eSpindle Yarn

LearnThatWord on Edmodo!

2011-12-10T23:56:00.001-08:00

We're delighted to join the Edmodo community!

If you're an Edmodo teacher or student, please join us:

http://www.edmodo.com/publisher/learnthat

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Under beautiful skies...

2011-12-01T21:21:00.001-08:00

My daughter celebrating with her Dog, Mowgli.

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Voices of Literacy

2011-11-03T19:02:00.001-07:00

A beautiful movie about what it means to be comfortable with language and literacy:

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Cloudflare rocks

2011-10-07T19:49:00.001-07:00

I normally don't post much about the webmastering of LearnThat, but what we recently experienced is so dramatic that I wanted to share it with you.

Like I do regularly, I logged into my analytics and saw this:

A drastic jump in page views. People from one day to the next viewed three times more pages on my site.

At the same time, the bounce rate, the number of people who leave the site on the first page (which used to be too high), dropped to less than a third:

Overall, the number of visitors more than doubled!

Of course, I was delighted! It's rare to see such a drastic improvement, not to mention within a day's time.

When looking at the different things that had changed, and also considering the ominous spike in the middle of September, I found out that we owe big thanks to Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is a new service and I had met Michelle at a local meetup. What she presented seemed too good to be true, but these graphs prove that Cloudflare is very well worth the very low price.

Cloudflare applies a set of services that help your website in many different ways, but the main one is speed.

By caching the static parts of the site on servers all over the world, the load time is reduced so dramatically that improvements like the ones above materialize!

Now that my site is faster, I actually get to welcome all the visitors who come to us, and they have a much better experience, engaging and reading more, and no longer leaving frustrated by to much load time wait.

Thanks, Cloudflare, keep up the great work!!

And thanks for making your outstanding service available and affordable to small organizations like ourselves!

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I believe that education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

2011-09-02T19:28:00.001-07:00

... And if you care about promoting opportunity and reducing inequality, the classroom is the place to start.”
~ Secretary Arne Duncan, October 9, 2009.

... or maybe the Internet? Our schools are failing our students... personalized learning coupled with Open and Social can turn this around!

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Vocabulary automaticity is the goal

2011-09-02T16:01:00.001-07:00

Most vocabulary programs are tiring, arduous, and ... completely ineffective.

The reason: "Teaching" a word is not enough. Learning vocabulary is only to a limited degree a rational process, and largely a pattern-building, practice-based process. And for practice to be effective, it requires follow up in a personalized manner until the student has really gained automaticity.

Automaticity is a term used in neuroscience that describes a moment when you no longer have to think to retrieve knowledge, it's hardwired into your mind, so you can use it effortlessly and easily, without stopping to think about it.

Vocabulary more than anything else requires automaticity to be of value. At LearnThatWord its what we focus on all day long. The goal is to help learners build automaticity quickly and effectively, and the new upgrade will add more quiz modules that focus on usage and meaning of words, and lots of colorful, fun ways to interact with words.

Everyone at LearnThat.org is very excited about taking the new quiz for a first spin: it's fun and nicely addictive!

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The learning schedule

2011-07-19T13:45:00.001-07:00

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance.
Friedrich Nietzsche

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Spelling errors are costing web businesses big money!

2011-07-14T14:10:00.001-07:00

It's not like it's new or surprising: If you have low verbal skills, people trust you less.

This article touches on some of the problems relating to spelling:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

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Being an expert means less brain activity, not more

2011-06-02T17:25:00.001-07:00

I enjoyed this little report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13620058

In particular the part where the neuroscientist explains that the characteristic of an expert is less mental activity, not more.

You become an expert once you gain automaticity around the elements required for expertise.

This used to be called memory, but since ideology has piled a lot of polemic smear on this term in the educational domain, we now call it automaticity.

For the last few decades, teachers were taught that memorizing was "stupid" and that all students needed was to be allowed to apply critical and creative thinking. I'm all for critical and creative thinking, but you need a large foundation of underlying knowledge to be successful at it, and that foundation is built through review and repetitive processes that build automaticity.

You need a huge selection of building blocks, in storage and readily available, if you want to build a castle. All the materials have to "just be there" if you want the architecture and design to convince. If you're busy figuring finding the building blocks "as you go" and "in context" you will never move into the castle.

Unfortunately, this is what a large groups of ideologists have been preaching in education, and I'm happy that bit by bit we get scientific data from neuroscience that proves that the brain actually works quite differently:

Not logically, not rationally, and creatively only to a small degree: It becomes more and more evident that humans most effectively create skill through automaticity and forming subconscious patterns.

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Another interesting delanceyplace.com snippet...

2011-05-26T22:23:00.001-07:00

Interesting thoughts on IQ and genius. I bought the book. Looking forward to a more quiet time to read it!

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You have to see this

2011-05-26T20:47:00.001-07:00

This will make you cry:

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Professional evolution

2011-05-25T19:17:00.001-07:00

Attended a very interesting and engaging event over the weekend:

ETIS, the symposium of the educational technology industry, here in San Francisco. It is one of my favorite events, because it provides amble opportunity to mix and connect with the greatest minds in educational technology.

Carrying home a stack of cards from new won friends and enjoyed reconnect with old ones. Also carrying home: Two thought reverberating in my mind.

For one, it was exciting to see the call for personalization gain momentum. This is something that's at the very core of LearnThat.org, and it feels great to meet allies and people who share our passion for anytime/anywhere learning.

The voices are getting louder, the crisis more dire.

When will the avalanche take off?

Secondly, I engaged in many conversations around professional development and user adoption, partially triggered by being nominated as an innovator company for our Pay-Per-Result personalized payment concept we introduced on our site. We developed this concept in response to administrators asking for guarantees that our technology works, so we designed a concept that provides 100% guaranteed return on investment, supported by 24/7 customer service/chat. You literally only pay for gained, measured learning results, so in essence: We assume responsibility for it working. We don't tell people to trust us based on our marketing... we know that it works, so we give people the option to only pay for measured results.

Some impressions of the problem:

***Programs that were sold to millions of users, yet their analytics show less than 100,000 unique monthly visitors. This seems common in many products. Looks good---strong sales to administrators---low adoption by teachers---does not trickle down to the student.

***Many programs that are lauded as successes, gaining lots of investor support, but that don't have user traction. Are programs not evaluated with basic analytics, like the Alexa toolbar or Google analytics?

***Colleagues stating that 20% first year adoption of their amazing and userfriendly solutions is common in public schools (Quote: "It's different in private schools, because there is more control. In private settings, teachers have to implement what the administrators decide.")

***Our own experience with public school adoptions, taking unreasonable support effort and long start up cycles to implement -- and we tested our software with focus groups of elementary students, so it's not our user interface.

We have still thousands of licenses in our system, paid for years ago, and never claimed because the teachers never came on board.

Everyone is citing "professional development" as the problem (in any other industry, you would call this training, but it has been pointed out to me that teachers take affront with that term).

"We need professional development and more mentoring" is the common chorus.

Honestly, I don't think teachers need any more "professional development" or "training."

How many hours/weeks/months of professional development should it take to teach the teachers?

The majority of teachers I met so far are capable, smart professionals, passionate about education. They could figure this out in 5 minutes and implement new technology like they do their online banking, facebook social lives and other areas of technology.

What teachers need is an open, honest discussion, respect, and participation in designing 21st century education. They don't need "training" and "mentoring". They need to take ownership of this movement, because they will benefit the most.

If chronic problems don't go away, it's nearly always because too much attention is given to the symptoms, not the underlying causes.

Teachers need assurance that the changes that happen so rapidly (and commonly top-down) are designed to improve their job, not eliminate it.

Currently, public school teachers are disrespected and underpaid, left insecure and vulnerable, criticized by society for evils they did not create. Understandable that under these conditions their tolerance for change is low. They have no reason to hope that new technology will be anything but another painful yank on their chains.

The school of the future has to ensure -- and teachers need to know and be able to trust -- that when all is said and done, they will still be the center piece of education, and society has to make a clear decision and commitment to our teachers.

Personalized education has the power to transform the teaching profession and teachers will be 1,000 times happier and more effective because of it.

Professional development should not focus on the use of products and procedures.

There are many educational products on the market and in any area there are stunning examples of wonderful, user-friendly implementations. Every elementary student could explain these programs to the teacher, if training was really the problem. The problem is that teacher find the very essence of why they chose this career in the first place eroding and threatened. "Professional development" time and resources should be spent to envision the future of personalized learning and to involve teachers in the transition from the traditional classroom to being a mentor of a student on a personalized learning path.

Personalized learning and the promises technology hold are a dream come true for the teaching profession. Once teachers understand how wonderful teaching in such an environment is, and that they're safe to venture into this new territory, we will have teachers spearheading the movement.

Teachers who are just doing "a job" might find the transition too troublesome. Resisting change is not tolerated in other areas of society; it should not be permitted in schools. If you're tired of it all (it's understandable) and can't find the energy to engage yourself, find another job or retire. Excuse me, but this is about our children and the future of our society.

Personalized education allows teachers to really spend time and get to know each student, accelerate their progress appropriately, nurture their talents, and provide learning platforms to bring students together in ways that are creative, relaxed, effective, and rewarding for both teachers and students.

My daughter was fortunate to enjoy such an environment: it's very powerful, and it works.

I hope that more and more teachers and students will start to invest their time, power, and voice to facilitate this change and claim and define their role in this process.

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More interesting research on memory

2011-05-18T17:35:00.001-07:00

I have been sharing my beloved delanceyplace.com emails before, and here's the latest super brilliant excerpt and "thought bite" - another piece on memory and our misconceptions of it.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Autism visible as different brain growth at 2 years old

2011-05-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting article - http://news.discovery.com/human/autism-puts-brain-growth-in-overdrive-110505.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Not really surprising from a parenting perspective. Two years of age is the time when the child discovers a sense of self, and starts to challenge and explore its options in the social network surrounding them ("the terrible two").
Autistic kids have a different sense of self, and low ability to interact socially, so while the "normal" kids get busy figuring out how the people around them respond to a "no" presented in varying levels of intensity, autistic brains just punch out of this social learning process.

Consequently, their brain is growing faster in the cognitive area during this time.

Wondering if MRI can also detect where non-autistic kids grow during this time... where does social learning take place? Does that show up on these scans?

Twice the charm!

2011-04-28T19:09:00.001-07:00

Invited for the second time to attend the conference of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) at the end of May in San Francisco with innovator credentials. Excited!

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If life gives you melons...

2011-04-27T21:25:00.001-07:00

... you might be dyslexic.

[from a t-shirt I saw today]

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You could fry an omelette...

2011-04-25T17:35:00.001-07:00

...not on our brains (human dignity prevents this), but on the CPU of our developers' computers, as they work on the foundation for our new vocabulary module.

Our brains are running red hot as well, and I don't think I've slept without dreaming of words and numbers for weeks.

The shape this project takes is amazing, and there's that great "rocket blast-off" tingling in the tip of my nose; something great is about to happen.

Over the next few blog entries, I'll share with you as I find a bit of time what we're up to. Feedback is very welcome!

Normally, when I explain to my friends what we're up to, their eyes glaze over, because honestly, what our bright LTW engineers are cooking right now is very powerful stuff, and a fairly complex undertaking.

To start with something less abstract than "language," let me give you a brief "stellar" explanation of why I'm so excited about the new LearnThatWord module.

Once upon a time, people would look up at the sky and see a random sprinkling of stars. And air was just invisible nothingness.

Over many thousand years, and through careful observation and analysis, humankind slowly determined that there was an order to the stars, a "cosmos," a system and harmony.

Certain stars could be seen moving in groups, others had a certain quality that distinguished them.

Later on, we started to understand that we are looking at different systems and spheres, five in total, troposphere being the one closest to us, stacked into each other like a Russian doll.

I love this picture, and although I don't know the context it was created for, I see a learner and seeker who managed to break through the core sphere, and who is about to move on to the next. It's one of the most amazing illustrations of the process of "learning" in my mind.

However, once we go above the spheres, we're actually looking at an infinite collection of large units called solar systems. Most of us learned that unless you like to flirt with madness, it is quite enough to concern yourself with our local, hometown universe, since the size and complexity of this one alone will make you nauseated if you try to completely comprehend it.

Over time, humankind learned that what we call "the universe," is simply a word we use to represent something that nobody is actually able to visualize or comprehend. We soothe ourselves by using a term that makes our limitation less obvious, by using a singular term for the infinite vastness. Language is similar in that it gives the impression we're looking at one "thing," where in reality there's only infinite, morphing and evolving grandness.

So, this is how the old astronomers would sketch their astrologic knowledge. Keep this in mind as I make a leap from the stars to the English language, because you will better understand what the new quiz will bring if you visualize it with this structure.

Ok... how this relates to our new module:

Words are not created equal. It's fairly old knowledge that we use some words a lot, and others much less frequently, hence it is more important to know the very common words than the more exotic and obscure ones.

Already in the early part of the last century, people sat down and -- at the time, manually -- looked through large amounts of texts, counting words one by one.

These old frequency lists are still quite relevant today, because they only included a few hundred of the top words. There is not much evolution in high frequency words. They're words like "the" (the number 1), "be" (including it's relatives: am, is, are, was, been, etc.), "I," "you," etc.

This is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

So, owning the core words brings an instant advantaged, a quantum leap towards unlocking a language. Unfortunately, it seems as though progress is made rather slowly after the first 1,000 words.

However, to be fluent in a language, you need above 95% of word proficiency. If you are presented with a text of 100 words, not knowing 5 in them is still a high number, and you will need a lot of energy and concentration to make it through a text or conversation at this level. It's kind of like riding a bicycle with a flat tire. You can do it, but it's bumpy and a pain and you won't find it very fun.

Here's another word estimate:

To reach mastery, you actually need about 15,000-20,000 words, and by words most researchers mean the "word family". So dance, dances, dancing, danced would count as one word. If words were counted more strictly, without combining them into a "root word" or "word family" or "lemma," the number of words you'd need to know would be much, much larger.

There are countless ways to learn the 1,000 core words, because that's what many, many publishers focus on. It's a waste of energy, because these "core words" are words you'll learn nearly automatically anyway, and quite effortlessly. You'll encounter them everywhere, so your brain can easily build automaticity around them.

Going beyond these core words, effective support quickly dissipates and it becomes exponentially more difficult to learn.

To provide tutoring along the full frequency strand is possible only for LTW, being the only program designed around a comprehensive vocabulary data set of now 180,000 words (and continuously growing).

The meaning of 80/20 to language

What various language programs suggest is that if you learn the top 1,000 or 2,000 words you're close to mastery. Doesn't that sound great? Learn the 1,000 words that make up 80% of texts and your almost done!

Once you look closer, though, you'll find that these 1,000 core words are words that you will naturally pick up rather quickly; they are really very basic. However, to master living language, you need to be able to fill in the more advanced words in synergy with these core words to actually get something out of them. Meaning is most commonly communicated through the more advanced vocabulary, the more specific words.

Here are some randomly picked lines. Blanked out are the words with frequency rank larger than 1,000:

The world is very xxxxxxx.

Do you like your xxxxxx?

What do you think about xxxxxx?

I can't believe it's xxxxxx!

What all of these sentences have in common is that they use core words for 80% of the text volume. Despite this big text volume that's covered by the high frequency words, not knowing 20% makes communication useless!

Try it for yourself:

Take an average, casual text and blank out all the slightly more specific or advanced words. You'll see the 80/20 proportion (or something very similar). You'll also see that the text has become very hard to understand. If the text is slightly more specific, your primary core vocabulary, while essential, takes you nowhere at all.

It's the 80/20 thing all over again. If you've got the 1,000 core words down, you cover 80% of the text, but only 20% of the meaning. On easy-to-read texts, 20% of words, roughly, will be made up of non-core or advanced words. Unfortunately for the learner, often these 20% carry the bulk of the meaning in a text.

Good news is that researchers (including our own team at LTW) have been setting the big data monsters on the trail of the English language all over the world, investigating its structure from all different angles, and a "language cosmos" is starting to reveal itself.

The data monster has been digesting incredible amounts of words and has produced a lot of very valuable data sets, so that we now not only know the top 20,000 word families, but far beyond.

An exciting time to be in linguistics! Or language tutoring... ;-)

Vocabulary spheres

Using this data and a few important aspects I'll explain in future entries, it is possible to divide the language cosmos into spheres (remember the image above?). It allows us to give a scientifically and statistically sound approach to learning English. Once you reach general proficiency, you may choose to expand further into more specialized vocabulary areas (it's like launching into a new solar system).

Our new vocabulary assessment tool will allow users to tell us what their unique focus is:
Maybe you want to
- focus on spoken language only,
- prepare for medical school,
- ... or business communications,
- ... or explore humanities or social sciences,
- ... or be on equal verbal turf with lawyers?

Tell our program what you're looking to accomplish and we will prep you accordingly. We have an incredible general frequency list. But, in addition to that, we have twelve (12) more specific frequency strings, each for a different learning focus and each extensive and comprehensive.

So with this frequency data, it is possible to break up the language learning progress into a cosmos of different spheres, and determine incredible accuracy how much space you already cover, in terms of vocabulary. Knowing what you know allows you to optimize which words you might want to learn next, so they're not too easy or too advanced.

We're excited to build an easy and effective vocabulary assessment tool right after launching our new vocabulary module. It will be online, interactive and allow users to determine their location in the English Word-iverse in a few minutes.

If you share our passion for learning and would love to wear sponsor laurels, please get in touch.

Frequency data is one of the core pillars of this project, but only one of them. I will post some more of the logic of the new algorithm as we go along, so please consider subscribing to this blog or joining us on Facebook...

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

LearnThatWord finalist for two CODiE awards

2011-04-11T12:41:00.001-07:00

LearnThatWord was nominated today as a finalist for two CODiE awards:

Best K-12 Instructional Solution

Best Reading/English Instructional Solution

The CODiE awards are given annually by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) based on selections made by a jury of judges from the industry and voting among industry peers. We're delighted!

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Donations!

2011-03-08T08:38:00.001-08:00

Received our first donation to preserve and expand Vocabulary Junction into the next year... thank you!

Would like to take part? There's a donation button and thermometer on the about us page.

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Bonus words, wait list and more upgrades

2011-03-02T09:39:00.001-08:00

We're constantly working behind the scenes to improve LTW. Many of these things you'll notice as improved speed or better data for the words, but here a few noteworthy recent upgrades:

When you study via Vocabulary Tutor, you have the option to find a word based on definition/image/sample sentence before clicking the audio button. If you succeed, you are issued a bonus point, which is worth a nugget and also counts towards your diploma. With the latest upgrade, the word is no longer added to the practice list if you enter it incorrectly, since many times there are multiple right answers for a certain definition. Failed bonus word attempts are simply added to your preferred word list to be re-tested again in one of the future sessions.

If you are spending coins on your reward page, it will now prompt you to confirm that you want a particular item, since in the past sometimes members clicked at multiple items not aware that it would deduct coins for each activity. If you choose to get learning credits as your reward, you can see how many learning credits you have in your student portal now, even if you're a member.

And because members tend to take quizzes more frequently now that they are rewarded for it, we implemented a 6-hour wait list feature that prevents that words are moving through the practice cycle too quickly. LTW is based on the principle of spaced repetition, so we provide a few quick exposures in the first quiz, and future reviews should happen stretched over a time period that ensures the word is pulled from long-term memory, not short-term.

New feature: If quizzes are restarted in short sequence, practice words that have been presented before will not be shown again until six hours have passed since the last review. Words affected are listed in a 6-hour wait list table in your practice word page.

Our goal for LTW is perfection and our to-do list long... if you have feedback or ideas about what we could be doing better, please let us know!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Find us @ Google Apps Marketplace

2011-01-25T09:19:00.001-08:00

A big step towards making LearnThatWord an easy, one-click choice for schools:

We are now available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Schools using the free Google Apps for Education program can now make

LearnThatWord available for teachers and students with a click.

Google Apps provides sophisticated email features with calendar, tasks, and

document tools that can be used privately or shared by your constituents in a free

and ad-free environment.

Since our program is offered through the no-worry, affordable and 100% measured

Pay-Per-Result concept--without any per-person licensing fees--it’s easy to get

everybody started through the Google Apps Marketplace. You don’t even have to

decide who to include or exclude, since you can do that later on by granting or

removing sponsorship as needed.

Students receive 5 free learning credits each, schools 100 additional credits. This

allows for a few weeks of trial time, on average.

In addition, all third graders study free with our Vocabulary Junction campaign.

Your annual expense is capped to protect your budget, making it the easiest,

most accountable and most affordable tutoring solution available to remediate

vocabulary and spelling.

Click here to add it to your Google Apps for Education account now:

Click here if you don’t yet have a free Google Apps for Education account and would

like to get started.

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Making practice less onerous

2010-11-21T13:49:00.001-08:00

I live in a great place. Little Sebastopol in Sonoma County, home to a lot of conscientious and smart people, and among them the good folks at O'Reillys.

Today, I came a across a discussion on the value of practice, which culminated in the following lines that I would like to share:

My point this morning was in large part that repetition and drill matter, and that once you've figured out that they're actually helping you, they 'suck' a lot less.

It's not just a matter of Calvinist ethics (sorry, Kurt) - it's an opportunity for learners to move forward by doing things a lot, shifting ahead a bit at a time. The great leaps are fun as well, but build on smaller steps.

My concern with this is that while letting kids figure out what works for them is a good idea and that different kids will figure out different things, actually becoming good at things is about a lot more than discovering them or creating them.

Reading sheet music is one thing - learning to play an instrument is another. And I figured out what integration and differentiation were about long before I got to calculus, but I probably should have flunked my second semester of calculus because I just couldn't wrap my head around how to actually make it work. (Which shocked me, because math up to then had just flowed naturally for me.)

Ideally I'd love to have discovery and creativity motivate learners' actions - but they still need to motivate learners into a tremendous amount of repetition to get there.

Kurt said 'Computers and the internet can be used to scale the learning by discovery paradigm.' Yes, and they can also be used to manage, moderate, and fine-tune repetition. Hopefully we can combine all of that into something that gives people instruction at a pace they can maintain, thrilled by their progress, but also in a way that sticks with them."

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Learning has it's own rewards, BUT...

2010-11-10T00:22:00.001-08:00

... we're excited to announce the launch of our new rewards program!

LearnThatWord users now earn coins for completing quizzes! These coins buy anything from La Linea cartoons to games to free learning credits, etc. After all, the biggest challenge about learning is keeping the momentum going and to stay motivated!

Rewards, whether they're diplomas or prizes, are given for effort and quality, not existing achievement.

Come check it out, and let me know what you think!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Cognitive Misers

2010-11-05T06:55:00.001-07:00

The following excerpt is a text sent to me yesterday by the delanceyplace.com snippet collector, one of the few emails I enjoy reading whenever I find the time to:

"We tend to be cognitive misers. When approaching a problem, we can choose from any of several cognitive mechanisms. Some mechanisms have great computational power, letting us solve many problems with great accuracy, but they are slow, require much concentration and can interfere with other cognitive tasks. Others are comparatively low in computational power, but they are fast, require little concentration and do not interfere with other ongoing cognition. Humans are cognitive misers because our basic tendency is to default to the processing mechanisms that require less computational effort, even if they are less accurate. Are you a cognitive miser? Consider the following problem, taken from the work of Hector Levesque, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto. Try to answer it yourself before reading the solution.

Problem: Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

A) Yes
B) No
C) Cannot be determined

"More than 80 percent of people choose C. But the correct answer is A. Here is how to think it through logically: Anne is the only person whose marital status is unknown. You need to consider both possibilities, either married or unmarried, to determine whether you have enough information to draw a conclusion. If Anne is married, the answer is A: she would be the married person who is looking at an unmarried person (George). If Anne is not married, the answer is still A: in this case, Jack is the married person, and he is looking at Anne, the unmarried person. This thought process is called fully disjunctive reasoning - reasoning that considers all possibilities. The fact that the problem does not reveal whether Anne is or is not married suggests to people that they do not have enough information, and they make the easiest inference (C) without thinking through all the possibilities. Most people can carry out fully disjunctive reasoning when they are explicitly told that it is necessary (as when there is no option like 'cannot be determined' available). But most do not automatically do so, and the tendency to do so is only weakly correlated with intelligence.

"Here is another test of cognitive miserliness, as described by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Shane Frederick.

"A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

"Many people give the first response that comes to mind - 10 cents. But if they thought a little harder, they would realize that this cannot be right: the bat would then have to cost $1.10, for a total of $1.20. IQ is no guarantee against this error. Kahneman and Frederick found that large numbers of highly select university students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton and Harvard were cognitive misers, just like the rest of us, when given this and similar problems."

Author: Keith E. Stanovich
Title: "Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking That IQ Tests Miss"
Publisher: Scientific American
Date: November/December 2009
Pages: 35-36

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The Myths Behind the Things We Do

2010-09-14T08:03:00.001-07:00

Here a few lines by Benedict Carey, "Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits," The New York Times, September 6, 2010...

" 'We have known these principles [for improved study] for some time, and it's intriguing that schools don't pick them up, or that people don't learn them by trial and error,' said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. 'Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.' (...)

Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are 'visual learners' and others are auditory; some are "left-brain" students, others "right-brain." In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journalPsychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. (...)

Cognitive scientists do not deny that honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as most students quickly learn - it holds its new load for a while, then most everything falls out. ... [In contrast] an hour of study tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now - so-called spacing - improves later recall without requiring students to put in more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found."

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Read through a pile of novels or go to jail?

2010-09-12T15:49:00.001-07:00

Just stumbled across this program... inspiring!

http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm

Convicts in MA may participate in a literacy program as an alternative to being sentenced. They are required to read and discuss a range of novels... leading to a deeper and more effective awareness gain, it seems:

The numbers show that participant go back to criminal behavior at a drastically reduced rate.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Google's contribution to nonprofits

2010-09-01T15:24:00.001-07:00

Many people may not know yet that Google has an extremely effective and generous grants program that helps nonprofits connect with their audience. Our Vocabulary Junction campaign, for example, has been made possible by their grant and it had a dramatic effect on our website.

Yesterday and today I participated at the Google grants workshop at headquarters in Mountain View.

I'm impressed and humbled by the generosity and support extended to the philanthropic community, and delighted to meet the dynamic and enthusiastic team that provides support to over 7,000 nonprofits.

It is fun and inspiring to learn directly from the bright and fun Google volunteers who blew my mind with making the complex simple.

Also, I'm really impressed by Google's internal culture:
The communication within the team, the beauty of the campus and of course, the cafeteria.

Everybody seems to have a wonderful and wonderfully productive time.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Thank you, thank you, Google!

2010-08-26T19:48:00.001-07:00

We recently got a grant expansion that allows us to dare and undertake a campaign I've been dreaming of for a long time.

This will be the first year for Vocabulary Junction, giving free tutoring to third graders in the U.S. and Canada.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

New site is live...

2010-08-26T19:44:00.001-07:00

We switched the flip... flipped the switch... we're LIVE!

Really enjoying our new site and getting lots of great responses... and of course questions for the new Pay-Per-Result.

It takes people a while to understand that WE MEAN IT... on our site you only pay if we teach you something you didn't know before...

We had trouble with our recording equipment so still working feverishly to finalize the introductory videos... more to come soon.

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

New site about to launch...

2010-08-23T10:45:00.001-07:00

We're so excited... just making final changes to the new site.Scheduled to go live tomorrow!!

Anyone who wants to peek and share feedback: beta.learnthat.org/vocabulary

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

From 0 to 296 in three days... amazing!

2010-07-08T20:12:00.001-07:00

Yupp, I can't believe this myself! We're on rank 296 right now, over 500 votes in three days or so, and having a rank of 200 or higher on 7/12/2010 means a $20,000 grant!
Please, if you read this and haven't voted, or know of people who would vote for our vocabulary tutoring campaign, this is the link:
http://bit.ly/learnthatword
It just takes a few seconds!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Vote! Share with your friends! We can do this!

2010-07-08T11:46:00.001-07:00

Wow, we are impressed by how many responded to our email call for help. We're at close to 300 votes, but will need about three times as much to win a grant.
If you haven't voted yet, please click on http://bit.ly/learnthatword and give us a click... if you did vote, please considering sending the link to your friends and family, or repost on Facebook!

By the way: We hear from a lot of people who click the "like" button and then are confused about what to do next. When you click that, often a "verification required" link pops up that you need to click next and enter the captcha. That's the last step before voting... Thank you!!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Word Cup... last rounds!

2010-07-07T09:31:00.001-07:00

The last round of the Word Cup tryouts are upon us.
Please check out the schedule at www.wordcupcafe.org and try out!
If you qualified for the semifinals, please make sure the take the quiz before August 1st, or your invitation will expire.
Good luck!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

The race is on... please vote for us @ Chase Community Giving

2010-07-07T09:16:00.001-07:00

Our nonprofit has entered the race to win a Chase Community grant, and we need your help! The grants are given to the top 200 nonprofits based on votes.

We heard about this just recently, and still need about 800 votes before 7/12 to make it, we've done great so far... but we need to get many more votes.
Can you help us out by voting for our Vocabulary Junction campaign, making free tutoring available to third graders nationwide? Please also repost this on facebook, via email, in forums/networks, etc.
As a thank you for taking time to vote, we will credit 10 learning credits to you.
In the near future, when www.LearnThatWord.org replaces www.eSpindle.org, users will only pay for measured learning results, and 10 credits represent about a month of free tutoring!

Here's how it works:

1 - Click on this link: http://bit.ly/learnthatword. (You have to be logged into your Facebook account)

2 - Click on the get started link:

3 - On the next screen, approve that Chase can connect with you and get access to your public Facebook info (they will list your name and profile images after you vote).

4 - On the following screen, click "like" by clicking on the highlighted button (you can "unlike" Chase at any time). Click on the verification required link and fill in the captcha.

4 - Click "vote for this charity"... Thank you!! Send an email to support@eSpindle.org with your Facebook name and your eSpindle username, and we'll credit your account.

5 - Please share this info with your friends and everyone who cares about education: Facebook, emails, forums, networks. http://bit.ly/learnthatword... this is urgent!!

Let's start closing the Vocabulary Divide that causes so many elementary students to struggle. We still need about 800 votes before 7/12... just a little miracle that should be well possible with a little help of our friends!

Thank you for your support!!

Posted via email from LearnThat's Blog

Click here to set a title.

2010-05-26T21:50:00.001-07:00

I just heard from one of our members. He's heading for the National Spelling Bee finals in Washington D.C. in early June and very excited.

Over the last few years, our site has become a major hub for these amazing mental athletes, since we are the only comprehensive and fully managed spelling program to help them manage their ambitious goal.

We also offer a forum for spelling bee contestants: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSpindle_SB/

This particular child just emailed me saying "I am using your website as my personal coach. It is such an amazing program!" He has studied over 17,000 words with LearnThatWord so far... what an amazing achievement! There are only two members who have studied more -- you can see the highest scoring users by moving your mouse over the blue round "1" icon on the home page or next to the quiz.

I was wishing him good luck, but then thought how inappropriate the term seemed compared with his level of preparedness. Luck is so often looked at as something random. However, contrary to popular folk myth, luck very rarely just drops on people. Instead, it follows a formula.

l = p x o

Luck = Preparedness x Opportunity

Of course, this child may encounter one of the few words he has not yet studied or that his brain has forgotten under the onslaught of vocabulary data. He may be making a mistake. But he has taken every step to minimize the likeliness of that by making sure he is prepared to the highest degree.

And from what I can see of his character so far, I'm sure that even if he hears the bell and not the questions of the media this year, he's likely to be back next year.

Luck is not blind. She only has serious trouble seeing clearly. Get up and try to stand right in front of her by striving to increase your preparedness and opportunities wherever you can. Don't give up. Every action you take to either increase your preparedness or your opportunity will seriously increase your chances of being tagged by "luck."

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Learning Style De-Bunk

2010-05-12T15:48:00.001-07:00

The newsletter from the Dana Foundation is always highly interesting. Today's news stream debunked the "fancy myth" of learning styles and that somehow somewhat somebody could actually made sense out of all that hype and turn it into results.

Here a quote from the article:

What are you calling a learning style?

“There’s not much to this notion of learning styles,” said Daniel Willingham, of the University of Virginia, and no evidence that categorizing children by such terms as “visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners,” for example, helps them learn.

The notion that we can categorize people by how they prefer to learn has seeped into popular culture; 90 percent of the undergraduates in Willingham’s classes raise their hands when he asks them if they know what their learning style is. But research has not proved the categories are useful.

For example, in one study researchers divided children into “auditory learners" and “visual learners,” and then gave them an “auditory task” and a “visual task,” expecting the auditory learners to ace the first and the visual learners to ace the second. They got the opposite results.

“In many of these studies, the original classifications don’t always work,” he said; one person might be classified a “serialist learner” one day, but would meet the standard for its opposite, a “holistic learner,” the next. “The theories at hand aren’t effective,” Willingham said; perhaps another learning theory will appear that is, but he doesn’t see one on the horizon.

His talk had the tables buzzing; many teachers and administrators said they at least consider learning styles when they design curricula or make lesson plans. Willingham said relying solely on such a perspective might lead to less-effective teaching, but he does promote the idea of “changing-up,” using a range of different modes in the lesson.

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

The trouble with "free"

2010-05-10T11:24:00.001-07:00

The boat is rocking at Wikipedia.
The media is upset that images deemed child pornographic were allowed to persist on the site.
The Wikimedia team is upset because Jimmy went in and deleted them without lengthy consensus discussions.

Wikipedia is a great resource in many regards, but this conflict highlights the problem of free--not only are you bound to be surprised by content that is of low quality or worse, but the article also mentions that Fox News stepped out, calling major donors to Wikimedia and complaining about the offensive material.

Depending on donations entirely, this "free" site depends on funding like everyone else on this planet.

Without consistent sustainability build in and substential maintenance costs, could the site tumble if the "big bad wolf" blows the house down?

Or would a situation like that cause people to rethink the glitzy appeal of "free"?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10104946.stm

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Building Literacy One Word at a Time

2010-04-15T21:04:00.001-07:00

With spring and a flavor of change in the air, we at eSpindle Learning are feverishly at work, making major changes to our website. By end of May, www.espindle.org will re-launch as http://www.LearnThatWord.org. Instead of the membership model we will launch an innovative concept that allows users to only pay for results! Only if you had trouble with a word and we successfully taught it to you will you pay a few pennies.

This will make LearnThatWord accessible to a much wider audience and more affordable.

We are also planning two major campaigns to celebrate our continued growth:

Come August, we will launch Vocabulary Junction, a campaign to make free tutoring available to third graders throughout the nation. If we find some extra sponsorship support, we may even be able to include 2nd graders and other countries. You can find our partner invitation here: http://www.espindle.org/proposal_o.swf.

Please contact us if you have ideas or would like to get involved!!

We are also actively looking for ways to make free tutoring available to other literacy organizations.

If you represent a nonprofit serving an audience that needs LearnThatWord support, feel free to contact us.

Posted via web from LearnThat's Blog

Children's under-achievement associated with poor working memory

2010-02-22T09:58:00.000-08:00

A large study involving 3,000 students has shown that in about 10% of children problems with academic achievement were due to a lack of working memory capacity. http://www.physorg.com/news123404466.html

While the article laments that teachers often fail to assess memory deficiencies as the source for academic failure, it does not mention that memory is a brain function that can be easily exercised or left to deteriorate further, if not challenged.

Chances are we see this high number of memory deficiency because these kids grow up in a vague in-the-moment state of consumption that does not challenge them to take ownership of knowledge and invest energy into memorizing.

When we memorize, our brain is forming pathways that allow for knowledge to be stored. The more we learn (and as part of that process, memorize), the more sophisticated and powerful our brains become, allowing consequential steps of learning, creativity and understanding to happen with ease.

As a species, we are new to the information age, with all its on-demand conveniences. It's really just been a decade or two that a large percentage of mankind is benefiting from the digital data-flow provided by computers and the Internet. Faced with such overwhelming accessibility of data, the first conclusion of many is that it is no longer necessary to memorize anything.

Why burden your brain with information that you can look up with a few clicks?

This study, however, sheds some light on why memory-building and memorized content is no less important today than it has ever been. Our brains need a solid framework to make sense of our world and accomplish higher order learning.

To be able to "connect the dots" successfully, you have to know where the dots are, they have to be on your mental map. Computers provide a great backdrop and resource, but they can't replace a diminished capacity to think due to lack of memory and memorized knowledge.

It's not about how much you do, it's about how well you do it

2010-02-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article called
Divided Attention a few days ago.

The amount of information in our life has grown so much so quickly that most of us multitask to varying degrees. And there is some satisfaction to that, the feeling that you "get a lot done" at the same time.

The article highlights research that proves that doing more is not at all equal to performing well, or even satisfactory, and that attention and working-memory capacity is still what separates the true achievers from the busy bees.

Great read.

Live word translations in 37 languages

2009-12-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

We recently launched a new feature allowing eSpindle users to set their native language and receive live translations of the word to be learned. The additional information is available on demand, so as to not distract from the otherwise English immersion environment of the quiz.

Members who use eSpindle to learn English as a foreign language love it!

You can choose from 15 different languages, including those with non-Latin scripts, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, etc.
To activate the feature, simply select the language by going to you > preferences.
Then you'll see the translation of the word every time you mouse over the "bubble" icon in the quiz.

Root word madness

2009-11-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

It's quite common when I introduce eSpindle to the educational community (not parents, not students, but educators, administrators, and publishers) that it is rejected with a brusque -- "but eSpindle requires knowing how to spell the word!"

It blows my mind every time, but people actually highlight that as a flaw of the program.

>>We don't teach spelling, why do you make it a requirement?

>>Well... because if you don't know the spelling, you don't really know the word, do you now?

>>But that is memorization!! Are you saying you want students to MEMORIZE content?

>>Memory is not a four letter word. Every kind of learning - playing an instrument, learning to ride a bicycle, cooking, academics - is 5% "aha!" and 95% memorization.

>>That's dark 19th century pedagogy! We want our kids to explore! Experience! Learn smarter, not harder! They don't have to learn at all, actually, just know how to consume information effectively... be creative, critical thinkers... tech-savvy...

And so it happens that although eSpindle is the most advanced and high-powered vocabulary and spelling practice program in the world, most people actually find us in the search engines because we also provide the most extensive listing of root words and suffixes on the Web.

Root words are being taunted as the holy grail of orthography and verbal prowess right now.

Admittedly, studying root words and etymology is very interesting, and I could spend hours exploring "what's in a word" (if I only had the time). Delightfully, there are a few words where you can systematically decode meaning from knowing root words (most books I know herald "orthography" as an example).

Then there are a few thousand more where you can derive some bits of understanding if you know root words. That's it, folks!

The fact is, to say it bluntly, that the root word frenzy to a large degree is linguistic smart-alecking that is not useful to somebody struggling with a limited vocabulary or someone learning English.

Our brains (unless we're dyslexic) build their vocabulary knowledge by storing mental orthographic images (MOI) and sound impressions for each word... it is a pattern-based process that relies on -- yes! -- memorization. Almost exclusively at that. It helps when the word is presented in interesting context, but learning words is still mostly memorization in action.

We're currently making lists for the word archive at eSpindle Learning, and we ran hundreds of queries in our database to draw out words as examples for the various root words.

The result: Most of the words that display the root word sequence actually do not fit the common teaching for that root word. In some lists, one can see a proportion of three misleading words to one conforming word. We were initially going to clear the "not-working" words out, but will likely keep them in.

Students should understand that root word knowledge is great, yet really just a grain of salt in the big pot of word soup. It's not what language is made of. Language, to the largest part, is not a verbal Lego set, where words are the sum of their components. But it does add some fun to know root meanings.

Let's take for example some random suffixes: "-ware" - "things of the same type or material". We got silverware, earthenware, software, hardware... and aware? unaware?
Next suffix. "Wise" - "in what manner or direction": Clockwise, lengthwise, otherwise, likewise... unwise? Plus, if as in these (and many other) cases there are indeed just four words where the root word meaning applies, why not simply teach the words and let the brain figure out the pattern, as it will naturally do?

The smart mind is lead to strange and wondrous lands by root word study... the labyrinth of the English language that resists standardization, rules, "smart learning." It will slip and slide and fall - get tangled in contradictions and oddities, and end up with as many questions as answers.

We get emails from students constantly asking in despair -- what's the root words of "ought"? Of "weird"? If "pre" as in "prejudice" means "before"... why does "present," the word that means "now," have the prefix that indicates "before"?

If I was a modern-day student, I would get started on questions like these and get lost for hours of verbal wonder and philosophizing, and would flunk all those "smart-teaching" root word classes.

The fear to "just teach" and the ban on anything that resembles memorization that has become prevalent in the educational community is disastrous if you're a student who either has a lot of catching up to do, or who just doesn't memorize words automatically/subconsciously.

These ideologies that strut around displaying modern and liberal attitudes are actually the opposite: Ignorant of current realities and elitist.

How much longer do we have to look at ridiculous drop-out rates and every decreasing literacy levels, before we will start to set aside ideology? The research is in that a 4th grader who does not operate at grade-level literacy level is doomed to fall more and more behind. So, what will we do with this knowledge now?

It's not a matter of phonics (which teach sounds, not words, and are heavily overrated), it's not a matter of rules (that don't work) and root words (that are a linguistic hobby, not a solution).

The problem is that if you don't have a chance to build a large vocabulary in your early years and within your extended family, you need a teacher teaching you these words. You need follow-up that makes sure these words make it into long term memory, and you need as much targeted instruction as it takes to help you catch up.

Let's end this on the positive note.

Research has not only shown that our academic crisis is largely a verbal, a literacy crisis.

Research has also shown that students can build their vocabulary at drastic speed if provided with targeted, meaningful study tools. We also hear this from our members: Provided with effective tools, the gap can be bridged quickly!

Ditch the ideologies!

Memorizing is not bad.
Spelling is not a problem, unless you don't teach it.
It's not rocket science. It just needs a bit of practice.
It's really not a big deal, unless it's ignored.

A grand grant

2009-11-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

Just came back from a few delightful days at Yosemite National Park. With the fall air crisp and clear, and both the sunny days and full-moon nights sharing their light with the magnificent surroundings, grandeur was everywhere.
What is the difference between something grand and something big?
Something truly grand will not make you feel small, but instead inspire and empower you.

Just like Google did recently when they gave us a generous Google grant to promote Word Cup.
Google has been helping many non-profits get the word out about their work and the causes they serve. To be chosen for a grant has been really inspiring and has helped our event a lot.
It's been a grand grant indeed!

A Picture says it all... many pictures = an awesome learning tool!

2009-10-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

We now have over 7,000 large color photographs enhancing our eSpindle resources.
What bliss! It is so much easier to understand and memorize words with the right visual support.

Our volunteers are still combing through Flickr in search of more images, and we anticipate that once we're done we'll have 12,000 images supporting our program.

If you haven't eSpindled lately, register for a free trial and see how it works!

A New Word Cup, More Powerful Than Ever

2009-10-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

Friday will see the launch of Word Cup as part of the LitCam Live! Forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair. (12:00, Hall 4.2)

Word Cup is designed to harness the power of the Web to make good, maybe even amazing, things happen. Our goal is to grow the event into the largest literacy fundraiser on the Web.

With some generous support from Google and Amazon Web Services and great media partners like BetterWorldBooks, AromaLand and Helium.com, we're on our way...

People who participated in the last Word Cup will notice some profound differences - for one, Word Cup is now completely free!
Secondly, there are substantial prizes to be won. That is, if you support the Word Cup fund with a few dollars yourself.

Being a supporter qualifies you for lots of extra "Word Cup 2.0" prizes; plus, you'll help the Word Cup Literacy Fund grow. Come check out Word Cup's four literacy projects!

Reading First no effect on comprehension

2009-02-02T15:04:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to share this study with the eSpindle community for a while. I think it is very interesting:

No Effect on Comprehension Seen From 'Reading First'
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

The $6 billion funding for the federal Reading First program has helped more students “crack the code” to identify letters and words, but it has not had an impact on reading comprehension among 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in participating schools, according to one of the largest and most rigorous studies ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education.

While more time is spent on reading instruction and professional development in schools that received Reading First grants than in comparison schools, students in participating schools are no more likely to become proficient readers, even after several years with the extended instruction, the study found.

Among both the Reading First and comparison groups, reading achievement was low, with fewer than half of 1st graders, and fewer than 40 percent of 2nd and 3rd graders showing grade-level proficiency in their understanding of what they read. On a basic decoding test, however, 1st graders in Reading First schools scored significantly better than their peers.

The problem with literacy and academic achievement does not originate in students having problems learning 26 letters and corresponding phonemes.
The real problem is that they are not familiar with the words and the meaning they add to a sentence.

If I would get a dollar for ever teacher telling me that explicit vocabulary instruction and practice is no longer needed, I would be going on vacation today.
Who started the rumor students will somehow learn words by themselves?

Fact is that students from a disadvantaged background enter school with half the vocabulary of their more supported peers. This gap widens as the years progress, with 4th grade commonly being considered the critical year. If the lack in vocabulary skill and confidence is not remedied by 4th grade, the student is at high risk to fail academically, and to drop out of school.

So much for the sad news. The good news is that every student can build a strong vocabulary with efficient and targeted practice. eSpindle was designed to be that program, providing personalized learning sessions and unlimited support.

It is not uncommon that new members need an incredible amount of repetitions - sometimes 50-60!! - before a word is learned. Quite quickly, however, this number shrinks to around 5 as the student develops confidence and interest in words.

Why? Because the student was given the opportunity to figure out, at their own pace and time, that learning words is really not hard. It takes a bit of effort, yes, but it is not rocket science, and definitely something most everybody can manage to accomplish with the right support.

This understanding helps the brain to stop resisting the challenge and gain confidence.

International Literacy Day

2008-09-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been hectic with the Word Cup finals under way, and the Word Cup Cafe under construction. It is not a coincidence that the last day of the Word Cup coincide with International Literacy Day.

Whenever I meet someone with high verbal aptitude (and I enjoyed meeting many over my four years at eSpindle Learning), I like to ask them:

How did it all start?
What made you become interested in language?
When did the reading bug bite, the need to write begin?

To this day, I still have yet to meet someone who would not directly trace the source of their verbal development to a person--a parent, a teacher, a relative--who enticed, encouraged, supported, challenged, acknowledged, and mentored them.
Chances are, you owe your appreciation for language to someone you respected, who invested time and energy introducing you to the World of Words. Who was this person/were these people for you?

The mere fact that you are reading blogs and surfing the internet as a reader likely means that years ago, there was someone who read to you, someone who challenged you to expand your vocabulary, someone who talked with you, who taught you to understand and appreciate nuances and different shades of meaning.

Can you imagine for a moment what would have happened if you had not been gifted with such support? Imagine for a moment that your parents and people around you were illiterate - and I use this term according to Mark Twain's interpretation of it, who said, "the man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can not read them."

You entered school proud and eager, but soon noticed that most kids knew words that you didn't - it was not your fault, but you felt ashamed and scared that you would be found out. You felt embarrassed, like something was "wrong" with you.
Fear and shame made learning words even harder, and sometimes it took you a long frustrating while to decipher simple sentences... you especially hated having to read out loud!! Books were scary, and when texts became too advanced, you tried to hide your panic behind "I don't care" attitudes... your growth stopped, and instead of searching opportunities you spent most of your time escaping problems.

Literacy is not a "hot" nonprofit cause.
It is not headline material like an epidemic disease, it is not gory and violent like war, it is not cute like them polar bears... no: advocating for literacy is nerdy.

It reeks of "schoolmasterness" and dusty books. The problem seems so vast, and the number of more immediate and more dramatic catastrophes so large, that it is easy to forget that many of our problems have their roots in this nearly invisible, inconspicuous cause.

What has literacy given you?
Could you share some of that plenty with the kids in your life?
Could you find the time to volunteer to help someone crack the code?
If you could put a price tag on what literacy has brought to your life - would you find yourself rich enough to share?

Today was the last day of the Word Cup, but we are continuing the literacy fundraising campaign until the end of the year.
Please stop by www.WordCupCafe.org and plant the seed of literacy for someone by making a donation.

And while you're there, welcome to the newly opened Word Cup Cafe!

Innovation... incubated

2008-05-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

I just returned from the annual summit of SIIA, the Software and Information Industry Association, in San Francisco. It was an exciting event, with some of the best and brightest of the industry meeting to share ideas and learn from each other.
The beautiful Palace hotel felt like a bee hive, vibrant with great energy.

eSpindle Learning attended both as a CODiE award finalist (the CODiE is an award casually referred to as "the grammy" of the software industry), and as part of SIIA's Innovation Incubator program.

Ten interesting companies/projects had been selected for their innovative contribution in the realm of educational software. We were given the opportunity to showcase and present our work to the industry's veterans. The association went out of their way to support us (who for the most part were very young organizations) and to ensure we maximized the benefits of the event. I'm looking back with a deep feeling of gratitude.

One of the fun little fringe benefits of being part of the innovation incubator program was getting to walk around with a little purple flag on my name tag that said "innovator."

Promptly, I was stopped by a business owner in the software and content part of the conference (which is a different track from the education community) who asked me - "So, what does someone have to do to get to wear an ’innovator‘ badge?"

I replied "Work 60-80 hours per week for 4 years, pay yourself a salary that is a third of what it was before you became obsessed with your idea, constantly push and challenge yourself..."

"Oh," he said, laughing, "I guess I don't want innovation that badly..."

As we continued talking, he learned that eSpindle Learning was a nonprofit, and that threw him off even more. "If you are working so hard," he said, "don't you want to become rich, too?"
"You don't understand," I replied, "I'm as rich as anyone could get already. A bit more money would be great, but aside from that, I'm very, very rich." :-)

It's a happy new year...

2008-01-12T21:05:00.001-08:00

2008 is starting well for eSpindle: A few days ago we received a Learning Magazine’s 2008 Teacher’s Choice Award for the Family.

Isn’t it pretty? ;-)

At the same time the membership report came in. Overall, our membership revenues increased by 270%, and we fulfilled our goal of giving away 5,000 eSpindle scholarships to disadvantaged students in 2007.
These scholarships, once established, are kept live for as long as they are used by the student, giving an unparalleled tool for personal improvement to those struggling with vocabulary.

The most significant news for me personally was that the ratio of members who renewed beyond their first year term increased by nearly 9%; an improvement that is quite impressive, considering that even last year the majority of members decided to renew after the first year.

A big thank you to all those who have been part of building eSpindle – those who volunteered, contributed, provided feedback and believed in this unique project, especially those who provided precious support when eSpindle was nothing but a vision.

Nonprofit? Business? Both?

2008-01-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Every once in while we meet people who respond to us with a peeved “how can you be a nonprofit, you act like a business!” The next line tends to be – “if you’re a nonprofit, why aren’t your services free?”

Unfortunately “free” simply does not exist, not even for nonprofits. What’s “free” to you is free at the expense of someone else – a sponsor hoping for positive publicity, a foundation channeling funds to serve its intended purpose, a government agency distributing tax dollars, a donor hoping to make a difference, a volunteer committing time and sweat. And the more “free” services nonprofits offer, the more dependent they become on the charity of these participants.
There is a saying in German - “Only death is free, and it will cost you your life.”

eSpindle is aiming to create a self-sustaining system that empowers our public benefit mission without depending on donations and grants.The business-nonprofit hybrid model you see at work in eSpindle is also commonly referred to as social entrepreneurship.

As you can easily imagine, the development effort behind eSpindle was tremendous.
Custom editing a 100,000 word database (including live recording single words and about 20,000 sample sentences), developing a refined and now patent-pending technology to provide the highly differentiated instructional technology, and building a name in the world of education, all required and still involves a team of brilliant people contributing their unique talents along with lots of time.

Honoring this effort we decided, from the start, to accept the challenge of growing and sustaining the organization by “real world” rules – the rules of the market place. And fortunately, our unique application allows us to do this because it is of value to a diverse audience – both those who can easily pay $80-100 for a year of tutoring, and those who can’t.

By incorporating both for-profit and non-profit best practices we believe that eSpindle will be a stronger organization in the long term, than if we allowed reliance on the comfort and protection of charity grants.

Contrary to common perception, nonprofits are free to do anything a regular business does – including selling products and services, licensing, collaborating with both for-profit and non-profit ventures, etc.

The main difference is that nobody at eSpindle owns the company or any surplus created. Every effort we undertake is focused on our mission:

To empower people by helping them build a broad vocabulary as a foundation for critical thinking, confident communication and success in life.

From the start we have committed to match every paid membership with a free license to a disadvantaged student, and our current ratio (of which we are very proud of) is six scholarships per paid membership.

These free licenses are given to other nonprofits, literacy organizations and title 1 schools who approach us for help, and if you have ever seen the challenges that students in underserved neighborhoods face, you will know why we are delighted to support teachers who dedicate themselves to making a difference for these students.

Cna yuo raed tihs?

2007-09-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this email that has been circulating for quite a while now?

***

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

***

It's impossible to count how many times someone has forwarded me this email. If emails could smirk, this one would, especially because of the triumphant "Yeah, and I always thought spelling was important!"

When developing the eSpindle concept I spent a lot of time reviewing current research about spelling, reading, writing and the workings of the human brain, and to me, this email proves something completely different:
We not only write, but also read based on Mental Orthographic Images (MOI), so to get really familiar with a word's writing convention is very, very important.

This email proves that most people do not read using phonics, rules, or root words. If we did, we could indeed not read this text unless we went through lengthy decoding.
Phonics, spelling rules and even root word knowledge are great intellectual tools that can help us decipher a word when we get "stuck" – they are not, however, the stuff that good readers and writers are made of.

Fluent reading – just like writing - is driven by the brain's library of MOI, an immense collection of visual imprints of words created as the brain memorizes written words.

As you probably know, a good speller is likely to write based on "looks right" decisions (unless s/he is dyslexic – see below).

What this little entertaining email proves is that MOI actually drive our reading as well – by supporting the brain by zipping through the text based on "looks like" decisions and content-based associating.

If the mind uses MOI for reading ("looks like") as well as writing ("looks right"), then this would mean that focused word instruction – teaching the successful formation of MOI – is actually dramatically more important than is currently acknowledged.

Sometimes people ask us why we have such a "ridiculous" large entry field in our quizzes – it was very purposefully designed that way to support the successful formation of MOI.

The number of people that can read this and why they can

Some versions of this email state that "only 55 out of a hundred can," others say that everyone is able to read the text.

After showing this text to readers of all ages and education levels, I have concluded that while not everyone can read the text, clearly more than 55% of the population can.
Dyslexics and people who read little have severe trouble figuring it out, and normally give up after a few words.

The speed by which someone "gets it" seems to directly correlate to the speed they normally read.
People who read a lot and effortlessly can read this instantly, albeit still at slower than their normal speed.
People who always read slowly take longer and get "stuck" on words frequently.
The most common "stopper" is the word phaonmneal (phenomenal) in the second paragraph, an advanced vocabulary word that someone of low literacy skills is often not familiar with.

Apparently the brain pulls up words from its memory bank based on the first and last letters, its expectation based upon context, and other factors like length of word, number of upper- and lower-length extensions, etc.

It's a much more advanced decoding process than unraveling words going from left to right, letter by letter, which is our traditional understanding of "reading."

It is an amazing processing task, and gives us a little glimpse into the vast potential of the powerful supercomputing organ we shelter within our cranium.

People tend to respond to this email saying – "I didn't know I was that smart," "seems like I'm a genius," or "I would have never thought I could to this."
Why do people go through school not learning this basic truth - that their capacities are so vast, close to limitless?

When will our students be taught to understand that they do possess the tools to do anything they want, if only they dedicate the time and energy it takes to develop the skill to use them?

I have received three versions of this text: One credits "a researcher" at Cambridge University, others an Oxford scientist. Newer versions talk about an "English university."

After fruitless research I was unable to link this email to any of these two universities, and so assume that this email is the work of a rather informal "researcher." If so, thank you, dear unknown creator, for providing such a strong and compelling experiment!

If someone is more successful in actually locating the scientific research producing this piece, please let me know! I would be curious to see what kind of conclusions and observations were drawn from this experiment.

Historically, learning was hammered into students' minds in an authoritarian, rote and all-around frustrating way, not leaving much room for creative and critical thinking, or individualized instruction. Older generations remember spelling instruction as frustrating and discouraging, or at the very best, boring.

Then research discovered that dyslexics, who performed badly on the weekly spelling test, were able to navigate around their problems when they were taught phonics and spelling rules – so the conclusion was to throw out the old memorization routines and teach spelling through teaching phonetic patterns and grouping words by these patterns or rules.

What this ignored, however, is that the vast majority of students form MOI easily and reliably if taught in an intelligent and focused fashion.
The logic-based approach that works so great for dyslexics does not serve other students – because they read and write based on MOI, not based on a logical, analytical process.

A lot of students, especially strong visual learners, will pick up the majority of words while reading, with minimal need for explicit spelling instruction. What strong visual learners will have to work on is overcoming false MOI they may have formed unconsciously, for example when presented with workbooks with misspellings in their instructions (there should be a law prohibiting this!).

Many students, unfortunately, are left without the assistance they need. They are not served by the rule-based instruction initially designed for dyslexics, because they are not dyslexic. And for a variety of reasons, they may no longer get the targeted instruction they need to successfully form their MOI database.

While all they really need is just a bit of additional targeted practice, they often simply do not get enough coaching to truly "get it."

Their discomfort with words soon affects their reading and writing.
They get frustrated, write and read less, fall further behind in building their MOI library, and soon notice that their peers read and write faster, understand context better, and learn more effortlessly.
Humans quickly feel "behind" or not smart enough, a scary feeling which causes many to give up, leaving them heading for educational disaster.

Our very human existence is linked to words, and more and more to the written word. Let's make sure that everyone has a broad and complete word foundation for confident communication and success in any field!

Spelling or Advanced Word Tutor

2007-06-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

eSpindle started out as a program strongly focused on spelling.
Now a more advanced tutoring module is available as well that challenges you to find of the right word first.

After selecting "advanced word tutor" on the preferences page, the quiz will no longer provide instant audio for the word in question.

Instead you're simply presented with the number of letters the word contains, and may then request the first and last letter of the word.

These clues, along with the definition and sample sentence will challenge you to actively find the right word without actually hearing it.
You can then click the "hear word" button to verify your answer.

We hope you'll enjoy this version as well and let us know what you think, please!

Words - Coins of Thought

2007-04-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Michelle for forwarding an article by Washington Post writer Michael Skube, titled Writing Off Reading.
This quote summarizes the essence of his observations:
"If words are the coin of their thought, they [college students] are working with little more than pocket change."

An interesting read for everyone concerned about declining reading and writing skills. Could the underlying cause be as simple as schools no longer teaching words?

My daughter's school books teach vocabulary via multiple choice. Most school books I've seen operate on a similar basis, and most everyone can get through these exercises without breaking a sweat.
But does this mean that the students will own these words?
Will they know them enough to have them available for both fluent reading and writing?
Are these words going to "come to them" with ease and without slowing down their train of thought?
Is it enough to recognize a word, or is it important to be able to recall it, to know what it means, how it sounds, how it is written?

Recently I had a conversation in a charming little cafe, Coffee Catz, in my hometown, Sebastopol.
A few tables away from mine, an elderly man and a young woman just discovered that they both worked in college education, and both specialized in teaching remedial English.

After they had compared notes about how difficult, even impossible, it was for some students to make the cut, because they were "disadvantaged," and how one had to be satisfied with even little progress, their conversation trailed off, at which point I introduced myself.

"Overhearing your conversation," I said, "and understanding that you are experienced in teaching remedial English courses to college students, I am very interested to learn how much of the problems you are facing are related to basic word knowledge, in your opinion."

When I said "word knowledge" the young woman abruptly turned around in her chair so she no longer faced me.
The older man took on a condescending tone, the one you use to explain to someone ignorant that she has just committed a crime against political/social/overall correctness.

"No...," he said, "I mean, maybe, but we don't teach vocabulary, that is outdated. The only way we teach words is by providing them in context."

"That's great, but what about students who are not served by that? Students, who are in your remedial courses because they simply do not have a sufficient vocabulary? How do you provide further study for words that surface as problematic in the context of your instruction?"

"Oh, they'll somehow get it at some point."

"What if they don't? Do you have a way to know? How do you make sure they get the assistance or tutoring they need? What assistance is provided to students where lack of word skill is indeed the source of the problem?"

"No," he said with a tone that meant you're just not cool enough to get this, "we just DON'T TEACH words!
Well, we tell them simply not to use big words. It's good style anyway to express your thoughts with the small and simple ones. There is no need for all these complicated words anyway. Anything that's important can be said simply."

"Oh," I said. As a matter of style, I happen to agree. But would you want to experience a reduced vocabulary as a limitation in your own life, I wondered?
How much would you enjoy reading academic texts, or even the New York Times laying on your table, if your vocabulary was limited to the simple, short words? How would your own life have evolved if you had to operate on a minimal vocabulary, because your teachers said that was "good enough" for you?

"Plus," he said, a slight smile on his face, "our students are not going to do it anyway, they wouldn't think it's fun. Maybe the Asians, or ESL students, but not our regular English students."

Conversations like these leave me sad and aggravated; I've heard these type of statements too many times:

"We don't teach words."
"We don't require our students to be able to spell."
"We only teach in context." (Or - "We only teach phonics.")
"Somehow they'll be fine."
"Students won't do it anyway."

Oh, what convenient statements!
So much easier than getting down to the nitty-gritty of making sure that students not only carry "pocket change" but a wealth of vocabulary with them into their lives.
Or insisting that they work on building their language foundation, which is truly their foundation in life - regardless of whether they think it's "fun" or not.

Could you, dear reader, imagine living in a world where communication depended solely upon context?
How would it feel to walk around without fluency in your own native tongue?
What are your favorite books? Who are your favorite authors? What would the world be like for you if those questions left you blank and speechless?
If we respond to these questions with a shrug, what will become of this language we love?

If we don't build students' active vocabulary skills, reading and writing skills will continue to decline. ("Duuh!" my daughter said, reading this. How come this is obvious to a 12 year old, but not to our educational system?)

I come from a country, Germany, where books were once burned on a gigantic scale. Fueling the fires was the thought that all people needed to know was what they were told by the system.

In modern society, such drastic steps are no longer needed to keep people from thinking critically and leave them disenfranchised.
Leave the books on the shelves!
Post them on the Internet!
With students who grow up in a culture that tells them learning words is not really important, that they are fine with multiple-choice level vocabulary skills and a spell checker, and that everything is about "having fun," books are no longer dangerous.
Why burn them? Just let them gather dust.

Add words, practice words

2007-04-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

We have added some additional functionalities that let you temporarily disable words that you manually added to your account.

Many times people create or locate a word list they want to study, and upload them all at once.

The problem here is that eSpindle will always quiz words added with priority, so if you upload a long list, it will take weeks before the quizzes actually turn to practicing words that you misspelled.

The new functionality allows you to upload a large list at once.

Next, check all of the words with the new button provided and disable them. Then, enable just a few every week to make sure the student also gets to work on the practice words to really memorize words that were hard before.

And please don't forget to submit your list to our word list swap!

By doing so you help us build a library that will help other students as well!

Supercalifragilistic... !

2007-02-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

We just completed another database upload, adding over 700 new words.

Our commitment to support this program with a database that represents pretty much the entire English language constantly keeps us on our toes, searching for new words, recording live those that could stand improvement, editing the accompanying information.

Every time one of our members adds a word that is not found in the database, we receive a call for evaluation. Many times the word was left out because it was not the base form of a word (dreams or dreaming instead of "dream").
Such variations are frequently not included, unless they are irregular.

Often the word is not found because it is misspelled or does not exist (as per Merriam-Webster and other lexical authorities). Sometimes it is a real find - a word that is not yet in our database, but should be.
One of the new words that now adorns our precious word collection is Mary Poppins' famous song title Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

The only reason why a project of eSpindle's dimensions is possible is the advanced technology of TTS (Text-To-Speech), and the good sound quality it now provides. We refer to our computer voice as "Mike," and Mike does amazingly well on most challenges, breezing through the bulk of words and sample sentences errorfree and even attempting that certain human sounding modulation.

Want to hear how Mike, the computer voice, says supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? - http://www.espindle.org/audio/words/97757.mp3.

Pretty impressive, hm ;-)?

By the way, this is what Wikipedia has to say about the meaning of this word, which is one of the longest words of the English language:

"The word itself has obscure origins, pertaining as to when it was first used, but the roots are fairly clear, as Richard Lederer wrote in his book Crazy English:

super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragilistic- "delicate," expiali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," the sum meaning roughly "Atoning for extreme and delicate beauty while still being highly educable."

This is the perfect word for Mary Poppins to use, being that she thinks of herself as incredibly beautiful but also extremely intelligent, which makes up for it."

In response to adding supercalifragilisticexpialidocius to our database, I received this little sentence in my email box from one of our editors (thanks, Sandi!).
This sentence is of unknown origin. It goes like this:

Imagine a holy man, who walks barefoot most of the time, producing an impressive set of calluses on his feet. Many times, such a mystic will also eat very little, which makes him rather frail, and his minimal diet may lead to bad breath.

This would make him - are you ready for this? -

A "super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis."

Why this hasn't been done before

2006-12-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Why has a concept like eSpindle never been attempted?
Will one of the educational software giants step up and copy our concept?

Answer:
Unlikely.
It has not been done because it is not likely to be sustainable for a for-profit company.
Designing limited units of study is profitable, but a vast and on-going project like eSpindle is a tremendous and risky undertaking.
It is a project fit for the Internet Age and thrives on lots of visionary spirits coming together and pitching in to make it happen – not for a for-profit company focusing on its bottom line.

eSpindle is made possible through the support of a large network of volunteers and supporters.
At its core is a vast and growing database that currently encompasses about 100,000 words – that is most every word of the English language in its base form, including about 30,000 words that are considered “Spelling Bee words.”

Only with such a tremendous foundation is it possible to power a learning experience that is ongoing and can accommodate learners of varying and developing skill levels – that will accommodate most any word that you may request when uploading word lists for priority study.

Were we to offer eSpindle in CD format, our members would currently have to load 18 CDs of data into their computers to install the database supporting this project – and eSpindle’s resources are constantly growing and evolving.

Just the audio license by itself (which is provided to eSpindle by one of our sponsors) would make it impossible for a for-profit company to offer such a resource without making access prohibitively expensive.
Add to that the custom edits needed to make sure our brief definitions do not give away the word to be spelled; adding sample sentences; proofing the audio generated by Mike, the computer voice.
Who can count the hours needed to live record all entries Mike does not get right, editing, and proof-editing them – plus all the other ongoing expenses associated with running a large Web project?

A project of these dimensions can only be accomplished as a community attempt, and is fueled and sustained by our volunteers, supporters, and membership contributions.

It is only possible because people from all walks of life are joining this project – as volunteers, members, and contributors and are helping out in any form they can.
You’re making it all possible!
Thank you for helping us create our innovative, amazing, wonderful eSpindle!
It is a tremendous, exciting undertaking. With your support, the sky is the limit!

How eSpindle got started

2006-12-09T16:47:00.000-08:00

My days are filled with talking to people:
Introducing our program, answering questions, establishing partnerships. The one thing everyone wonders about - How come a non-native English speaker has created an English Word Tutor?
Someone who is not an English teacher or enmeshed in the educational system? Someone who may be caught mixing in a German word here or there (I grew up in Germany and still speak German with my daughter) and who sports a pretty strong accent?
Someone who loves words, but is by no means an English language expert?

The answer: eSpindle somewhat happened to me.
The idea came to me in a rather casual way, while helping my daughter learn her spelling words.
Have you ever had an idea that just doesn't want to go away?
No matter how often I discarded it, the idea for eSpindle kept coming back, bringing with it the allure of the new and the temptation of a great adventure... When the idea for eSpindle started to take roots in my mind, I was VP for Sales and Marketing at AromaLand, an Aromatherapy and Spa company based in Santa Fe - a stimulating and creative job that I could attend to from my home in California, with lots of flexibility and a regular paycheck.
Oh, no, I had no use at all for this idea that started flirting with my imagination.

But my unwanted idea kept coming back to me, persistent, nagging.
Pointing out news about students struggling with vocabulary, or dropping hints about how this "good" idea could be turned into a "great" idea. Reminding me of how I had struggled to learn English as a foreign language without having proper audio support, how it would help my daughter and so many more students - I started researching, looking for that very solution that I wanted to see.
The more I reviewed what was available, the more aggravated I became.

I saw programs using misspellings of words (a pedagogic sin according to brain research), lots of programs where parents were asked to record and enter information for the words to be quizzed (gee, that certainly helps a lot!) and programs that focused on limited word units, normally comprising between 50 to a few hundred words. The largest program I encountered featured 1,000-some words, but was unaffordable for most students. Just looking at the class of my daughter, I saw struggling ESL students next to book-devouring word whizzes who delighted in learning new words.
How could these students be served with uniform, unit-based study?
It was obvious that what was currently offered was patchwork at best, and a complete let-down for a lot of the students, especially the bright and the struggling.

The part that surprised me was that most programs I found on the Internet were basically virtual translations of text books into online format.
A little bit of animation was added here or there, teddy bears and butterflies, but it seemed like their designers either did not understand or did not care for the new opportunities powered by the Internet and computer technologies.
And slowly, "the" idea became "my" idea. I started talking with other parents about it, and received enthusiastic feedback and support.
Yes! Why wasn't there a better tool to help students memorize new words?
Why were we still doing good ole' spelling word lists with our kids in the age of information technology?
And what about families where parents did not have the time, resources or skills to tutor their children?
Why were teachers still wasting time and resources on spelling tests, which are long proven to not be very effective at all?
And wasn't it a shame to have a large number of students go through school without every learning how to read and write with confidence?

Now that my idea had convinced me of its necessity, I let it occupy the "guest room" in my brain, not really knowing what to do with it. Then, a friend of a friend introduced me to an educational software development firm, their quote sounded okay, a network of editors, writers and English teachers formed, I cracked my piggy bank and found myself tempted to trade my job for my calling...

There was only one more question left:
If the idea was so important and splendid, why had nobody done it yet? Well, it is late at night right now, and I will write about that a bit more in my next blog…