Calo Corner

  Course Correction: Tips for Parenting GenZ Hopefully, my last post helped you better understand your GenZ child.  My goal in this blog is to share tips for setting boundaries on your teens' technology use so they live healthier lives.  This is by no means a handbook. It's a list of ideas. Some will work; others won't; and chances are good that you will get this reaction.     → 1. Limit use of the smartphone to one hour a day. 2. Put off giving your child a smartphone; instead give them a phone with limited functions, like a flip phone. 3. Allow teens to be on social media, but on your computer. Choose media that allows brief and individual posts only. 4. Install an app on your child's smartphone that will limit the time on apps and shut down the phone after a period of time. 5. Create phone-free times during which no one has a phone with them. Many people make the dinner table a phone-free zone. 6. Engage children in experiences that build their independence a...

  Tips for Maximizing Student Learning From Video I am so impressed by the number of teachers who have begun incorporating educational videos in their instruction as part of our professional development on Multiple Means of Representation .  Some of you have expressed frustration that students are not engaging with the videos as you would like. Some students are ignoring parts of the video and as a result, missing the educational content. For these reasons, I am sharing tips that will increase student learning from videos.  To start, I need to go back to my post on cognitive load , particularly extraneous load. If you recall, extraneous load is determined by how content is presented. The goal is to reduce extraneous load so that students' working memories are focused only on the content to be learned. This applies to educational videos. To reduce extraneous load and increase attention, consider the following recommendations: Signaling: Signaling, or cueing, directs s...

In my last post, I outlined the importance of accessing prior knowledge to learning. In this post, I am going to expand on our understanding by introducing cognitive load theory .  Let’s start with the connection between prior knowledge and cognitive load theory. If students do not recall previously learned material, they will overload their working memory by trying to recall what they already know while learning the new material. Since working memory can hold about “three to five items for 10-20 seconds,” this effort taxes their ability to learn (Kelleher, 1). As a result, when we design lessons, we have to be aware of cognitive load , which refers to the amount of mental activity imposed on working memory at any one time. Dr. John Lovell in Cognitive Load Theory in Action , defines cognitive load as “anything that takes up working memory’s capacity” (20).   While there are three loads, educators must be cognizant of two in particular, intrinsic and extraneous loads . In a n...

Contemporary cognitive scientists often disagree about the educational impact of some teaching practices. However, they all agree on the importance of activating prior knowledge before learning something new. John Hattie provides a nice synopsis of the research. As you can see in the visual below, Hattie rates “strategy to integrate prior knowledge” as having a .93 effect, or a 50% boost in learning.                                                                                                   https://www.mguhlin.org/2019/09/uncovering-truth-hattie-and-pbl.html The increase in learning occurs because students make connections between old and new understandings when recalling prior knowledge. Th...

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on national health issues, conducted a study in 2010 regarding the amount of time teens spend with entertainment media. In 2010, the average kid spent about 7.5 hours a day online. In 2020, the number of hours increased to 12 hours a day. I find that number staggering, as both an educator and a parent. I often find myself asking, How have we gotten to this place ? I understand that entertainment media like Youtube, Instagram, and video games are designed to be addicting. But I wonder if there are other causes. Fortunately, during one of the sessions at the Learning and the Brain conference, I got an answer, one that I'd like to share. As we all know, the brain is a pattern seeker. The brain looks for patterns because it craves familiarity and synchrony. This need for synchrony results in social learning, or conforming to the rules of a group. I never realized the extent to which social confirmation is hardwired in our b...

Every fall I attend the Learning and the Brain conference in Boston. The topic this year was the distracted brain, or how technology is impacting students’ mental health and academics. One session in particular was of great interest to me… and I believe to you, too. Two researchers from Harvard’s Project Zero shared the results of asking 3,500 teens the following question: What are you worried about growing up in a digital world? Their responses were candid, insightful, and concerning. Five themes emerged: 1. Teens know that they are addicted to technology but don’t know how to or are afraid to break the addiction.  2. Teens find being a friend hard. If they are not available to respond all the time , they could lose a friend or a friend could hurt him/herself. 3. Subtle jabs from friends and peers are as hurtful as blatant hostility. Being left out of a picture, seeing your friends out somewhere, not being tagged in a photo, and getting too few “likes” makes them feel isola...