What's better - books or reading online?

There's no doubt about it: exposure to fiction is essential for developing children's imagination. In a way, it matters less whether the format is listening to a book, reading together with a parent or reading by themselves, just as long as they get lost in the imaginary world of book characters.

We usually include e-books and online reading in the same set: as long as it's a book, it doesn't matter whether it's on paper or on the Kindle. However, as early as 2006, an eye-tracking study by scientists at the US-based research group, Nielsen Norman, indicated that people read web pages and books on iPads in an “F” pattern. This means that they scan the top line all the way, then halfway across the next few lines, and then only down the left side of the page, all the way down to the bottom of the article.

This kind of reading is helpful when we're trying to form a quick overview of the text (non-fiction reading), but it doesn't work to yield a deeper understanding of what we’re reading. Wall Street Journal had this to say: "as much as rich multimedia-laden content captures our attention, with a mixture of words, sounds, and moving gifs, videos and image galleries, studies have shown that together they can lead to lower comprehension than just reading plain text."

Something to ponder, for sure, especially if your Learning Style is visual.

Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society

This blog post is a tribute not only to Robin Williams, but also to all the great teachers out there. In the movie "Dead Poets Society", Williams played the role of John Keating, an unconventional English Literature teacher. John Keating's teaching style - it involved tearing "boring bits" out of textbooks - would have horrified sequential thinkers and delighted simultaneous ones. (To read more about Learning Styles, please click here.)

Some famous John Keating quotes include:

• When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.
• No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
• We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

John Keating was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary. He was a real teacher.

Finland and South Korea - The Best Education

Recently, Finland and South Korea were proclaimed the two countries with the best education systems. Shocking? Indeed. You would be pressed to find two countries so different in their philosophy towards learning, and yet, both systems yield results.

The differences are staggering. South Korea has large classes and relies heavily on hard work and repetition. Finland has tiny classes with very few school hours, withe the emphasis placed on students thriving outside the school.

There is only one similarity we could find: in both countries, teaching is a highly respected profession. Could the answer to the world's schooling problems be as simple as that?

Best Learning Quotes

“Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.” – George Evans

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” – Plato

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.”
― John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog 

 

“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” ― Robert Frost

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky 

Google Earth and Learning Styles

Google Earth helps children visualise and discover the world around them. It’s an online program that lets you explore the earth using 3D maps and 3D street views. It also has some library images of forests and mountains, so you can see inside the White House including all the details of the Oval Office décor, as well as the spots on a jaguar inside the Amazon Jungle. (Incidentally, when you do see a large spotted cat inside the Amazon Jungle on Google Earth, the search engine Google itself can tell you, as it told me, whether it’s a leopard or a jaguar. It’s a jaguar. Leopards don’t inhabit South America. You Google and you learn.)

Depending on your child's learning style and personal interests, you can use Google Earth to:

·        Find the globe’s volcanoes and researching details about their locations.

·        Map the journey our food takes from the farm to our plate, and investigating the environmental impact of food choices.

·        Travel back in time to learn about their own neighbourhood and how it’s changed over the years.

·        View shipwrecks.

·        Use the Ruler tool to calculate distances.

 Have fun!

Fun Education Apps

For all those students out there whose Learning Style is visual, tactile and stationary, here are a few iPad apps to try out at school or at home.

1. StoryKit - an awesome app that allows users to create an electronic storybook via illustrations by drawing on the screen, using pictures and text, and recording audio to attach to stories. 
2. Video Science - A growing library of hands-on science lessons. These short videos demonstrate inexpensive and easy to recreate experiments that are designed to inspire and excite kids of all ages. 
3. Google Earth - Explore the planet: search for cities, places, and businesses. Browse layers including roads, borders, places, photos and more. Visit the Earth Gallery to find exciting maps such as real-time earthquakes, planes in flight, hiking trails, city tours, and more. 
4. Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries - Soar through the universe with the Hubble Space Telescope, exploring dark energy and colliding galaxies. 
5. Solve the Outbreak - Get clues, analyze data, solve the case, and save lives! In this fun app, you get to be the Disease Detective. Do you quarantine the village? Talk to people who are sick? Ask for more lab results? The better your answers, the higher your score – and the more quickly you’ll save lives. You’ll start out as a Trainee and can earn badges by solving cases, with the goal of earning the top rank: Disease Detective.

 Is e-learning a good option for your child? Find out.

Your Working Style And Conferences

You hear about a new conference in your field coming up next month. The topics all seem interesting at worst and ranging all the way up to super-fascinating. The guest speakers are experts you've heard of and would love to connect with/ And, best of all, your diary is clear for that week and your boss is paying.

Are you excited? Or not so much? That will probably depend on your Working Style. If you learn best in groups, by looking and by listening, in a noisy environment, during the day and by sitting still, then conferences are the thing for you. Change some of these preferences into non-preferences, and you might actually not enjoy your conference experience very much. Of course, there are always the tea breaks to look forward to.

With this in mind, we've decided the time may be right again for a Learning Styles conference. Watch this space for more details.

What is your own Working Style? Find out.