Music Training Sharpens Brain Pathways, Studies Say New research suggests that the complexity involved in practicing and performing music may help students’ cognitive development. Studies released last month at the Society for Neuroscience meeting here find that music training may increase the neural connections in regions of the brain associated with creativity, decisionmaking, and complex memory, and they may improve a student’s ability to process conflicting information from many senses at once. Research also found that starting music education early can be even more helpful. image via flickr:CC | Brother O’Mara High-res

Music Training Sharpens Brain Pathways, Studies Say

New research suggests that the complexity involved in practicing and performing music may help students’ cognitive development. Studies released last month at the Society for Neuroscience meeting here find that music training may increase the neural connections in regions of the brain associated with creativity, decisionmaking, and complex memory, and they may improve a student’s ability to process conflicting information from many senses at once. Research also found that starting music education early can be even more helpful.

image via flickr:CC | Brother O’Mara

Study Finds MOOCs Mostly Attract 'Privileged' Students

The students who successfully attempt free, open online classes tend to already be well-educated, research shows.
According to the researchers, the trend does not mean MOOCs will never reach underrepresented populations. They also caution that, because the study examined only a slim percentage of the students registered for Penn courses, let alone all MOOCs, “the survey may not be generalizable.”

Blended Learning 2.0: A Visual Guide For Teachers There are a few key stages of proper implementation that you should know if you’re looking to start climbing the blended learning tree. Starting from down at the roots is the planning process. It’s about a lot more than just ‘planning’ on buying some iPads. Planning involves creating appropriate blended learning spaces. That means you have a nice place for students to gather and collaborate while using technology. Read the trunk to get started! Embiggen here High-res

Blended Learning 2.0: A Visual Guide For Teachers

There are a few key stages of proper implementation that you should know if you’re looking to start climbing the blended learning tree. Starting from down at the roots is the planning process. It’s about a lot more than just ‘planning’ on buying some iPads. Planning involves creating appropriate blended learning spaces. That means you have a nice place for students to gather and collaborate while using technology. Read the trunk to get started!

Embiggen here

POC Parents Most Anxious About Child’s Online Safety

While the online environment can be an exceptional learning environment, it can be a dangerous space for children to engage, explore and play. A new study discovers that parents say a key concern is the fear that their children will meet strangers online, followed closely by exposure to pornography, violent content and bullying.

But a parent’s level of concern for these and other online safety issues varies depending on their racial and ethnic background, researchers learned.

The study has been published in the journal Policy & Internet. Highlights from the study include:

  • White parents are the least concerned about all online safety issues;
  • Parents of Asian and Hispanic descent are significantly more likely to be concerned about all online safety-related issues;
  • Black parents are significantly more concerned than white parents about children meeting harmful strangers or being exposed to pornography, but not about other issues.

What Happens When Great Teachers Get $20,000 to Work in Low-Income Schools? Results.

Teacher merit pay. It’s one of those perennially popular policy ideas that, historically, hasn’t worked very well.

A few years ago, New York City offered teachers in select schools $3,000 if the entire school’s test scores went up. But scores at the merit pay schools did not improve any faster than scores at control schools. (In some of the merit-pay schools, scores actually went down.) In Nashville, teachers who volunteered for a merit pay experiment were eligible for $5,000 to $15,000 in bonuses if kids learned more. Students of those teachers performed no better on tests than students in a control group. And in Chicago, teachers were paid more if they mentored their colleagues and produced learning gains for kids. Again, students of the merit-pay teachers performed no better than other kids.

That’s why the results of a new study, the Talent Transfer Initiative, financed by the federal government, are so important. Surprisingly, this experiment found merit pay can work.

theatlantic: 'It Feels Like Education Malpractice' Laurel Sturt was a 46-year-old fashion designer in New York City whose career trajectory took an unlikely shift one day on the subway. A self-proclaimed social activist, Sturt noticed an ad for a Teaching Fellows program. Then and there, she decided to quit her job in fashion design and shift her focus to her real passion: helping others. She enrolled in the two-year program and was assigned to teach at an elementary school in a high-poverty neighborhood near the South Bronx. A decade later, Sturt has written about the experience in her provocative memoir Davonte’s Inferno: Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag. I spoke with her about how her time in the classroom affected her views on education today. Read more. [Image: Jim Young/Reuters] High-res

theatlantic:

'It Feels Like Education Malpractice'

Laurel Sturt was a 46-year-old fashion designer in New York City whose career trajectory took an unlikely shift one day on the subway. A self-proclaimed social activist, Sturt noticed an ad for a Teaching Fellows program. Then and there, she decided to quit her job in fashion design and shift her focus to her real passion: helping others. She enrolled in the two-year program and was assigned to teach at an elementary school in a high-poverty neighborhood near the South Bronx.

A decade later, Sturt has written about the experience in her provocative memoir Davonte’s Inferno: Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag. I spoke with her about how her time in the classroom affected her views on education today.

Read more. [Image: Jim Young/Reuters]