Answer Tips for learning

To illustrate the potential of Answer Tips for learning, here's 2 suggestions:

1. Design an interdisciplinary (language and Science) performance task where groups of students work on producing stories about Science and technology for their Science Blog. As students peer review each other's Science Blog, Answer Tips can then serve as effective tools to bridge student’s understanding of complex Science and technology phenomena, which students typically have difficulty understanding because such concepts are ultimately language-based (Gregory, 1988). Here's an abstract from one of my paper for you to try out Answer Tips. Don't know what avascular is, just double click on the word to find out. It is hoped that Answer Tips.com can improve the technology by incorporating flash-based/Virtual Reality simulations to its explanations of scientific/technical concepts.
   
   "We develop and calibrate a mathematical model for avascular tumour growth. The model is formulated as a set of partial differential equations describing the spatio-temporal changes in cell concentrations based on reaction-diffusion dynamics and the law of mass conservation. Unlike existing models, the current model takes into account the dependence of the cell proliferation rate on the growth inhibiting factors secreted by necrotic cells; furthermore, the model incorporates an element of random variation to the mitotic rate and nutrient supply. The model is solved using standard finite difference techniques. Results obtained from the simulation compare well with published experimental data. The biological and clinical implications of these results are also discussed."
   
   
2. For language teachers designing online journaling tasks around students' areas of interests and yet catering to the special learning needs of students of mixed ability (such as those students with reading comprehension difficulties), you may consider integrating Answer Tips with text to speech applications for firefox (you can download the text to speech applicaton from my fletls files, it's called clickspeech_bundle_v1.3. You then must open the file from firefox browser and restart firefox after installation). In this way, students with special learning needs for reading comprehension can listen to any part of their classmates blog post read to them as well as double click on any word to understand its meaning in the context of the post entry.
   

You may view the video file for Answer Tips and text to speech illustrations.

Reference:
Gregory, B. (1988). Inventing Reality: Physics as Language. NY: Wiley.