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.    

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.

Concept mapping in math is often overlooked yet it can significantly deepen students’ understanding of mathematical concepts, particularly those that are complex or hard-to-understand. 

According to authors Pamela Grossman, Alan Schoenfeld, and Carol Lee, writing in the book, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do, mathematics education should focus on helping students learn when a particular approach is useful and how to apply appropriately, which greatly depends on robust understandings of concepts. They state, “robust understandings come from seeing the same concepts from multiple perspectives and representing and using them in multiple ways, thereby developing connected webs of understanding rather than rote memorization of facts and procedures. Common Core and other state standards require students learn math concepts as rigorously as they learn skills and fluency, necessitating a shift from past teaching practices. Students must be able to access concepts from a number of perspectives in order to see math as more than a set of mnemonics or discrete procedures.

Fake news sites. Post-truth politics. Media fragmentation. In the digital age, it’s arguably more important than ever for students to develop new literacy skills. These skills are critical for students to be successful not only in college and in future careers but also in civic and economic life.

According the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE): “To become a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory level, affecting the way we think, feel, and behave.”

Campus Technology reports that a study conducted by the Oregon State University Ecampus Unit found that a majority of students use video captioning and transcripts to support their learning. The study showed that students with a diverse range of abilities can benefit from tools that aid focus, comprehension and retention when viewing videos.

As we noted in a previous blog post, an engaging, distraction-free digital learning environment is critical to student comprehension and academic performance. To that end, Ideaphora has added new enhancements to its online concept mapping platform to offer even greater convenience and time-savings, and further minimize disruptions to students’ thinking and learning while they interact with digital content.

This post is written by Mary Chase, Ph.D., an expert in curriculum design, literacy education, and technology integration. 

In 1871, the poet and thinker Walt Whitman wrote:

… the process of reading is not a half sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That [would result in] a nation of supple and athletic minds, well-train'd, intuitive, used to depend on themselves, and not on a few coteries of writers. 

When we picture a reader, we imagine a person leaning over a text, still and silent. However, if we could peek into the reader’s “thought bubble,” we’d see instead someone wrestling with ideas, leaping between past experience and new applications, and dismantling words and phrases. Reading isn’t a passive endeavor.