At first I thought it was a teacher thing. I would ask how someone was doing and they would say, “I’m really busy.” This was often followed by a description of how little sleep they had gotten and how much grading they had done. Teachers weren’t whining. It wasn’t a “poor me” attitude. It was more of a sense of pride. As teachers, we often wear “busy” like a badge of honor, advertising to the world how out of control our careers have become.
Turing Tumble is a new type of game where players (ages 8+) build mechanical computers powered by marbles to solve logic puzzles. It’s fun, addicting, easy-to-learn, and while you’re playing, you discover how computers work. I’m all about teaching kids to code. When I was a professor at the University of Minnesota, I saw how valuable…
To be effective tinkerers, students need to achieve a state of mind in which they are primed to play and make joyful discoveries. Young kids who are playing don’t worry about making mistakes. They’re just playing, and the idea that they could make a mistake—that there’s a wrong way to play—doesn’t enter into their consciousness. It’s this freedom that…
See how families live around the world with Dollar Street Dollar Street is a project where Anna Rosling Rönnlund interview families around the world and photographed the families. This photos are used on the website to show a fictional street, where the poorest families are on one end of the street and the richer families live at…
In The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream, Tyler Cowen argues that more Americans are living comfortably and contently with what life has handed them. By sheltering ourselves from the new and different, it’s hard to see what is lost by standing still. But if you look at the data, we’re seeing…
When a neighbor asks her what she’s doing on her computer, the girl replies ‘What’s a computer’ making the not-so-subtle point that an iPad Pro is more than enough computer for many tasks. Source: Apple Posts ‘What’s a Computer’ Video Promoting the iPad Pro – MacStories I’ve tried out using an iPad as my mobile…
“A number of studies have shown that mindfulness can improve cognitive abilities, including certain verbal abilities. However, little research has examined how mindfulness can affect verbal learning and memory. Furthermore, no research has examined the mechanism by which mindfulness may improve learning and memory,” said study author Adam Lueke, an assistant teaching professor at Ball…
