Personal growth charts from MindLog™ (Educator view)

MindLog™ for Educators — What’s it all about?

This article is not really an article. It’s a list — actually, a series of lists — that exposes some of the reasoning behind MindLog, Lectica’s latest educational offering. It’s also a work in progress.

An interesting AI interpretation of MindLog. It’s actually pretty good.

Validity & reliability

1. MindLog is the first scalable and affordable method for measuring mental development over time.
2. The standardized measurement system used in MindLog builds on more than a century of rigorous research in mental development. It uses the most thoroughly researched and precise measure of mental development in existence.
3. The standardized measurement system used in MindLog has been shown to be objective and fair.
4. Multiple measurements like those made with MindLog’s continuous measurement system provide the highest possible level of statistical reliability.
5. The short reflections scored with MindLog are always relevant to the learning context because they are reflections on what is currently being learned.

Support for mental development

1. MindLog seamlessly integrates learning and assessment, combining the best in mental ability assessment with the latest insights from the learning sciences.
2. Using MindLog supports optimal mental development by engaging students in practices that recruit the mind’s built-in motivational system for learning — the dopamine-opioid cycle.
3. Using MindLog supports optimal mental development by engaging students in practices that help them integrate new knowledge into their existing mental structures. This is how good minds grow.
4. MindLog is not designed to push students to learn faster. It is designed to help them build more robust mental networks so they can continue to develop for a lifetime.
5. MindLog supports at least two kinds of external feedback — educator comments and growth charts. Both provide information that can be leveraged to support optimal mental development.
6. MindLog is designed to support the development of skills for self-directed learning. When students reflect on their learning or set up micro-tasks in the MindLog interface, they are building critical skills for life-long learning.
7. MindLog allows educators to see their students as individuals growing along their own personal developmental trajectories. Over time, exposure to MindLog’s growth charts helps educators build skills for providing students with feedback and learning activities that are increasingly attuned to their personal learning needs and interests.
8. MindLog’s growth charts provide information that can alert educators, parents/guardians, and students themselves to learning issues as they develop.

Support for educators & schools

1. Educators can use MindLog right out of the box. Simply using it as it is designed to be used has positive effects on student growth.
2. Using MindLog does not require major changes in current curricula.
3. Teachers who already assign regular reflections can easily integrate MindLog into their current lesson plans.
4. Schools (and students) benefit from using MindLog even if only one or two educators use the tool regularly.
5. MindLog increases parent/guardian involvement by providing them with an ongoing account of their children’s developmental progress.

Support for humanity

1. MindLog has been designed with the future of humanity in mind. At Lectica, we believe that the best way to secure a positive future for humanity is to provide every child with the opportunity to develop optimally.
2. MindLog will help students to understand that competence and expertise are built through practice, and that there is always more room for growth. This will equip them with a healthy form of personal humility.
3. Students who have an opportunity to see themselves as growers will feel more hopeful about their futures and their capacity to participate in society, regardless of where they fall in the genetic lottery.
4. Students who are more hopeful will have fewer reasons to reflexively distrust authority.
5. Students in schools that valorize skill development will develop an earned sense of competence that will increase their ability to adapt in a rapidly changing world while giving them a vital sense of personal agency.
6. Students who have an earned sense of competence and personal agency will enter adulthood with a love for striving that will make them less vulnerable to dopamine-opioid cycle hijackers (media and advertising).
7. Students in schools that valorize skill-building will learn to view errors and mistakes as valuable opportunities for growth.
8. Students in schools that use MindLog to build self-regulation and interpersonal skills will enter the world better prepared to play well with others.
9. Students in schools that use MindLog to build self-regulation and interpersonal skills will enter the world less psychologically damaged by bullying or being bullied.
10. Students whose minds have developed optimally will be less vulnerable to manipulation because manipulators will find it harder to leverage poorly developed minds, hopelessness, unhappiness, and disaffection.
11. MindLog supports learning diversity. It is not designed to get every kid to college or ensure that all students learn the contents of a mandated curriculum. Instead, it respects the uniqueness of every learner’s mind and aims to support the development of individual minds by allowing students to reflect in their own way about their learning experiences and observations. This is important because diversity critical for social and cultural evolution and adaptation. We need a wide variety of good minds to maintain healthy and sustainable human cultures.