Many animals ignore anything that does not move or makes at least some sort of weird noise. As if we are all wired to give more attention to dynamic elements in our environment. I know that for me to sit and stare at a book and remain focused and actually try to remember what I read is not always easy. The external world many times manage to distract me.
What if we created a learning environment where facts would automatically get accompanied by a shape and a color and would zoom in-front of us from side to side. Would we manage to take note of them and remember them better than static book bullets?
How many of you can recall tiny objects from games you played years ago but cannot recall something you read yesterday?
I hope it is interesting enough for someone to further explore and I hope they update me or at-least send me a download link to a multimedia application that generates these kind of dynamic presentations from written texts.
I think that the usage and memory retention data can be very interesting.
There are theories that people think about things that they can represent with their vocabulary. The hypothesis is that we do not think about things we have no words for.
My idea is to influence behavior by introducing many more positive words than usually adopted by children in a regular family and school environment.
I hope that less words for violence and criminal acts and more for kindness and positive outlook on life will result in more positive thoughts more often and ultimately less violence and more benevolence.
Lifelong learning means there is a need to test knowledge of people all the time to measure progress. The time it takes to develop tests, administer them and grade them takes a huge budget from the already tight education budget.
What if we could make a simple device that would use biometrics to authenticate a person and then flash images and concepts from the study materials in front of his or her eyes. A low cost EEG could measure the brain wave activity in response to each image and thus gauge the familiarity of this concepts to the student.
This is of course not accurate but could still give an indication of the level of familiarity of the person with the concepts. This can allow to test and grade people automatically, fast and with very low cost and eliminate cheating.
Could probably be used for knowledge testing rather than reasoning testing.
It is a well known fact that education is one of the strongest forces behind economical growth both for individuals and for nations. Students coming from low-income families have many pressures that arise from their immediate survivability concerns and find it hard to shut themselves out of their daily hardship to immerse themselves in studies that are difficult and offer no immediate relief to their current problems.
According to psychological theories it is hard to make someone invest in fulfilling needs that are lower on their need pyramid when the higher needs are still not satisfied. In this case the need to fulfill their personal growth potential and invest in a better future is lower than the need for immediate solution for food and shelter.
This is why I think so many kids from low-income families are not doing well in school-they simply have more important things to deal with.
Instead of trying to change the motivation for these kids I suggest finding a method that will help them do both. I suggest a method that will accomplish the goal of improving their education to create a more productive and capable individual as well as help them in their immediate situation.
I suggest that some of the education funds be put aside to directly compensating low-income students on success.
A student will get a salary every month according to his participation / grades and a yearly bonus according to final grades. These salaries will come from both government and private sources and will come from the understanding that students need to get compensated for their effort, even if it is learning. Doing math exercised or learning biology is much harder to most people than flipping burgers. The question is do you want a nation of burger flippers or of scientists? Why would anyone work hard for free when they can work less and get paid?
For students coming from high-income families and for students from low-income families that have demonstrated high achievements, the needs pyramid allows for using other forms of compensation instead of cash. They can be motivated with awards, social recognition, advanced courses and other things they will appreciate.
Low income students can also get cash compensation for creating worksheets and grading lower grade assignments. They will be taught that they can make money from their education.
