Active Learning Still the Most Effective
Razi Berry Engaging students through interactive activities, discussions, feedback and AI-enhanced technologies resulted in improved academic performance compared to traditional lectures, lessons or readings, faculty from Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute concluded after collecting research into active learning. The research also found that effective active learning methods use not only hands-on and minds-on approaches, […]
Taking Breaks Help Improve Memory
Razi Berry Many of us have experienced the following: the day before an exam, we try to cram a huge amount of information into our brain. But just as quickly as we acquired it, the knowledge we have painstakingly gained is gone again. The good news is that we can counteract this forgetting. With expanded […]
The Sweet Spot of Information to Encourage Curiosity in Children
Razi Berry Preschool children are sensitive to the gap between how much they know and how much there is to learn, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study. The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, found preschool children are more likely to choose to gather more information about something if they know just enough […]
A New Take on Discipling Schoolchildren… Or Not
Razi Berry A study examining Japanese schools’ hands-off approach when children fight showed it could create opportunities for autonomy and encourage ownership of solutions, suggesting a new strategy in handling kids squabbles in other countries. Called mimamoru, the pedagogical strategy is a portmanteau of the Japanese words mi, meaning watch, and mamoru, meaning guard or […]
Brain Exercises to Help Kids with Math Skills
Razi Berry Young children who practice visual working memory and reasoning tasks improve their math skills more than children who focus on spatial rotation exercises, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings support the notion that training spatial cognition can enhance academic performance and that when it comes […]
Reading Skills Help Proficiency in Other Subjects
Razi Berry A University at Buffalo researcher’s recent work on dyslexia has unexpectedly produced a startling discovery which clearly demonstrates how the cooperative areas of the brain responsible for reading skill are also at work during apparently unrelated activities, such as multiplication. Though the division between literacy and math is commonly reflected in the division […]
Study Links Math and Musical Ability
Razi Berry Music educator Martin J. Bergee thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might have influenced previous ones — race, income, education, etc. — he could disprove the notion of a link between students’ musical and mathematical achievement. Nope. His new study,”Multilevel Models of the Relationship Between […]
Can a little bit of exercise make you smarter?
Razi Berry Most people know that regular exercise is good for your health. New research shows it may make you smarter, too. Exercise is cheap and ubiquitous with smart results Neuroscientists at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, working with mice, have discovered that a short burst of exercise directly boosts the function of a gene that […]
Sleep Helps the Brain’s Ability to Learn
Razi Berry Synapses in the hippocampus are larger and stronger after sleep deprivation, according to new research in mice published in JNeurosci. Overall, this study supports the idea that sleep may universally weaken synapses that are strengthened from learning, allowing for new learning to occur after waking. Sleep may universally weaken synapses strengthened from learning, […]
New Studies on MDMA Show Possibility for Improving PTSD
Razi Berry Recent research into MDMA (ecstasy) has shown that the drug can induce a neural response that allows the brain to become more sensitive to the reward and value learning process of social behaviors. This “critical period” of learning is typically seen in adolescence when people and animals are most sensitive to the social […]