Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Back in 2007 or 2008 I watched a professional development webinar for the first time. I can't remember exactly what the webinar was about (it was something about Second Life), but I do remember thinking that I didn't get "it." After that I watched bunch of free webinars about all kinds of things because that's what I thought I should do to be a modern teacher staying current in his practice. Finally, in late 2011 I paid to join a webinar and something weird happened, I got a lot more out of the experience. Since then almost every webinar I've attended, both free and paid, has been a good learning experience. Here's what I figured out about learning from webinars.

You can’t watch a video like you read a book; the modalities couldn’t be much more different.

On the surface level a video uses light, color, sound, and moving images, with the potential for adding text and shape and color and light filters as overlays to communicate ideas, while the most basic text structures use alphanumeric symbols, paragraph and sentence structure, and an assortment of text features (e.g., white space, headings and subheadings, fonts, etc.) to convey their message.

To define annotation it is when you add notes, comments or opinions about a piece of writing,  or a drawing, photo, or diagram. Often these are critical explanations to add extra insight about something. These explanations can be necessary to understanding writings in which the language might be difficult to make sense of without clarification.

5 Science-Based Study Tips to Help Your Sad, Failing Memory If there’s one thing that rocks about having reached a certain age, it’s knowing that there are things you will never again have to do… Like...

In a 2014 article in Psychological Science called “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer claimed that while note taking in itself could be beneficial to student learning, using a laptop proved to be detrimental. A recent article from Scientific American, “Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop in the Classroom,” added fuel to this fire.

For 10 years, I’ve been teaching study skills to college students, both individually and in the classroom. The vantage from my office offers me a clear view of students devouring information during tutoring appointments and focusing intently on the strategies shared during study skills counseling sessions. The effort and time they pour into comprehending their course material is irrefutable. However, when I ask students what they know about the lecture’s content before arriving at class, the answer is almost always the same: “Nothing.”

Have you ever told your students to study for a test? Have you ever actually taught them how to study?

It turns out studying can be taught. And two cognitive psychological scientists, Yana Weinstein and Megan Smith, have made it their mission to teach people how to study better. On their new website, The Learning Scientists, they use infographics and videos to share strategies and other insights about how we learn.

What’s the big deal about thinking about something that already happened? In our ’10 Characteristics Of A Highly-Effective Learning Environment‘, we suggested that learning habits–reflection, for example–were constantly present and modeled.

As a professor of cognitive psychology, I teach about memory, especially about when and why our memories often fail us. Students are excited to apply this material to their everyday lives.

During a recent class, a student asked whether other faculty were familiar with this research and remarked that it would be helpful if everyone structured their lessons with this knowledge in mind.

Hand-write or to type? How do we keep up? What's the most effective way of grasping all of the information we've just been bombarded with?