How many kids would benefit from grade skipping? According to the study team at Johns Hopkins, two out of seven children test at a grade level higher than their current one—“staggeringly large numbers of students,” in their words, who might benefit from jumping ahead by grade or class. Advocates of accelerated learning point out that skipping a grade is just one way to jump ahead. In middle and high school, students can more easily move in and out of higher-level classes without missing an entire grade. And technology has eased the way for accelerated learning. Children living in remote parts of the country, for example, can move up by taking AP classes online.
Interesting how things can come full circle and we’re now re-visiting the one room schoolhouse. Arguments about grade levels come up when the date to start kindergartners is discussed, but in the grand scheme of things, no matter where you set the date, each grade level will still have students that can be practically an entire year different in age.
Summary: Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks. Source: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think Also, 26% can’t use a computer AT ALL!!!
In the past, I’ve written on ideas for gamification—using games in the classroom—but lately I’ve been reflecting on some of the bigger ideas that games open up in terms of pedagogy and the classroom experience. While we can use games as tools and perhaps build units that are gamified, we might also adopt some basic…
First off, there’s pretty firm evidence to suggest that some forms of gaming are correlated with high scores in conventional IQ tests. For example, researchers at the University of York found that adults who play online strategy games (particularly those involving team cooperation) score highly on standard intelligence tests. Source: Science Says Gamers Are Smarter Than Non-Gamers – Armchair Arcade…
What Bode was saying was this: “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.” Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more…
If society learns to value motivation as much as intelligence or leadership skills, it could be an enormous boon for children. Source: Highly motivated kids have a greater advantage in life than kids with a high IQ Intrinsic motivation that is, it isn’t about external rewards such as stickers or money.
The scourge of open offices is not a new subject for ranting. Open offices were sold to workers as a boon to collaboration — liberated from barriers, stuffed in like sardines, people would chat more and, supposedly, come up with lots of brilliant new ideas. Yet study after study has shown open offices to foster…
