Fluency and automaticity Building fluency in math and language is significantly (though not exclusively) building automaticity in recognizing and recalling math facts, and the sounds, spelling, and meaning of words, respectively. Foundationally, building automaticity must in fact be based on tasks which do so. This seems obvious but isn't so, as an incisive article reveals: ... Read more
Science of Math has taken cues from the Science of Reading. Though it is seen as lagging by a few years, there is already a solid body of research regarding how children learn math and how to best teach it. As with the Science of Reading, the focus is on proven explicit, direct, systematic instruction, ... Read more
Learning Piano app (Simply Piano) My seven year old started to learn the piano at age 6, at first it was messing around with an app (Simply Piano), though he committed to 15 minutes per day. We did that for about six months, but using an app has many drawbacks. My children like this, but ... Read more
Reasons for homeschooling Homeschooling is a way for parents to take on the primary responsibility for educating their children. By primary I mean as the sole guiding source of instruction. While in many cases, state or third party curricula is used, as well as shared resources or even online courses and enrollment in distance education ... Read more
Kodable is a somewhat slow website (and iOS app, no Android) which teaches "coding" in a somewhat rudimentary way. It is engaging for the children (tested on ages 4 and 6) but limited in what it can teach. Navigation is problematic as there are two interfaces and so sending a task from the teacher/parent dashboard ... Read more
It turns out that there are many legitimate concerns when it comes to virtual reality and children, the ones that are different than the concerns with video games (addiction, etc.), are around how the eyes focus (or not) in virtual reality as opposed to reality. Currently, one could say that all virtual reality devices and ... Read more
Homo Ludens is a book by published in 1938 by Johan Huizinga. It is meant to explain The Play Element of Culture(not just children's play). Homo Ludens is an important part of game studies. As such it is a great place to start out when designing course for children, even very young children. They are ... Read more
If an artificial intelligence is meant to be thinking and feeling, then it makes sense to understand it as a social being, one which learns in a community of learners, teachers, and others. This might seem obvious. Just as a human being can become human insofar as they are embedded in a community and human ... Read more
Written American English Standard English is most related to written form and is standardized for a given English-speaking country. Therefore, Standard American English is the standardized form of English in the United States. Spoken American English General American English is the more or less standardized or common spoken American English. Written Standard American English and ... Read more
Learning second, foreign, or other language as adult is not uncomplicated. First, we need to review what we actually know about learning languages, and learning them as an adult (as there is a significant difference between how children and adults learn languages). What we don't know about l;earning a language First off, we need to ... Read more