Daniela O’Neill

For more on the science and social function of small talk, this episode has been consistently popular among our autistic listeners

Does your toddler call every animal a dog? Or call the moon a ball?

Both are examples of a perfectly normal toddler behavior known as overextension.

Thread 🧵

Screenshot of springernature journal page saying "great news! fundign is available for open access publishing. Explore open access funding | change institution."

Table with profit margins from big publishers of research

Sad news! By choosing to publish with us, you are wasting a horrendous amount of tax money. Learn about Diamond Open Access and where to submit instead Buy yourself prestige here -->

Apparently, there is still funding left in academia even though Springer Nature made $489 million profits off of it in 2024. And now they are telling researchers what great news that is.

Let me fix this for you... (inspired by arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820)
#springernature #closedscience

Rereading it, I see just how much higher level vocabulary I was exposed to in reading comics, something I preach about often. I have compiled a list of this vocabulary in just this one story. Excitement and engagement kept me reading. The built-in scaffolding of image and text helped make meaning.

#openaccess #adolescence #developmentalpsychology

Many people have no mental imagery. What’s going on in their brains? People with aphantasia are offering a window into consciousness.

Most people can call up pictures in their minds, visualizing the past & summoning images of the future. But for ~4% of us, such mental imagery is weak or absent. New edition of @nature.com has a nice introduction to how research on this phenomenon (aphantasia) opens up novel windows into the brain.🧪

At my university, our library recently did a presentation to explain some reasons for why they had to cut certain journals, and I was incredibly impressed at the amount of data and factors they took into account. I could see if they would share this with you.

Free, Tues:
AGING PLAYFULLY:
Reimagining the Possibilities
FREE WEBINAR presents Maxx Hartt

We grow old if we stop playing...
Tues. Jan. 27 11am EST / 4pm UTC
Invite: Cities for Better Health & 8 80 Cities
Register FREE & share:
bit.ly/3KU86uj

🎉 Congratulations!

🎉Chalk & Talk just surpassed 300,000 podcast downloads. YouTube views are up significantly too! My goal: improving math education by sharing knowledge about what works.
🙏Thanks for listening & please share the podcast with someone who could benefit. Channel link below.

Why we keep getting the cause of dyslexia wrong | BBC Science Focus Magazine Genetics, audio processing and environment can all impact how our brains connect sounds to the symbols we use to read

Check out this article featuring our work via BBC Science Focus. Thank you, Nate Scharping, for a thoughtful piece on #dyslexia and its causes:
"Why we keep getting the cause of dyslexia wrong."
www.sciencefocus.com/wellbeing/wh...

Why the Big Six should actually be the Big Five.

New blogpost from @pamelasnow.bsky.social

Why the Big Six should actually be the Big Five

Hint: “language is literacy is language”

#scienceofreading #structuredliteracy #OntEd #CdnEd #languagedevelopment

pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2026/01/why-...

When Older Students Can't Read: How This Middle School Is Tackling Literacy Structured literacy classes at a New Hampshire middle school have helped some students crack the code.

When Older Students Can’t Read: How This Middle School Is Tackling Literacy

www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

Pair with webinar by Joan Sedita based on her new book Essentials of Adolescent Literacy home.edweb.net/webinar/teac...

1/3 “People often think only smart people learn math.
But it goes the other way. If you learn math, it helps make you smarter.” -Barb Oakley in my latest episode. I had both Barb and John Mighton on (two of my favourite people). John was my first guest! Ep link below👇

🎉My podcast Chalk & Talk hit 200,000 downloads!
If you haven't listened, check it out! I'm a mathematician & an advocate for better math instruction for students of all ages. I've published 49 episodes, with more great episodes to come!

We’re excited to announce a new collaboration with RBC to expand access to financial literacy education for more than 12,000 children in underserved communities across Canada by 2027.

Here are almost 40 of my favourite #MiddleGrade reads for 2025.

A fantastic range from wild fantasy, to gritty realism, historical adventures and more than a few scares. What a brilliant year its been for children’s books

Learning curves: Post-COVID learning trajectories differ by the grade a student was in when the pandemic hit | Brookings Lauren Bauer and Eileen Powell assess whether the effect of COVID-related disruptions differed depending on the grade a student was in during the 2019–20 school year.

Very penetrating analyses and very sad graphs! Many take-home messages, among them that math is a very cumulative subject. Displaced learning curves are hard to boost.
www.brookings.edu/articles/lea...

It should be: why has it taken so long for comics to be so popular? It’s taken a while but finally they’re getting their dues.

The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...

The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing

english.elpais.com/science-tech...

(& so many don’t realize that none of these profits come to the authors, who even have to pay $$$ themselves to make the work open access)

#highered #academicsky

Transforming evidence into practice for reading and spelling instruction: a descriptive study of six Victorian primary schools In this qualitative study, we describe the reported processes, enablers and barriers associated with transformations towards adopting structured literacy instruction at the whole-school level. Theo...

#openaccess

Transforming evidence into practice for reading and spelling instruction: a descriptive study of six Victorian primary schools

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#scienceofreading #structuredliteracy #righttoread #OntEd #CdnEd #literacyisequity #untilallcanread

Inventing ourselves: 100 years of research on adolescence On the occasion of the Leverhulme Trust’s centenary year, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore FBA FMedSci FRS, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge spoke on one hundred ...

A few weeks ago, it was my honour to give the The Leverhulme Trust Centenary Lecture, and you can hear it here if you're interested

Inventing ourselves: 100 years of research of adolescence

media.leverhulme.ac.uk/podcast/annu...

"We found that #language similarity affected the amount of exposure needed to reach a certain level of proficiency."

www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

Build Canada's Literacy Foundation A fifth of Canadians are functionally illiterate. This has massive social impacts and costs Canada $67 billion in productivity.

A very informative piece!

share.google/vYY7ltqlClry...

#literacy #righttoread #structuredliteracy #scienceofreading #cdned #bskyedu

Happy World #Linguistics Day! www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/ho...

Intergenerational classroom for caregivers generates greater empathy, better outcomes for seniors A unique partnership between Christie Gardens and the University of Toronto pairs undergraduate students in health studies with older adults for a semester-long exploration of gerontology and geriatri...

Intergenerational @utoronto.ca classroom for caregivers generates greater empathy, better outcomes for seniors

nationalpost.com/sponsored/li...

#seniors #gerontology #highered #intergenerational #inclusive #socialconnection

This paper is a real benchmark and will be of great interest to anyone who works with those with DLD. (Developmental Language Disorder)
#DevLangDis

#Kitchener 🇨🇦 teen’s first feature-length documentary “Chronically” captures the medical & lived experiences of 5 teen girls with #chronicillness & rarer diagnoses. Help spread awareness by viewing it via the online LA Awareness Film Festival until Dec 31 ($13 CDN $10 USD) awarenessfestival.org

Financial Literacy Month is a great time to begin guiding children to become financially responsible and successful adults by teaching them how to understand and manage money.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Combining visual literacy, analysis, and writing. Individual interpretations matter when backed up with visual and textual evidence. Comics = literacy.