David Moursund's To Write List

From IAE-Pedia

Readers who feel they benefit from reading this page will likely benefit from reading the IAE Blog.

In my daily reading, writing, and thinking I often encounter topics that interest me and that I want to share with others. Usually this encounter results in one or more of the following:

I make an addition to one of the current IAE-pedia entries.
I write a Blog entry or a short note to myself that this may become a future Blog entry. If you like to read very short articles, see the IAE Blog.
I add an entry to the page you are currently reading. This is a "possibly to do" list.
I talk to someone about the topic.
I forget what I have read. (You have heard the expression, "Use it or lose it." The same expression tends to hold for what I read. I am hopeful that a few ideas from what I rad have been assimilated into my brain, well mixed in with things that I think that I already know.)

For some reason unknown to me, this page has generated quite a bit of traffic since its creation. Perhaps it is serving as a source of ideas for preservice teachers looking for possible term paper projects. Perhaps it is providing ideas to doctoral students and others seeking research topics. In any event, I am pleased!

An IAE Blog

In August 2010, the Information Age Education organization launched a Blog (see http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog.html) designed to help in IAE's goal of improving education at all levels, and throughout the word. A number of the topics listed on this Web page will be included as topics of discussion in the Blog.

I am pleased to report that the Blog s doing quite well. Most of the Blog entries have some lasting interest and value. In some sense, most are like very short articles of the form that I would add to the IAE Wiki. Indeed, some focus on topics that are already in the IAE Wiki.

Many of the Blog entries focus on topics that are suitable for discussion in preservice and inservice teacher education. From time to time I go back to such an entry and add a Comment that focuses on specific applications in the classroom or adds more recent information to the topic.

Possible IAE Wiki Pages Not Yet Created

The topics and ideas listed below all deserve their own pages in this IAE-pedia.

Reading

Here is a topic that I find interesting. On average, people in the United States are reading less hard copy print materials than in the past. One can argue that this is made up for by spending more time reading email, instant messages, Web documents, and so on. And, of course, they are spending a lot of time playing electronic games.

So, let's narrow the topic a little. When I was a child, reading was one of my favorite pastimes. We had radio—another important pastime—but we did not have TV until I was 16. (That's if you want to consider a very small number of fuzzy channels without color to be TV!)

Now, on average, young people read far fewer stories and books for entertainment than when I was young. They play far more electronic games. Think of an interactive multi player game as a type of book—as an adventure story. Playing the game has some of the characteristics of reading a book. One has to use their imagination and thinking skills to understand what is going on. The "play" may be quite complex and it can take a long time to learn the environment and characters. In addition, in the game, one can be an active participant, and one's participation changes what is going on in the game. Also, in such a game one interacts with (collaborates with, competes with) other game players. Thus, in some sense, playing such a video game fills (is significantly replacing) an entertainment niche that was formerly filled by reading for entertainment.

The same type of analysis can be done for movies versus video games.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

See http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15281. Also see:

Theobald, Bill (8/19/2010). Federal grant money to provide computers to needy kids. Gannett Washington Bureau. Retrieved 8/19/2010 from http://www.dnj.com/article/20100819/NEWS02/8190328. Quoting from this Website:

Needy Tennessee kids will get hundreds of computers with $2.3 million in federal grant money that administration officials announced Wednesday.

The money is part of $1.8 billion in economic stimulus money that will be divided among 37 states, primarily to expand broadband access.

Tennessee's share will go to the non-profit Connected Tennessee for the group's Computer 4 Kids program, the only project in the state that will receive grant money from the latest release of stimulus funding.

Computer 4 Kids has provided computers to foster children for several years, said Michael Ramage, executive director of Connected Tennessee.

Ramage said computers are used to encourage and reward foster children who do well in school. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Study Skills

All students learn (on their own through experience and/or through being taught) various study skills. My impression is that the "average" level of skills knowledge and implementation by students is quite low. Here is a NY Times reference:

Nankani, Sandhya (9/13/2010). Learn your lesson: Using effective study strategies. The Learning Network. Retrieved 9/15/2010 from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/learn-your-lesson-using-effective-study-strategies/. See also http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1.

The topic of learning to earn is challenging. ow does one best learn math? Compare and contrast this with how one best learns to read Shakespeare plays or how one learns to play a new computer game.

In brief summary, there has been quite a bit of research on study skills. Think about this as how the research applies to groups of people and how it applies to a single student. The bottom line, in some sense, is that each student is unique and that the nature of what is to be studied (learned) strongly affects how one should study it.

Thus, the teacher in each discipline area at each grade level has a responsibility for teaching research-based, discipline-specific and grade level appropriate information about how to learn the discipline. Each student has a responsibility of individualizing this information—gaining personally relevant knowledge and skills.

Technology Hasn't Helped Students' Study Skills, Research Finds.

Aug 30, 2010 ... The research, published this month in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would ... www.facultyfocus.com/.../technology-hasnt-helped-students-study-skills-research-finds/ - Quoting from this source:

In the space of one generation, college students have gone from studying with highlighters and wire notebooks to laptops, netbooks and, now, iPads.

But despite the prevalence of technology on campuses, a new study indicates that computers alone can’t keep students from falling into their same weak study habits from their ink-and-paper days.

“Our study showed that achievement really takes off when students are prompted to use more powerful strategies when studying computer materials,” said the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Ken Kiewra, an expert in study methods and one of the authors of the study.

The research, published this month in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would with traditional texts: They mindlessly over-copy long passages verbatim, take incomplete or linear notes, build lengthy outlines that make it difficult to connect related information, and rely on memory drills like re-reading text or recopying notes.

For more content like this, be sure to download the FREE REPORT: 10 Effective Classroom Management Techniques Every Faculty Member Should Know.

Meanwhile, undergraduates in the study scored 29 to 63 percentage points higher on tests when they used study techniques like recording complete notes, creating comparative charts, building associations, and crafting practice questions on their screens.

HIICAL: Highly Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning

The IAE-pedia contains several brief treatments of this topic as a part of other topics, but there is no specific page treating the topic in depth.

Recently I have started using the term HIIICAL: Highly Individualized Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning.

The major underlying idea is that timely and relevant feedback is essential in learning. One-to-one tutoring is especially effective in eduction because of two things:

New content being presented can be more carefully aligned with the learner's current knowledge, skills, and interests.
Feedback can be immediate, personalized, and the basis for an interactive dialog.

Brain Science Mythologies

For a brief treatment of this topic see my 11/6/2010 IAE-Blog entry.

This is an interesting and fun topic. For example, probably you have hear the myth that the typical human brain uses only 10% of its capabilities. I suppose that one can use this myth to suggest that there is this huge reservoir of unused capabilities that can be tapped into through better education or if one would just learn to try harder.

Of course, you have also heard about the idea of "use it or lose it" in terms of ones learning, and you have hear of the ideas of brain plasticity and re-purposing of neurons. If a collection of neurons are not being used, they will be taken over by some other active part of the brain—they will be re-purposed.

Recently I read a 1979 article about brain mythologies. So, this topic seems to have a fairly long history. I suppose that phrenology is part of that history. My recent Google search turned up a lot of well-researched articles about brain mythologies (neuromythologies).

Daniel Pink

Note that students are being rewarded by being given an important tool that all should have. Hmm. See Daniel Pink's book that discusses reward structures for lower-order work and for higher-order work.

Note also the recent research on giving rewards to teachers whose student make more gains on test scores. (September 2010). The reward structure that was studied had no effect. Early in 2011 I read an article that presented some evidence of success in offering college students money for getting good grades.

A related reading:

Communities of Practice at http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm

Daniel Pink and his book titled Drive.

First is biological. Second is extrinsic; third is Type 1. Type 1 behavior is a way of thinking and an approach to business grounded in the real science of human motivation and powered by our third drive—our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Hmm. Creativity. This has long been recognized as a driver.

How are health care and education alike? They both are concerned with the well being of people. They both contribute to the bettering of the human condition. See the sequence of IAE Newsletter articles written by Dave Moursund and Bob Sylwester. They can be accessed via the "Free IAE Newsletter" in the top part of the menu on the left side of this page.

Daniel Pink's book is mainly about motivating works in business and industry. From that point of view it is a book about business and economics.

But, every once in a while in the book he includes examples of research in education and suggestions that his ideas apply to all both students and their teachers. This "apples and oranges" type of analysis is helpful, just like the IAE-Newsletters "apples and oranges of Education and Health Care" provide useful insights.

The fundamental theme in Pink's book is that there are three major themes of motivation that need to be considered:

1. Biological. This is a type of intrinsic motivation that is a strong driver in the live all of us.

2. Extrinsic—especially rewards and punishments; especially if-then contingencies. If you don't shown up for work on time, I will dock your pay. Continue to do that, and I will fire you. If you work overtime, I will pay you time -and-a-half. If we meet our sales goals for this month, I will take all of you out to a nice dinner.

3. Intrinsic, especially for those who have their baseline needs being met. They have fair, decent, competitive wages and work conditions. They, offer the type of reward that is not based on if-then. Rather think in terms of personal satisfaction, making a difference in the world, contributing to the welfare of other, expressing one's creativity, and so on.

Autonomy: task, time, team, and technique. This comes from others, but is mentioned in the Pink book.

Decreasing Dropout Rates in Distance Learning Courses

http://www.naehcy.org. This study tried out various ways to decrease dropout rates, and non of the methods tried produced a significant decrease. Here are two of my conjectures:

1. People are inherently social creatures. It is built into our genes to be social creatures and to learn in social, interactive, small face-to-face groups.

2. Our current educational system is not designed to educate or train students to learn in a distance learning environment. It does not help students to learn to function with that level of independence and self-responsiiblity.

Carol Dweck

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck. Her work and insights are outstanding!

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and the topic of flow

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi. I have read his book on "flow" and think of it as "fight on!" I certainly have experience flow in some of my activities.

Also see:

Stuart, Keith (8/11/2010). What do we mean when we call a game 'immersive'? guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 8/13/2010 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/aug/10/games-science-of-immersion. Quoting from the article:

How do you know you are immersed in a game? There are lots of obvious signifiers: time passes unnoticed; you become unaware of events or people around you; your heart rate quickens in scary or exciting sections; you empathize with the characters... Basic stuff. But while we can reel off the symptoms, what are the causes? And why do many games get it wrong?

Auxiliary Memory

See http://iae-pedia.org/Two_Brains_Are_Better_Than_One. In retrospect, this document should have been about three brains being better than two. The third brain in the discussion is the Reading & Writing brain.

Student Autonomy

Quoting from an email message written by John Gardner June 30, 2010:

Hello all. I am thoroughly enjoying this conversation and look forward to a time when there are many answers as well as many questions! I don’t know anything about anything, but that doesn’t stop me from having opinions on everything. After all I am an American voter. I am absolutely convinced that students will learn better if they have the ability to learn at their own pace from excellent material that can be accessed multi-modaly. The previous conversations clue me that autonomy has nothing to do with automobiles, so maybe this is autonomy?

Anyhow to be serious for once, I’d like to add to the questions. “What students do not benefit from autonomy?” My guess is “none”, but I’ll also guess that I would be very hard pressed to find a way to prove it. We seem to be very good at training students not to be autonomous! For many years I taught an advanced undergrad course on computer interfacing that had as its only requirement that students do a project. The only rule was that the project involve computer interfacing. I refused to assign any topics, and students hated me. By the end of the course they didn’t hate me anymore, and in later years many returned to tell me that it was the pivotal course in their lives, the first time that they had to actually THINK independently. It was the first time they were totally autonomous. I am sure that one would get very different results trying to answer my question if the tests were run before or after that course.

I’m enjoying this thread and hope that my comments don’t have the same effect on you that I did when I was young and joined a group of young women. Tom is wrong. Girls are much more difficult than math.

John Gardner

Roles of Education and Health Care in Improving Quality of Life

See:

Brain Exercises and Cognition

See:

Study: Brain Exercises Don’t Improve Cognition By Eben Harrell TIME/CNN http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983306,00.html Quoting from the article:

You’ve probably heard it before: the brain is a muscle that can be strengthened. It’s an assumption that has spawned a multimillion-dollar computer-game industry of electronic brainteasers and memory games. But in the largest study of these games to date, a team of British researchers has found that healthy adults who undertake computer-based ‘brain training’ do not improve their mental fitness in any significant way.

The study, published online on Tuesday by the journal Nature, tracked 11,430 participants through a six-week online study. The participants were divided into three groups: the first group undertook basic reasoning, planning and problem-solving activities (like choosing the ‘odd one out’ of a group of four objects); the second completed more complex exercises of memory, attention, math and visual-spatial processing that were designed to mimic popular brain-training computer games and programs; and the control group was asked to use the Internet to research answers to trivia questions. (See different workouts for your brain.)

Curiosity

Humans are naturally curious. Does our educational system help or hinder?

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." (Albert Einstein; German-born theoretical physicist and 1921 Nobel Prize winner; 1879–1955.)

This topic is vaguely related to creativity. Recent research suggests that the level of creativity of our students is declining as compared to the past.

Bronson, Po and Ashley Merry (7/12/2010). Forget brainstorming. Newsweek. Retrieved 8/31/2010 from http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/12/forget-brainstorming.html. Quoting from the article:

Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team’s creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together. In fact, according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn’t mince words: it’s “garbage.” Whether for adults or kids, the worst of these programs focus solely on imagination exercises, expression of feelings, or imagery. They pander to an easy, unchallenging notion that all you have to do is let your natural creativity out of its shell. However, there are some techniques that do boost the creative process:

Don't tell someone to be 'creative.'

Get moving.

Take a break.

Reduce [television] screen time.

Explore other cultures.

Follow a passion.

Ditch the suggestion box.

Peer and self-instruction

The Tom Sawyer effect. (Convince others that what you are doing is really fun.) Now, if I could just convince more of my readers that it would be fun to add a document to the IAE-pedia!. It is interesting to think about why so many well educated people (who have lots to share) resist doing "serious" writing.

The bars of soap example Peer instruction. Soap: http://esa.un.org/iys/docs/san_lib_docs/Handwashing_Handbook.pdf. The Handwashing Handbook A guide for developing a hygiene promotion program to increase handwashing with soap.

Computer in the wall example. http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm. Here is a short description of this work:

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens. Based on the results, he talks about issues of digital divide, computer education and kids, the dynamics of the third world getting online.

New Delhi physicist Sugata Mitra has a radical proposal for bringing his country's next generation into the Info Age. Quoting from a Businessweek Online Daily Briefing,March 2, 2000 edited by Paul Judge:

Kids learn how to play quite complex games from each other and on their own. Similarly for using various aspects of ICT—especially the T part, and multimedia downloading, recording, and playback devices, Twitter, Facebook. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/sugata.mitra Newcastle University. His wiki: http://sugatam.wikispaces.com/

Creativity

This is one of the three components in Robert Sternberg's theory of multiple intelligences. Computer-based tools are being developed to speed up (enhance?) creativity. See http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=91413. Quoting from the article:

"It is like Wikipedia, people get a real kick out of participating, and now it has millions of articles, and all because Web 2.0 lets people do what they would like to do anyway. But with Web 2.0 they are connecting with people immediately," Luccini stresses.

InnoTube also boasts a host of enhancements to all these relatively common Web 2.0 elements. For example, users can look at a type of 'mind-map' showing the links between different users who like the same content, and Luccini emphasises that there is an inherent value to such ‘connected knowledge’; it helps highlight information that will probably be useful even if you have no idea the information is there.

"If you like somebody's choices for one item, chances are that you will like it for another. If you are interested in a subject that one user covers very well, you will probably find lots of information you were not aware of in the files she or he recommends," he says.

There is almost no end to the enhancements INSEAD’s CALT has added to their package. People can communicate asynchronously, by starting forums around particular content or topics, or synchronously by using instant messaging, chat and video chat, public or private.

One creates making use of available media, tools, and so on. When we create new tools (such as computer graphics), we create new outlets for or tools for use in creativity.

Bronson, Po and Ashley Merry )7/10/2010). The creativity crisis. Newsweek. Retrieved 8/31/2010 from http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html. Quoting from the article:

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

Another quote from the same article:

In the 50 years since Schwarzrock and the others took their tests, scholars—first led by Torrance, now his colleague, Garnet Millar—have been tracking the children, recording every patent earned, every business founded, every research paper published, and every grant awarded. They tallied the books, dances, radio shows, art exhibitions, software programs, advertising campaigns, hardware innovations, music compositions, public policies (written or implemented), leadership positions, invited lectures, and buildings designed.

Here are three references:

IAE Newsletter - Issue 34 January 2010. This issue of the newsletter explores the topic of creativity by artificially intelligent computer systems. Keep in mind the idea that human intelligence and creativity may well be quite a bit different than computer intelligence and creativity—but both are of value to us.

IAE Newsletter - Issue 33 January 2010. This issue of the Information Age Newsletter explores biological creativity.

The Scientist: Prof. Bailey Explores Human Creativity and Machines

Cornell Daily Sun (NY) (03/02/11) Laura Comin. Retrieved 3/2/2011 from http://www.cornellsun.com/section/science/content/2011/03/02/scientist-prof-bailey-explores-human-creativity-and-machines.

Cornell University professor Graeme Bailey is studying the ability of computers to mimic human creativity. Bailey says the divide between computer science and art is fading, and he is researching how computer algorithms can be used to create original works of art, and how those creations lead to a universal statement about human self-awareness and perception. "If we as computer scientists are hoping to build machines which can create effective art, then we must understand what psychologists and artists understand about human perception," Bailey says. In 2005, Bailey, composer Steve Stucky, and psychology professor Carol Krumhansl created the Computing in the Arts minor at Cornell. The concentration enables students to create works of art with computers, focusing on different disciplines including music, psychology, dance, film, and art. Bailey says computers will eventually be able to create original works of art indistinguishable from human-created works.

View Full Article | Return to Headlines

Quality of Life

The issue of "quality of life" is a standard one in medicine and health care. My recent Google search of quality of life returned about 340 million results. There are a large number of factors that contribute to one's quality of life. These are given varying levels of importance by different people. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-of-life_index.

Thus, some people will give a relatively high ranking of how their formal schooling has contributed to their quality of life, and some will give it a relatively low ranking. At the time they are undergoing their middle school and high school education, for example, may students feel that the schooling is a "pain in the neck" and the time and effort it requires is decreasing their quality of life. Others will point to certain subjects or certain teachers, arguing that these particular subjects or teachers are "good" or "bad" in contributing to their quality of life. Years later, their retrospective insights may be different than those thye had at the time.

The "Game" of Mathematics

Currently Bob Albrecht and I are writing a book "Using Math Games and Word Problems to Increase the Math Maturity of K-8 Students." The book discusses math maturity and explores a number of games that can be played with dice or dominoes that help to increase math maturity.

In writing material for this book, it occurred to me to start thinking about math itself as a type of game. This thinking led me to writing (in an email to my friend Gene Maier):

Lately I have been working with Bob Albrecht writing a book on games in education for use at the elementary and middle school level, and that help engage students in activities that will increase their levels of math maturity.

The other day I noticed that I had previously written a sentence that mentioned "the game of mathematics." By that, I had in mind that math is a game.

Yesterday I thought more about what the concept of the game of mathematics might mean and whether it was relevant to my insights into math education. Math has rules, goals to be accomplished, strategies to be developed and used, and so on.

How is this the same and how is it different from a computer-based simulation? Hmm. Think of math as a simulation game. The simulations (models) that are developed often are usefully accurate models of problem situations that people want to study in many different disciplines. A math model (or a computer simulation) does not need to be perfect to be highly useful.

Gene Maier responded on August 23, 2010

It would never have occurred to be to compare math to a computer simulation, but I can see the possibilities, especially for those who draw their math from physical settings.

I have a difficult time coming up with a definition of mathematics other than it's somewhere between an art and a science that evolves from an examination of number and space. It is somewhat like a game, but with a flexible set of rules. One changes the rules to suit one's need or fancies; the rules are not immutable; and a lot of mathematics grows out of examining what happens when the rules are changed. Also, contrary to popular opinion, there's a wide range of legitimate moves one can make to reach one's goal and people are always inventing new ones; so it's not a static game. Math comes with a caveat that's not there in ordinary games: You can make up your own rules as long as they are logically sound, and even that, as the article Bob Sylwester (see below) forwarded points out, is subject to debate.

Note: The article referred to is:

Elwes, Richard (8/16/2010). To infinity and beyond: The struggle to save arithmetic. NewScientist. Retrieved 8/24/2010 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727731.300-to-infinity-and-beyond-the-struggle-to-save-arithmetic.html?page=1. The article discusses some new results on incompleteness in math.

How Do Search Engines "Do Their Thing?"

It is easy to learn to use a search engine. However, it is not easy to learn to be a skilled user a search engine—and there are lots of different search engines. What do we want our students to learn about search engines?

Inside Higher Education (9/30/2010). Searching for better research habits. Retrieved 9/30/2010 from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/29/search. Quoting from this article:

“Students do not have adequate information literacy skills when they come to college, and this goes for even high-achieving students,” said Asher, the lead research anthropologist at the Enthographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project, which recently studied the search habits of more than 600 Illinois students spanning a range of institutions and demographic groups. …

Asher moved swiftly through a few slides featuring excerpts from interviews with students, each eliciting both chuckles and gasps from the audience of librarians and technologists. “I’m just trusting Google to know what are the good resources,” responded one sophomore biology student.

“Of all the students that I interviewed, not a single one of them could give an adequate conceptual definition of how Google returns results,” said Asher. Not even those “who should know better,” like computer science students. The word “magic” came up a lot, he noted.

Active Learning

Active learning is a "buzz expression" in education. The general idea is that teachers want students to be actively engaged in learning what the teacher is teaching. Here is a useful reference:

Weimer, Maryellen (2/9/2011 Defining Active Learning. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 2/14/2011 from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/defining-active-learning/?c=FF&t=F110209. Quoting from the document:

The Greenwood Dictionary of Education defines active learning as “The process of having students engage in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas and how they are using those ideas. Requiring students to regularly assess their own degree of understanding and skill at handling concepts or problems in a particular discipline. The attainment of knowledge by participating or contributing. The process of keeping students mentally, and often physically, active in their learning through activities that involve them in gathering information, thinking and problem solving.”

IAE Wiki Stub Page Exist for Topics Listed in This Section

I consider each of the following to be important topics. Readers are encouraged to add to the pages that have been started for these topics.

1. Charter Schools.

2. Personalized Medicine and Education.

3. Learned Helplessness.

4. Robotics and Education.

5. What is Social Science?

6. Mind and Body Connection.

7. Knowledge Discovery and Data-mining.

8. Self Assessment.

The following article discusses student preparation for college as measured by ACT college-entrance exam scores.

Banchero, Stephanie (8/18/2010). Stagnate scores at high schools. Retrieved 8/21/2010 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703824304575435831555726858.html. Quoting from the article:

New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years.

The results raise questions about how well the nation's high schools are preparing students for college, and show the challenge facing the Obama administration in its effort to raise educational standards. The administration won bipartisan support for its education policies early on, but faces a tough fight in the fall over the rewrite and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind program. …

The ACT is taken by students in every state but is most popular in the Midwest. About 47% of the 2010 graduating class, 1.6 million students, sat for the exam, which is accepted at most U.S. colleges. The ACT is an achievement test that measures students' mastery of high-school curriculum and the skills they'll need to pass first-year college courses.

The average ACT composite score has actually fallen since 2007, after increasing during the five-year period before that. This year, the average composite was 21.0, compared with 21.1 last year and 21.2 in 2007. The test is scored on a 1-36 point scale.

It seems to me that one of the things this means is that students are being mislead. They take the courses and achieve the grades that they are told prepare them for college. However, they are not prepared.

For me, this suggests the need for honest rigorous self-assessment instruments. Every student should have free and easy access to instruments that provide fair, valid, reliable information about how well they are prepared for college (or, for a particular type of employment that does not require college).

Topics I Hope Others Will Write About

When I created the IAE-pedia, I hoped that lots of people would contribute articles. The reality has been that only a modest number of articles have been contributed.

If you would like to contribute an article, please contact me. I will offer you both encouragement and help! Email me at moursund@uoregon.edu.

Here are some topics that I feel are very important, and that I don't feel qualified to write about.

1. Graphic Arts and Education. See, for example:

http://arstechnica.com/site/about-ars-technica.ars. Quoting from this site:

When Hippocrates said that "life is short, art is long," he did not mean that art outlives the artist. The "father of medicine" instead diagnosed a basic fact of life: true art or skill takes a lifetime of effort to perfect, and the path is fraught with "occasional crises, perilous experiences, and difficult judgments." Technology is the "art" at the forefront of our changing world, and we're here to help it all, even the difficult judgments.

Professor Nancy Yen-wen Cheng, Department of Architecture, University of Oregon.

2. Digital filing cabinet ideas and a "solid" introduction to information retrieval in XXX (name a discipline) written for students taking a "solid" course in XXX at the upper high school or lower division college level. The basic idea is that in each discipline that a student studies, the student will learn to make effective use of information resources and will begin to build or will add to a personal library of resources in that discipline. These will be resources the student has used (read, drawn upon in learning and writing, and so on) and might well want to draw on in the future. This ties in closely with the Two Brains Are Better Than One idea.

3. What children should be learning about human cognitive neuroscience (the human brain) during K-12 education.

4. Computers and music, especially as they relate to music education.

Links to Related IAE Resources

This is a collection of IAE publications related to the IAE document you are currently reading. It is not updated very often, so important recent IAE documents may be missing from the list.

IAE Blog

IAE Blog.

Neuromythologies.

IAE Newsletter

IAE Newsletter - Issue 34 January 2010. This issue of the newsletter explores the topic of creativity by artificially intelligent computer systems. Keep in mind the idea that human intelligence and creativity may well be quite a bit different than computer intelligence and creativity—but both are of value to us.

IAE Newsletter - Issue 33 January 2010. This issue of the Information Age Newsletter explores biological creativity.