About

W

hat Is Fascinating Education?

 

Fascinating Education is a series of audiovisual curricula aimed at supplementing the current text-based curricula for middle school and high school chemistry, biology, and physics. Fascinating Education was created by Dr. Sheldon Margulies, a practicing neurologist in Silver Spring, Maryland.

 

W

hat is the Approach of Fascinating Education and Why is This Approach Unique?

 

Fascinating Education flips the teaching process and approaches science through the “right hemisphere.” Instead of using a written text as the primary teaching tool with occasional illustrations to explain the text, Fascinating Education uses simple, colorful illustrations as the primary teaching tool with text, in the form of attached audio files, to explain the illustrations.

Fascinating Education uses questions and answers to engage students in an interactive relationship with the teacher. Lessons generally begin with an everyday observation or commonly known fact and ask why that happens. The answer to one question elicits another question, and the process repeats itself one step at a time in simple English without terms of art.

Students are also given a roadmap for each curriculum so that they understand why they are learning each topic within the curriculum. Emphasis is also made to apply the lessons to the students’ everyday lives. Students are tested frequently to ensure that they are keeping up.

The result is an efficient and effective way to learn science – in school, after school, home school, or simply to understand the world around you. Complete Fascinating Chemistry, Fascinating Biology, and Fascinating Physics and you will never look at the world around you the way you do now. You will become the child you once were, asking why this happens and wondering whether you can do it better. Boredom will be a thing of the past.

  • Assumes students know absolutely nothing about chemistry, biology or physics
  • Slices the information very thin
  • Presents the material slowly and clearly
  • Follows a story line
  • Continually shows how chemistry, biology and physics explain or solve some real life observation or problem
  • Deemphasizes terminology
H

ow Has Fascinating Education Been Shown to Work?

 

 

In 2008, the Fascinating Biology curriculum was field tested for 1 hour a week with 95 juniors at Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. Students’ standardized test scores in biology rose from a 40% pass rate in 2006 to an 86.6% pass rate the year Fascinating Biology was used.

 

W

hy Is This Learning Approach Appealing?

 

Fascinating Education’s use of technology is a natural for today’s kids who are as comfortable with computers as past generations were with books.

Students will love learning science using Fascinating Education’s method of teaching. They can actually see how science works in vivid color, rather than just reading about it. Using pictures leaves less room for ambiguity, and as they say, one picture is worth a thousand words.

  • About Dr. Margulies

    Dr. Margulies lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife and the youngest of his five children, practicing neurology full-time. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966, and Stanford School of Medicine in 1971, completed an internal medicine residency at McGill University in 1973, and completed a neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco in 1976. In 1988, he graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law.

    Dr. Margulies currently holds the rank clinical assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and at Howard University, having been a clinical assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University and assistant professor of neurology at the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama. Dr. Margulies is also an inactive member of the Maryland Bar. He has written three educational textbooks, Everyday Doctoring: A New Approach to the Logic and Reasoning of Neurology and Medicine (1986), Learning Law (1992), and The Fascinating Body: How It Works (2004). In his 35 year teaching career, Dr. Margulies has taught over 2500 medical students and residents.

    Dr. Margulies is uniquely qualified to create audiovisual curricula for middle and high school students. As a neurologist, he understands how the brain works, including how we learn, how we focus our attention, how we retrieve information, and how emotion and motivation affect learning. Having attended both medical school and law school, having taught neurology to over 2500 medical students and residents, and having authored three educational textbooks, he has honed his teaching skills and is now applying them to improve the way science is taught and to inspire our youth to pursue careers in science.

    Dr. Margulies on Science Education

    I approached the curriculum with only a basic knowledge about each subject.

    This perspective forced me to step into a student’s shoes, and helped me understand why students have such problems learning science by relying on textbooks.

    I think these audiovisual curricula will help students overcome their fear and frustration surrounding science textbooks. While what I have done is not perfect, these audiovisual curricula should help students learn science, because they explain things in ways that young adults understand.

    While the curricula have been reviewed by teachers, I am certain that many users will discover mistakes, or at the very least, better ways to explain something. I welcome all suggestions, and look forward to speaking with students and teachers about science and math education, something I consider a neurologic issue. More importantly, my efforts are part of a communal effort to improve science education.

  • Dr. Margulies’ Books Include:

    The Fascinating Body

    The Fascinating Body

    A fun and informative look at how the body works and how to keep it working
    Buy It Now

    Everyday Doctoring

    Everyday Doctoring

    A textbook on medical and neurologic physical diagnosis

    Purchase From Author

    Learning Law

    Learning Law

    Coauthor of Learning Law: The Mastery of Legal Logic, a textbook outlining legal reasoning.

    Buy It Now

    Articles

    Articles

    Dr. Margulies has also published articles concerning the post concussion syndrome and its causes; the medical evidence for and against the diagnosis of brain damage following mild head injuries; the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Daubert concerning the trial court’s role in excluding junk science from the courtroom; and the applicability of Daubert to the use of differential diagnosis and neuropsychological testing in proving claims of brain damage.