Teachers Using Social Media to communicate with Parents

Teachers are turning to twitter, blogging and Facebook as a way of keeping in touch with parents about their child's learning, and according to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) education expert Associate Professor Margaret Lloyd it is a trend which is meeting the needs of busy parents with time restrictions.

Professor Lloyd said contemporary teaching involved teachers' blogging with students to capture their learning, and tweeting and emailing parents with information about the school day.

"Gone are the days of finding a scrunched-up newsletter in the bottom of a bag, squished between the rotten banana and mouldy sandwich," she said.

"Parents are now able to find out what their children are doing, virtually as they are doing it." Professor Lloyd said in many families today both parents worked, meaning parents were not able to be as involved in their child's schooling as they perhaps would like.

Prof Margaret Lloyd

"This trend of using digital technology as a means of connecting with parents, essentially bringing parents into the classroom, is really taking off," Professor Lloyd said. "It also fits with the trend that the walls of the classroom are disappearing."

Professor Lloyd said the notion of classes fitting inside four walls was a thing of the past, with digital technology rapidly being used as a communication tool between teachers and parents, teachers and students, students and students and teachers and teachers.

"For example it is common for students in one classroom to work with students in another classroom halfway across the world using digital technology," she said.

"There is also a change in the relationship between teachers and students with teachers nowadays able to see the students' work as they are working and comment and provide feedback progressively.

"There is a huge change in the way we are teaching and communicating." She said universities were leading the way in this method of teaching.

"At QUT we model this teaching practice. Future teachers are working on collaborative wikis, they are talking about collaborative learning and they are being afforded that enhanced teaching experience," Professor Lloyd said.

"The classroom is changing and our teaching students have to be positioned to lead that change and once they get on board, it just clicks into place."

Comment
Firstly, one wonders if the schools and teachers would be open to enabling wider Social Media forums that would allow parents to discuss general school and education matters more openly.

Thus allowing parents to see and share difficult areas and comments on potentially bad teachers /pupils and to bring group thinking into the discussion.

Secondly, this is an excellent step forward in teacher /parent communications but unfortunately, in some areas and countries the teachers and parents can be less able to use and understand the Technology, reported here.

Dyscalculia = Maths oriented Dyslexia

We have heard a number of stories concerning the lack of awareness and knowledge about Dyscalculia but we are always amazed and shocked when it pertains to educational institutes and teachers.

Recallinga recent letter concerning a mother and her daughter, who is in college working on her associates degree. She was doing very well in all her classes, with one exception, maths, and then only within the criteria of timed tests.

She had been tested when she was much younger and been told that she had issues with stress or timed testing of maths. Her parents tried to explain the circumstances to the college. They asked if their daughter could be tested in a one to one learning centre with supervision, but without the stressful time limits. Unfortunately, the institution said no and were very unsympathetic to the parent's and their daughter's plight.

Sadly, we are told that the college personnel and teachers were very dismissive and acted as if the family were imagining the condition or simply making the whole thing up. We find this completely unacceptable in this modern world where inclusion, accessibility and usability is uppermost in all our minds. Educational institutes sole role is to enable learning and comprehension NOT to create difficulties by exclusion, squashing enthusiasm and promoting elitism.

For parents and students in a similar situation there is a supportive and helpful forum on the Dyscalculia website; The Dyscalculia Forum. There’s even a good chance a member is close where you live and maybe know a local place to get help.

If you’re in the US you can find local learning disability associations on the LDA USA website. They are a good source for local facilities, support and testing. It is important that you seek support from your community and not work too much in isolation, especially in raising awareness and in communicating your needs to the colleges and institutions.

Raising awareness for Dyscalculia is extremely important because it is still somewhat unrecognised all over the world. You will come across barriers to understanding but remember that Dyscalculia is medically approved in the scientific and educational world and falls into the same category as dyslexia, and has been for Decades.

Dyscalculia is clearly described, and accepted, in Both the DSM-IV and WHO ICD-10, which is the global medical registers used by doctors and mental health professionals to diagnose. It would be useful for you to seek this out and to get good copies made, to distribute to non-believers or misinformed educators. Thus, helping raise awareness and your cause through evidence-based research.

Unfortunately, you do need to become a pseudo or mini expert on dyscalculia to respond to the ignorance of others and to not only answer their questions but also to know what you are talking about. Also you should contact a local association and ask for their support and advocacy.

You will not only be helping your own or your family's situation you will be helping the many people who are excluded by the mere fact they have a Maths Dyscalculia.

Neuroplastic Changes to the Brain using Neurofeedback

A pioneering collaboration between two laboratories from the University of London has provided the first evidence of neuroplastic changes occurring directly after natural brainwave training.

Researchers from Goldsmiths and the Institute of Neurology have demonstrated that half an hour of voluntary control of brain rhythms is sufficient to induce a lasting shift in cortical excitability and intracortical function.

Remarkably, these after-effects are comparable in magnitude to those observed following interventions with artificial forms of brain stimulation involving magnetic or electrical pulses.

The novel finding may have important implications for future non-pharmacological therapies of the brain and calls for a serious re-examination and stronger backing of research on neurofeedback, a technique which may be promising tool to modulate cerebral plasticity in a safe, painless, and natural way.

Inner control of one's own brain activity may be learned with the aid of a brain-computer interface, which acts to display a person's instantaneous brain activation on a computer screen through what is known as a "neurofeedback" loop.

During brainwave neurofeedback, a visual display on a computer screen behaves like a virtual "mirror" to real electrical oscillations produced by neurons in the cerebral cortex, which are recorded by surface sensors on the scalp.

Read the full article here at Science daily