Working with the help of teachers and their own insights about what works, all students develop study skills. However, a great many students do not learn effective research-based study skills.

My recent Web search of the quoted term study skills produced over eight million hits. A large amount of research has been done to help determine the more effective study skills. Quoting from the Wikipedia:

Study skills or study strategies are approaches applied to learning. They are generally critical to success in school, are considered essential for acquiring good grades, and are useful for learning throughout one's life.…

The content, teaching processes, and assessment in math education are slow to change. The following TED video is now more than a year and a half old, but is still as fresh and important as when it was first published. It paints a picture of a completely different type of math education system in which computers are an embedded and routine tool.

Wolfram, C. (November, 2010). Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: Stop Teaching Calculating, Start Teaching Math. Retrieved 6/5/2012 from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html. (17 minutes.)

"The Los Angeles Board of Education votes to require grades of D or better in college-prep classes starting with incoming ninth-graders in the fall, raising requirements to a C for the Class of 2017." That is the subtitle for the following article:

Blume, H. (5/9/2012). All L.A. Unified Students Must Pass College-prep Courses. Los Angles Times. Retrieved 5/13/2012 from http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0509-lausd-20120509,0,245781.story.

The underlying idea is that all students should be required to get a good education, where “good” means be prepared to enter the California State University System. Students not achieving this "good" education will not be allowed to graduate from high school. In my opinion, this definition of “good” is “bad.”

Last week I attended a lecture on Computational Behavioral Sciences. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the word Computational caught my attention. I know a little about Computational Thinking, especially as it has been applied in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines. I looked forward to learning about related ideas in the humanities.

The talk was held in the building at the University of Oregon that houses the Computer and Information Science Department. I got there a few minutes early and struck up a conversation with a person seated next to me. He indicated he was a faculty member in the CIS Department specializing in machine learning.

By luck, the previous day I had read an article on the use of machine learning in developing a short and easily administered written test for Autism. So I brought up this topic and we had a pleasant conversation.

Recent reports indicate that the rate of autism incidence has risen to 1 in 88 children in the United States. I highly recommend the TED talk about autism by Temple Grandin available at http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html.

The following article provides information about a short and reliable Web-based screening test.

DuBoff, Katie (4/10/2012). Web-based tool produces fast, accurate autism diagnosis. Harvard Medical School. Retrieved 4/22/2012 from http://hms.harvard.edu/content/web-based-tool-produces-fast-accurate-autism-diagnosis.

Many “students of all ages” are interested in and regularly play computer games. Often these games are quite challenging and require a lot of effort to learn. Educators are trying to find ways to make effective use of this game-playing motivation in education.

The following article provides a good analysis of research and thinking about use of electronic games in education.

Alexander, G., Eaton, I., & Kiergan, K. (2010). Cracking the code of electronic games: Some lessons for educators. Teachers College Record. Retrieved 4/15/2012 from http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15917.

We all accept the importance of children learning to read. By the end of the third grade we expect children to read well enough that reading can be an important aid to learning new content from the curriculum. By about the seventh grade we expect children to read well enough that reading can be a major aid to learning across the curriculum. By that grade level a history teacher might expect students to read and learn from their history textbook while a science teacher might expect students to read and learn from their science textbook.

I was somewhat surprised to encounter the following two articles about math as an important component of early childhood education. The articles indicate that a preschool student’s understanding of math is a very good predictor of success in school—possibly even better than early reading skills.

Stipek, D., Schoenfeld, A., & Gomby, D. (3/28/2012). Math matters, even for little kids. Education Week. Retrieved 4/15/2012 from http://www.schoolleadership20.com/profiles/blogs/math-matters-even-for-little-kids.

I recently read the following article:

Brown, E. (4/6/2012). Virginia’s new high school graduation requirement: One online course. The Washington Post. Retrieved 4/9/2012 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-schools-insider/post/virginias-new-high-school-graduation-requirement-one-online-course/2012/04/06/gIQAaz7E0S_blog.html.

Several states now require and/or are working toward requiring all students to take at least one online course as part of their high school graduation requirements. I have supported this endeavor for a number of years. I find it interesting to read the “justifications” or expected outcomes that are stated for this requirement in Virginia. Quoting from Brown's article:

The idea of requiring all students at the precollege level to learn something about computers (to begin to build a solid foundation in Information and Communication Technology) has been around for a great many years. In 1982, Art Luehrmann wrote: “Should the computer teach the student, or vice-versa?" The article discusses computer literacy. Quoting Art Luehrmann:

Mass computing literacy is not an agreed-upon educational goal. Today very few courses at any educational level show students how to use computing as an intellectual tool with applications to the subject matter being taught. Oh, there are a few isolated, subject-matter-free courses in computer programming; but their market is largely restricted to vocational-education students, at one end of the spectrum, and future computer professionals at the other. It is true that most schools consider it prestigious to have a large and powerful computer facility; but the fact of the matter is that such computers are usually the captives of research and administrative interests and operate on a pay-as-you-go basis. Ironically, it is in the most prestigious universities that students are least likely to be permitted to use those prestigious computers. It is a rare secondary school, college, or university that budgets and operates its computer facility in the same way that it budgets and operates its library.… In the main, literacy in computing simply is not an educational goal at many schools. Most educators seem to find bizarre the suggestion that accreditation agencies examine schools for the quality of their educational computing facilities, just as they now do with libraries. (Find this quote and learn more about Art Luehrmann at http://iae-pedia.org/Arthur_Luehrmann.)

The 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk” (http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html) includes the statement:

As I read, large numbers tend to capture my attention. Recently I browsed the article:

Jackson, J. (4/2/2012). "IBM to develop telescope data analysis system." Computerworld. Retrieved 4/4/2012 from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225739/IBM_to_develop_telescope_data_analysis_system.

The article talks about the challenge of storing and processing an exabyte of data per day. I am a numbers person, but a picture or other image of an exabyte does not immediately pop into my head. Here is how I handled the situation.