Online Learning: Regular demands on attention and memory needed

Somewhere between the traditional classroom and old fashion home schooling, online learning has emerged as the dominant educational resource.

Skyrocketing tuition fees, particularly at the college level, has sped the inevitable migration to online accreditation.

While the benefits are obvious, the loss of those seamless instances of micro-feedback between student and teacher makes attention the primary casualty of its rapid adoption.

Efforts to bridge this gap and reduce mind wandering among online students are underway at Harvard University, an institution well poised to be a leader in providing online content.

A new study in PNAS from their psychology department gives one possible solution to the problem. By making attentional demands in the form of brief quizzes on 5-minute intervals, student performance in online courses can be significantly improved.

Even the most highly motivated student still battles the constant urge to search or click on a link to learn more—or less as the case may be.

Undoubtedly striking the right balance between freedom and oversight is the central challenge to giving students mastery over a given body of knowledge.

Various models have emerged that have garnered massive worldwide enrollment.

Free courses at edX.org, coursera.org, 2u.com, Udacity.com have all been highly successful.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the call for help in maintaining selective attention in the absence of the normal controllers has come from the students themselves.

Noval Khan
Schacter Memory Lab

The approach taken by the new Harvard study is based on what they call interpolated memory.

It is based upon the idea of interpolating the coursework or task with short memory tasks.

Students were given a 21-minute statistics video lecture which was segmented into four periods, each followed up with a 2-minute testing period.

The testing period involved brief review, testing, and even unrelated arithmetic. The perhaps predictable results were that students given the additional retesting at each segment, did much better on cumulative testing done after the lecture.

This formalisation of the obvious was corroborated by the student self-assessment in which they invariably reported reduced periods of mind wandering.

The study adds rigor to the idea that replacing a human lecturer with a human on a screen can work, provided appropriate considerations for the learning process are taken.

A useful analogy might be to consider running on a field compared to running on a treadmill. On your own on the field, you can control your speed at every step, and go in a any direction you choose.

On a treadmill your pace is set for you. The best performance seems to be somewhere in between, as on a track.

Here the goal is set, the student has some freedoms in getting there at their own pace, but is guided at every turn.

More information: 
Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures, PNAS, Published online before print April 1, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221764110

Online Child Protection : CEOP UK Video

'The Parents' and Carers' Guide to the Internet', from CEOP, is a light hearted and realistic look at what it takes to be a better online parent. The show covers topics such as, talking to your child about the technologies they use and the things they might see, such as pornography.

With interviews from leading experts such as, Professor Tanya Byron, Dr Linda Papadopoulos and Reg Bailey, as well as key industry players from Facebook, Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters , this online guide aims to equip you with the tools to have those tricky conversations with your children and keep your family safe online.

Dyslexia and ADHD: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Online Movie

Percy, who is dyslexic and has ADHD is visiting The Museum of Metropolitan of Art and is attacked by a Fury disguised as his teacher, Ms Dodds. A Storyline that many will be able to relate to.

Watch it Online here

Carol Vorderman's Online Maths School

Parents of sick kids distrust online medical help - ‘Dr. Google’

Parents of children with cancer not only don’t trust online medical sites, but fear them as well, preferring instead to receive information from a trusted source, like a doctor.

“Respondents were telling us they were uncertain of the information online and that they were afraid of the unknown,” says study co-author Elizabeth Gage, professor of community health and health behavior at the University at Buffalo. “They didn’t want to run into stories about ‘the worst case scenario’.”

Gage, along with Christina Panagakis, a UB graduate student in sociology and colleagues at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, interviewed 41 parents of pediatric cancer patients in the U.S. to learn how caregivers use the Internet as an information source about their child’s illness, its prognosis, and potential treatment options.

Published in the journal Sociology of Health and Illness, the study suggests that beyond a distrust and fear of health-related Internet sites, online searching for information about an illness might vary between patients dealing with routine conditions and those faced with life-threatening problems.

“The likelihood of a patient going online might depend very much on context,” Gage explains.

Previous studies looked at what Gage described as routine, contested, or stigmatized illnesses, while her research contributes a piece of knowledge relative to severe pediatric illnesses.

“One of the reasons we were interested in exploring this issue is that so much research and media coverage had examined how the Internet was breaking down barriers between patients and caregivers and their physicians,” Gage says.

“But that wasn’t the case in our study. Perhaps because of the severity of the diagnosis, parents and caregivers preferred to receive their information from sources other than the Internet.”

The information-seeking behaviour of parents and other caregivers appears to be influenced by the volume of available information, Gage says.

Patients with routine illnesses might find minor details online that better inform their conversations with health care providers, but respondents in this study who were confronting a more serious diagnosis were overwhelmed by the often conflicting sources of online material.

“Families in our study did not know where to begin or how to sift through such a huge mound of information,” Gage says.

Those who did look for information through the Internet tended to limit their searches to what they considered more credible sources, such as medical journals and hospital libraries, the study says.

“A lot of families used the Internet to establish connections with other families in a similar situation, as much for emotional support as for reasons to share medical information,” Gage says.

“However, many families ascribed a certain expert status upon these individuals, almost elevating the experience of what they call “the veterans” to the same level as that of a trusted hospital-based site.”

More news from University at Buffalo: www.buffalo.edu/news

Your children's digital footprint

Tips for educating our children about their digital footprint:

1. Don’t lie. Don’t EVER lie to kids. They are a lot brighter than we are, and they will distrust you when they catch you out. “Why can’t I have a Facebook account?”. “Because that’s the rule, you have to be 13″. Not: “The computer won’t allow it”. They’re literal beings. When they discover John down the street has a FB account, you’re busted. HIS computer will allow it…therefore, Mum/Dad lied.

2. Start early. Talk to your children about drugs and alcohol despite the fact they’re a long way off having any interactions with addictive substances. Also talk to them about Social Media despite the fact they are a long way off opening accounts. The earlier we get the conversation started the better.

3. Monitor accounts and monitor your children’s online activities. Yes, they can be on Facebook, Twitter, whatever when they’re old enough: as long as you can see what they’re doing. There’s no difference in the fact that you monitor their tv/movie viewing or where they go out while they’re still young.

As a parent, it’s your duty to guide them and you can’t do that if you don’t know what they’re doing. You are not their friend, you are their parent. Maintain that difference!

4. Clearly to guide your children, you need to understand social media yourself. You will have several friends who HATE facebook and twitter. They curse everyone who dares to share their information and they think the world is going down the toilet due to SM.

In turn, they tell their children that they’re not allowed on there. Ever, ever, ever and “Not in my house”.

This is simply burying your head in the sand and avoiding the issue. It will cause more harm than good. I am sure you did some things as a teen that make you cringe now, and we did some of these things because they were expressly forbidden.

Understanding the ways in which our children communicate with each other will help us much more than simply saying NO and turning your back.

5. Clearly to guide your children, you must understand your online persona and what it represents. We all have several personal and business related social media accounts. However, we NEVER write things on our personal FB account without the realisation that our clients, friends and relatives could easily see it too.

Of course your accounts have security, but it just takes one person to share your status/tweet and the whole world can see it. Bang goes your security!

Your online persona is made up of ALL the things you put on the internet and some people will gather this together to determine who or what you are. We need to explain this to our children too – what they write today will be there for their future boss/partner/friends to see.

These are some basic tips in understanding our digital footprint and helping our children understand theirs too.

Dyslexia Awareness, Life Strategies and Online Courses

Announcing an online distance course teaching Dyslexia Awareness. 

Dyslexia Awareness have partnered with Life Strategies Ltd. to offer a course based on training materials from their in-person workshops. 


Life Strategies offers customized seminars, workshops, courses, and keynotes. Topics include psychometric assessment, work-life balance/sustainability, team strengthening, workplace diversity, career management, and employee development.

The course offers insight into Dyslexia: what it is, what causes it, and how it affects learners and employees who are Dyslexic.

Participants will also learn how to screen for Dyslexia and related issues and plan accommodations for the workplace and adult learning environments.

This online course is targeted at:

• service providers,
• employment counseling services,
• human resource managers,
• managers & business owners,
• literacy tutors,
• Dyslexic employees,
• and anyone who wants to understand a Dyslexic adult or employee’s needs in the workplace.

Life Strategies is also offering the course with a special introductory offer with a  25% discount.

The link to the course can be found at: www.lifestrategies.com

Common Misspelling: Online Dictionary

Click on the picture to visit the online dictionary website

Dyslexia - Online Grammare Checker from Ginger Software

New Online Resource to help Teachers assess Dyslexia

Sir Jackie Stewart

A groundbreaking online resource – the ‘Assessing Dyslexia’ toolkit – has been launched by motoring legend Sir Jackie Stewart.

The toolkit, produced by a specialist working group managed by Dyslexia Scotland and supported by the Scottish Government, aims to help all teachers and early years workers across Scotland to identify literacy difficulties and dyslexia.

Click here to read the full article

ExamFox: New online learning methodology developed for struggling students

As a boy Patrick Wilson was written off at school because he suffered from dyslexia. Today he launches a new online learning website for students with learning difficulties which is already achieving terrific results.

ExamFox is a brand new service offering expert one-to-one online tuition for GCSE and A-Level students, focusing on revision and exam practice to improve students’ knowledge and exam technique.

1. Is your child underperforming at school and not on track to get the exam grades they want, or deserve?

2. Do they lack the confidence to ask questions in class and so get passed over?

3. Do they suffer from anxiety about exams and seem lost in understanding how to prepare?

4. Do they suffer with a learning disability that is handicapping their learning?

ExamFox founder and former teacher Patrick Wilson has developed a new approach to tackling these issues. Having struggled at school himself, Wilson understands first-hand the difficult facing many of today’s children whether they suffer with learning difficulties or not.

He says: “Students who are reminded every day that they are doing badly feel constantly overwhelmed. They make a huge effort, they think they're trying their best – in fact they’re not, but they think they are – but their best is never good enough. That feeling becomes an ever present fear: ‘I have low potential. I am going to fail.’ That lack of self-esteem reaches every part of your life.”

The ExamFox system is specifically designed to help underperforming individual students. ExamFox creates a 5-Step Plan for every student which outlines the key areas they need to address to help them achieve their true potential. Tutors regularly set assignments and assessments, to ensure students stay on track, and provide feedback to ensure they have fully understood all the required material.

Courses are offered in a range of subjects including GCSE Maths and A -Level Psychology. ExamFox has more than 50 tutors located across the UK with up to 20 years of experience teaching students seven days a week. All tutors have been hand-selected and trained to ensure that they continue to deliver Patrick’s founding principles.

All new students who sign up can claim a free 1 hour trial lesson in a subject of their choice. The website, which is free to join, also provides users access to a free library of resources of videos, study guides and exam tips.

Success Stories
ExamFox student Atlanta Walsh says: “I was really confused by the way my lessons were working out in school and often felt ignored. But Chris (ExamFox tutor) gives me the attention I need to understand complicated Maths problems. Now I feel really confident that I’m going to ace my Maths exam.”

Tutor Chris Jefferies says: “ExamFox really suits bright but underperforming students to help them achieve their potential. I log on, turn on my webcam and begin teaching. The interactive element of the lesson means the pupils are really responsive and nobody wastes their time travelling.”

ExamFox Says
ExamFox founder Patrick Wilson says: “Young people take to online learning with huge enthusiasm and gain fantastic results. Our students don’t see lessons as a boring chore but an exciting way to bring their subject to life. ExamFox tutors break down their revision into achievable weekly chunks to give them a clear path to exam success, so stress doesn’t get in the way of progress.”

NB: This blog and website provides the article on ExamFox purely for information and does not in anyway promote or recommend the use of the ExamFox online service.

However, we are very interested to hear from you concenring any feedback or experiences you may have with the service and would welcome your input and stories. Let us know if this service is good, mediocre or otherwise and we will share our experiences with you.

Project puts 1M books online for blind, dyslexic

Project puts 1M books online for blind, dyslexic

Even as audio versions of best-sellers fill store shelves and new technology fuels the popularity of digitized books, the number of titles accessible to people who are blind or dyslexic is minuscule.

A new service being announced Thursday by the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco is trying to change that. The group has hired hundreds of people to scan thousands of books into its digital database — more than doubling the titles available to people who aren't able to read a hard copy.

Brewster Kahle, the organization's founder, says the project will initially make 1 million books available to the visually impaired, using money from foundations, libraries, corporations and the government. He's hoping a subsequent book drive will add even more titles to the collection.

"We'll offer current novels, educational books, anything. If somebody then donates a book to the archive, we can digitize it and add it to the collection," he said.

The problems with many of the digitized books sold commercially is that they're expensive, they're often abridged, and they don't come in a format that is easily accessed by the visually impaired.

The collections are also limited to the most popular titles published within the past several years.

The Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/


The National Federation of the Blind: http://www.nfb.org/

Open Library: http://www.openlibrary.org/