Items to Share: 18 May 2014

I've been away for a couple of weeks, so this catch-up is even more random than usual!

Education Focus

• The Opposite of Boring  : Conceptual Understanding Hocus-Pocus | Webs of Substance Two stimulating posts from Harry Webb.

• BBC Radio 4 - Intelligence: Born Smart, Born Equal, Born Different 'BBC Radio 4 has just concluded an excellent three-part series on the controversies over the genetics of intelligence and it’s one of the best and most nuanced discussions you’ll hear about the topic for many years.' (Vaughn Bell: Mindhacks) 

• Lectures Aren't Just Boring, They're Ineffective, Too, Study Finds | Science/AAAS | News 'The meta-analysis, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that teaching approaches that turned students into active participants rather than passive listeners reduced failure rates and boosted scores on exams by almost one-half a standard deviation.' (Breaking news!)

• Is Rereading the Material a Good Study Strategy? | Faculty Focus  '“Rereading has three strikes against it. It is time consuming. It doesn’t result in durable memory. And it often involves a kind of unwitting self-deception, as growing familiarity with the text comes to feel like mastery of the material.” (p. 10) I was a bit taken back when I first read that. But part of the argument made sense immediately....' 

• A System for Remembering What you Read

• One scientific insight for curriculum design Joe Kirby on quizzing. 

• What is a more effective way of taking notes - laptop or notepad? | Neurobonkers | ''The researchers found that on factual recall questions, the students performed equally well no matter how they took their notes but for conceptual questions the students using the laptops performed worse. The students writing longhand wrote fewer words and used less verbatim transcription but scored better when tested on what they had learned.' 

• ResearchED York- the blogs ResearchED York: It's great up north  Two posts from Tom Bennett on the latest ResearchED conference. Zombie bølløcks: World War VAK isn't over yet - Tom Bennett again

• But I Already Learned MLA! Why Do I Need APA Style? A dubious article which implies that knowing how to comply with APA style in detail is a sufficient credential for membership of a professional community=== There's a form of dogmatic fundamentalism about this which can only detract from students (or even academics) daring to experiment or even speculate in their writing...

• What the PISA problem-solving scores mean--or don't. - Daniel Willingham  'So the PISA 2012 is surely measuring something, and what it’s measuring is probably close to something I’d comfortably call “problem-solving.” But beyond that, I’m not sure what to say about it.'

• Making It Stick - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education  '"Make It Stick", the single best work I have encountered on [memory and learning]. Anyone with an interest in teaching or learning will benefit from reading this book, which not only presents thoroughly grounded research but does so in an eminently readable way that is accessible even to students.'

Other Business

•  Seeing red? The mind-bending power of colour - Telegraph telegraph.co.uk
  '[O]ur perception of colour really does affect our minds, and our bodies. A 2004 study found that football teams wearing red were statistically more likely to win than teams in other colours. Another, in 2008, found that male volunteers shown photos of averagely attractive women on red and white backgrounds rated the women on red as more good-looking. Meanwhile, an experiment in the Seventies found that male prison inmates became physically weaker when they were housed in pink-painted cells.'

• phdcomics.com research methods,  ethics, humour  

• Phineas Gage neuroscience case: True story of famous frontal lobe patient is better than textbook accounts.