For the teacher in your life

Do you know a teacher? Delight them this Christmas with a unique gift: a present created especially for them.

Barbara Prashnig’s book, “Learning Styles in Action”, is a practical guide to implementing learning styles in the daily teaching practice, thus helping teachers solve any stress and discipline issues.

The newspaper-column-style of the book ensures fast reading. The layout allows the reader to skim and dip into the content at any point, gathering the desired information and enhancing it with the content supplied on the left-hand pages. (These pages partly elaborate the content of the right-hand pages, partly illustrate and explain the concepts discussed on opposite pages.)

The book is full of scenarios and diverse real-life situations. Among others, “Learning Styles in Action” shows you:

• How learning styles can help underachieving or disruptive students
• Multi-sensory teaching and learning in action
• Ways to integrate learning styles and ICT (computer technology)
• How to create a real learning styles classroom
• The do’s and don’ts of using learning styles.

Each chapter gives answers to different areas of teaching. Special care has been given to the application of LS in different age groups because despite the same underlying concept and philosophy, teaching strategies, classroom set-ups, and interaction with students vary profoundly from pre-school to university level.

The book also explains the integration of LS with other pedagogic concepts like learning cycles, Multiple Intelligences (MI) and Information Communication Technology (ICT). Most importantly, it also suggests strategies for dealing with discipline issues and disruptive disrespectful students.

Help a teacher today with “Learning Styles in Action”. 

Travel Less Save More

For many companies and organisations, travel is routine. Meetings, training, site visits, and, of course, commuting to work – for most people these are all part of the daily schedule. With travel comes cost: the cost of travel, the cost to the environment, as well as the cost of productivity lost during travel time.

Communications technology can help reduce the need for travel in business today. Depending on your Working Style, tools such as the telephone, video conferencing and email can be as effective as face-to-face meetings, without the time and expense of travel.

Innovative working arrangements can also help reduce travel time. With compressed working, employees can accumulate the hours they work and then use these to take a day off. This can contribute towards fewer travel costs, for example, a person may elect to work a 10-hour day Monday through to Thursday and take Friday off.  Allowing staff to work from home one or more days per week can reduce their travel costs and improve their productivity by maintaining their work-life balance.


Are you well suited to working flexi-hours or in a virtual office? Find out.

Christmas Maths

Whether it's summer or winter in your part of the world, you've probably noticed your children's learning has decreased in intensity in anticipation of the Christmas holidays. However, the break will not be favourable towards the students' progress in maths.

Fun sheets to the rescue! Have a look at these magnificent ways of capturing your child's imagination and enthusiasm for learning this Christmas season:

• Count and Trace for preschoolers
• Number fun for children in their first year of school
• Numbers 10-99
• Multiply double digits
• Multiplication and fractions
• Christmas games and puzzles

 +  = ???

Useful Maths Tricks

How many of these super-cool maths tricks do you know? Have a look.

Incidentally, did you know that your child's ability to do maths depends, among others, on their Learning Style:

• If you ask a child who needs movement to sit still and memorise a times-table, you’re unlikely to get good results. You would do far better if you allowed them to walk around or play hopscotch on a makeshift map of times-tables.
• Tactile children, would love to use Koosh balls and learn better by using self-correcting learning tools (flip chutes, electro boards) and other hands-on activities. 
• Auditory children benefit from making tapes of their lessons (either recording their teachers in class, or reading the material themselves out loud).  E.g., chanting the times-tables.
• Kinesthetic children may make schoolwork more interesting by miming the lesson or staging a production.

What is your child's Learning Style? Discover it today.

9 x 8 = ???

7 x 6 = ???

30 degrees C = ??? F

Learning Resources: Do you prefer technology or tradition?

When it comes to learning, today's technology keeps providing us with the latest and the greatest gadgets. We can access knowledge online, we can experience new skills in simulated environments, we can use our eyes, our ears, and our hands.

Whether you embrace technology or prefer the tried-and-tested resources will depend, in part, on your Learning Style. But here's an interesting argument from IKEA (with our apologies to Apple). Have a look. 

What Teachers Can Learn From Famous People

Terry Pratchett is an internationally bestselling novelist and a multi-millionaire. At school, he was, according to his own words, "a non-decrypt student", a "dreamer", and a "goat". His principal open doubted Terry would achieve anything in life. At 17, Terry left school with 5 O-levels, and got a job at a local newspaper. at 35, he had his first Discworld novel published. 25 years later, he was knighted.

Thomas Edison, famous scientist and inventor (of, among many things, the electric light bulb), was thrown out of school at age 12 because he couldn't learn maths and was unable to focus. His teacher said, "he was too stupid to learn anything."

Tom Cruise, a world-famous movie producer, director, and actor, describes himself as a “functional illiterate” due to dyslexia. He wasn't a good student. Today, his estimated wealth is 380 million dollars.

Director of Jaws, Steven Spielberg, dropped out of high school because he was put in a "special education" class.

Benjamin Franklin, whose image graces the $100 bill, left school at age ten.

Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft and the richest person in the world for a number of years, left Harvard in his junior year.

All these people succeeded despite, rather than because of, their teachers. And yet, a good teacher can ignite the imagination and instill a love of learning. Are you a good teacher? Find out.

What Teachers Can Learn From Students

In a recent study, a teacher took two days to replicate a student's life at school: she attended all the classes, played the sports and did the homework. Here's what she learnt:

• Students spend a lot of time sitting, and it's more energy-draining than you can imagine. Before the first day was over, the teacher had a lot of empathy for children who fidget in their desks.
• Students spend a lot of time having to listen. In many lessons, there's no opportunity to express your own views, you just have to assimilate those of the teacher. Even students who learn well by listening need a regular break to aid their concentration.
• In some classes, students may feel belittled if they ask a question.

The problem doesn't end at school though. Sometimes it continues on the sports field, with the coach doing all the talking and reprimanding, as well as at home where homework awaits.

Depending on the child's Learning Style, they will be better or worse equipped to handle what's expected of them. Discover their optimal Learning Style today and learn what makes them tick.