Realities of Teaching, Learning and Becoming Effective

I remember it well: 2 times 1 is 2, 2 times 2 is 4, 2 times 3 is 6, and so on.  Up to 12 times 12 is 144.

What a great way to learn.  I still know that 9 times 7 is 63, and lots of other tricky multiplications too.  Has this gone out of fashion with smart-phones?

Everywhere you look in the blogosphere people seem to be bothered by their inability to teach and their students' failure to learn, especially in higher education. 

Alison Gopnik, Professor of Psychology, writes: “children learn by exploring—by experimenting, playing, drawing inferences.”  True—undoubtedly and it sounds so liberating.  But they also learn by repeating things 10,000 times: for example that’s how they learn to stand up or play the violin. More...