results hold, a natural next question is, Who might find these patterns useful, and for what?
    • Campbell, a computer scientist, has a longstanding interest in what he calls “persuasive technology.” He dreams of making this app available in the app store to help students improve their behaviors and in turn, classroom performance — a Fitbit for your brain.

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