Leno gets it
From Jay Leno last night:
Scientists from the University of Padova, in Italy, announced this week that baby chicks have the ability to do basic arithmetic and can add numbers together.
It’s bad enough our public school kids can’t compete with kids in China and Japan, now we’re losing to poultry in Italy?
BBC has the story here.
Sobering Thought
Next year, Chinese Universities will graduate 7 million students.
Yes, that’s right, China will graduate more students with higher education degrees in one year than 2% of the total US population.
Playing with your kids makes games less scary
An interesting report released not long ago from the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) looks at what players (children and adults), parents, and game professionals think about games. (PDF here; summary here) Among the interesting findings (from the summary):
Non-game playing parents are concerned about the amount of time their children, particularly boys, spend playing games and would prefer that they were outside in the fresh air. However, they are more concerned about the ‘stranger-danger’ of internet chat rooms. While the violence in games surprises them and concerns some of them, they are confident that their children are well balanced enough to not be influenced by playing violent games.
Which, of course, suggests why massively multiplayer online games are so potentially troubling for parents.
Coincidentally, I had a conversation just this morning with a parent whose elementary and middle school children are playing World of Warcraft.
Originally posted 2007-09-20 16:22:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
An interesting statistic
An interesting statistic here, from a study on France’s ethnic minorities. Eighty-seven percent of French nationals are white–that is, originally of French decent. Given the problems that France (and much of Western Europe) are having with immigration and integration of different cultures, that sheds some light–in a positive way for a change–on the challenge of education in America’s diverse, multicultural society.
One way we know we are on the right track.
People are asking for epistemic games.
We hope this website provides a space where people who are interested in discussing new ways to think about education (and especially those who are interested in new technologies, games, and learning) can read and talk about some of the latest ideas about how to make education relevant to our evolving world. We decided on building the website in a blog format to encourage this kind of exchange. One of the things we constantly hear in comments (like here) and links (and here) to this website are queries about how to download, purchase, or test epistemic games. The interest is gratifying, and I wanted to take a moment to thank all of those folks who have taken the time to comment and inquire about the availability of epistemic games. I also want to take a moment to apologize to those who commented and didn’t get a prompt response.
Originally posted 2008-01-28 12:47:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
