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Keep it simple: Attention must be paid
How do teachers get the attention of easily distracted "digital natives?"

Joanne Jacobs
Feb 22 min read
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Covid stress hurt memory, 'flexible thinking' for kids and teachers, says study
Students -- and teachers -- lost reasoning, memory and executive-function skills during the pandemic. Stress? Long Covid? Screens?

Joanne Jacobs
Sep 21, 20241 min read
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'Mad minutes' don't cause math anxiety -- and kids learn more
New research shows timed math tests don't worsen math anxiety.

Joanne Jacobs
Aug 9, 20242 min read
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Practice makes better
How do get to Carnegie Hall? Practice! It's the same for math, writes Holly Korbey on Edutopia. “They are considered dirty words, but...

Joanne Jacobs
Dec 1, 20231 min read
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Teachers know little about how students learn
My teacher preparation program in the late '90s "never talked about how kids learn," writes M-J Mercanti-Anthony, the principal of a New...

Joanne Jacobs
Nov 8, 20231 min read
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Easy come, easy go: Googling is bad for learning
Students don't need to learn facts, educators have been saying since the Cro-Magnon first learned to search the Internet. "They can just...

Joanne Jacobs
Aug 12, 20232 min read
2 comments


If you have to think about 3x = 18 . . .
Thinking about everything is hard, writes Greg Ashman, author of Cognitive Load Theory, on Filling the Pail. It exhausts students'...

Joanne Jacobs
Mar 21, 20232 min read
5 comments


Back to handwriting?
I don't write much by hand these days, and when I do it's a chore. Even writing a few lines on Christmas cards seems like hard work....

Joanne Jacobs
Jan 2, 20232 min read
5 comments
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