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Teacher Students Forum - OECD - 23-11-2004
Are you studying to become a teacher?
We would like to hear your opinions and to know your needs !!!.
What kind of pedagogic tools do you think are the best for students?
Do you feel you are sufficiently informed about new scientific discoveries about learning and teaching?
What do you think about the issue of including students with special needs in daily school work?
Teacher Students Forum - Nathan - 05-04-2005
Hey,
Q: Do games facilitate learning? I'd love to know your thoughts.
Also, Does this come under Activity based learning or is there a more appropriate title that researches have been using?
Thanks
Nathan
Teacher Students Forum - OECD - 06-04-2005
Hi Nathan,
There are evidently pros and cons with educational computer games. On the one hand the game has to be exciting and stimulating for players/learners to continue playing it and not get bored for the learning aspects to have an effect. On the other hand, sometimes these games are judged as too distracting and that the environment is over stimulating and thus minimises the educational aspect. Games should be used as an extra and supplementary alternative to other more traditional learning tools, and not as replacements for teachers. Computer game remedial tools have been shown to be very effective especially with children who have learning problems or disabilities. There are probably many different terms out there including "activity based learning", especially when such games are commercially controlled all sorts of catch phrases are adopted, including especially the term "brain-based"! We are going to start up a learning tools prototyle site which will be directly accessible from teach-the-brain in the next few days. So, you should be able to judge for yourself. Our researchers have preferred the term "tools" to games for this site, to stress that these are tools to be used as serious learning and remedial aids.
Teacher Students Forum - Nathan - 06-04-2005
What about actual learning games used in the classroom and facilitated by the teacher?? not pc games...
Ta
Teacher Students Forum - OECD - 07-04-2005
Hi Nathan,
I can give you one example of a classroom brain-based games to improve maths that we have come across in our project, called The Number Worlds and which has a good success rate in the US with kids with math difficulties (especially those from low socio-economic status families). Take a look at this report on a symposium we had on developing dyscalculia rehabilitation tools. Read about the Number World games from pp: 9-11.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/39/18268884.pdf
Perhaps other teachers on this forum could provide other working examples of effective classroom games?
Teacher Students Forum - geodob - 07-04-2005
OECD Wrote:Are you studying to become a teacher?Hi OECD,
We would like to hear your opinions and to know your needs !!!.
What kind of pedagogic tools do you think are the best for students?
Do you feel you are sufficiently informed about new scientific discoveries about learning and teaching?
What do you think about the issue of including students with special needs in daily school work?
In reply to this question, I would begin by mentioning that I finished my Teacher Training 3 years ago.
Where Special Needs was offered as an optional extra single study unit which few Trainees undertook.
Most of the general Teacher Training, was entirely focussed on Behaviour Management strategies.
Yet their was never a mention that a significant proportion of any classroom, will consist of Students who have learning disorders which may effect their fine motor, gross motor, visual-spatial, comprehension, social, auditory, tactile, visual, vestibular, kinesthetic, proprioceptive and/or visual/auditory working memory skills.
Instead of being informed about this variety of learning disorders, and provided with appropriate Teaching strategies?
The focus was entirely on the Behaviour Management of students, as a result of ignoring the particular learning difficulties of each Student.
If Students do not accept having their disorder ignored, and as a result become frustrated and as a consequence. Develop a history of being disruptive. Then the solution to this learning difficulty, is to recommend the use of Drugs as a remedial approach to their education?
Therefore I must question the model of Teacher Training, which rather than recognising the Diversity of ways in which Students learn.
Instead, focusses on a Behaviour Management approach. Which teaches exclusively to some mythical Average Learner.
Worse still and most sadly, Students are accused of "not trying hard enough",when they are 'trying their hearts out', and have their confidence in their capacity to Learn destroyed!
Therefore I would suggest that some major changes need to urgently take place within Teacher Training Institutions?
Geoff.
:confused:
Teacher Students Forum - OECD Expert - 07-04-2005
Of course practice with games of all sorts improve knowledge about the game. You may want to know if practice on some games goes beyond this and improves performance over a broader domain. There is relatively little evidence on this. One study using video games as a training tool for students of college age provided evidence of improved attention that went beyond the domain in which learning took place. There is also evidence from children with attentional deficits that learning specific tasks can produce more general improvements. We don't yet know what aspects of the training task are most likely to produce general improvements.
References
Green, C.S. & Bavalier, D (2003) Action video game modifies selective attention. Nature 423 534-537 A
Klingberg, T., Forssberg, H. & Westerberg, H. (2002). Training of working memory in children with ADHD. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24:781-791.
Olesen PJ, Westerberg H, Klingberg T (2004)Increased prefrontal and parietal activity after training of working memory NATURE NEUROSCIENCE 7 (1): 75-79
Teacher Students Forum - OECD - 08-04-2005
Inr esponse to Geodop. Our OECD member countries have expressed the lack adequate teacher training in brain science and this is one of the issues we wish to address in our forthcoming report. So all comments on the forum on this subject are most welcome. I should just like to point out that progress in this field is being made for teachers who wish to become specialists in this field with MBE programmes starting up especially at Harvard where The Mind, Brain, and Education Program's (MBE) broadest mission is to create a new field of mind, brain, and education, with educators and researchers who expertly join biology, cognitive science, and education. The immediate mission is to train students in this new field both (a) to return to schools and other educational settings where they can use this new knowledge in educational practice and (b) to become researchers with deep knowledge of both biological/cognitive science and education who can therefore create a research base grounded in this new union of knowledge. The immediate target audience is students and teachers with background in one of these fields who want to join biology, cognitive science, and education. The broad target audience is educators, school personnel, and researchers in general, who need to know how to integrate the new biology and cognitive science into education and to base educational practice on relevant research.
See:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=mbe&pageid=icb.page635
Teacher Students Forum - geodob - 16-04-2005
Hi OECD,
Thanks for the posting about the MBE program at Harvard, which I found most interesting.
Though my concern with it, is that it appears to me to be focussed on what I might term as the Standard Brain?
Whereas, my concern is with as I previously wrote:
Students who have learning disorders which may effect their fine motor, gross motor, visual-spatial, comprehension, social, auditory, tactile, visual, vestibular, kinesthetic, proprioceptive and/or visual/auditory working memory skills.
Yet, whilst a variation from the Norm, in any 'one' of the above mentioned, are simply classified as a Disorder.
This variation in fact reflects the reality of a complex Learning Diversity, rather than simply a Learning Disorder. For a simple example, some people naturally use their 'auditory' working memory as their Primary working memory. Whilst others primarily use their 'visual' working memory.
Therefore, if instruction is offered singularly in a verbal format. It will disadvantage the auditory thinkers, and vice versa.
Also research has identified that a deficiency in Visual-Spatial skills, effects the ability to Visualise. Which in turn impedes the development of Maths skills. Where visualisation is basic to the mental processes of Maths.
Another most crucial general area, is Fine and Gross Motor Skills, and in turn the Kinesthetic, Proprioceptive and Vestibular Skills. Which are critical to both Cognitive and Meta-cognitive development.
As well as implicated in both Comprehension and Social Skills.
But underlying all of this, is the subject of our brain's Grey Matter, and the lesser known, White Matter.
At birth, our Brain is nearly 100% Grey Matter. Which is basically where information is stored.
On the other hand, the White Matter provides the 'cabling' that Networks the Grey Matter information/ data.
But crucially, this White Matter cabling doesn't just grow automatically.
Rather this cabling is built/laid out in response to attempts to connect data between different Grey Cells.
Yet the Brain operates a 'Pruning' process, where unless a 'cable' is repeatedly used. Then it will remove the said cable.
My basic point, is that despite Piaget, education is still primarily focussed on information/data input to our Grey matter.
Whereas the major focus should be on the development of the White matter Network, and cognition and meta-cognition.
I would also note that in regard to many so-called Learning Disorders. They are not in fact a result of Grey matter dysfunction. But rather a lack of White matter cabling. Where a greater focus on 'cabling' development, would overcome many of these Disorders.
Therefore my essential point, is that School Education should be primarily focussed on developing the Network cabling, that enables information to be fully comprehended and utilised.
Teacher Students Forum - Christina - 13-05-2005
Thank you, Geoff, for your powerfully insightful commentary relating White Matter development to an individualized and constructive-oriented conception of learning –I am quite certain that my White Matter network has extended as a result of this post!
I would like to clarify Harvard’s Mind, Brain and Education (MBE) program. The MBE program is not structured around the conception of a “standard brain.†The MBE program is grounded in a prevalent modern educational framework of individualized learning that, in fact, has been profoundly sculpted by many of the faculty of the program, including Howard Gardner, Kurt Fischer, and David Rose. Within that framework, diversity and variation are considered an inherent quality of learning. Further, special education, including learning disabilities is a large part of the MBE program, which is evident from the program’s website (http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=mbe&pageid=icb.page635).
As emphasized by the OECD administrator, teacher training is an imperative aspect of building this trans-disciplinary field. It is our hope that more programs with as strong a commitment to intellectual rigor as the MBE program are developed to ensure the careful management and accurate dissemination of this new knowledge.
~Christina
Teacher Students Forum - Cathy Trinh - 13-05-2005
I am responding to the teacher training question as both a parent of dyslexic sons and a student teacher. My experience as a parent, who tried to get a proper education for my sons in the public school system, was dismal at best. I was fortunate in that I was able to afford to have my sons tutored by an Orton-Gillingham trained tutor. My son who continued through the public school system is not as well educated as my son whom I placed in a private school. Hense I have come to the conclusion that most public school teachers are not trained to help children with disabilities. Not all of this is the fault of the training colleges. Last winter I spoke to a young special education teacher. She told me that when she was being trained, other students didn't think that they would be teaching special needs children. The student teachers were resistent to learning about teaching "exceptional children".
In the fall I will have taken four classes in the Education Department of my college. In addition to these classes, I will have taken numerous related classes. As a Language Arts Major in the Elementary Education program, I have taken many classes that relate to teaching reading and writing to children. Every class has had some point of it devoted to meeting the needs of exceptional students. My instructors have made it a point to insist that the needs of these children are to be addressed. In addition, I must write that the classmates that I have come to know through these classes are determined to reach special needs children. Needless to say I am optimistic about the future of education.
