There was an article the other day about how video games are actually good for your brain. They make it work better, improve hand-eye coordination, and help you make decisions. Take that, Dad!

I know that this doesn’t mean that sitting in front of the TV or computer for six hours a day is good, but a little gaming every day is okay. I like playing video games because they are relaxing, and challenging. I can that tell my brain is working. I like solving the puzzles, and learning new stuff, and video games help with that. I also really, really enjoy killing zombies, and where else can I do that but on my PS3?

About me: I go to South Secondary School in London, ON and I have two younger siblings. I have always been a movie guy. But movies aren’t the only thing I enjoy. In the summer I love to bike with my friends down to the Thames River and ride along the trails. The sights and the entire ride are always beautiful. Anyway, hopefully you’ll enjoy my posts! Remember to leave feedback and comments at the bottom! – Dylan.

We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, with the holidays fast approaching, we compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!

Day 4: Play Video Games.

This might seem like an odd activity to suggest, since your kids are most likely fully intending to play video games day in and day out over the school break. Research has indicated that video games might not be as detrimental to kid’s mental development as we tend to think. In fact, certain interactive video games might actually help children develop skills (math, literacy, and social) that pay off in the classroom.

If you want to spend some quality time with your kids, why not pick up the controller, and get them to teach you how to play? Putting the kids in the instructor’s seat forces them to think systematically, logically, and analytically about the game and how they play it.

Tip 1: Get Crafty Together
Tip 2: Snuggle Up With a Book
Tip 3: Take a Hike

Take 10 minutes to watch this great video that looks at how our current education model is outdated, and how it’s failing to teach today’s children.

“Today’s kids live in the most intensely stimulating period of the history of the earth. They’re besieged with information…and we’re punishing them for getting distracted.”–Sir Ken Robinson.

The brain is elastic—it can change and grow. This is not breaking news. In fact, it’s the scientific foundation on which Oxford Learning’s instruction model is based. Poor learning skills can be unlearned, and new and improved learning abilities can replace them.

This is known as neuroplasticity. Generally, it’s a good thing.

However, a recent article in the New York Times showed how, thanks to our rampant use of technology, scientists are now concerned that neuroplasticity can work against us to create bad learning habits.

According to the article, our brains can become addicted to the fast-paced, instantaneous give-and-take of the high-speed, connected, online world . This can become a problem where learning is concerned. It can cause issues in the parts of the brain that deal with deep thought, introspection, and reasoning.

The article calls this “fractured thinking.” It also warns that multitasking, which comes part and parcel with Internet use, can lead to difficulties in filtering out irrelevant information.

As you can imagine, this can be problematic in an educational setting.

The article also touches on many other issues that arise from heavy computer usage, such as disconnection from family, compulsive behaviours, and loss of empathy.

Even though the latest techno-gadget, the iPad, was just released, textbook developers are already considering how it can be used to enrich classroom textbook experiences.

Unlike with a traditional print textbook, the iPad will allow students to not just read about a subject, but also watch, listen, and manipulate.

Though it will most likely be years before the iPad becomes as ubiquitous to classrooms as chalk, program apps are already being developed that can help students have a more interactive and multi-sensory classroom learning experience.

Read the full article on ParentDish.com: The iPad and Education – It’s Not the Size of the Screen, It’s What You Do With It

More articles about technology and learning:

• New Classroom Technology Sounds like a Great Idea
• Nostalgic for chalkboards
• Texting VS Writing: The Problem with Instant Messaging

Are wired classrooms changing the way that students learn?

Chalkboards, one room school houses, apples for the teacher, walking to school, using both sides of the paper, desks with flip open tops, writing with pencils right down to the nub…there is something in the air during back to school time that prompts nostalgic thoughts of academia.

All those images of schooldays persist as icons of academia, even though not a single one of the items in the list above is used in a modern classroom—they are nothing more than relics, quaint memories from educational history.

My, how education has changed! Now the chalkboard is nothing more than a relic of classrooms past. Today’s classrooms are wired, interactive, and media-rich. Gone are the chalkboards and the notebooks; in their places are digital displays and laptops.

But have these new technological teaching tools helped or hindered the way that kids learn in the classroom? Multi-media visual tools have certainly improved the scope of a teacher’s lesson preparation and delivery. Teachers can teach a lesson all while showing resources, three-dimensional mind maps, color images, video clips and every possible resource available to help drive home the message of the lesson. But, has technology in the classroom limited the scope of how far a student’s brain has to stretch to understand that lesson?

Is too much technology doing the hard work for students—the visualizing, the imagining? Is it making it so that students don’t have to rely on their brains to make the necessary connections? They don’t have to fill in the gaps or do the mental legwork to understand so that they can have the “A-Ha!” moments of true understanding. They don’t have to extend their mental capacities beyond what they see in front of them, because it was all there for them, all laid out in full-color and pretty pictures. Why remember the answer when you can just Google it?

Consider classrooms of the past: with little or no high tech tools, great thinkers made important intellectual leaps using nothing but brain power…no word processors to fill in words as they typed great dissertations, no spell check, no computers to help them fill in the gaps. If they could accomplish these tasks with no help, shouldn’t today’s students be able to as well?

The irony here is that chalkboards, in their day, actually revolutionized the classroom. They made it possible for the teacher to teach multiple students at once using visual aids. It was the first time teachers could write a message and have all students see it.

Chalkboards haven’t disappeared from classrooms just yet. They are still there at the front of many classrooms—sometimes hidden behind projector screens—a quaint reminder of the way things used to be.

Science fairs submissions are usually fairly predictable… there’s hot air balloons, and growing mold on bread, the solar system, waves, generating electricity from a potato, wind energy, magnets, and of course, the ever-popular exploding volcano.

But one high school student has set the bar for all future science fair submissions. For his tenth-grade science fair 16-year old Daniel Burd did more than describe the science behind a common scientific problem—what to do with all the plastic bags—he searched for a real-life solution.

And so began Daniel’s award-winning science fair project. He began with what he already knew—that microorganisms are involved in the breakdown of plastic—and then set about isolating, identifying, and measuring those microorganisms.

He measured, counted and retested for about three months until he was able to prove his theories successfully, and identify a real-world application for his discoveries. And then it was off to the Canada-wide Science Fair in Ottawa to win the top prize.

Burd may seem to be a gifted or exceptionally talented student—and certainly he stands out when compared to other 10th graders and their more predictable science fair submissions.

But the one thing that truly make’s Burd’s Plastic Not Fantastic project so outstanding is not the fact that he could isolate microbes, run control groups, and accurately follow the scientific method. It’s not even that he attempted to find a solution to one of the biggest ecological problems of our time.

What makes Daniel Burd stand out from the crowd is his active mind and the fact that he was able to make connections from what he learned in school to home life to environmental issues. The ability to transfer skills, understand interconnectivity, and look for solutions to everyday problems—these skills represent educational ideals at their best.

It’s these skills that make Daniel Burd a winner in our books.

Sometimes, communication isn’t about talking or reading.

Historically, icons—any sign or likeness that represents something else— were used to communicate a particular message.

Icons are used in modern times too. Think Mickey Mouse or the Smiley Face, that famous yellow circle with a smiley face in it from the sixties?

That bright and fun image was an icon of happiness.

These days, the smiley has a new face… and it doesn’t have a bright yellow background. In fact, it looks a lot like a colon and a bracket. : ) If you can’t see the smiley, tilt your head to the left.

The smiley icon evolved to fill a need in an increasingly digital society.

As society embraced the computer, the way people communicated changed. Email or text message became the norm, and the risk of miscommunication and misunderstandings increased.

One of the benefits of good old face-to-face talking is the ability to watch the other person’s face and register emotion such as sarcasm, humor, or anger. These emotions simply don’t translate in an email.

Enter the emoticon. The word emoticon is a portmanteau (a mashing together) of the word icon and emotion. Meant to communicate digitally when someone is joking or happy, the smiley emoticon turns 25 years old this year, which he’ll celebrate with a bunch of emoticon friends.

Check out this (by no means comprehensive) list of emoticons:

• Wink
• Frowning
• Shouting :-@
• Yawning ;-O
• Indifferent :-I

Read more about emoticon development.

Sand in your bathing suit, in your hair, in your sleeping bag…and in your keyboard?

Camping, to this generation’s children, is not what it used to be. Camping has changed so much over the years that wireless connection is now listed as a basic service at many campgrounds across North America. Electrical hook up, firewood, bathroom facilities, and now, wi-fi.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that the purpose of camping was to get away from it all—to reconnect with nature, and to be unavailable; disconnected, and to get back to nature.

The evolution (or de-evolution as the case may be) of summertime childhood activity is a popular subject these days. Kids spend more time than ever inside watching TV, playing video games, surfing the net. There are more than a few articles circulating in the media about what this means to traditional childhood, not to mention what all the plugged-in indoor time means to learning habits and social interaction.

Childhood is an ever-evolving landscape, but unfortunately, the new technologies and changing lifestyles are eroding traditional summer pastimes such as playing hide and seek, stargazing, bike riding, building tree houses, hopscotch…and camping.

The campsite is a place to get back to nature and re-discover how to long hours doing nothing more than using the imagination to keep amused. It’s a place to disconnect, to unplug, and to learn the simple pleasures that a childhood summer can bring.

Link: The Globe and Mail

Staying au courant with the ongoing in your teen’s life can be challenging, especially since teens can be notoriously difficult to talk to. Short, one-word responses such as “nothing” is the norm to questions like “How was your day?” and “what’s new?”

A recent article in the local paper told of how one parent discovered a way to open the lines of communication with her teen. She signed up for the popular social networking site Facebook as a way of staying in the loop with her children’s lives.

Facebook began in 2004 at Harvard University as a tool for creating student profiles and performing classmate searches. By 2005, it became accessible to most colleges, universities, and even high schools in the US. It opened up to the general public late 2006. Since then, Facebook has been in the media spotlight frequently surrounded by issues of privacy, a hot topic in the age of identity theft.

Privacy issues aside, the mom reports that Facebook has opened the door to communicating with her teenage daughter. The status updates and photos give the mom helpful conversation starters, and now they actually have discussions that go beyond the monosyllabic grunts she used to get to her inquiries into her daughter’s life.

Facebook—more than a social networking site, it just may be the technology that helps parents to bridge the generational and conversational divide. As author Patrick White notes in the article Facebook: watching the watchers, family dynamics may never be the same.