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The Brain Unplugged From Technology: Implications for Learning in Young Children

August 17, 2010

“Attention is the holy grail.”

These are the words of David Strayer, a professor of psychology who studies attention and the brain. And last month, he organized a week-long camping trip with four other neuroscientists to experience for themselves how unplugging from technology affected their own brains.

This is an issue that the scientists on this trip consider of the utmost importance. As Strayer says: “Everything you are conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on attention.”

As the scientists and an accompanying reporter, photographer, and outdoorsman rafted on the San Juan River in Southern Utah, hiked along canyons, and camped—far out of range from their BlackBerries, cell phones, and computers, they discussed the potential impact of technology on the brain. Does being bombarded by technology crowd out our working memories? Does it tax our abilities to process information? Does it impair our capacity to learn? They shared these and other thoughts with Matt Richtel, who wrote a front-page article about their journey for the New York Times on August 16th.

Join us for Office Hours with Ellen - Wednesday,  August 11th from 12-4 pm EDT

August 11, 2010

We invite you to join us Today, Weds. 8/11, 12-4pm EDT on Facebook for the first "Office Hours" with Ellen Galinsky.

Go  to  Facebook.com and search for Mind in the Making. Once you get  to  our page, all you have to do is enter your question for Ellen, and she'll respond.

The topic: "How to Keep Learning Alive at Home." What are your back-to-school questions? Are you wondering about what to do if your child gets a teacher wh...o is turning your child off to learning? Is your child is refusing to do summer reading?

It’s Not Just the Teacher—It’s What the Teacher Teaches, Including Life Skills!

July 28, 2010

A front-page story in the New York Times today (July 28) by David Leonhardt is provocatively titled “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers”. In what is described as an “explosive” new study, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shed new light on the importance of quality early childhood teaching. The researchers examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who were part of a Tennessee experiment, Project Star, that took place in the 1980s. In this study, students from similar socio-economic backgrounds were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classes. At the end of the year and into the first, second, and third grades, some classes made more progress than others. These differences were statistically significant, yet like other studies, as the children grew older, the difference began to fade out by junior high school, when assessed by test scores.  

Importantly, the forthcoming study by the economists looked beyond test scores.  The children in the study are now about 30 years old and so other indicators of life success can be used. The economists found that the students who learned more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college, were less likely to become single parents, were more likely to be saving more toward their retirements, and importantly, more likely to be earning more. And therein is the title of the article. As Leonhardt writes, $320,000 is the “present value of the additional money that a full class of students [with a standout teacher] can expect to earn over their careers.”

As Leonhardt makes clear, the economists don’t know exactly what these good teachers did to make the difference. While smaller class size and the composition of the class did make some difference, these factors don’t come close to explaining the results. So what does?
 

Seven Ways to Help Your Children Thrive During Summer

July 27, 2010

The Time magazine cover story (August 2, 2010) declares “The Case Against Summer Vacation” and it gives us as parents one more thing to feel guilty about.  Saying that summer is romanticized, the words on the magazine cover continue: “all that downtime is making our kids fall behind, especially those who can least afford to.”

If you can get past the headlines and read the story by David Von Drehle, it is really quite good. It makes a point that is often lost in the debates about the achievement gap in the U.S. For example, there are studies conducted by Harris Cooper of Duke University revealing that all students lose about a month in math skills during the summer, while low-income students slip as many as three months in reading comprehension compared with middle-income students. Another study conducted at Johns Hopkins finds that while lower-income students and higher-income students make similar progress during the school year, lower-income students tend to fall back during the summer and these differences begin to add up over time. This explains about two-thirds of the achievement gap between more and less advantaged students by the ninth grade.
 

The Promise of Play: A Report from the 2010 Aspen Institute Ideas Festival

July 19, 2010

Sometimes when a word in our language slips out of favor, the marketers among us look for another word to reframe and replace it. There is no doubt that “play” is under appreciated, even misunderstood, especially when it comes to children. So it was significant to me that the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival organizers not only boldly embraced the word play, but added a whole track to its 2010 agenda called “the promise of play.” And even more significantly, the nine sessions in this track were very well-attended, some with standing room only, despite the fact they were competing with sessions at the same time on global health, the next economy, or world affairs.