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First successful implant of a ‘bionic’ eye could restore sight to the blind

‘I’ve dreamed in colour for the first time in 20 years’: Blind British man can see again after first successful implant of ‘bionic’ eye microchips

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Posted By Ian Jukes

Surgeons in Oxford, led by Professor Robert MacLaren, fitted the chip at the back of Chris’ eye in a complex eight-hour operation last month. Chris, from Wiltshire, said: ‘I’ve always had that thought that one day I would be able to see again.’

It was the ‘magic moment’ that released Chris James from ten years of blindness.

Doctors switched on a microchip that had been inserted into the back of his eye three weeks earlier.

After a decade of darkness, there was a sudden explosion of bright light – like a flash bulb going off, he says.

Now he is able to make out shapes and light. He hopes his sight – and the way his brain interprets what the microchip is showing it – will carry on improving.

Mr James, 54, is one of two British men who have had their vision partly restored by a pioneering retina implant.

The other, Robin Millar, one of Britain’s most successful music producers, says he has dreamed in colour for the first time.

Both had lost their vision because of a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, where the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye gradually cease to work.

Their stories bring hope to the 20,000 Britons with RP – and to those with other eye conditions such as advanced macular degeneration which affects up to half a million.

Mr James had a ten-hour operation to insert the wafer-thin microchip in the back of his left eye at the Oxford University Eye Hospital six weeks ago. Three weeks later, it was turned on.

Mr James, who lives in Wroughton, Wiltshire, with his wife Janet, said of his ‘magic moment’: ‘I did not know what to expect but I got a flash in the eye, it was like someone taking a photo with a flashbulb and I knew my optic nerve was still working.’

The chip is 3mm by 3mm, and is implanted into the eyeball of sufferers

The Six Million Dollar Man: A similar ‘bionic’ technology was used to restore sight to the blind, and the first group of British patients to receive the electronic microchips were regaining ‘useful vision’ just weeks after undergoing surgery

The Wiltshire man can now recognise shapes after becoming the first British patient to be fitted with the digital chip

Robin Millar from London, one of two men to undergo cutting edge bionic eye treatment

The microchip has 1,500 light sensitive pixels which take over the function of the retina’s photoreceptor rods and cones.

One of the first tests was making out a white plate and cup on a black background.

Mr James, who works for Swindon Council, said: ‘It took a while for my brain to adjust to what was in front of me, but I was able to detect the curves and outline of these objects.’

Tim Jackson, a consultant retinal surgeon at King’s College Hospital and Robert MacLaren, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Oxford and a consultant retinal surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, who are running the trial, say it has ‘exceeded expectations’ with patients already regaining ‘useful vision’.

The first group of British patients to receive the electronic microchips were regaining ¿useful vision¿ just weeks after undergoing surgery

The company hopes for a further trial with ten new patients later this year

Ten more Britons with RP will be fitted with the implants, which are also being tested in Germany and China. The device, made by Retina Implant AG of Germany, connects to a wireless power supply buried behind the ear. This is connected to an external battery unit via a magnetic disc on the scalp. The user can alter the sensitivity of the device using switches on the unit.

Mr Jackson said: ‘It’s difficult to say how much benefit each patient will get, this pioneering treatment is at an early stage.

‘But it’s an exciting and important step forward. Many of those who receive this treatment have lost their vision for many years. The impact of them seeing again, even if it is not normal vision, can be profound and at times quite moving.’ Mr Millar, 60, who was behind Sade’s Diamond Life album, has been blind for 25 years. He said: ‘Since switching on the device I am able to detect light and distinguish the outlines of objects.

‘I have even dreamt in very vivid colour for the first time in 25 years so a part of my brain which had gone to sleep has woken up! I feel this is incredibly promising and I’m happy to be contributing to this legacy.’

The patients were able to detect light immediately after the microchip was activated, while further testing revealed there were also able to locate white objects on a dark background, Retina Implant said

The chip pairs with an external device to process images

Chris James from Wiltshire, said: ‘I’ve always had that thought that one day I would be able to see again.’

The first real, high-resolution, user-configurable bionic eye

Researchers in Germany have unveiled the Alpha IMS retinal prosthesis; a device that completely redefines the state of the art of implanted, bionic devices. The first round of clinical trials were a huge success, with eight out of nine patients reporting that they can now detect mouth shapes (smiles, frowns), small objects such as telephones and cutlery, signs on doors, and — most importantly — whether a glass of wine is red or white.

The Alpha IMS, developed by the University of Tübingen in Germany, is exciting for two reasons. First, it is connected to your brain via 1,500 electrodes, providing unparalleled visual acuity and resolution (the recently-approved-in-the-US Argus II retinal prosthesis has just 60 electrodes). Second, Alpha IMS is completely self-contained: Where the Argus II relies on an external camera to relay data to the implant embedded in your retina, the Alpha IMS prosthesis has a built-in sensor that directly gathers its imagery from the light that passes into your eye. This has the knock-on effect that the Argus II requires you to turn your head if you wish to look from side to side, while the Alpha IMS allows you to swivel your eyeballs normally. In essence, Alpha IMS is the first true, self-contained bionic eye.

At this point, you really should watch the two videos below. The first demonstrates where Alpha IMS is implanted, and how it works. The second video shows one of the first patients to receive the Alpha IMS prosthesis, and how it felt to see his wife’s face for the first time. It isn’t clear in the video, but the device is powered wirelessly from a battery in the patient’s pocket.

The Alpha IMS and Argus II retinal prostheses work in fundamentally the same way. Basically, there are different kinds of blindness — cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, disease, and so on. In a healthy eye, light is converted into electrical signals by the rods and cones in your retina, which are then transmitted down your optic nerve to your brain. In an eye that’s been afflicted by macular generation or diabetic retinophathy, these signals aren’t generated. Alpha IMS and Argus II restore vision by, essentially, replacing the damaged piece of your retina with a computer chip that generates electrical signals that can be understood by your brain. (See: A bionic prosthetic eye that speaks the language of your brain.)

For the most part, these bionic eyes are still rather dumb and rely heavily on the brain’s amazing ability to make sense of the alien signals being pumped into it. That isn’t to say, though, that we don’t have any control over the signals being produced, and thus the perceived image: In the image above, the large device above the patient’s ear is a dial that can adjust the implant’s brightness. Yes, we’re now at the point where we can create bionic eyes with configurable settings. I wonder how long it’ll be until there are bionic eyes that offer higher resolution and sharper visual acuity than our squishy, fleshy orbs.

Research paper: doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0077 – “Artificial vision with wirelessly powered subretinal electronic implant alpha-IMS” [open access]

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Which of These 4 Instructional Strategies Do You Use in Your Class?

Original source 

Posted By Ian Jukes

Instructional strategies, according to Alberta Learning, are “techniques teachers use to help students become independent, strategic learners. These strategies become learning strategies when students independently select the appropriate ones and use them effectively to accomplish tasks or meet goals.” the strength of instructional strategies is that they determine how teachers can go about realizing their teaching objectives.

Instructional strategies are derived from different educational theories. Here some examples of  4 key instructional strategies as identified by Gayla S. Keesse :

1- Direct Instruction
This is what some refer to as the traditional method. Direct instruction is primarily teacher centred and consists of direct lecturing or vertical teaching. It is a form of explicit teaching  that consists of repetitive practice, didactic questioning, drill and demonstration. This strategy is particularly useful for ‘providing information, or developing step-by-step skills.’

2-Interactive Instruction
As its name indicates, this strategy consists of creating learning environments conducive to interactions and discussions. It posits that learning takes place through interactive communication of knowledge and this interaction can happen in different forms including: open or closed group discussions, collaborative project work, whole class discussions …etc

3- Experiential learning
One of the seminal works in experiential learning is Dewey’s “Experience and Education“. This strategy highlights the primacy of the process of learning over the product of learning. The purpose is to enhance students motivation and increase their retention rates by connecting classroom learning to their lifeworlds. This can happen through engaging students in reflexive thinking about their own experiences and how to leverage what they learned in the past in new contexts.

4-Independent Study
Gayla defines this strategy as “the range of instructional methods which are purposefully provided to foster the development of individual student initiative, self-reliance, and self-improvement. Independent study can also include learning in partnership with another individual or as part of a small group.”

Read Gayla’s post for more information on each of these strategies. There are also several other instructional strategies that were not mentioned in her work, here is a one-page PDF from Deming Intermediate School containing more than 40 examples:

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assessment Gaming

Study Shows Video Games’ Impact On Face-to-face Teaching

A new study conducted by faculty at NYU and the University of Michigan has uncovered some interesting results in regard to using digital games to provide formative assessment to students during the learning process. Jordan Shapiro, an expert in gaming and learning, shares this news in Forbes.

posted by: Ryan Schaaf

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In the past, I have covered many studies that look at the efficacy of game based learning. But a recent study from A-GAMES, a collaboration between New York University and the University of Michigan, is significant because it looks at the way games impact the learning experience and the relationship between teacher and student. It does this by considering how digital games support ‘formative assessment’ — a term educators and researchers use to describe “the techniques used by teachers to monitor, measure, and support student progress and learning during instruction.” It may sound fancy but “formative assessment” really just refers to the ongoing attention that all good teachers have always provided their students, monitoring student learning and offering ongoing and specific feedback.

A-GAMES stands for Analyzing Games for Assessment in Math, ELA/Social Studies, and Science. The project is one among many games and learning research projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The study, entitled “Empowering Educators: Supporting Student Progress in the Classroom with Digital Games,” was undertaken by Jan Plass at NYU and Barry Fishman at University of Michigan. Surveying 488 K-12 teachers from across the U.S., they found that “more than half of teachers (57 percent) use digital games weekly or more often in teaching, with 18 percent using games for teaching on a daily basis. A higher percentage of elementary school teachers (66 percent for grade K-2 teachers and 79 percent for grade 3-5 teachers) use games weekly or more often for teaching, compared with middle school (47 percent) and high school (40 percent) teachers.”

These numbers are more or less consistent with previous studies. particularly the Level-up Learning study that the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop issued this past fall. That study focused on teachers and how their thinking about digital games in the classroom impacts actual implementation. This A-GAMES study, alternatively, is looking in more detail at the way games impact the teacher’s ability to provide personalized attention, assessment, and feedback to individual students.

The NYU/University of Michigan study found that on a weekly basis, 34 percent of teachers use games to conduct formative assessment. What are they assessing? Facts and knowledge; concepts and big ideas; mastery of specific skills. And they are doing formative assessment with games in the same way they do it with other classroom activities: observing students in class; asking probing questions; looking over their shoulders. All of this suggests that “using digital games may enable teachers to conduct formative assessment more frequently and effectively.” Game based learning seems to be aiding and supporting existing strategies rather than radically transforming the practice of teaching.

“Formative assessment is thought of as one of the most important classroom practices to support student learning,” said Barry Fishman, professor of learning technologies at the University of Michigan School of Information and School of Education.  “And our study indicates that teachers who use games for formative assessment conduct assessment more frequently and report fewer barriers.”

One of the useful things about this new study is that it does not focus on radical disruptions to the culture of education. Nor does it focus on cost savings or efficiency–not even on student achievement. Instead, it focuses on the efficacy with which digital games enable teachers to do their jobs. Therefore, it may help to dispel some of the negative myths about game-based learning that have become obstacles to widespread implementation.

Believe it or not, the perception of video games in the classroom is not always positive. Many teachers that I’ve spoken to express a fear that games are going to replace human teachers with automated video game avatars. I’m not sure where that notion comes from. I talk to a lot of game developers and pro-tech educators and so far I’ve never met one who wants to replace teachers with robots. Most want to create tools that are help teachers to do their job with more ease and greater impact.

Still, many folks worry that there are nefarious legislators and big bank types who see technology as a way to reduce labor costs through automation. I acknowledge that such a fear is not totally absurd. I’ve read Diane Ravitch’s work and I understand why she worries about the ongoing privatization of the public school system. I see how what begins as a an effort to create a marketplace where parents have more choices could spiral into a mess of potential dangers. In fact, I’ve even argued myself that we need to stop thinking of education as a business or an industry, and stop thinking of teachers like factory workers or resources. There’s nothing hidden here. It is easy to see how our unwavering faith in the corporate mindset has created a tragic level of socioeconomic stratification.

But it is also important not to swing all the way to the polarized opposite perspective. Although lowering labor costs seems to be an inherent part of the Walmart way (which is certainly not in the best interest of our children), we should also acknowledge that financial considerations have always been part of the school conversation, even at the very beginning of the great U.S. public education experiment. It wasn’t all idealism at the start. Don’t imagine that everyone used to act in the best interest of equity, social justice, and democracy but somehow we wandered off the straight and narrow path. That’s just plain false.

While promoting her book Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession, Dana Goldstein brought renewed attention to Catherine Beecher, an early feminist educator who was not only an outspoken advocate for girls’ education but also played a pivotal role in the women’s movement by leading women into professional classroom employment.

In the 19th Century, Beecher argued that one of the reasons women would make good teachers is because they provided cheap labor. In an interview with Rebecca Traister, Goldstein explained that Beecher “needed to make this pragmatic appeal to cheapness because one of the main barriers for early education reformers was trying to make education compulsory, so that parentshad to send their kids to school. And resistance to raising taxes was the major barrier to this movement.” The economics have always been one of the biggest obstacles to equity in education.

So please don’t spout nostalgia from a meek-shall-inherit-the-earth anti-profit moral soapbox. Someone profits on pencils and blackboards and desk-chairs and lockers and magic-markers. Sure, we should watch the hucksters carefully. Be wary. They’re not to be trusted. But also, we don’t want to miss out on good innovations because we’re afraid we might get scammed. If we’re afraid to take risks and iterate, an education for reflective critical thinkers is already long lost.

Certainly I worry about the tragic impact edtech and game-based learning could have on our children were we to mistakenly prioritize the capacity to create high impact at a low cost. This criteria absolutely should not hold more weight then other factors which guarantee an education for human dignity. Were affordable scalability the only promise of game-based learning, I’d be the first to object. But that’s not the case.

Instead, game-based learning uses interactive simulation to blend content with context in such a way that students learn not only facts, but also how to use those facts in relationship with other individuals and with the world around them. What’s more, games make it easy to harness the power of play and creativity, creating a pedagogy grounded in discovery learning (hands-on exploration) instead of just direct learning (lecture, demonstration).

Now, thanks to this study, we have some evidence that game-based learning can also enable better formative assessment. Which means that it even helps facilitate the kinds of live interactions that have traditionally formed the foundation of good teaching. Remember, it is not a choice between video games and live teaching; it is a happy marriage of both.