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On Screen with Ben Kamens, Lead Developer at Khan Academy

By , 9/14/2011 at 8:13 am

Ben KamensIf you work in the world of Education and you haven’t been sleeping for the past five years, then you will surely have heard about the amazing stuff that Khan Academy has been doing lately.  It’s no longer just an online library of charismatic math tutorial videos as many people think.  Rather, the Khan Academy has recently begun releasing a new type of learning trajectory based on “knowledge maps,” with which students can boost their math skills more efficiently than ever before, using interactive exercises, remedial videos, and facilitated collaboration between teachers and other students.  Learners have never before had such effective resources for working at their own pace while leveraging human tutors only when most deeply needed.  Bill Gates deems this model to be the greatest hope for solving the ”mind-blowing misallocation” of resources in education today.

I sat down with this afternoon with Khan Academy’s lead developer, Ben Kamens, to learn more about how Khan Academy’s model works, and about its plans for future technological advancement in education.  Please check out the video(s) below and let Ben know what you think! (more…)

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Learning Spanish through yoga

By , 9/13/2011 at 8:27 am

If you love languages, you are always looking for new ways to keep learning more and more. Study books, interactive websites, conversation cafés, and immersion in a foreign country are only a few of the many ways that one can learn a language. Within these methods is another strategy that I recently “re-found”, a strategy whose effectiveness, I realized, is seriously downplayed. What is that strategy? Movement.

I recently stumbled upon an article in the Orange County Register news of an interview with yoga instructor Claire Nightingale. Nightingale, who has had experience as a high school English and Spanish teacher, talked about how she has seen many of her students get frustrated with their inability to understand certain aspects of the language. It was from that frustration that she conceived of the idea of teaching Spanish through yoga. (more…)

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Dyslexia and Voices

By , 9/12/2011 at 8:14 am

Dyslexia has always been thought of as a learning disability having to do with literacy impairment. Many people who have it are unable to read properly when they are younger, or read a lot slower than a non-dyslexic reader. They may also have trouble spelling or reading things like nonsense words. In short, dyslexia is a learning disability in which people have trouble translating visual language into language that the brain can understand. It happens to be one of the most common learning disabilities among children, affect anywhere from 10% – 15% of our population, according to various sources.

Until recently it has been thought of mostly as a learning disability that specifically affects the ability to read and understand writing. However, research recently completed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology adds another dimension to dyslexia that helps us understand exactly what it is. (more…)

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How the iPad’s Competitors Actually Subsidize Apple

By , 9/8/2011 at 10:55 am

The other day, I saw a commercial for the Motorola Xoom, the tablet most frequently called the best competitor to the iPad (at least until the release of Amazon’s upcoming tablet).  Like most iPad wannabee ads, about 90% of the footage of this commercial focuses on a human story at the expense of footage of the tablet itself.  (Contrast this to the usual iPad commercial where nearly 100% of the footage is of the device in action.)  As the words “Motorola Xoom” flashed across the screen at the end of the commercial, I thought to myself: “Does this make me want a Motorola Xoom?”  My answer: “No, but it really makes me want to buy a tablet.” (more…)

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What’s in an Idiom?

By , 9/7/2011 at 7:29 am

One of the greatest challenges that many people face when learning a new language is that of learning idioms. What often happens is that we literally translate a phrase from our first language to the new language in an effort to stay true to the structure provided by our native language, which generally does not mean what we want it to.

For example, after a particularly long day playing volleyball, I told my French host family that I was feeling very sore. However since I did not know at the time how to say “sore”, I ended up saying something that in English translated to “my body is very hurt”, or “I have a tired body”. They understood what I was saying after a while and laughed, but kindly informed me that there was an idiom that more accurately conveyed what I was trying to say.

That being said, in English we have so many idiomatic expressions that we are not even aware of using simply because they are idiomatic, and thus very natural to our English language. Taken literally, many of these idioms do not make sense at all; however we know what they mean because we’ve grown up using them!

In a blog post adapted from How-to-study.com, the author lists some of the idioms very commonly used in the English language. Take a look at the list below! (more…)

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Evaluating the efficiency of educational games

By , 9/6/2011 at 8:22 am
Math Education GameIt seems that no modern education discussion can avoid the topic of whether educational games should be used as a teaching tool.  On one hand, advocates tout games as the only way to engage today’s distracted students in otherwise boring curriculum material.  On the other hand, opponents worry that games may trivialize education, waste valuable class time, and further deplete students’ attention spans for “real-world” situations that are not necessarily as fun.  I think that the real answer probably lies somewhere in the middle of these extremes.
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Keyboard Shortcuts Quick Reference Cards

By , 9/2/2011 at 10:56 am

For this past week, we’ve been publishing a series of blog posts and resources to help you drill yourselves on keyboard shortcuts for the Mac, PC, browsers, spreadsheets, and Gmail.  In case you missed them – or in case you wanted a printed supplement to the web and iPhone apps Brainscape has created to help you drill yourselves on keyboard shortcuts – we have created simple quick reference cards for the most useful keyboard shortcuts for each environment.  Feel free to print these out and pin them to your office wall!

PRINTABLE QUICK REFERENCE CARDS

Oh, and in case you’re not convinced that learning keyboard shortcuts is worthwhile, check out our video calculating how much time you could be saving by incorporating keyboard shortcuts into your regular work routine.

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8 Spreadsheet Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Be Using

By , 9/1/2011 at 7:13 am

The spreadsheet has arguably been one of the most important productivity tools ever created – particularly with the advent of real-time collaborative spreadsheet programs like Google Spreadsheet.  How dare we waste so much of its potential productivity benefits by excessively using the mouse!

To combat this horrific carpal-tunnel-inducing behavior, Brainscape has made a web/mobile Keyboard Shortcuts Genius app that drills you on all the spreadsheet shortcuts that you need to know.  I have included my eight most essential spreadsheet shortcuts below.  Most of these work for both Excel and Google Spreadsheets, but you should try all of them for yourself in order to experience your own eureka moments.  Note that I have excluded obvious shortcuts like Bold (Cmd + B), Undo (Cmd + Z), and Copy (Cmd + C). (more…)

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