Over the past few weeks, our very own president and co-founder, Ms. Bobbi DePorter, has been jet-setting across the country in her ongoing efforts to educate parents on how to support their teens in school and in life. Here are just a few of her key study and test-taking tips:

Optimal Study Area

• Design the optimum study area at home. It should include good lighting, a desk or table to work at, a comfortable chair, inspirational posters, and plants.
• Play Baroque music softly in the background.
• Study at the same time every day and take a short break every 30 minutes.
• Tackle the most difficult subjects first. When you get them out of the way, the rest will be easy.

Cultivate a Winning Attitude

Maintaining a positive attitude is your most important learning asset. You need to mentally prepare before any learning experience. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t. Either way, you are right.”

Overcome the Obstacle of a Blank Page with Freewriting

When faced with writer’s block, freewriting provides visible and immediate progress. Choose a subject and set the timer for a specified amount of time. Write continuously until your time is up. Don’t worry about structuring sentences, checking grammar, backtracking or crossing things out – just keep writing. Freewriting clears your mind, focuses your ideas and makes the invisible visible.

Take Breaks

Every 30 minutes it helps to take a short five-minute break. Take mini-breaks more often by standing up and stretching whenever you notice your mind wandering. Studies show that you remember best what you learned just before and just after a break – so the more breaks, the more you learn!

S.L.A.N.T.

• Sit in the front row or middle section of the classroom.
• Lean slightly forward in your chair, as if you are hanging on the teacher’s every word.
• Ask questions to clarify anything you don’t understand.
• Nod your head to show you are listening and interested.
• Talk to your teacher after class to build rapport and establish a relationship.

Plan Ahead

Use a calendar to mark days for tests or due dates of important papers. Studying ahead reduces stress and increases your ability to remember at test time.

Discover the Power of “This is it!”

“This is it!” means making the most of every moment. It also means doing whatever it takes to make a subject interesting. Some ideas include studying with a friend or relating the topic to something you already know or like. When you know something well, you almost always find it interesting.

Test-Taking Strategies

• Allow yourself enough time to get to class a few minutes early – hurrying causes tension and mental crunches, and you can use the few extra minutes to review your notes one last time.
• Before and during the test, tell yourself positive messages, such as “I know this information and I’m going to get an A.”
• If you feel yourself getting tense, close your eyes for a moment and take a few deep breaths. Imagine a relaxing scene.
• If you’re having trouble concentrating or are feeling overwhelmed, try drawing a mind map in the margin of your paper. It will help you remember what you studied.

Remember the “F” Stands for Feedback

From infancy through adulthood, we learn through our mistakes. Remember to learn from the feedback you get from others, whether it is a failed test or a poor relationship. In your path to become an excellent learner, feedback is simply the information you need to succeed.

These strategies used together create the ultimate recipe for academic success!

Check out a few of Bobbi’s recent interviews below:

• Bobbi on San Diego Living with Renee Cohn 2/22/10

• Bobbi on Chicago’s WGN Mid-day News with Allison Payne 3/2/10

So I believe I posted the link to this site in one of my earlier posts, but I am putting a whole post dedicated to them for a few reasons.

a) This guy is HILARIOUS.  I was always frustrated at comedians for being funny but trashy and potty-mouthed. Finally someone funny that isn’t that way.  His tweets and blogs are great.

b) He’s honest and amazing. His posts are great, and so true.

c) He and Clover are giving away a MacBook Pro!!!

Now don’t go apply, because I’m trying to win one for my classroom. But I guess if you want to there is no stopping you…

So go check him out. And buy his new book, and then buy a copy for me because I am poor right now. (Although I plan to buy it with my first pay check.

http://stuffchristianslike.net/

Number One Daughter is in the fourth grade, a trait she shares with lots of other ten year-olds in the world. After doing homework with her for four years I’ve come to some conclusions about how she learns, and useful methods for getting her to learn.

I’ve learned to split her subjects into two categories:

Subjects She Has To Memorize

These abound in elementary school, and are the hardest to get her motivated for.  I can’t always tell her that learning the history of Maryland will be useful in life, or that knowing the spelling and meaning of ‘migrate’ is key to her future. And studying is much less interesting and more random for these subjects.

Subjects With Algorithms

It’s no doubt the software pro in me, but think of subjects like decimals, probability, geometry, etc. as algorithm subjects; subjects primarily concerned with learning core concepts, and learning to apply those concepts. This makes them easier to learn on one hand, because she learns the concept, she can crush the problems. On the other hand, these subjects tend to have a cumulative nature that makes them more fraught. More about that in another post.

Social Studies

So, Social Studies. This year it is mostly about American Colonial history, taught mostly in terms of Maryland history. This involves learning lots of names, families, industries, geography, and the like. It is a lot of memorizing, and she really pretty much would rather not. Not bother, not do it, not learn it.

But there are tests, and she really likes doing well on the tests.

One of the hardest things has been drawing a causal line in her mind between the effort she puts in and results she gets out. In order for her to do well on the tests, she needs to study; furthermore, she needs to connect that her study effort directly impacts her test scores.

This is harder to do than you might think, for a variety of reasons. Some teachers seem happy to return homework and tests loong after they were studied for an turned in. Some subjects come too easily to her, meaning she doesn’t need to study. Sometimes she makes unimaginably careless mistakes, like the test where she forgot the page was double-sided. Some subjects come hard to her, and come more easily to friends (oh, the drama). And sometimes, the schools have really stupid rules about not allowing scratch paper for math — what is the point of that? (This last one drives me NUTS. At what point in life will there be a shortage of scratch paper to do your work? Paper actually does grow on trees. And recycles.)

Finally, she is a ten-year-old girl; the capacity for distraction at this age is amazing.

So, for a variety of reasons, I do extra work to make her draw the connection between the effort she puts in and the results she gets out. Mostly, this involves making sure she studies efficiently. So what do we do, for these subjects where you have to ingest facts and connect them usefully?

Write It Down, Write It Down, Write It Down

Really, this is the most effective, simplest to explain, and easiest to achieve method that we’ve come up with.

First, for all her study notes, handouts, etc., we turn each note or fact into a declarative statement: “Industry for Baltimore: Shipping” becomes “The main industry in Baltimore in Colonial Times was Shipping”. And so on, until she has a complete set of notes to study. Now, initially I had to help her, and occasionally I still do, but she can mostly do this on her own.

Then the real work begins. She hand-copies three to five copies of the notes; the emphasis is on reading each note, and each section of notes, understanding them, then writing them down. Rinse, lather, repeat. She doesn’t rush, there is no extra points for finishing early. I made the point pretty well that rushing through the copies will just mean she did the studying but didn’t get the grade, and that would stink.

This method has proven pretty effective.  First, she does all the work. I only do a little quizzing at the end to make sure she actually paid attention as she copied things. Second, it is a measurable amount of work; if we decide she needs to make four copies, she feels like she is getting somewhere when she finishes the first page; she can measure her study progress. She can choose to do a copy a night, or two a day, or four at once. This choice, for a ten-year-old, is a big deal.

It has the virtue of being cheap: all you need is pencils and paper.

Finally, it works. At least for my eldest, it has made her more confident in her ability to excel in these subjects. It has moved her grades way, way up. And it has made studying less involved for mom and dad.And after a few units, she’s built up a passel of notes covering the whole year.  Which makes her proud as all get out.

If you have a kid (or are a kid) who is struggling with a subject like Social Studies, try it!

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Big Brother Not Just Spying On Schoolchildren Through Their Laptops

Federal lawsuit brought against district for covertly monitoring students and families in their homes

Steve Watson & Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Sunday, February 21, 2010

Students Spied On With School Issued Laptops

The scandal surrounding kids being spied on at home via webcams in laptops provided by schools extends further than just schoolchildren – four years ago Google admitted that it was implementing similar invasive surveillance technologies that would target all Americans.

A school district in Philadelphia faces a class action lawsuit after it allegedly issued laptop computers to 1,800 students across two high schools and then used concealed cameras within the machines to spy on students and their parents without their knowledge or consent.

Lower Merion School District in the suburbs of Philadelphia faces charges of invasion of privacy, theft of private information, and unlawful interception for providing computers with webcams that were remotely and covertly turned on by administrators.

The suit was brought on behalf of all the students and their parents after it was revealed that the computers had been used to monitor students both at school and at home.

The story harks back to revelations of how private industry and eventually government are implementing plans to use microphones in the computers of hundreds of millions of Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance and minority report style invasive advertising and data mining.

In 2006, Google announced that they would use in-built microphones to listen in on user’s background noise, be it television, music or radio – and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.

“The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject,” reported the Register.

Hundreds of millions of Internet-active Americans will all be potential targets for secret surveillance and the subsequent sell-off of all their information to unscrupulous data mining corporations and government agencies.

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.

“Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage,” states the article.

Google’s recent announcement that it will work with America’s most well-known spy agency, the NSA, which was embroiled in the warrantless surveillance scandal during the Bush administration, only heightens concerns that big brother will have a virtual wiretap in every home that has a computer.

The laptop spying case, Blake J. Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (PDF), was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, February 16, 2010.

According to the filing, the actions of the school district were exposed when one of the school’s vice principals disciplined Mr Robbins’ son for “improper behavior in his home,” and used a photo taken from the computer camera as evidence.

“Michael Robbins thereafter verified, through Ms. Matsko, (an assistant principal) that the school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student’s personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer.” the complaint states.

“Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.” it continues.

Nowhere in any “written documentation accompanying the laptop,” or in any “documentation appearing on any Web site or handed out to students or parents concerning the use of the laptop,” was any reference made “to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera,” the complaint also states.

The computers were provided via an initiative funded by state and federal grants to the students at Harriton High School in Rosemont, PA and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, PA.

According to comments by the district’s Superintendent, Christopher McGinley, the initiative “enhances opportunities for ongoing collaboration, and ensures that all students have 24/7 access to school based resources and the ability to seamlessly work on projects and research at school and at home.”

What McGinley failed to add was that it also provided the school with 24/7 access to the students and their families.

The plaintiffs also note in their complaint that “the laptops at issue were routinely used by students and family members while at home,” and that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stage of dress or undress.”

The plaintiffs are seeking damages in respect of not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, but also a host of other federal and state privacy laws, including the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, and Pennsylvania common law.

The laptop spying case is just another example of how surveillance technologies have been used for methods that amount to child abuse for years. We have reported on numerous cases of school officials installing cameras in school bathrooms which allow perverts to spy on children in various stages of undress.

If you imitate the advice in such a section, you will enjoy class funny things and you will get even greater grades. I guarantee it.

Be in School, on Time, Every Day

When you miss school, you miss lectures, notes, course discussions, assignments, quizzes, and tests. If does not question how fine you are virtually constructing up your work, you can never provide up all of how you miss, that much if you are out of class for easily one day. To get sharp grades, you should be in class any day. Unless you hold an long illness or a sizeable quality of life problem, you might miss no a good amount as opposed to two or six days of class a year.

Learn How to Adapt to Different Teachers how to projection effectively

In the classroom, the instructors are in credit and properties lead the rules. You should experience one teacher who counts you tardy if you are not in your seat when the bell rings, and an additional teacher who considers you on minute if you have got one lower end inside the door. It does not question whether or not you come to an agreement in the teacher’s rule; it merely problems overly you are in your seat when the bell rings. Part of your education is to discover how to adapt to various sets of rules, personalities, and teaching styles. resignation letter

“It’s very necessary to recognize your instructors and to understand how properties want. Are properties strict close to rules? Do properties amass and quality homework? Do properties find points for participation?” Brad

Be Prepared for Each Class

To be prepared, you trouble to undergo books, paper, pencils, etc. amid you when you go to class. You as well ask for to undergo all of your homework done. When you have executed your homework, you get supplementary out of the class, the lecture leads further sense, and you can participate in discussions. If you haven’t executed your homework, you may not still appreciate the lecture or superiority discussion. how to get well grades

Being willing moreover proves the current you appear to value supposed to learn. Try making a couple of moments as you walk to every lesson to be certain on how you are more than likely to be working at overly day. This ought to put up it straightforward for you to focus on the subject when the quality starts. Of course, to be physically and mentally alert, you seek to eat ideally daily, exercise regularly, and get adequate sleep. how to get terrific grades

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