Ideaphora Insights

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

I read today that there are more than a billion websites on the Internet. The mind boggles. When I look back on my own education, I remember thinking that my library’s card catalog and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature comprised the pinnacle of responsible research. Later, I graduated to the more sophisticated Social Sciences Citation Index and other complex databases; nevertheless, my resources were paper and my access limited to library hours and collections.

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

 

A good friend of mine, Tim Gillespie, once said, “Anytime you do something for students that they could do for themselves, you are 1) working too hard, and 2) stealing from them an opportunity for learning.” I’ve carried this notion with me and rediscovered every year just how capable and creative my students can be.

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

Why do educators make such a big deal about recognizing patterns of information and organizing facts? These skills are necessary to developing expertise. Expert knowledge goes beyond mere recall of facts to the ability to connect new information to old and create new understandings. John Bransford, an educational psychologist whose findings have centered on these ideas, has gone so far as to say, "Helping students to organize their knowledge is as important as the knowledge itself, since knowledge organization is likely to affect students’ intellectual performance." Focusing on patterns of information (rather than just discrete facts) is also important because these patterns are visual in nature and easily recalled.

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Current events present an opportune time to introduce or reinforce curriculum concepts in the classroom and engage students with relevant learning activities, particularly when they have ramifications for society beyond space-time...

For a century, Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has inspired and enlightened - as well as confounded some - learners, scientists and enthusiasts around the world. Recently, his famous theory was proven by direct detection of gravitational waves at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). As one of the most exciting scientific developments in history that could impact research, technology, and many other disciplines, the news offers some thought-provoking learning opportunities for teachers and students. 

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

In my previous post, I explained that reading depends on three cueing systems. As students create knowledge maps of the text they encounter, they not only break down meaning, but also encode it in their memories using all three cueing systems. There's more, though. Ideaphora's visual/verbal mapping environment helps learners tap into the power of dual coding, a cognitive theory proposed by Alan Paivio. Let me illustrate.

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

It’s become a truism in education that every teacher is a teacher of reading. Sadly, that sentiment is more wishful thinking than it is a reality. While most teachers recognize that their students need support as they encounter increasingly difficult texts across the curriculum, very few of us have had intensive instruction in reading pedagogy.

We're at it again. We've added numerous enhancements to the Ideaphora knowledge mapping environment to further improve the user experience for teachers and students. These updates are available to beta users and pilot sites as we move closer to the public launch of our subscription-based tool. During the beta testing phase, everyone can use Ideaphora for free.

The product improvements are focused on four areas:

• Tablet support
• Map sharing
• Content
• Classroom management tools (for pilots)