Beyond Sal Khan: Education Innovators Doing Great Work!

Posted on November 16, 2012 by karen mahon

As I mentioned in my last post, I was recently on a short holiday with my husband in Grenada. Beautiful place, very relaxing. On our connection in Miami I had the urge to get a fluffy magazine, so I wandered into the airport shop thinking I’d pick up People or something similar. But looking at the magazine rack what did I see, but Sal Khan’s face looking back at me from the cover of Forbes (Nov 19 edition).

I’ve written previously on this blog about the changes I’d like to see in Khan Academy, so I won’t rehash those here.  Instead I’d like to talk about the larger theme of education disruption that emerges from the Forbes article. Continue reading →

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Numerosity: review of a new Math app from ThoughtBox!

Posted on November 9, 2012 by karen mahon

Today I’m so fortunate to be blogging to you from the West Indian island of Grenada…the Spice Island…where there are frequent reminders of the fact that the issues we debate here on this blog truly are “first-world problems.”

This week my colleagues at ThoughtBox, based in Dublin, Ireland, released their long-awaited for first Math app, Numerosity.  It has been received with great acclaim by many app review sites that are run by teachers and parents.  And I know ThoughtBox has worked a very long time on this app, so congratulations are in order!

Continue reading →

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Civics Instruction…free and fun!

Posted on November 6, 2012 by karen mahon

Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman Supreme Court Justice here in the U.S.  She was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and she retired from the bench in 2006.  Justice O’Connor’s appointment to the bench was transformative…three women have been appointed to the Supreme Court since her appointment. Continue reading →

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Classroom Tablet Management SOLVED by TabPilot

Posted on November 1, 2012 by karen mahon

Wishing all of you who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy well.  I am in the Boston area and we were very lucky here, only losing power for 10-12 hours.  It did affect my blogging schedule, so apologies to my regular readers for the delay…

For well over a year now I’ve been talking to teachers and administrators about transitioning to tablet use in their classrooms.  The most consistent concern that I hear about, both nationally and internationally, is about the ability to “lock down” tablets, only allowing students to have access to what we want them to be doing in class.  Whether the access is narrow or broad, the universal desire seems to be for the teacher to have control over it, thereby increasing the likelihood that students are staying on task and minimizing the probability that kids are out surfing the web and getting into things that they shouldn’t be. Continue reading →

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A Math App Worth Bragging About!

Posted on October 25, 2012 by karen mahon

Native Numbers by Native Brain, Inc.

On Tuesday I wrote about a math app that gave me paroxysms so today I want to write about a math app that gives me the warm fuzzies.  It only seems fair.  This way we’ll balance out the Universe.

Just this week a brandy new app called Native Numbers was released for the iPad in the App Store.  You guys know as well as I do how many terrible education apps there are out there, so my expectations were….not that high.  So I was very pleasantly surprised when Native Numbers turned out to be great! Continue reading →

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Algebra, Chocolate-Covered Broccoli and Insanity

Posted on October 23, 2012 by karen mahon

As all of you know by now, I spend quite a bit of my time reviewing ed tech products.  And as I’ve been reviewing educational apps I’ve always wondered what would happen when the day came when the material got too hard for me and I struggled doing the work.

I had a fantasy that this would happen with Physics or Chemistry….maybe AP Calculus prep or Advanced German.

I didn’t expect it to happen with Algebra I. Continue reading →

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Posted on October 19, 2012 by karen mahon

And now for something completely different…
I’m reblogging a post from the Blanchard LeaderChat page today. It is completely outside of my typical ed tech type of post, but every now and then I like to include a leadership post. Leadership is a big interest of mine, both in education and out, and I think Kathy Cuff’s post here is really worth reading. What are you doing to empower your employees?

David Witt's avatarBlanchard LeaderChat

I love being pleasantly surprised, especially when it comes to customer service experiences.  I had one of those experiences a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting my son at college.  Let me share what happened and what I learned about the impact of empowerment as a result.

My son goes to school in the small town of Pueblo, Colorado.  I was in town for his football game and wanted to buy some easy-to-eat food for a pre-game tailgate party. I thought fresh fruit would be nice, so I headed to the produce department at a local Albertson’s grocery store.

I found some watermelon that was already cut up and ready to serve.  It looked as if it would be ripe and juicy, but being a spoiled Californian when it comes to fruit, I decided to ask a young man who was re-stocking some vegetables what he knew about…

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5 Low-Tech Ways to Increase Engagement in Lectures

Posted on October 18, 2012 by karen mahon

This photo is owned by D. Sharon Pruitt and is provided here under Creative Commons licensing.

Today I attended a two-hour workshop put on by a local government agency that shall go unnamed, to protect the not-so-innocent.  It was a good workshop.  I was interested in the topic and I learned a few new things.  That learning part is not always a guarantee with any workshop, so I count myself lucky.  But the part that was disappointing was the format of the workshop.  It was your average PowerPoint and sage on the stage bit.  Heck, I brought my laptop to take notes and they didn’t even have a WiFi network that I could use.  (I’m big on Google Docs lately, so no WiFi presents a problem!)

My buddy Scott McLeod has been talking on his site and on twitter lately about the fact that technology can really enhance learning in the classroom, and I agree.  And I’m the first one to say that the way to make a lecture much better is by putting student response devices (“clickers”) in the hands of the whole audience to drive engagement.  But what about the situation that the teacher of this workshop was in today?  In a setting where the closest thing to modern technology he had was a tabletop projector (that’s right, not even a short-throw)?  Yes, we were 10 adults attending the workshop on a topic of interest, but what are some low tech things that this instructor could have done to keep us engaged?  I thought about it the whole way home and here’s my list: Continue reading →

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Posted on October 12, 2012 by karen mahon

This is a great blog post that I’ve been wanting to reblog for a while now. And since I’m on vacation this week, it seemed the perfect time! Enjoy!

Pedro's avatarFrom experience to meaning...

Last week I discovered this wonderful lecture by Dorothy Bisshop that everybody interested in research should take time for.

In her lecture she mentions several research-papers and 2 are definitely worth a closer look.

First there is this 2008 research by Weisberg et Al. from which this is the abstract:

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people’s abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) × 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as…

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In Defense of Homework

Posted on October 7, 2012 by karen mahon

This image originally appeared on http://killsuperwoman.blogspot.com/2010/10/homework-monster.html; visit the site for an argument against homework.

I’ve been reading quite a few anti-homework articles lately.  Is this something new?  Have I just been missing it?  It seems like in the blink of an eye we went from everyone being pro-flipping the classroom (with its requisite video-watching as homework) to a whole movement of people who are against homework entirely.  There’s even a Facebook group for Teachers and Parents Against Homework!

My head is spinning.  And it got me to thinking: should we get rid of homework?

To summarize the position of those who suggest we should do just that, here are some of the main reasons suggested for getting rid of it: Continue reading →

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