I really enjoyed learning about cognitive load this week. I think the use of music really emphasizes how much we can store in our short turn memory and how to manipulate this process a bit. For years I have been talking to my students about studying skills and retaining information. One of my favorite little tasks is giving my students 5 seconds to memorize:

aeeeggiiiilnnnnsstt

Then I after assessing how well students performed, I repeat the process, but this time they try to memorize:

learning is interesting

As some of you may have noticed, these are the same set of numbers. However, because of our ability to chunk together letters in words, in the second round students only need to memorize 3 things, not 20.

I also hope everyone found our Connectivism presentation to be helpful. It was a bit difficult as a teacher to let everyone just go off in their own direction without much structure in our activity, but I think this was a more meaningful and personal process than most lessons. Sorry to those classmates who don't cook.

I have been asking my students to find and present math websites that may help us in algebra class. This process has been rewarding for them, not only because they have found something to help them learn, but they have also helped organize a set of resources for  all of my current and future algebra students.