August 2011 Blog Posts
Does handwriting matter? For many years, the general consensus was, in a nutshell, no. Ideas counted. Creativity. The contents behind the scribbles. Then the personal computer came along and typing replaced most forms of handwriting. A god thing? Not so, claim the experts.
"Study after study suggests that handwriting is important for brain development and cognition — helping kids hone fine motor skills and learn to express and generate ideas," says Gwendolyn Bounds in The Wall Street Journal.
Virginia Berninger, a psychologist from the University of Wisconsin discovered that students produced more ideas when composing essays in longhand. Her research showed that the sequential...
This blog has been telling you for years. You've always suspected it. Now you have proof. Your job may indeed be killing you - literally.
A research study conducted by the Tel Aviv University has discovered that people with little or no social support from their co-workers were 2.4 times more likely to die in the next three decades than those who said they had close, supportive bonds with their workmates.
Their conclusion implies that people whose Working Style has a preference for working with peers on in groups may be in danger in toxic workplaces where they can't find colleagues to team...
(a guest blog by Nicholas Reid, writer and critic)
A question has been jangling in my head recently and keeping me awake at night. Is the appreciation of literature really being taught?
I know at first glance the question seems self-evidently absurd. Of course the appreciation of literature can be taught. Otherwise why do we have all those English and other language departments and programmes in universities and colleges? And why do high-school teachers force Lord of the Flies, The God Boy, The Color Purple, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Whale Rider, The Old Man and the Sea, Man Alone,...
What do you think is the most misunderstood learning style?
Tactile input?
Mobility-preference learning?
Holistic information processing?
Yes, yes, and yes. It's well documented that tactile learners are often neglected, learners with a strong preference for mobility labelled as unruly, and holistic processors misdiagnosed with ADHD. However, a learning style that can sometimes slip through the cracks is Visual (words).
You know that your child loves stories. You see her reading complex chapter books which are meant for much older readers. She can summarise the plot and describe every single character in the...