Dr Steve Miller is the chief science officer for Nervanix Corporation. He's one of the driving forces behind the development of Nervanix Clarity, a wearable piece of technology that can listen in on your brain and track your concentration in real time. It might sound a bit like science fiction, but the technology behind it, known as EEG, is actually about 100 years old. Elite athletes and businesses are now using neuroscience to improve performance or make strategic business decisions, so the appearance of a product like Nervanix Clarity is not as surprising at you might think. And for education, there are significant implications. We can now more effectively monitor concentration, which is so often a problem for struggling learners. Conversely it also offers the opportunity to enhance learning for advanced students. In this episode, Dr Miller explains how it all works.

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This podcast is brought to you by LearnFast. To find out more about LearnFast, visit www.learnfasthome.com.au

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Carolyn Mee is an edtech entrepreneur who wants to change the way children get screened for hearing loss. With a background in media, and a strong desire to improve learning outcomes for children, she's developed an app called Sound Scouts in collaboration with National Acoustic Laboratories, which is a research division of Australian Hearing. The app is a gamified test that invites children to participate in a story. Along the way, their hearing is tested in the comfort and convenience of their own home. Carolyn's work with Sound Scouts has the potential to radically improve detection rates of hearing loss, which in turn will help to provide intervention more quickly leading to better learning. It's a serious undertaking, backed by scientific research and ongoing development. In this episode, Carolyn, shares her journey with Sound Scouts.

To find out more about LearnFast, visit www.learnfasthome.com.au

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Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or ODD, can be a very traumatic thing to deal with. The literature states that defiant behaviours need to be consistent and obvious for about 6 months, which can seem like a long time before decisions get made to do something about it. Dr Shan Ong is a developmental paediatrician with deep experience in this field. In this discussion, I ask Dr Ong what it means for parents to take the first steps in handling the situation and what they can expect. It's a mixture of experiences and emotions ranging from relief to denial as parents come to terms with the long road ahead. We also talk about the role of the school, and how that fits in with strategies at home and the working relationship with a medical professional. I started by asking Dr Ong to clarify what defiant behaviours might look like.

This podcast is brought to you by LearnFast. To find out more about LearnFast, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

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One of the great things about producing this podcast is the many interesting people I get to talk to from around the world. Occasionally, the tables get turned, and the people I meet start to ask me more questions than I ask them. Nick Kenny, hosts a radio program on Sydney based community station Northside Radio, FM99.3, called A Fair Call, which is a political commentary and current affairs talk show. He invited me to join him on the program to discuss what learning capacity is, what I thought about current developments in the education system in Australia, and why I thought reading is so important. He wasn't afraid of asking tough questions, and it made for a very enjoyable discussion. The program was recorded, and I'm pleased to add it to the growing list of interviews that make up the Learning Capacity podcast.

Mimma Mason is the Cogmed manager for Pearson Australia, and has previously been on the show to discuss working memory. But she also spends much of her time helping people understand the emerging field of educational neuroscience. Is it another band wagon, or pop science? We've asked this question before on the show, and it seems like the consistent message is that educational neuroscience is now increasingly informing educational practice and research. If it is for real, then how do we implement it? And what does this mean for future teacher education and professional development? In this episode, Mimma helps us understand what to make of it all.

This podcast is brought to you by LearnFast. To find out more about Cogmed working memory programs, Fast ForWord, and individualised language, literacy and reading programs for your child, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

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Ever wondered how to describe autism? Dr Norman Doidge provides a simple, yet insightful description of this baffling and severe disorder in chapter 3 of his best selling book, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science. Put simply, he describes it as a mind that cannot conceive of other minds. He then goes on to explain some incredible progress in understanding and dealing with autism. In this episode, I introduce you to that chapter, and provide you with the opportunity to download the chapter for FREE. You will be introduced to the ground breaking work in the field of neuroscience and the key people involved. Yes, it's about brain science, but it's a simple read, and the stories and science are very compelling.

To receive your download, visit http://www.info.learnfasthome.com.au/book

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Cameron Paterson is a teacher at a private school in Sydney, Australia, and first came across Project Zero a little over 10 years ago. The ideas presented at the time resonated strongly with Cameron, and he was attracted by the progressive nature of the thinking in the Project Zero team. Since then he's spent time at Harvard University where he studied learning and teaching and completed a Masters degree. He's worked extensively with Ron Ritchhart and March Church in creating Cultures of Thinking within his own school, and has much experience using thinking routines in the classroom. For Cameron, creating cultures of thinking is not just a passing idea or educational fad. Its backed by research and case studies from around the world. In this episode, Cameron shares how he's made it real and successful in the classroom.

This podcast is brought to you by LearnFast. For more information about neuroscience based language and reading programs, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

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Startup businesses in the EdTech space seem to be appearing everywhere. Most of us might think of a new learning app, or some web based learning system that many schools are adopting. Monica Wulff regularly meets the people behind the scenes of these new technologies in her work at StartUp Muster, which is a kind of bureau of statistics for startups. It may come as a surprise, but Australia is thriving with startups, with a large proportion of founders having a background in education, and developing for education. On one hand, this really is uncharted territory. But on another, it represents incredible opportunity both for business, and for learners who previously have not had access to quality education. In this episode, Monica sheds light on this emerging space.

For more information about LearnFast, and individualised remediation and enhancement programs in language and literacy, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

To comment on this podcast, send us an email to [email protected]

Mimma Mason is the Cogmed Manager for Pearson Australia, and spends much of her time raising awareness of working memory and its relationship to learning. Most of us might easily relate to long term memory, what we did a while back, or short term memory, like what we did yesterday. But do we give enough time to thinking about working memory? That's what's going on when we get exposed to new things, and it's a critical part of the learning process. Poor working memory makes learning that much harder. In this episode, Mimma helps us understand it, and more importantly, how we can develop it.

This podcast is brought to you by LearnFast. To find out more about LearnFast and the Cogmed programs, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

To comment on this podcast, send us an email to [email protected]

Mike McKay is now a retired superintendent of the Surrey County schools district in British Columbia. He was a public educator for 35 years. The area he supervised is said to have over 160 languages spoken. You can imagine it would be extremely difficult, if not nigh on impossible to measure the potential problems with language and reading development in such a large and diverse region. But back in 2008 he attended a conference hosted by Scientific Learning Corporation, where he was exposed to the research behind the Fast ForWord programs. When he came back, he asked his board to trust him, and give him $300,000 to get started. It was bold pitch. In this episode, Mike tells the story of how things have panned out.

To find out more about LearnFast and the Fast ForWord programs, visit http://www.learnfasthome.com.au

To comment on this podcast, send us an email to [email protected]