Education 2.0 & 3.0

Absorbing media and assimilating it into your existing knowledge is a challenge, and this is a concern when the media is full of big, scary headlines about artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world, stealing jobs, and being sentient. As teachers and parents, you don’t need to know all the details about AI to answer young people’s questions, but you can avoid accidentally introducing alternate conceptions. This article offers some top tips to help you point those inquisitive minds in the right direction.

"I want The Three Bears!"

These days parents, caregivers and teachers have lots of options when it comes to fulfilling that request. You can read a picture book, put on a cartoon, play an audiobook, or even ask Alexa.

A newly published study gives some insight into what may be happening inside young children's brains in each of those situations. And, says lead author Dr. John Hutton, there is an apparent "Goldilocks effect" — some kinds of storytelling may be "too cold" for children, while others are "too hot." And, of course, some are "just right."

Hutton is a researcher and pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital with a special interest in "emergent literacy" — the process of learning to read.

Here are four strategies to help calm down a child with executive function difficulties. If your child is in the middle of an outburst, acknowledge their feelings to help them calm down.

Children’s brains develop in spurts called critical periods. The first occurs around age 2, with a second one occurring during adolescence. At the start of these periods, the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles. Two-year-olds have twice as many synapses as adults. Because these connections between brain cells are where learning occurs, twice as many synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life. Therefore, children’s experiences in this phase have lasting effects on their development.

Kara Newhouse