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ROBOTSLAB BOX IS A FINALIST FOR THE GAME CHANGERS AWARDS

UPDATE: OCt. 23rd  - RobotsLAB BOX is the winner of the "Game Changer" Award 

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IMPROVING EDUCATION: GREAT MINDS ARE MADE! NOT BORN!

Growth Mindset” isn’t a new idea. It was formulated almost thirty years ago by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck.
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AMERICAN EDUCATION: DOES OUR PRESENT SYSTEM ENDANGER OUR FUTURE PROSPERITY?

Lew Dobbs, for those of you that might not know, is the host of Lou Dobbs Tonight, a prime time program on the Fox Business Network. 
Endangering Prosperiy: A global view of the American school
In this interesting video Dobbs discusses a recent book by Eric Hanushek titled Endangering Prosperiy: A global view of the American school with the author himself.
As an interviewer Lou Dobbs tends to be more laid back than most of his fellow hosts on the Fox Network, but he did seem upset by two figures author Hanushek claimed showed the inadequacy of our public schools:
  • one, students in the US were rated 32nd of 65 nations in math proficiency;
  • two, US students ranked 17th in reading proficiency worldwide.
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AWARD-WINNING ROBOTICS CLUB DEMANDS ACTION

According to Jeff Gelles, Philadelphia Inquirer Business Columnist, the Philadelphia public schools are short on money.
‘Imperiled’ is the word used to describe public schools in the area.
Worse, even the money that is there is being distributed unfairly as evidenced by the grade of “D” the Education Law Center's National Report Card on school-funding fairness gave the state of Pennsylvania for how it distributes school funds.
Students rightly feel unfairly treated by the state. 
Student’s at Philadelphia’s Central High School are particularly fed up with this seeming lack of interest by politicians in the school’s decay.
Student’s on physics teacher Daniel Ueda’s award winning robotics team wrote up a petition detailing some of the ways the schools were being short changed and what they thought needed to be done to make things right.
Interested parties are asked to sign this petition.  
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ROBOTS HELP TEACHERS FIND EACH STUDENT'S SWEET SPOT OF LEARNING

Have you ever wondered why students don’t like school?
Most of us haven’t given the question much thought; disliking school just seemed to come naturally.
Personally I disliked sitting in one place for such a long time.
But maybe the author of "Why Don’t Students Like School", cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, is on to something with his “sweet spot.”
 
“The problem,” for each student, Willingham says referring to teaching in general,  “must be easy enough to be solved yet difficult enough to take some mental effort,”  He calls this the “sweet spot” of difficulty.
Goldilocks would have understood: the bed couldn’t be too hard or two soft (easy); like all of us she was looking for “just right!”
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PATHWAYS TO ICT EDUCATION AND CAREERS USING ROBOTICS IN CLASSROOMS

Why introducing robotics for computer science education?
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ROBOTS: THE NEWEST MILESTONE IN SCIENCE LEARNING

In an online edition of Scientific American,  Michael Wysession, an earth and planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote, “Though we live in a thoroughly modern scientific world, our science education structure is now 120 years old.”
That sounds like a criticism, but it’s really just a statement of fact.  
froebel blocks
Mr. Wysession breaks the last 120 years of science education into four separate eras or milestones.
 
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THE NEW ERA OF TOY ROBOTICS

The online edition of the Wall Street Journal is where the article was found.
“IN OLDEN TIMES…” is how the article begins.
Nostalgia is what I felt.
 
 
Eric Sofge, author of The New Era of Toy Robotics, hit the proverbial ‘nail on the head’ with that opening.
In olden times young engineers like myself had to build robots out of Tinkertoys (has anyone seen any of those lately?) or erector sets.
Or maybe if you were lucky and your parents hadn’t cleaned the garage lately, you could cobble one together with some duct tape, wire and sheet metal.
 In any case it was pretty much like Sofge says, “In Olden Times, the most an ambitious young tinkerer could hope for...was to be able to stick one funny-shaped piece onto another.”
And then all you had in front of you was the skeletal facade of a robot; you could roll it around the floor with your hands--and not much else.
But instead of whining about being too old, I’m thrilled to find that these new toys are as fun for us old guys as for young ones!  
Lego NXT EV3
 
 
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6 TECH TOOLS THAT BOOST TEACHER-PARENT COMMUNICATION

Communicating effectively with parents is one of the most trying things a teacher will do.  
Some parents are working several jobs and are hard to find;  some don’t speak the teacher’s language, and truth to tell it, some parents just don’t want to be bothered.  
Teachers too have things to do, grading papers, planning lessons; some become discouraged when their communications with parents have been ignored.
Fortunately in today’s educational digital universe there are several means available to help teachers get their thoughts across to parents without going door to door or making endless phone calls.
Educator Jeff Knutson discusses several of these means in a blog post on Graphite.Org called 
 
weebly logo
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IF MASSACHUSETTS WAS A COUNTRY

I ran into an interesting article by Alan Singer, a Hofstra University social studies educator.
The article is openly contemptuous of what he terms the "self-proclaimed educational ‘reform’ movement" which in his opinion "is busy packaging Common Core standards with high-stakes assessment, scripted curriculum, packaged test prep, the de-professionalism of teachers and the privatization of school support services".
 
Professor Singer believes that the process, he so deplores, is driven in part by a recent book by Amanda Ripley titled The Smartest Kids in The World: And How They Got That Way, kids which she apparently discovered in Finland, South Korea and Poland.  
These kids did particularly well on international exams when compared to American kids.
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