“There’s long been a myth of the tortured artist, holed up in a studio somewhere, working away at his or her ideas isolated from the world. Well, a new study by Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has found that this stereotype might not be too far from the truth. Martinsen and his team set out to determine the type of characteristics creative people have by analyzing a group of artists, musicians, and actors as compared to a control group of managers and lecturers. What they found were seven core traits that creatives possess. Some of these are highly desirable characteristics like ambition and flexibility, yet others, not so much. Low emotional stability and low sociability are also on the list, hence this idea of the tortured artist.” – Yasha Wallin, Learn in Science, Culture and Living

Read the full article and view the findings here:
http://www.good.is/posts/researchers-discover-the-seven-characteristics-of-a-creative-personality/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+good%2Flbvp+%28GOOD+Main+RSS+Feed%29

“Unfortunately, very few students go to school to learn. Instead, they go to school to be taught. What this means is that most students are not mentally engaged at school. They are passively, not actively learning. (Even grammatically, “to be taught” is passive.) This is the key problem with traditional institutions — they perpetuate an epidemic of too much teaching and too little learning.” – Jean Fan, Uncollege

http://www.uncollege.org/too-much-teaching-too-little-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Uncollege+%28UnCollege%29

“ ‘Our long-term vision is that this becomes an acceptable alternative to college,’ says Kane Sarhan, one of Enstitute’s founders. ‘Our big recruitment effort is at high schools and universities. We are targeting people who are not interested in going to school, school is not the right fit for them, or they can’t afford school.’ ”

“The Enstitute concept taps into a larger cultural conversation about the value of college — a debate that has heated up in the last few years. In important ways, the value is indisputable. The wage gap between college graduates and those with just a high school degree is vast: in 2010, median earnings for those with a bachelor’s degree were more than 50 percent higher than for those with only a high school diploma, according to the Department of Education.” – Hannah Seligson, NY Times Business Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/business/enstitute-an-alternative-to-college-for-a-digital-elite.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

“There is no scientific evidence that children do indeed acquire information more effectively if it is presented to them in their preferred learning style. In fact, according to Paul Howard-Jones of the University of Bristol, there is some evidence to the contrary. Speaking at a workshop about the impact of neuroscience on society at the BNA Festival of Neuroscience yesterday, he pointed out that some research actually suggests that children learn better when presented with information in a way that takes them out of their ‘comfort zone.’”

And further:

“They found that the concept of learning styles was the most prevalent misconception: 82% of the teachers in their sample believed that it is true, even though there’s no brain research to back it up, or classroom studies into the effectiveness, or otherwise, teaching tailored to pupils’ preferred learning style. The results also showed that belief in neuromyths was correlated positively with general knowledge about the brain – that is, the more general knowledge a teacher has the more likely they are to believe that myths and misconceptions about the brain are true.” -Mo Costandi, ThInk

Learning styles are always a hot topic and, not to disappoint, the comments to the post are interesting and worth considering. For example, Jen Lilienstein points out how learning styles might be used by a teacher to aid a struggling student.

http://thinkneuroscience.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/the-myth-of-learning-styles/

“Speaking at a Sydney, Australia, event called ‘The Future of Higher Education and Skills Training,’ Agarwal explained that edX’s surveys of students have found they find handwritten material more engaging than PowerPoint slides in the outfit’s online courses, even when the handwritten stuff is presented on-screen.

The secret to scrawl’s success, Agarwal said, is MOOCs’ use of a technqiue called ‘interleaved learning’ that offers a few minutes of oratory and then a few minutes of something else, be it an exercise or a session in which slideware shows handwritten notes or a handwritten equation. By changing presentation modes every few minutes, MOOC audiences stay more engaged.

Agarwal said edX’s student surveys found ’80% of students preferred handwriting to PowerPoint.’

‘Students say this kind of learning, far be it from making it sound like long distance education, feels more personal,’ Agarwal said.” -Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor, The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/12/handwriting_beats_powerpoint/

“About a year ago, after screencasting recorded lectures for a few years prior, I began experimenting with the flipped classroom model with my chemistry students at Minnesota State University, Mankato. It was then that I realized, and proved with statistical significance, that implementing the flipped classroom model could not only benefit me as a professor of the sciences, but it could also help me adapt my classes to the various learning styles that exist among my students. I haven’t looked back since.”

Read the full description of the course design with analysis of effects at:

http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2013/03/27/Flipping-To-Adapt-to-Multiple-Learning-Styles-at-Minnesota-State-University.aspx?Page=4&p=1

Interestingly, Reinhardt’s own hollow experience of xMOOCs (apparently) might well foreshadow a return to the art of teaching:

“But my favorite teachers didn’t just have great content, they also had great content delivery. They made the content fun. Gripping even. And thats where Coursera and EdX have let me down.”

This, of course, smells a lot like the age-old educational technology problem of the old wine in a new bottle.

Reinhardt speaks from personal experience with each of the top MOOCs. His analysis leads to three additional problem areas:

“… the starting commitment is too high, the re-engagement emails are terrible, and the pacing is impersonal.”

Read the full article at:

http://rein.pk/online-educations-dirty-secret-awful-retention/

It’s well worth your time and attention.

“Education innovator Sugata Mitra won a whopping $1 million TED Prize today for his “Hole in the Wall Experiment” to improve the future of learning by using technology to empower students to teach themselves.

The Hole in the Wall projects helps poor children in the slums of Hyderabad, India teach themselves English. By giving students access to tools like computers, Mitra showed that uneducated, non-English speaking children could work in small groups and with the help of computers, teach themselves how to speak and read.

Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University and visiting professor at M.I.T., is the eighth winner of the TED Prize. The prize is awarded to one social entrepreneur to fund his or her big idea.” -Good

http://www.good.is/posts/sugata-mitra-wins-1-ted-prize-for-innovative-education-project-hole-in-the-wall/

‘This approach is being designed to promote skilled communication as well as learning that is deeper, collaborative, self-managed, cross-disciplinary and technology-enhanced,’ said Carroll in a prepared statement. ‘This is an interesting shift that is shaking the traditional approach to teaching and lecturing.’

The university plans to deliver instruction through a ‘flipped classroom’ approach, a strategy where teachers record their lectures and students watch the video outside the classroom. Class time will then be reserved for small group discussion and collaborative work. Students will be able to access lecture materials online and use shared digital spaces for remote collaboration with their peers.”

- Kanoe Namahoe, http://campustechnology.com/
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/02/20/arizona-university-moves-to-lecture-free-classroom-model.aspx

‘This approach is being designed to promote skilled communication as well as learning that is deeper, collaborative, self-managed, cross-disciplinary and technology-enhanced,’ said Carroll in a prepared statement. ‘This is an interesting shift that is shaking the traditional approach to teaching and lecturing.’

The university plans to deliver instruction through a ‘flipped classroom’ approach, a strategy where teachers record their lectures and students watch the video outside the classroom. Class time will then be reserved for small group discussion and collaborative work. Students will be able to access lecture materials online and use shared digital spaces for remote collaboration with their peers.”

- Kanoe Namahoe, http://campustechnology.com/
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/02/20/arizona-university-moves-to-lecture-free-classroom-model.aspx