Creating passionate students

I have been subscribing to a blog contributed to by a group of authors called 'Creating passionate users'

The Creating Passionate Users bloggers are all authors of bestseller Head First books (http://www.wickedlysmart.com)--a new brain-friendly series from O'Reilly.

They're all passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially--how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Oh yeah, and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques to get you to do something.

The postings are interesting from an IT perspective. At year 12 level the new SSABSA IT Systems curriculum focuses on improving the user experience. The other reason is that it is easy to replace the word 'users' with 'students' and use the insights in a school setting.

Look at the post 'Give users a Hollywood ending' for example.

We can all take a lesson from filmmakers: endings matter. The way we end a conversation, blog post, user experience, presentation, tech support session, chapter, church service, song, whatever... is what they'll remember most. The end can matter more to users than everything we did before. And the feeling they leave with is the one they might have forever.

That fits nicely with improving teacher student relationships IMHO