As we all know that just like the rest of the world, United Kingdom is also suffering with job loss and unemployment in many sectors. Today, a huge question is present in front of those who are either looking for a career change or are just entering the work force. And the question is how to pursue their dream of becoming a successful professional in their field. Times are hard and the situation is not as easy and bright as it used to be.

That’s why; every aspiring candidate needs the help of a professional that can show him the right path towards his dreams. Career consultants are the best way to ensure that your each step is right and resourceful in your career. After all, you don’t want to leave anything on chance in today’s times. We all think that we know about our career and how to go ahead with it. But this notion is often wrong and we only realize this mistake when we see someone less talented than us getting ahead in his career.

Therefore, a career consultant is an important step when you are thinking about finding a new job or starting a new career altogether. There are many career consultants in UK that might help you in your career. Hire a qualified expert and see your career race ahead.

Publisher’s Weekly description (via Amazon):

New York Times journalist Tough profiles educational visionary Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children’s Zone—currently serving more than 7,000 children and encompassing 97 city blocks—represents an audacious effort to end poverty within underserved communities.Canada’s radical experiment is predicated upon changing everything in these communities—creating an interlocking web of services targeted at the poorest and least likely to succeed children: establishing programs to prepare and support parents, a demanding k-8 charter school and a range of after-school programs for high school students.

Tough adeptly integrates the intensely personal stories of the staff, students and teachers of the Children’s Zone with expert opinions and the broiling debates over poverty, race and education. The author’s admiration for Canada and his social experiment is obvious yet tempered by journalistic restraint as he summarizes the current understanding of the causes of poverty and academic underperformance—and their remedies. Smoothly narrated, affecting and heartening, this book gives readers a solid look at the problems facing poor communities and their reformers, as well as good cause to be optimistic about the future.

Source: Clive Shepherd

While repetition is covered in this chapter, the main idea underlying this rule is that "information is remembered best when it is elaborate, meaningful and contextual … the quality of the encoding stage is one of the single greatest predictors of learning success … ‘quality of encoding’ means the number of door handles one can put on the entrance to a piece of information."

Medina makes three key assertions:

1. "The more elaborately we encode information at the moment of learning, the stronger the memory." The more meaning something has, particularly to the individual learner, the more memorable it becomes. So, if you want to remember something, make sure you understand it. Medina recommends that teachers make liberal use of relevant, real-world examples, which I’d also endorse strongly. Medina explains: "Why do examples work? They appear to take advantage of the brain’s predeliction for pattern matching. Information is more readily processed if it can be immediately associated with information already present in the learner’s brain."
2. "A memory trace appears to be stored in the same parts of the brain that perceived and processed the initial input." The human brain is not like a computer: "it has no ‘hard drive’ separate from its initial; input connectors."
3. "Retrieval may best be improved by replicating the conditions surrounding the initial encoding." Retrieval works best when the environmental conditions at retrieval mimic the environmental conditions at encoding. If this is true, then the most effective environment in which to learn would be on-the-job; to take the idea to extremes, the only people who should be taught in classrooms are teachers, and the only people who should be taught using computers are those who work on them!

My postings on Brain rules #1, Brain rules #2, Brain rules #3, Brain rules #4

The Brain Rules book

The Brain Rules website

Source: Clive Shepherd

Why such a staggering increase in the cost of housing? That is a long, separate discussion, but one point is worth underlining here: when a family buys a house, it buys much more than shelter from the rain. It also buys a public-school system. Everyone has heard news stories about kids who can’t read, classrooms without textbooks, and drug dealers and gang violence in school corridors. Failing schools impose an enormous cost on the children who are forced to attend them, but they also impose an enormous cost on those who don’t. . . .

A 2000 study conducted in Fresno, California, (population 400,000) found that, for similar homes, school quality was the single most important determinant of neighborhood prices —more important than racial composition, commute distance, crime rate, or proximity to a hazardous-waste site. A 1999 study conducted in suburban Boston showed that two homes less than half a mile apart and similar in nearly every aspect would command significantly different prices if they were in different elementary-school zones. Schools that scored just five percent higher than other local schools on fourth-grade math and reading tests added a premium of nearly $4,000 to nearby homes. . . .

Perhaps the strongest evidence that parents’ concern for their children’s welfare has driven their spending is the relative changes in housing prices for parents and non-parents. The federal government has not reported the data for the full 30-year period we have been examining, but looking at the period from 1984 to 2001 we see that housing prices for families with at least one minor child at home grew at a rate three times that of other families.

Source: Aaron Schutz

[If US] achievement gaps [of poor and minority students] were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day.

Looking at the actual study, however, it seems as if they are assuming a linear relationship between increase in education and increase in employment. (See page 84 of their supporting documents.)

But as I noted earlier, there is a great deal of evidence that education does not create jobs. In other words, these increases may happen on the margins, for the first few kids, but will fall off drastically after that.

I haven’t perused the study with agonizing detail. I’d be interested in other perspectives. But it seems to me like this report simply feeds the fantasy of schooling, that if we just made schools better, all of our economic (and then social) problems would be solved.

Source: Aaron Schutz

The survey found that "half of employees across Europe want more e-learning and blended learning during the next three years, while only about 40% of HR professionals plan to develop more programmes using these techniques. Learners are also keener to embrace collaborative tools like blogs, forums and wikis - 44% of employees want to see these techniques developed, compared to just 32% of HR professionals. Face-to-face learning is more popular among HR, with 42% of respondents wanting to see more classroom learning compared to 38% of employees."

The survey also found that e-learning and blended learning programmes are meeting the expectations of users. The survey showed that "for 89% of employees, blended learning is living up to users expectations ‘well’ or ‘very well’, and the same was found for 82% of respondents using e-learning." The study also asked how e-learning can be made more effective: "The vast majority of respondents (88%) rated work-based scenarios as their top choice as a tool for improving the effectiveness of e-learning. In second place, 82% rated self-assessment techniques and in third place, 73% rated help from a tutor or peer."

Source: Clive Shepherd

Genius locus: Explores the evidence of the link between genius and autism.

Incognito: Evidence is mounting that the brain makes a decision before the owner knows about it.

Twice blessed: Children brought up in a bilingual home have an enhanced ability to organise, plan, prioritise, shift attention from one thing to another and suppress habitual responses.

Source: Clive Shepherd

0:51    Do we need to create different materials for different generations?
6:03    Should materials be designed very differently depending on the topic, e.g. IT training v compliance?
10:00    Are we beginning to see a greater use of performance support materials instead of formal e-learning tutorials?
14:00    Could we get to a point where no-one needs a formal training programme?
19:13    How do you see e-learning content developing in the next few years?
22:00    Do you actually do any e-learning yourself?
25:00    What gadget do you use the most?

Source: Clive Shepherd

Make a point of dropping by. I certainly will be. You do not need to register to attend. Here’s the programme and the LearnTrends site, so no excuses.

Source: Clive Shepherd