educational-tools

The Top Brain Book Collection for Educators and Learners

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The pow­er­ful Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Accred­i­ta­tion of Teacher Edu­ca­tion (NCATE) has now issued a report that encour­ages pre-ser­vice and grad­u­ate teacher edu­ca­tion pro­grams to incor­po­rate cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science dis­cov­er­ies about child and ado­les­cent devel­op­ment into their cur­ric­u­la.  This link to a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle on this devel­op­ment will also get you to the NCATE report.

The next obvi­ous step would turn encour­age­ment into curricular/accreditation require­ments. That incor­po­ra­tion of Edu­ca­tion­al Neu­ro­science dis­cov­er­ies into edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy and prac­tice will shape 21st cen­tu­ry teacher edu­ca­tion and K‑12 edu­ca­tion in ways that are [Read more…] about The Top Brain Book Col­lec­tion for Edu­ca­tors and Learners

Videogames for Cognitive Training?

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There were a few inter­est­ing research papers pre­sent­ed at the last  Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions around the theme:

Play­ing Video Games Offers Learn­ing Across Life Span, Say Studies
— Skills Trans­fer to Class­room, Sur­gi­cal Pro­ce­dures, Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing (press release).

Prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing study was that of 303 laparo­scop­ic sur­geons, which “showed that sur­geons who played video games requir­ing spa­tial skills and hand dex­ter­i­ty and then per­formed a drill test­ing these skills were sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 tri­als than the sur­geons who did not the play video games first.”

The note goes fur­ther to explain the impli­ca­tions from this research:

“The big pic­ture is that there are sev­er­al dimen­sions on which games have effects, includ­ing the amount they are played, the con­tent of each game, what you have to pay atten­tion to on the screen, and how you con­trol the motions,” said Gen­tile. “This means that games are not “good’ or bad,’ but are pow­er­ful edu­ca­tion­al tools and have many effects we might not have expect­ed they could.”

Very thought­ful quote. Please note a few ele­ments about [Read more…] about Videogames for Cog­ni­tive Training?