drz's blog

Technology in the classroom has been growing exponentially over the past few years.  Internet collaboration and alternative approaches to coursework are becoming a part of professional development.  The neglected concept of a student portfilio has become a reality with the growth of blog, ning, and wiki.  Even President Obama has embraced technology in learning, although his head of Education has not given up his position on standardized tests.  It is not what you can do, but how well you can score that is still of primary importance.  I trust that will change.

Family Math Day and opportunites to explore the spreadsheet with student groups has convinced me that the spreadsheet is an important tool in developing an understanding of quantiy as well as our number system. Where to begin is always an issue,just as it is in every classroom.

Start with an introduction that provides a feeling of control and success.  The challenge is to move to from the known to the unknown: move to the new content as quickly as possible by starting with the simplest version:

I was recently interviewed on the Yvonne Pierre radio show and it is available at Blog Radio.

It was a discussion on the neuropsychological bases of learning disabilities and learning styles.

I was back in another life and was guiding a Saturday computer class for gifted children.  Not only was there no web, but we were working in command line DOS.  I remember I created a Dungeon and Dragon game to teach them to use DOS.
One way I had them relax was by playing a game called Snake.  You controled a snake that got longer as the game progressed.  If you moved the snake through particular places, you would get bonus points.  The game ended when the snake ran into itself (remember it is growing) or you hit the side of the screen.

A Researcher Looks at LD I am a retired professor of NeuroPsychology who developed a research program on the relationship between the brain and learning disability. I want to outline one particular study and show its importance in how we diagnose and teach the children we now label learning disabled.
 
An identified group of poor readers who had clear phonological deficits in reading were compared to average readers on two simple tasks. A group of words preselected to be in the sight vocabulary of all participants were paired under two conditions.
 

Let's assume you think that BAC will jump to its price of 36 in October of 2008 sometime in the next two years. You have about $750 to invest. At the current price of 8.75 you could buy 85 shares. If you are right your $750 would be worth $3096 (86 shares at $36) Let's see how you can do better using calls. The January 2011 call with a strike of 10 costs $3.75, so a contract of 100 shares would cost $375. You could buy two contracts and control 200 shares. You will make money when the stock is higher than the strike price plus the cost of the option.

I taught neuropsychological research with an emphasis on special education for 25 years. I got started in this area when I told a friend that I did not have visual imagery. Her reaction was, "How do you think?"
I think by talking to myself but she thought via mental imagery. From there I developed a theory of the causes and remediation of reading disability.

It is 1980 and the web was not invented, but the Bulletin Board System (BBS) flourished. They served the same function of a website, email, file transfer, graphic all in text. Most were served by a single phone line and there was no communication among the BBS.
 

In the previous section I discussed the use of a Call option in place of buying a stock that you think will increase in value. In this section I will discuss the use of a Put option in place of shorting a stock you think will decrease in value. Most people are familiar with the buy low—sell high logic of buying a stock, that is, buy a stock, it increases in value, and sell it for a profit. Shorting a stock uses a reverse strategy of sell high—buy low.

In the 19th Century Reading was as important a skill as it is today. And in the 19th Century phonetic decoding was the basis of reading. The 20th century did relatively little to the reading process. Probably more than half the population prefer reading from paper than from a screen or a Kindle. One thing, however, has remained as strong across 3 Centuries: Phonics!!!