Items to Share: 23 November 2014

Education Focus

• What if we started trusting teachers? | David Didau: The Learning Spy ... and it's not just school-teachers...

• The List of Further Education Bloggers (Version 2.0) | The Echo Chamber

• Robert Coe, Daisy Christodoulou and Doug Lemov. Reviews. - John Bald/language and literacy  The author used to review for the weekly and daily press education sections, but they are retrenching so he is doing it on his blog.

• Ivan Pavlov in 22 surprising facts | OUPblog 'An iconic figure of 20th century science and culture, Ivan Pavlov is best known as a founding figure of behaviorism who trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell and offered a scientific approach to psychology that ignored the “subjective” world of the psyche itself. [ ] While researching "Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science", I discovered that these and other elements of the common images of Pavlov are incorrect. The following 22 facts and observations are a small window onto the life of a man whose work, life and values were much more complex and interesting than the iconic figure with whom we are so familiar.'

• BPS Research Digest: How guessing the wrong answer helps you learn the right answer It's well known that taking tests helps us learn. The act of retrieving information from memory helps that information stick. This seems intuitive. More surprising is the recent discovery that guessing aids subsequent learning of the correct answer, even if your initial guess was wrong.

• Resourceaholic: Ideas from Shanghai On teaching maths at secondary level, but also applicable for functional skills etc.

• Teaching Practices Inventory Helps You Examine Your Teaching | Faculty Focus 'It’s an inventory that lists and scores the extent to which research-based teaching practices are being used. It’s been developed for use in math and science courses, but researchers Carl Wieman and Sarah Gilbert suggest it can be used in engineering and social sciences courses, although they have not tested it there. I suspect it has an even wider application. Most of the items on the inventory are or could be practiced in most disciplines and programs.'

• Index to series on Hattie’s Visible Learning | docendo discimus This blog is embarking on some promising posts engaging in critical discussion of Hattie's Visible Learning meta-analysis. Worth following, I think.

• Does brain training really work? | Loony Labs 'Ever wonder if you could be the next Einstein if only you could do some brain training? Well as it turns out, while computer based ‘brain training’ can boost memory and thinking skills in older adults, many programs promoted by the $1 billion brain training industry are ineffective.'

• Students don't know what's best for their own learning [theconversation.com] 'Two recent studies of student evaluations [...] looked at student evaluations and learning. Both came to the same conclusion: university students evaluate their teachers more positively when they learn less.' 

Other Business

• Why do pigs oink in English, boo boo in Japanese, and nöff-nöff in Swedish? | Education | theguardian.com 'It’s not just pigs, the onomatopoeia we apply to most animal sounds varies delightfully across different tongues. What does this reveal about our relationship with language?' 

• The Secret Life of Passwords - NYTimes.com 'We despise them – yet we imbue them with our hopes and dreams, our dearest memories, our deepest meanings. They unlock much more than our accounts.'