The Learning Success Blog

A 100 year old set of diaries written by a World War 1 Australian nurse, Anne Donnell has become the basis of 19 lessons using e-Book technology designed to help young readers improve their reading fluency and comprehension.

First, Anne's diaries became a children's book, Anne Threw a Streamer, written by Jan Leader and Mitch Mitchell.

Then the book was specially adapted to the e-Book format on Reading Assistant Plus, which features voice recognition technology that can provide a class of students with non-judgemental real-time corrective feedback as they read aloud. 

Authors, Jan and Mitch spoke to The Learning Capacity Podcast about their family connection to Anne Donnell and how their book includes themes of Australian and World history, feminism, racism and compassion and sacrifice amid terrible suffering.

It was fascinating to hear that on her return from the War, Anne became a single mum adopting and raising an aboriginal half-caste girl.

What is STEM and why did it become STEAM?  

I asked John Burfoot, a STEAM teacher in a New South Wales Primary school to explain and we recorded our chat as an episode of The Learning Capacity Podcast.         

John also told me about how STEAM lessons enable students to learn valuable 'soft' life skills, as well as technical and technological skills.

His journey from a student who failed all his final high school exams to a degree qualified teacher is inspirational, and can serve as a reminder to students that their lives are not defined by what marks they achieve in school exams.

He worked as an electronics apprentice, a job in avionics, and making explosives for special effects in films before realising his passion is teaching.

What's changed in educational neuroscience technology this century?

How has neuroscience research and the development of technology impacted the tools educators have to improve learning outcomes for all students?

Recently I was interviewed on a podcast produced by Sentral, providers of proven web-based student management software.

The discussion focussed on how educational neuroscience and technology had changed in the last two decades, from the turn of the century in the year 2000, until now, almost 20 years later.

And it covered a wide sweep of topics as well - from how students are learning English in China with the help of educational neuroscience programs to some thoughts about cost versus value in educational decision making.

Girls are bullied more often than boys. And are more likely to consider, plan, or attempt suicide as a result.

These are the conclusions from a Rutgers University study of 4 years of data from the USA Centre for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behaviour Survey 2011-2015. The study, published in the journal Nursing Research, challenges the common belief that boys suffer most from bullying.

The study found the effects of bullying are significantly higher in females than males on every measure of psychological distress or suicidal thoughts and actions.

After 20 years as a maths teacher and tutor, Dr Dion Khlentzos, has a clear view of what's necessary for building students' maths skills.

His top five keys to maths success include building on students' prior knowledge, relating maths to their everyday life and strengthening their motivation and belief in their own maths abilities.  

He discussed the five keys in an interview on The Learning Capacity Podcast where he commented on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and whether artificial intelligence will reduce the need for many people to understand maths. 

Dr Khlentzos also commented on how technology like Zoom and Skype has enabled maths tutoring to be delivered to students who find it hard to attend face to face sessions with a tutor.

If you have a child with language challenges, reading problems or learning difficulties, and you have sought help from their teacher, speech pathologist or other learning professional, you may have heard some unfamiliar terms.

Words like phonemic awareness, auditory processing, listening comprehension and working memory.

Listen to Episode 96 of The Learning Capacity Podcast for explanations of 16 common terms used in discussions about learning difficulties. Once you understand these, you should be able to have more productive discussions with your child's teacher or therapists.

Ash Bhattacharya describes himself as an “autism advocate & coach”.  He is also a tech savvy entrepreneur who has established an online coaching program for parents of children with autism.

It's called Autism360 Club.

Ash spoke to The Learning Capacity Podcast about how he was inspired to create this service by growing up with a brother on the autism spectrum . And how Autism360 is delivering services to parents in Australia and the USA.

His belief, which underpins the online coaching program, is,  “More than any treatment, diet, or therapy, the perspectives from which you see your child’s Autism will have the greatest impact on him/her.”  

How would you like your child to hear almost 300,000 more words before they start kindy?

They could, if you read them just one book a day.    

That’s the finding from new research published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Researchers at Ohio State University estimated the number of words a child would hear from various amounts of being read to, up until the age of 5.

Here's how many words kids would hear by the time they are 5 years old:

When Sophie Bawa started teaching theatre in India, her students thought they were going to learn about Bollywood movies.

I met Sophie, a UK theatre teacher, in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

We spoke about her experiences teaching in India, how she was impressed by her very well behaved students' massive respect for education. And the students' mistaken belief that theatre was the same as the loud, colorful, singing and dancing movies produced by the Indian film industry.

We also discussed “human photocopiers”.

Can you imagine what it would be like to suddenly forget your past, to have pounding headaches, dizziness and tremors?

To be unable to find words when you wanted to speak?      

To experience an extreme loss of energy, have your blood pressure drop dangerously low, and find yourself uncomfortably sensitive to sounds and sunlight?  

And to feel that as well as having no past, you have no future? 

Sarah Rasborsek did.  She experienced all that and more when she "fried her brain" and suffered chronic brain inflammation during a triathlon on Queensland's Gold Coast in January 2018.