Next Trip: Djurdjevac - Barcelona

Itinerary

Event: Mobile World Congress

My role: insider who is outsider ;)

10:00 - Start - by car: Djurdjevac - Zagreb
Parking lot: friends house
13:00 - Zagreb airport Pleso - coffee
15:15 - flight Zagreb - Vienna
19:45 - flight Vienna - Barcelona
Arrival: Terminal 1- at 22:10
23:00 Checking-in at Catalonia Albinoni


***** Zagreb to Barcelona *****

Flight 1 Monday, February 15, 2010

Departure: 15:15 Zagreb, Croatia - Pleso
Arrival: 16:20 Vienna, Austria - Vienna International
Airline: Croatia Airlines OU5440 e
Aircraft: Canadair Regional Jet
Operated by Austrian

Change of plane required. Time between flights = 3:25.

Flight 2 Monday, February 15, 2010

Departure: 19:45 Vienna, Austria - Vienna International
Arrival: 22:10 Barcelona, Spain - Barcelona, terminal 1
Airline: Austrian OS395 e
Aircraft: Fokker 100
Operated by Tyrolean Airways

Hotel


THE CATALONIA ALBINONI IS LOCATED IN PORTAL DE L*ANGEL, A WIDE PEDESTRIAN AND COMMERCIAL BOULEVARD IN THE CENTRE OF BARCELONA, JUST A FEW STEPS FROM PLACA CATALUNYA AND THE CATHEDRAL. THE BUILDING HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE ARTISTIC HERITAGE LIST OF THE CITY. THE HOTEL STILL PRESERVES ITS ORIGINAL NEOCLASSICAL FACADE, WHICH FEATURES ROMANTIC AND BAROQUE MOTIFS. THE ENTRY HALL LEADS US TO THE INTERIOR COURTYARD WHERE WE CAN ADMIRE THE ORIGINAL MARBLE STAIRCASE. *** BREAKFAST IS AVAILABLE AT A COST OF 15 EUROS *** THIS PROPERTY WAS BUILT IN 1998 AMENITIES- AIR CONDITION - GST RMS SATELLITE TELEVISION ALARM CLOCK DIRECT DIAL TELEPHONE HAIRDRYER IN ROOM TELEVISION IN - ROOM SAFE TEMPERATURE CONTROL MINI BAR **FEES MAY APPLY TO ABOVE AMENITIES**

Conference: OnMedia 2010. - New York City

OnMedia NYC is where cutting-edge technology CEOs from the back streets of Silicon Valley meet the global advertising and media establishment.
This two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on which forces are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations industries.

Who Attends

Seven hundred technology, media and advertising CEOs, business development officers, media buyers, venture-capital and private-equity investors, and leading members of the press and blogging community will attend OnMedia. More than 20,000 webcast viewers from more than 100 countries will also tune in and interact with the program. Executives attend OnMedia to identify and debate emerging trends, build high-level relationships, and create new business opportunities.

OnMedia 2010 Speaker Line-up

• Mark Cuban, Chairman, HDNet & Owner, Dallas Mavericks
• Walt Frazier, Basketball Hall of Fame Inductee & Commentator, MSG
• Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corporation
• Jim Lanzone, CEO, Clicker
• Avner Ronen, CEO, Boxee
• Peter Hirshberg, Co-founder & Chairman, The Conversation Group
• Fred Graver, Founder of iLarious & Award-winning TV Writer
• Jay MacDonald, Partner, DeSilva + Phillips
• Ryan Steelberg, CEO, Brand Affinity Technologies
• Craig Roah, Founder & COO, Rubicon Project
• Paul Palmieri, CEO, Millennial Media
• Quincy Smith, Partner, Code Advisors
• Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia
• Tim Cadogan, CEO, OpenX
• Jessica Vascellaro, Reporter, Wall Street Journal
• Greg Coleman, President & Chief Revenue Officer, Huffington Post
• Steven Kydd, Executive Vice President, Demand Media
• Gilbert Fuchsberg, President, Skiff
• Ken Krick, Partner, KPMG
• Iain Scholnick, CEO, Imagespan
• Sam Angus, Partner, Fenwick & West
• Bob Davis, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners
• Alan Patricof, Founder & Managing Director, Greycroft Partners
• Michael Greeley, General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners
• Andy Goldfarb, Executive Managing Director, Globespan Capital Partners
• David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Internet & Technology, Fortune
• Eric Wheeler, CEO, 33Across
• Tom Phillips, CEO, Media6Degrees
• Jessica Schell, SVP, NBC Universal
• Dan Rose, VP Business Development & Monetization, Facebook
• Jay Hallberg, CEO, Spiceworks
• Drew Stein, COO, IMO Entertainment
• Brian O'Kelley, CEO, AppNexus
• Lexi Reese, Director Content Network, Google
• Rajeev Goel, CEO, PubMatic
• Amiad Solomon, CEO, Peer39
• Mike Monahan, Partner, KPMG
• David Pakman, Partner, Venrock
• Ian Sigalow, Principal, Greycroft Partners
• Warren Lee, Venture Partner, Canaan Partners
• Amish Jani, Managing Director, FirstMark Capital
• Bo Yaghmaie Partner, Cooley Godward Kronish
• Jai Haissman, CEO, Affective Interfaces
• Konrad Feldman, CEO, Quantcast
• Steve Goldman, CEO, Ace Metrix
• Eric Best, CEO, Mercent
• Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath
• Jon Carson, CEO, BiddingForGood.com
• Brian Hughes, Partner, KPMG
• Carol Cone, Chairman & Founder, Cone
• Joe Marchese, President & Founder, SocialVibe
• Atul Bagga, VP, ThinkEquity
• Nir Eyal, CEO, AdNectar
• Kevin Xu, COO, IGG
• Mitch Davis, CEO, Live Gamer
• Alex St. John, President & CTO, hi5
• Peter Kafka, Senior Editor, All Things Digital, Wall Street Journal
• Bill Rusitzky, Head Strategic Alliances Group, Adobe
• Bryan Perez, SVP & GM of Digital, NBA
• Jason Glickman, CEO, Tremor Media
• Joy Marcus, U.S. Head, DailyMotion
• Ron Yekutiel, CEO, Kaltura
• Doug Scott, President, OgilvyEntertainment
• Michael Siegenthaler, Director, MSN Branded Entertainment & Experiences Team, Microsoft
• Jordan Levin, CEO, Generate
• Lisa Stone, CEO, BlogHer
• Janet Cullum, Partner, Cooley Godward Kronish
• Sergio Monsalve, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
• Richard de Silva, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners
• Gerry Campbell, CEO, Collecta
• Sean Morgan, CEO, Critical Media
• Mike Kwatinetz, General Partner, Azure Capital
• Victor Boyajian, Global Chair, Sonnenschein Venture Technology Group
• Rick Heitzmann, Managing Director, FirstMark Capital
• Satya Patel, Partner, Battery Ventures
• Woody Benson, Partner, Prism VentureWorks
• George John, CEO, RocketFuel
• Greg Stuart, Former CEO, IAB
• Calvin Lui, CEO, Tumri
• Shiv Singh, VP, Razorfish
• Adam Oliveri, MD, Private Company Market, SecondMarket
• Mark Stevens, Partner, Fenwick & West
• Rachel Lam, SVP, Time Warner Ventures
• Joe Josephson, Partner, Union Square Advisors
• John Gardner, Partner, Nokia Growth Partners
• David Horowitz, Managing Director, Comcast Interactive Capital
• Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus & Kristin Ganong, VP, Diageo
• Max Herrnstein, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
• Michael Katz, President & Founder, InterCLICK
• Carl Fremont, EVP & Global Media Director, Digitas
• Michael Barrett, CEO, AdMeld
• Matt Seiler, Global CEO, Universal McCann
• Prashant Nedungadi, CEO, IM Shopping
• Siva Kumar, CEO, TheFind
• Stefan Weitz, Director Bing Search Team, Microsoft
• June Bower, VP Marketing, Cisco
• Jeff Litvack, GM, Mobile & Emerging Products, Associated Press
• Michael Moroney, SVP Digital, TBA Global
• Dave Courtney, CEO, JiWire
• Frank Barbieri, CEO, Transpera
• Tolman Geffs, Managing Director, JEGI
• Jon Hsu, CEO, 24/7 RealMedia & Head B3, WPP
• Omar Tawakol, CEO, BlueKai
• Chad Little, CEO, FetchBack
• Peder Magee, Senior Attorney, Division of Privacy & Identity Protection, FTC
• Jeff Hirsch, CEO, Audience Science

CEO Showcases

• Moshe Vaknin, CEO, Todacell
• Phil Fernandez, CEO, Marketo
• George John, CEO, Rocket Fuel
• Scott Silk, CEO, SeeWhy
• Rahul Sonad, CEO, Geodelic
• Jeff Hirsch, CEO, AudienceScience
• Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse360
• Oded Itzhak, CEO, AdSide
• Ben Kartzman, CEO, Spongecell
• Kirby Winfield, CRO, AdXpose
• Calvin Lui, CEO, Tumri
• Roger Wood, CEO, OrcaOne
• Jay Kulkarni, CEO, Theorem
• Rajeev Goel, CEO, PubMatic
• Pamela Springer, CEO, Manta Media
• Michael McNabb, CEO, Voyage.tv
• Boris Fridman, CEO, Crisp Wireless
• Michael Lee, CEO, Thoora
• Eric Conn, CEO, Gloto
• Walter Doyle, CEO, uLocate Communications
• Siva Kumar, CEO, TheFind
• George Garrick, CEO, OfferPal Media
• Chris Boone, CEO, Visuvi
• John Federman, CEO, Searchandise Commerce
• Al McGowan, CEO, Redlasso
• Marc Shedroff, VP Partnerships, Cooliris
• John Straw, CEO, Linkdex
• Mark Watkins, CEO, Goby
• Kimbal Musk, CEO, OneRiot
• Christine Marie, CEO,Gingerbread Media
• Bettina Bennett, CEO, WhichBox Media
• Steven Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net
• Dave Otten, CEO, LongTail Video
• Alex Mashinsky, CEO, GroundLink

Fourth Annual Charlotte Mason Conference!

Five more days until I leave for the Charlotte Mason Conference in Boiling Springs, NC!

Two Presentations Done and One to Go!!!!! Yahoo!!!!!!!!

Details here!

Come on! It will renew your mind!

Enjoy the pictures I uploaded into my presentation called "Moving from Behaviorism to Relationships"!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Ye RDI CMers!

ChildLightUSA just posted the audio file, handout, and three video clips (Tweaking CM, RDI, Association Method Part I and Part II) of my talk on assessing therapies from a Charlotte Mason perspective.

The blurb about the talk is:

Therapies recommended for special needs children can cloud one's vision of education as "an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." The speaker will demonstrate how to translate one autism therapy into Charlotte Mason terminology and accept or reject principles that respect a child's personhood. The participants will do the same for a speech program for language-delayed children. They will leave the class more confident in selecting the therapies most suited to a Charlotte Mason philosophy. They will leave inspired by Miss Mason's language arts program, which enabled a person with life-long speaking challenges to learn recitation!

P.S. Don't forget to put the Fourth Annual Charlotte Mason Conference on your calendar: June 11 through June 14. ChildLightUSA even offers online registration and a discount for early birds!

Fourth Annual Charlotte Mason Conference Alert!

Child Light USA posted the first teasers for this year's conference from June 11-14, 2008. Dr. Milton Uecker will cover upper elementary and lower middle school math manipulatives at the preconference, while the theme of the conference is "From Rewards to Relationships"--a perfect theme for parents autistic children moving from behaviorism to relationships. Almost everything you need to know about fees, logistics, lodging, weather, time and dates, etc. is here. I have two important reminders: (1) BRING LINENS--I did not the first year and (2) REGISTER EARLY--you save money by registering before April 30, 2008. I plan to register after they post the online registration form (due on or about March 1), but, if you are just itching to mail yours in now, you can find the mail-in registration here. You can find a quick list of the presentations here.

This year, the conference will include a book club discussion on two books by Alfie Kohn: Unconditional Parenting and What to Look for in a Classroom. Jack Beckman, one of the contributors to When Children Love to Learn, will host the discussion. Last year, I had read only half of the book and did not get much out of it as I could have. So, to quote Pamela, "You must be 18 years or older to order. Call now!"

I will be presenting again and again and again! As a Navy brat of seventeen years and Navy officer of fourteen years, you would think I should had mastered the acronoym, NAVY = Never Again Volunteer Yourself. But no, I plan to speak three times : "Moving from Behaviorism to Relationship," "How Vygotsky’s Work Parallels Mason’s Work," and "Scaffolding with Special Needs Children."

I usually only speak on two topics, but I think God intended otherwise. It all came to a head last month! Carroll Smith's wife, Andy, called me one day to talk about using Excel to store and manipulate registration data. She asked about Pamela, and I blithely ran my big mouth about this new relationship therapy for Pamela. Andy was very intrigued by relational ways of addressing autism, so I described some of the methods from Awakening Children's Minds by Dr. Laura Berk. Andy got very quiet and suddenly asked, "Are you talking about scaffolding?" Then, she zapped me an email with Carroll's article on scaffolding and narration. She told me that they have been looking for a speaker to present two plenary sessions on the work of Vygotsky (who is featured in Dr. Berk's book). GULP!

When I recovered from the shock, Andy and I both realized that this was a cool God moment. About a year ago today, I began exploring Relationship Development Intervention, and last October, I narrowed my focus on Vygotsky in my reading and blogging. Traveling on parallel tracks, Carroll was writing his article on Vygotsky and narration, hoping someone could discuss Vygotsky from a Charlotte Mason point of view at the conference. Then, Andy and I realized the connection during a phone call about Excel spreadsheets!

ChildLightUSA also just launched a blog with weekly posts and have a total of four free audio files posted from last year's conference! And, they just gave their website a new overhaul.

My Presentation

I did a special needs presentation on assessing therapies from a Charlotte Mason perspective. You can find the audio and handout here. I prepared the following four videos for my talk.

Improving Reading Comprehension (Reality)

I broke up Jennifer Spencer's breakout session entitled into three parts: Introduction, Model, and Reality. In the first two posts, I narrate her actual session, while, in this final post, I will describe how we are applying at home. The picture is my "Go Chart!" which I put on foamboard to make it extra sturdy since I lack a permanent spot for hanging it. I am test-driving it with David for his readings of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to prepare him for the book Deadliest Monster. I am finding it the most useful for Pamela. Up until now, all of her "narrations" have all been pure descriptions for we did not introduce the syntax of present tense verbs (singular) until recently. Now that she is comfortable with speaking in present tense, she is ready to narrate in the true sense of the word. I had been praying how to teach her the art of the narration and I am finding the Go! Chart invaluable. (Thank-you, Lord, for answered prayer!)



Every day, we focus on one very simple story from the syntax-controlled primers recommended by Dubard for the association method. While these are not living books, they are what Pamela needs to develop enough syntax to narrate living books. I see them as a bridge that helps her go from where she is to where I hope she will be. The first thing we do is to look at the story's words listed at the beginning of the primer (a discovery Pamela made!). In the story "Boo Jumps", the new words are animal sounds (urp, bow-wow, meow), and the reinforced words are many. Pamela also studies the title page, which is always illustrated. We record her predictions on one sticky note and predicted vocabulary on another before we ever read the story (you can click the picture to see it enlarged). In this story, Pamela predicts very reasonable possibilities: (1) Boo jumps, (2) Boo jumps on the fence, and (3) the animals can chase. She predicts words like fence, Boo, jumps, bow-wow, meow, and urp.


Then, she reads the story aloud to me one time (a single, hopefully attentive reading). After the reading, Pamela orally narrates the story. I film her to avoid slowing her down and listen to the recording to write it and post it on the board. As I write, I sort between sentences that are literal (drawn from the text or illustrations) and sentences that are interpretive. In this narration, Pamela incorrectly sequenced the story, placing Boo's jump before the animals making sounds. The frog makes a sound after the cat and dog jump on the fence (not before). This was the literal part of her narration:

Boo jumps. Boo jumps on the branch. The cat makes a sound. The dog says, "Bow-Wow!" The cat says, "Meow!" The frog says, "Urp!" The cat jumps on the fence. The dog jumps on the fence. The branch breaks. Boo falls.

Pamela included this bit of interpretive thinking in her narration:

Boo says, "Boo!" Boo is not hurt. Boo does not need a doctor.

I place a sticky note with her literal sentences in her narration in the column labeled Understanding and the inferred sentences under Interpretation. One weakness I have observed is that Pamela has difficulty ordering sentences in the correct sequence in her narrations, which is logical since she has difficulty in sequencing words because of her aphasia:


Once she finishes her oral narration, we study her predictions and line out any that were wrong. I make a point to congratulate her for thinking of such wonderful ideas. I am learning that Pamela is a champion at connecting these stories to her own life. This story reminded her of sitting in a tree when she was a little girl, and the dog reminded her of a dog we owned at that time of her life. Making connections comes naturally to Pamela. She makes hardly any connections to other books and stories, and that is what I will be encouraging whenever possible.

At this point of the process, we transition to how we have always done the association method. She and I read a script to practice new syntax and maintain mastered syntax: I read the questions and she, the answers; then, we swap roles; finally, I ask questions and she answers them without peeking. She does her copywork, written narration, and dictation plus worksheet activities that involve explaining why things belong in the same group, looking at a picture and writing her own questions and answers, filling in the blank and answering questions with the focus on correct syntax, and sequencing pictures from the story. Since Pamela finds sequencing difficult, I show her how to break up every story into a beginning, middle, and end. She is much better at sequencing during a narration when she fixes the story's arc in her mind.

The animals are the focus of the beginning of the story.


The middle is Boo's arrival and fall.


The story concludes with Boo and his friends sitting under the tree.



The final step of the Go! Chart is one last oral narration. Nearly every time, Pamela's narrations show great improvement in this final step. Pamela retells the story without peeking or looking at any pictures.

A fence is beautiful. A cat meows. The cat sits on the fence. A dog barks. The cat meows. A frog says, "Urp!" The frog sits on the grass.

Boo says, "Boo!" Boo stands on a branch. Boo falls. Boo is stuck. Boo runs.

Some animals are happy. Some animals see Boo. Some animals see Boo and a broken branch. Boo is happy.

At this point, I often see ways to improve Pamela's narrations further. While she usually correctly sequences the big picture, the little details are sometimes in the wrong order. Borrowing an idea from Cheri Hedden, I type up the narration, one sentence per line. Then, I cut it into strips, one sentence per strip. She lines out and removes any sentences with incorrect details. She sorts into beginning, middle, and end and orders the sentences in each block in the most logical order.


We work in improving narrations in other ways. Sometimes, I find her sentences too brief in content. When I type them, I leave blanks for her to add more detail. I call this making a sentence better. One day, Pamela, inspired to go above and beyond the call of duty, narrated forty-nine sentences. Some sentences repeated the same information, one more detailed than the other. I showed her how to choose the better sentence.



After we finish, I paper clip all the sticky notes and sentence strips in one bag and store them in a Ziploc bag. This helps me to store her work in an organized manner.


At this point, I am scaffolding Pamela by writing everything for her on the stick notes. The first step in the transition will be for her to write the final narration all by herself. Then, I plan to turn over the responsibility for writing all the notes, one column at a time.

Improving Reading Comprehension (Model)

In my introduction to "Improving Reading Comprehension", I narrated background information Jennifer Spencer provided about (1) five kinds of long-term memory, (2) Charlotte Mason's understanding of memory, (3) strategies for getting facts and information into long-term memory, (4) assessing reading comprehension, and (5) sources of three models of retelling/narration. Jennifer did not explain Charlotte Mason's model because Charlotte Mason educators were her audience, so I concluded with links to Charlotte Mason's writings about narration. In this blog post, I will describe the other two models plus Jennifer's hybrid and the results of her research. In my next blog post, I will narrate how I have applied her very practical session at home.

The first book Jennifer reviews is Read and Retell by Hazel Brown and Brian Cambourne. This book contains thirty-eight examples of descriptive, persuasive, argumentative, explanatory, and instructive writing. It outlines four steps in narration. First, teachers build a background by encouraging students to think forward to the story and predict the content, vocabulary words, and phrases based on the title of the story. Second, students read the text, orally or silently. Third, students retell the story in writing without peeking. Fourth, students in small groups share and compare retellings, figuring out how they differ from each other and differ from the texts. Then, they rewrite their narrations fixing altered meaning, omitted details, borrow ideas from other narration, etc.

Jennifer explains several aspects of this approach that seemed out of line with Charlotte Mason principles. She thought the method seemed artificial, not organic to the process of reading to know and telling what is known. The passages selected by the authors are not as literary as Charlotte Mason would have recommended. Moreover, Charlotte preferred whole, living books to excerpts and highlights. Finally, students are encouraged to reread the text, while Charlotte Mason emphasized a single reading.

Jennifer favored the second book in developing her hybrid model of teaching four aspects of narration (sequencing, connecting, interpreting, and narrating): The Power of Retelling. This developmental model of retelling enables children to add abstract, critical, and inferential thinking to their narrations. Developmentally appropriate strategies cover four stages: pretelling, guided retelling, story map retelling, and written retelling. The pretelling step is just like the first step of the earlier model (predicting content, words, and phrasing). In the guided retelling stage, teachers use concrete techniques to explain the structure of stories, identify elements of the story, and build background knowledge with related books. They also model narration for the students. In the story map retelling stage, teachers show student how to use abstract tools like graphic organizers to see patterns and highlight relationships between parts versus the whole, personal experiences, and various comparisons. This step enables students to move beyond exact retellings. The written retelling stage is very similar to the process explained in the earlier book. If this approach intrigues you and the book does not satisfy your hunger, one of the co-authors, Vicki Benson, holds seminars!

Jennifer's hybrid model includes living books and allows a single attentive reading. She chooses whole novels and builds background knowledge through picture storybooks and nonfiction trade books related to the novel. She recommends working through the developmental stages outlined in The Power of Retelling. She finds the best graphic organizer for retelling is a six-column Go! Chart with columns for prediction, vocabulary, understanding, interpretation (abstract ideas, theme, real meaning, tone, symbolism, inference), connection (with the phrase "__________ reminds me of __________ because __________), and retelling (beginning, middle, end). Her students write their ideas on sticky notes and place them on the chart. First, her students record pretelling in the first two columns (prediction and vocabulary). Next, they read the story and write notes on their literal understanding and interpretation in the next two columns (understanding and inference). They make connections and justify them in the connections column. They review their predictions, take down any wrong ones, and make new ones for future chapters. Then, they retell the story, keeping clear the beginning, middle, and end of the chapter. Finally, they create a comic strip with one square for each chapter to guide them when they write a narration of the entire novel at the end of the last chapter. Jennifer also encourages parents to hear ten minutes of reading aloud every day.

Jennifer flies through the results of the three areas measured by the Ekwall-Shanker Reading Inventory (oral reading accuracy, oral reading comprehension, and silent reading comprehension). After the pretest, she spent twelve weeks applying these ideas with a fourth grade class reading the novel Little Women. Then, she retested after twelve weeks and observed a leap of one to two grade levels in all three areas assessed.

In my final blog post about this breakout session, I plan to show how we are applying Jennifer's model at home.

Improving Reading Comprehension (Introduction)

The plenary sessions I have narrated so far involve abstract thinking about the meaning of Charlotte Mason's principles with respect to assessment. The talk on geography also focused more on ideas rather than practical application. Breakout sessions are usually more concrete with an emphasis on how to implement her ideas. The first one I attended was exactly that, for I walked out of the classroom with techniques that I am already using in real life! Because my notes on this one are copious, I have broken the narration into two segments (Introduction and Model), followed up a blog post about my experience with her model to date.

Jennifer Spencer, the Assistant Director of The Village School, spoke about a research project she did to complete her master's degree from Gardner-Webb University. She called this session, "Improved Reading Comprehension through Retelling". She begins by turning to research covered in the book Brain Matters by Patricia Wolfe. Charlotte Mason's primary educational habit to form was the habit of attention, which is not an easy task when you realize that the brain discards ninety-nine percent of stimuli with fifteen seconds. (I thought to myself that it is no wonder too much sensory input overwhelms autistic children!) She reminds us that Charlotte Mason hinted at the difference between long-term and short-term memory (the inner place and the outer court). In case you are curious, I found a wonderful quote on page 257 of Volume 6:

But the mind was a deceiver ever. Every teacher knows how a class will occupy itself diligently by the hour and accomplish nothing, even though the boys think they have been reading. We all know how in we could stand an examination on the daily papers over which we pore. Details fail us, we can say,––"Did you see such and such an article?" but are not able to outline its contents. We try to remedy this vagueness in children by making them take down, and get up, notes of a given lesson: but we accomplish little. The mind appears to have an outer court into which matter can be taken and again expelled without ever having entered the inner place where personality dwells. Here we have the secret of learning by rote, a purely mechanical exercise of which no satisfactory account has been given, but which leaves the patient, or pupil, unaffected. Most teachers know the dreariness of piles of exercises into which no stray note of personality has escaped.

Jennifer explains that our long-term memory has five kinds of storage (like files in a filing cabinet). She mentions two, semantic and emotional memory. Semantic memory, the focus of the teaching profession, involves facts and information not associated with events in one's life and is most difficult to retain. On the other hand, emotional memory, the most powerful, derives from emotionally charged events in one's life.

I would like to add how fascinating this information to me from the perspective of Relationship Development Intervention. The link I found furthered my understanding of memory, which comes in two forms, non-declarative and declarative. The former is the kind of memory that is recalled non-verbally, while the latter is recalled in words. Non-declarative memory comes to people much more readily: procedural memory (blowing bubbles with gum or candlewicking), motor skill memory (procedural memory so well-learned that it no longer requires any thought--did you ever reach the store and not recall actually driving there?), and the emotional memory (discussed in the last paragraph). Declarative memory requires the recall of facts and information, the domain of schools. It has two forms, episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memories derive from events that happen in our lives at a specific time and place and are most powerful when anchored by emotion. When taught with traditional methods (oral lessons and emotionally dry textbooks lacking storytelling), semantic memory require practice and review for facts and information to make it to long-term memory.

Please humor me with one more rabbit trail before turning back to Jennifer's session. In the passage quoted earlier, Charlotte Mason observed difficulties we have in storing information in semantic memory. After we read the newspaper, "Details fail us, we can say,––'Did you see such and such an article?' but are not able to outline its contents." Teachers give an oral lesson, and "We try to remedy this vagueness in children by making them take down, and get up, notes of a given lesson: but we accomplish little." She noticed information is lost most readily when it "leaves the patient, or pupil, unaffected." Charlotte sprinkles her writing with hints at the marks of a fit book that stirs the souls of pupils by making an emotional connection.

A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader. (Volume 3, page 178)

There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake's Songs of Innocence represent their standard in poetry DeFoe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature--that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life. (Volume 2, page 263)

Jennifer then talks about ways to improve the chances of facts and information making it to long-term memory. One way to support semantic memory is to tap into emotional memory by forming emotional connections and episodic memory by setting up events related to the knowledge. Acting out a passage, building models, getting first-hand knowledge, taking field trips and using graphic organizers are all ways to support semantic memory. The mind must connect new ideas to prior knowledge ala the law of association (page 157), forming links in a chain of memories. Studies show that peer teaching (group narration), summarizing and paraphrasing (Volume 3, page 180), and self-asking (Volume 3, page 181) all grow dendrites in the brain.

Jennifer addresses the relationship between reading comprehension and retelling (narration). She discusses several problems that crop up when assessing reading comprehension. First, successful decoding does not automatically mean the student comprehends the material. Decoding does not reflect understanding with accuracy. Second, traditional "thinking" questions cause the question writer to think more deeply than the child. Charlotte agreed, quoting a philosophical friend of hers, "The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself" (Volume 6, page 16).

If decoding and answering clever questionnaires does not reveal comprehension, then what does? Jennifer cites research that a child shows comprehension in how he evaluates, organizes, and presents ideas from a reading passage. Retelling reveals all three of these skills! It requires students to sequence events, connect ideas with background knowledge, recognize and interpret clues in the reading, and construct a cohesive narrative. Jennifer explains that she wanted to see if teaching students these four processes (sequencing, connecting, interpreting, and narrating) is positively correlated with increased reading comprehension scores on standardized tests. (Yes, Virginia, even private school teachers and homeschoolers often find it hard to escape this bogie.)

To see if learning to narrate is positively correlated with improved reading comprehension scores, Jennifer explains she found ways to measure comprehension and to teach processes required in narration. For a pretest and post-test, she collected three narrations from students in a fourth grade class and performed tests from the Ekwall-Shanker Reading Inventory, which contains thirty-eight diagnostic tests in eleven different areas. She selected the oral and silent reading subtest, which assesses oral reading accuracy, oral reading comprehension, and silent reading comprehension. The test tops out at an eighth grade reading level and a couple of students needed higher-level material. She also presented two rubrics made with a free Internet program, Rubistar, to help her score the narrations.

Jennifer explains how she developed developed a hybrid model of how to teach processes required in narration based on three sources: Charlotte Mason (Volume 1, Volume 3, and Volume 6), Read and Retell by Hazel Brown and Brian Cambourne, and The Power of Retelling by Vicki Benson and Carrice Cummins. In my next post about her model, I will explain the latter two models and the results of her research.

Jennifer does not spend much time discussing Charlotte Mason's view of narration because she knows her audience. In case you are new to Charlotte Mason, the following are links to many explanations of narration:

"Reading for Older Children" Volume 1, V, VIII Pages 226-230
"The Art of Narrating" Volume 1, V, IX Pages 231-233
"How to Use School-Books" Volume 3, Chapter 8
Sample Narrations from Examinations Volume 3, Appendix II
Results of Narration Volume 6, Introduction Pages 6-8, 15-17
Elementary Schools Volume 6, II, Chapter 1, Pages 241-248
Secondary Schools Volume 6, II, Chapter 2, Pages 259-261, 268-272

The following are links about the relationship between narration and the mind:

"Well-Being of Mind" Volume 6, I, Chapter 3, Pages 49-52
"Knowledge versus Information" Volume 3, Chapter 8, Pages 224-225
Literature Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 180-185
"Composition Comes by Nature" Volume 1, V, XIII, Page 247
Composition Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 190-192
Languages Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 211-213
"History Books" Volume 1, V, XVIII Pages 288-292
History Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 169-174
Geography Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section III, Page 227
Art Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 213-217
Citizenship Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section II, Page 185-186
"Fitness as Citizens" Volume 3, Chapter 8, Page 88
Public Speaking Volume 6, I, Chapter 5, Page 86

The following are links about the relationship between narration and the soul:

"The Well-Being of the Soul" Volume 6, I, Chapter 3, Pages 63-65
"Method of Bible Lessons" Volume 1, V, XIV, Pages 251-252
"Knowledge of God" Volume 6, I, Chapter 10, Section I, Page 158-169

The following are links with Parents Review articles about narration:

Some Notes on Narration
Concerning "Repeated Narration"
Some Thoughts on Narration
We Narrate and Then We Know

Mobile User Experience to be debated

People's forum for open, calm discussion. London. Today. Tomorow. No hype.

There is constant need for better mobile interfaces and interaction. People from mobile telecom industry are gathering in London and talk about mobile UIs .
It's the first ''manifesto statement'' I've seen in the mobile space .

Sort of guide and creative thinking highlighting the key issues in mobile user experience. Read a conference blog.