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CMaps are great concept maps, which don't impose all that hierarchy on you. Any flow or cycle you want. Cross-platform and network enabled too!

In my experience in education, that's a horrible spin on peer-learning. Methinks you had a poor experience.

Used correctly, peer learning is not only beneficial, but can improve grades in math for all students, can improve self-esteem and self-efficacy in young girls in math and science, and is considered one of the better cost-to-benefit options available.

Again, though, that's done correctly.

First, learning is not an industrial process. In the papers cited, all students were expected to operate in economically impractical small peer groups, and all students were expected to master the subject at hand.

This presumption of equality of educability is simply wrong, except at the lowest levels of education, where it's reasonable to expect students to have a relatively equal lack of exposure and therefore be at the same relative point in a given curriculum. This speaks to my earlier point of non-divergence of educational level being of great benefit to the teacher, but not such great benefit to the advanced (or potentially advanced, but thwarted) student.

The small group assumption here is not statistically significant in the three major studies cited by the first paper you linked to; in reality, despite having one of the smallest class sizes in the U.S., California tests near the bottom of the nation. In SAT scores, California scores in around #40 (if we include DC and Puerto Rico separately), while Utah, with twice the number of students per class and half as much spending per student (indeed, it's 48th in the nation), scores in around #19.

Lest you complain about teaching to the test, the first, 3rd, and 4th article you linked specifically reference standardized testing results as justification for their educational theories.

If you're going to be ignorant, that's great, but don't group all learning and educators into one group because of your own bias. Do you know the real reason that "it's possible for the P.E. teacher to substitute for the History teacher on occasion"? Because the P.E. teacher is a trained professional, believe it or not. S/he understands the basics of education and the fundamentals of teaching. This means that if the History teacher makes good lesson plans, prepares well, and does what s/he is supposed to do, then YES, there can be cross-discipline teaching in the short term.

I have to call B.S. on this. While a trained educator, the P.E. teacher in my high school was neither sufficiently skilled to teach my A.P Math class, nor was he sufficiently skilled to teach my A.P. History class, both of which he was asked to substitute in, more as adult supervision than as someone with relevant knowledge of the subject matter which he could impart to the students. Nor would he have been able to teach my A.P. Chemistry class, my A.P. English class, nor my A.P. Art class. Nor A.P. Biology nor A.P. Physics.

Understanding teaching is not good enough for advanced students; neither is teaching to a lesson plan while being unable to answer questions on the subject matter. Otherwise we might as well just replace the entire teaching staff with SRA booklets as soon as we get a kid up to the 4th grade reading level.

Does it work that way all the time? Nope. But, can you tell me that you g

Actually, that's the standard teachers union line, where the fast learning kids get to teach the slower kids instead of learning farther ahead themselves. This makes them more manageable, and keeps everything on a nice grade-level basis so the teacher can read the lesson plan a week ahead of having to teach the lesson, instead of knowing the material cold. This is why it's possible for the P.E. teacher to substitute for the History teacher on occasion.

In my experience in education, that's a horrible spin on peer-learning. Methinks you had a poor experience.

Used correctly, peer learning is not only beneficial, but can improve grades in math for all students, can improve self-esteem and self-efficacy in young girls in math and science, and is considered one of the better cost-to-benefit options available.

Again, though, that's done correctly.

If you're going to be ignorant, that's great, but don't group all learning and educators into one group because of your own bias. Do you know the real reason that "it's possible for the P.E. teacher to substitute for the History teacher on occasion"? Because the P.E. teacher is a trained professional, believe it or not. S/he understands the basics of education and the fundamentals of teaching. This means that if the History teacher makes good lesson plans, prepares well, and does what s/he is supposed to do, then YES, there can be cross-discipline teaching in the short term.

Does it work that way all the time? Nope. But, can you tell me that you give 100% on every project you've ever done, and that every single hour of every single day of your working career has been spent working to your maximum potential?

Keep your ignorance in check, please, and don't equate sample size to population - it's bad practice.

In 2006 & 2007 I was working at the American company that was working on this. I was working on a different project so I don't know the exact details, but I know they were using the BrainPort to let blind people see things (sending electrical spikes onto the tongue with a resolution of 64 points on the tongue). But it was actually funded by the military to allow hi-tech soldiers to get extra information through their tongue.

The demo they were working on at the time was to allow the soldier to get an idea of where their fellow soldiers where, through the BrainPort. After some practise, they can tell through their tongue that they have a soldier behind them on their left and 2 more coming on their right, for example. Here is a little description of the project: http://www.ihmc.us/research/projects/SensorySubstitution/

There are other pathways into the visual cortex than the retina and optic nerve. These may be especially useful for augmented reality and vision prosthetics. For example, the tongue is highly enervated and by-passes the optic nerve. A company called Wicab, Inc manufactures a product called the "BrainPort" Vision Device http://vision.wicab.com/technology/. The resolution is not great, but the race is on and thus far the most promising methods for manufacture of high-density transducer / electrode arrays have not been employed. With prospective military and medical applications "in sight" (pun intended), there is high competition internationally in the development of tongue display technology. I personally know of one such project being conducted by Dr. Anil Raj at IHMC http://www.ihmc.us/ to replace night vision goggles with tongue displays. The main research thrust in Dr. Raj's lab is sensory augmentation see http://ihmc.us:16080/community/ILOVEScience/Activities/TestingReactionTime/IHMCReactionTime.pdf for more information. Experiments have shown that "data" from slaved cameras can be "overlaid" on normal retinal vision, although there are still some registration (match up) challenges.

There are other pathways into the visual cortex than the retina and optic nerve. These may be especially useful for augmented reality and vision prosthetics. For example, the tongue is highly enervated and by-passes the optic nerve. A company called Wicab, Inc manufactures a product called the "BrainPort" Vision Device http://vision.wicab.com/technology/. The resolution is not great, but the race is on and thus far the most promising methods for manufacture of high-density transducer / electrode arrays have not been employed. With prospective military and medical applications "in sight" (pun intended), there is high competition internationally in the development of tongue display technology. I personally know of one such project being conducted by Dr. Anil Raj at IHMC http://www.ihmc.us/ to replace night vision goggles with tongue displays. The main research thrust in Dr. Raj's lab is sensory augmentation see http://ihmc.us:16080/community/ILOVEScience/Activities/TestingReactionTime/IHMCReactionTime.pdf for more information. Experiments have shown that "data" from slaved cameras can be "overlaid" on normal retinal vision, although there are still some registration (match up) challenges.

Have you tried Cmap? It's free and from what I remember, you can add hyperlinks, jpgs, small flash files; you can also share files and have others add to yours. Not hard to learn and it's better than a simple flowchart.