As you know, instaGrok allows teachers to keep track of their students’ research activity as well as see and comment on their journals. Well we are finally getting to improving the teacher dashboard!

You can see the new version if you log in as a teacher, and click on “View Class” (click to enlarge image below):

Some of the things to note:

1. The bar graph on the left shows the students activity with instaGrok (the time, in minutes, they spent each day) over the past week.
2. The “Time Ago” shows the last time a student did research on a given topic. (instaGrok groups related queries into the same topic).
3. The Journal button opens the student’s journal on the topic in a popup window (as always, the teacher can leave comments in the journal, as well as print/email it).

What else would you like to see in the teacher dashboard? More graphs? More statistics? Badges? Send us an email with your suggestions!

A recent study entitled “Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning Than Elaborative Studying With Concept Mapping” shows that practicing memory retrieval boosts science learning far better than elaborate study methods.

“Our view is that learning is not about studying or getting knowledge ‘in memory,’” said Purdue psychology professor Jeffrey Karpicke, the lead investigator for the study that appears [...] in the journal Science. “Learning is about retrieving. So it is important to make retrieval practice an integral part of the learning process.”

In the experiments, the group that studied by practicing active retrieval showed a 50 percent improvement in long-term retention above the other group (that studied by creating concept maps).

These findings support the usefulness of one of instaGrok‘s innovative features: multiple-choice quizzes that instaGrok automatically generates based on the user’s topic For example:

The [more] link next to each question takes the user to the original content page from which the question was generated.

Of course, these questions are not meant to be a deep form of comprehension assessment. Rather, they are fun little challenges to test how much you know about the topic. They are also another way to explore the topic, and learn interesting facts. We find that many students jump right to the quizzes, eager to see how many points they can score – and from there, begin to read deeper.

If you’d like to embed instaGrok search bar into your web page (such as a school library research portal), you can do so by copying and pasting the following code into your HTML page:

The result should look like this:

A recent BBC Article, “Pretty pictures: Can images stop data overload?” speaks to the effectiveness of mind-map style visualization of complex data. According to a recent study, the article cites, individuals that used mind-map visualization “used around 20% less cognitive resources, [...] performed more efficiently, and could remember more of the information when asked later.”

Duncan Smith of Mindlap International research company says:

“We did expect that visual mapping would perform better purely and simply because this is the way the brain is wired up. We don’t work as a filling cabinet, we don’t work in a linear fashion.”

We believe that one of instaGrok’s key strengths is the ability to lay out the conceptual space of a topic in a visual way, akin to mind maps used in this study.

(image courtesy of http://data-digest.co.uk/infographic.html)

Earlier today, Casey, one of the teachers using instaGrok suggested:

I was wondering if  you have started a teacher type of forum to help with best practices and inspiration on how to use in my classroom.  What ways have teachers used to assess and achieve academic success for students based on the use of instaGrok?

Excellent idea, Casey! We are introducing the instaGrok forum, a place where teachers can come together, share their experience and ideas, and give us feedback. You can access it from the front page, by clicking on the forum button:

(or by going directly to http://instagrok.com/forum).

We look forward to hearing from you and helping build the community!

We try to be very mindful of the quality of the content that instaGrok returns. Especially when it comes to protecting younger students from seeing offensive content.

One of the ways in which we try to ensure safety is through our profanity filter algorithm, which automatically discards any results that contain offensive language. As with all our algorithms, it is continuing to improve. Unfortunately, it is less effective for videos, since the technology is not able  to automatically analyze the visuals or dialogue in the video. It is hopeful to see that YouTube has an option to display auto-generated close captions for most videos, so whenever these captions become accessible programmatically we will be able to analyze the content of the videos, and hence filter, more effectively.

We also provide a method for teachers to report inappropriate content. This can be done by clicking on the trash can icon () next to each result. For general users or students, this action simply hides the item from their own results, but for teachers, it also shows a prompt asking whether they would like to report this item, e.g.:

Clicking Report on on this screen will cause the particular site to be removed from your and everyone else’s results (more specifically, it will be added to our blacklist database, together with the date the name of the user reported it, enabling us to review and follow up). Please be judicious in using this feature, because it affects other people!

We would love to hear your feedback on how we can continue to improve safety in instaGrok!

At some point recently, I started thinking more about this idea of non-linear learning: that most learning happens not as a definitive path from A to B, but as a process of weaving new knowledge into the web of our existing understanding, driven by our current knowledge, motivations, and the real-world situated context of our inquiry.

I wondered if anyone has thought of it from that perspective. I Googled nonlinear learning, and a few of the top results seemed to speak exactly to this idea. For example, this post:

Textbooks, curricula, and our educational system itself are the products of a mechanistic past.  School knowledge is pre-determined by a centralized authority, and delivered in alinear format to a mass audience. [...] The act of teaching, then, is seen as transfering information in a controlled sequence, a process that eliminates context - all learners receive the same content in the same format – but fails to accommodate variations in learner needs. [...] Most textbooks stagger information – you can’t proceed to Unit 2 until you’ve learned Unit 1.

In nature, linear learning doesn’t exist. If there is a metpaphor for learning in the natural environment it may be the network rather than the line: our neural networks forms the basis of memory/knowledge and even the brain itself.

Or this post:

When I was a kid [...] I picked what interested me and learned my way through it. It was a nonlinear process, much like a bloodhound follows its nose to sniff out new information.

Nonlinear learning [is] the idea that the learner chooses the sequence in which they learn new material. [...] It’s been discussed in the literature for some time. It’s only in the past few years that tools have emerged to take advantage of a nonlinear approach and put it within reach of educators.

Most online learning remains linear with learner choices limited to “next-page-previous-page.” What nonlinear learning offers is a model based on self-organization of ideas by the learner where [...] “the individual has done the work of putting [ideas] together for himself or herself, and they give rise to new ways to put them together.”

One practical implications of this is that if a learner wants to learn about, let’s say, gravity, the natural learning process is not to provide them with the definitive standard textbook on gravity, but rather help them navigate about this topic and learn exactly what is relevant based on what they already know and why they are interested in learning (are they building a model rocket or dabbling in theory of relativity?). Another implication, is the importance of supporting learners in re-organizing or curating ideas.

You could say that instaGrok’s innovation lies in supporting this type of non-linear learning.

On Monday, I had the pleasure of visiting one of the local schools and observing students use instaGrok. Such observations of users are extremely valuable to a startup, as they give us a lot of insights into how the product fits into the students’ school work, what features they notice or overlook, what is confusing or challenging, and much more.

These 7th grade students were doing research on medieval European history, and were using instaGrok to research a number of open-ended questions. The overall impressions were overwhelmingly positive – students appeared to be very engaged with the tool and provided insightful feedback. One of the action items the observations yielded, was a need to group related queries into one context with the same journal entry – something we added to the product right away.

Big thanks to Gene Tognetti for setting up this interaction, and encouraging his students to not only use instaGrok, but offer written feedback. Gene is very much a visionary when it comes to the role of technology in education, and spearheads adoption of innovative technology in his own school.

instaGrok now supports Google OpenID. What this means is that you can seamlessly log in to instaGrok using your existing Google user id and password (same ones you use for your Gmail).

You can log in with your Google credentials from the instaGrok’s login box, by clicking the Google logo at the bottom left:

… or go directly to www.instagrok.com/google

And if you are privacy-/security- conscious, don’t worry: instaGrok never sees your Google password; the whole login process happens through the Google website. And both Google and instaGrok searches are kept private from one another.

This will take you to the screen where you will see the following box (“Modify School Settings”) on the right side:

Select your role (Student or Teacher) and enter a class code (teachers would create a new class code, students would enter an existing class code).

This weekend, I was fortunate to participate in a workshop on Design Thinking in STEM, held at the Stanford University Design school (thanks to SV Education Foundation for putting it together!)

Design Thinking is a fascinating paradigm, particularly when applied to education. The approach invites both students and teachers to engage in integrated, open-ended and collaborative problem-solving. Design Thinking can be used both to solve particular educational challenges, as well as a way to transform the manner in which learning itself happens.

You can download a great PDF guide: Design Thinking for Educators.