In an effort to better prepare undergraduate students to read and critically evaluate scientific literature, a journal club experience was introduced into a university's bachelor of science curriculum. As a result of this experience, students have been found to be more thoughtful, poised, and articulate presenters, a fact that they, the students,…

Six older adults with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were trained to recall a name-face association using the spaced retrieval technique. In this study, we retested these persons in a 6-month follow-up program. For half of the participants, three booster sessions were administered at 6, 12, and 18 weeks after original training to promote…

This paper reports on exploratory research that examined how students learn Science with an interactive whiteboard. In this study, the IWB was found to support a range of multimodal representation types including verbal, graphic, tabular, mathematical, pictorial and kinaesthetic. The affordances offered by the technology are discussed in this…

This study investigated the effectiveness of three different levels of enhancement strategies utilized to facilitate students' learning from static and animated visualization when taking the time-on-task into consideration. Participants were randomly assigned to six treatment groups, and then took four criterion measures. The time-on-task was…

Many epistemic activities, such as spatial reasoning, sense-making, problem solving, and learning, are information-based. In the context of epistemic activities involving mathematical information, learners often use interactive 3D mathematical visualizations (MVs). However, performing such activities is not always easy. Although it is generally…

After a teaching experience with the children of Ecuador with so little support, the author has come to greatly appreciate what is available for teachers in the states. Sometimes the best encouragement for a new teacher of FLES is a success story straight from the classroom. In this article, the author shares a few of the tools she has picked up…

Securing the future of the human race will require an improved understanding of the environment as well as of technological solutions, mindsets and behaviors in line with modes of development that the ecosphere of our planet can support. Some experts see the only solution in a global deflation of the currently unsustainable exploitation of…

Technological literacy education involves the teaching of basic engineering principles and problem solving, including elementary electrical circuit analysis, to non-engineering students. Learning materials on circuit analysis typically rely on equations and schematic diagrams, which are often unfamiliar to non-engineering students. The goal of…

Teaching the connectedness of relationships among elements in the Periodic Table is often an overwhelming task, and can result in shallow student understanding. This article contains a series of activities that evoke student prior knowledge about classification, leads them to discover periodicity and other relationships among the characteristics…

The author believes that Venn diagrams are a useful, yet hugely underused resource, to encourage purposeful talk, reasoning and logical thinking both within mathematics and across the curriculum. Here, she describes ways in which Venn diagrams can be used to add challenge and develop reasoning, discussion and mathematical thinking at Key Stage 2.…

In two studies, we investigated infants' preference for infant-directed (ID) action or "motionese" (Brand, Baldwin & Ashburn, 2002) relative to adult-directed (AD) action. In Study 1, full-featured videos were shown to 32 6- to 8-month-olds, who demonstrated a strong preference for ID action. In Study 2, infants at 6-8 months (n= 28) and 11-13…

This article investigates whether different formats of visualizing information result in different mental models constructed in learning from pictures, whether the different mental models lead to different patterns of performance in subsequently presented tasks, and how these visualization effects can be modified by further external…

Those interested in using multimedia films for the purpose of illustrating, critiquing and even correcting behavior in organizations face a daunting array of choices from training films to television to full length movies. The authors suggest that the top screen "legends" of Hollywood and their definitive roles should be considered as an…

Exploring student test, homework, and other assessment scores is a challenge for most teachers, especially when attempting to identify cross-assessment weaknesses and produce final course grades. During the course, teachers need to identify subject weaknesses in order to help students who are struggling with a particular topic. This identification…

Most seventh grade students partially define themselves through everyday media messages. As a part of understanding how these images and the media impacts their lives, the author collaborated with her colleagues to develop a unit to help teens learn how visual messages such as those in pictures, media icons, logos, slogans, clothing, toys, and…