"If this does not blow your mind, then you have no emotion"

A lot of people, specially us teachers and people who feel identified with Humanities more than with hard Sciences, have struggled at least once with mathematical problems. As we were still in school, educational institutions and teachers were unable to do much for the students who needed longer time to understand a given task and were forced to continue with the next one, leaving a bunch of their students frustrated for not understanding and at disadvantage among their peers who managed to reach the objectives in time.

In 2004, Salman Khan made a huge discovery. He started posting math tutorials in YouTube for his nephews, as he was tutoring them from a long distance. Shortly after, other users of the popular video site started posting him comments and thanking him, because his videos helped their children understand mathematics. At that point he realized that he had found a great teaching tool still not fully exploited.

Now in 2012, there are more than 3,400 videos that can be found in Khanacademy.org along with math exercises generators displayed in a game-like fashion to make them more engaging. Teachers can tell their students to do all the exercising they need at home at at their own pace and use the time at school for experimentation, humanizing the classroom.

This system is already being applied in different schools in USA, and, hopefully, we can expect to find it in a school near us soon. As Bill Gates said, this is the future of education. Wouldn’t you agree?

The Role of Family in Attention Deficit/Hiperactivity Disorder

Attention Deficit/Hiperactivity Disorder (ADHD), includes much more than the person who suffers it, this disorder also affects all the people that are involved in learning processes; This way, one of the most important actors in this process that we have to consider is family and the effect that a kid with this disorder implies for it, since family dinamics are affected by the behaviour that children with ADHD present, affecting at the same time the core of relationships and behaviour learning, which for a child is family.

According to JB Schweitzer, TK Cummins andCA Kant from Medical Clinics of North America (2001) ADHD is one of the most common yet undiagnosed psychiatric disorders in children. This might be an explanation for how difficult is to find material that helps you to work with this kid in the classroom; but parents, and family in general, should take more action since according to Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents by Larry S. Goldman, MD; Myron Genel, MD; Rebecca J. Bezman, MD; Priscilla J. Slanetz, MD, MPH the key to a succesful treatment of this deficit is the early diagnose and, most importantly, the right one.

Ideally the family should be alert and realize that if their children symptoms such as
developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, impulsivity, overactivity, or a
combination of these; they can help their kid by noticing and speaking with an specialist, because these characteristics may indicate ADHD which results in chronic functional impairment, affecting not only the children's academic performance, but also the family dinamics that build the life-style, the affective and socila enviroment in which the kid will grew up and learn.

Taking into account all the mentioned above, I would dare to affirm that family is one of the fundamental mainstay for a child that suffers from ADHD to develop a better life quality and to be treated propperly, in a healthy enviroment.

If you read this post, you win a hundred points!

Gamification is a barely new concept that is changing the way people do activities these days. It can be defined as the the application of game elements and mechanics and digital game design techniques to non-game problems or contexts. It is a current trend among software developers who want to make their programs more engaging and businesses who want to increase the productivity among their workers.

Basic techniques of gamification motivate certain desired behaviors by taking advantage of the human tendency to engage in gaming, as it distracts people from what they are actually doing. These techniques are known to most internet users, as they are already present in very famous sites such as Facebook and Foursquare. They are more simple than anyone could think: winning points, obtaining badges, leveling up, climbing up “leader boards”, using virtual currency, showing progress bars, fulfilling quest, having avatars, etc. Adding these features to websites and programs, where there may be tasks considered otherwise rather dull or stressing, makes them not only endurable, but also enjoyable.

One important example of the brilliant use of gamification is the educational website khanacademy.org. Salman Khan, the site creator, incorporated game-like characteristics to make it more attractive for a younger learner audience. Students can win points and badges by doing exercises and watching videos and progress bars tell them how good their performance is at a given task.

You got to the end of this article, so you are now a hundred points richer. One can only wonder what else can be made into a game by just adding points to it. Is everything considered boring going to be “gamified” some day?

The Importance of Studying Disciplinary Text in English Language.

To study the disciplinary text in English is a very important issue for us as future teachers who are trained to teach children, teenager and also adults in a college class.

 While the English language is becoming a more and more important skill in professional life, texts in English language as study material and as a requirement to publish research is becoming more popular in academic life as lingua franca not only in the field of technology and international business, but also in all kinds of disciplines (such as: biology, law, physics and even in education) to publish research

One way to publish research is through the “scientific article”, but each discipline has needs of its own that can only be satisfied by a discursive genre of its own. Publishing research and scientific findings is essential to college life, publishing is a need for post graduates and to read these publications is a need for undergraduates.  According to Ibañez (2008) “it is considered essential for university students to have psycho-discursive skills that allow them comprehend disciplinary texts successfully.”

I would go further to say that it is essential for a college student to be able to produce this kind of text as well as to understand it, not only in his or her native language, but also in English since this language has become a sort of trading money in the scientific world. For the students of scientific programs, is fundamental to learn to understand and to produce this kind of text since they will be required to do so during their professional life and during post graduate programs. Thus the understanding and production of disciplinary text in English language comes as a matter that should be important to us as future teachers and also as a challenge for college education, since the system that exists now shows little awareness about this matter.