Ideaphora Insights

Educator Mary Chase, Ph.D., demonstrated in her blog post on dual coding theory that students learn best when visuals are combined with text. She explains that when imagery and language are interconnected, the information is dual coded in the brain, boosting understanding and recall. Ideaphora enables learners of all ages to make connections among keywords, or concepts, derived from digital videos in visual maps. This visual/verbal relationship helps students better assimilate information from video content than they could through imagery alone. 

In his new article in HuffingtonPost, Edtech to Prepare Children for an Interplanetary Future, Oliver Braithwaite explains how Ideaphora’s concept mapping environment can prepare learners for tomorrow as the nation and the world enter the next wave of technological innovation.

 Ideaphora now has over 17 thousand pieces of vetted-open content available for educators and students to use in creating their concept maps. Our unique granular search allows learners to explore resources not only by title or tag but down to the level of keywords and key phrases we generate automatically.    

Since Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe published their signature book, Understanding by Design, the idea of planning “with the end in mind” has become an important part of educational parlance. There are few endeavors where this advice is more important than Project-Based Learning.  

Because a project, by definition, has a prescribed outcome, it’s tempting to focus on the material objective rather than the accompanying learning. Regardless of the nature of the project, the important questions are: 

Never ones to rest idle, our staff have been busy creating resources to help teachers easily incorporate Ideaphora into their lessons. Educators can find video tutorials about using Ideaphora’s features, lesson plans and examples of student maps – and more coming soon! – on our new Teacher Resources page.

Small children learn by asking questions and testing the answers they receive. This tendency forms the roots of critical thinking. Unfortunately, question-generation eventually takes a backseat to receiving and storing information both at home and at school as children mature. In a traditional classroom, questions are the provenance of the teacher. In a project-based learning classroom, however, questions drive the entire learning process. 

In my last post, I covered the importance of satisfying students’ curiosity about why they “have to learn” various skills, facts and processes by connecting curriculum to real world applications. Project-Based Learning (PBL) is one important approach that accomplishes this task and far more.

On the heels of our PledgeCents partnership announcement, we are rolling out new features and enhancements that deliver a more robust and rich concept mapping experience for both teachers and students. These changes include concept mapping templates, additional open education resources, and improved search functionality.

School districts spent more money on digital content and curriculum last year than ever before, according to a recent survey report from The Learning Counsel. With increasing use of digital content in the classroom, it’s imperative that schools support students in deeply engaging with the material so they not only understand the concepts presented but also are able to apply what they’ve learned. We created Ideaphora to address this pressing need.

To ensure that all schools are able to use Ideaphora Classroom, we’ve partnered with PledgeCents, which offers a streamlined way for school leaders and educators to easily raise the funds needed to cover the cost of purchasing annual subscriptions. We want every school and educator regardless of their financial situation or budget to have the opportunity to use Ideaphora to empower their students as they prepare for work and life beyond the school walls in today’s digitally driven world.

You know the saying “I’ve got too many irons in the fire”? Well, I have my own personal twist on that saying - ”There are fires everywhere, and I’ve got irons in every one of them!”  

Being a professional in the field of educational technology, those fires might look like helping other teachers use technology, working with an administrator, negotiating with a vendor, or even working with a family member who knows you can help sync his/her latest device. 

One thing we can all agree on in this busy edtech world is that we like resources for integrating technology that engage students, cover standards, promote higher-level thinking, and are (at least close to) effortless to implement. Ideaphora’s web-based concept mapping platform is one of those resources.

 I’ve spoken before of my mentor in graduate school, Donald Graves. He used to say that one of the most important questions we could ask, as educators, citizens or even humans, was: What’s it for? Whether an educational policy or a political stance, he’d tell us, “What it’s for has everything to do with what we’re for.”