KIPP Founder Sees Correlation Between EdTech and High Test Scores

In today’s RobotsLAB Blog we want to give three Cheers for one of this countries’ most successful ed-tech aware education systems! KIPP! KIPP! HOORAY! and... KIPP! KIPP! HOORAY! and one last time... KIPP! KIPP! HOORAY!

Okay, so that was a bit of a silly opening. But Hip! Hip! Hooray! is so last century and I wanted to get your attention to K-I-P-P, a definitely this-century system of over 140 schools administering to under-resourced communities across the United States. Google “KIPP” and you’ll be amazed at the number of big inner-cities with a KIPP school. (Or go directly to their website: http://www.kipp.org/ )

KIPP by the way, is an acronym which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program. To show how successful KIPP is, take a look at the record of KIPP Los Angeles, the highest performing elementary school in the LA system and one of the top ten in the entire state of California!

Hour of code initiative - are you in ?

Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), designated in 2009 by the U.S. House of Representatives as the week of Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday, recognizes the transformative role of computing and the need to bolster computer science at all educational levels. This year, 2013, Dec. 9-15, CDEdWeek has added something new, a call to help introduce more than 10 million students across the length and breadth of the United States to computer programming, called HOUR OF CODE.

Art project draws from science lesson

We often talk about STEAM adding Art to STEM. The skills needed in STEM and Arts are similar and the study of these two different fields can teach both creativity and logical thinking. Arts can be also used to attract young adults that otherwise won't be willing to learn any STEM subject. More than that in the experience described, a concrete fun and engaging application ( paiting or creating some art ) serves as a live example of why Math concepts are needed and how we can find math in dawing a line.

Technology helps us understand how interconnected the apparently disparate elements of our reality actually are. The arts and sciences, once disciplines completely at odds with each, other are swiftly becoming more and more compatible--and more fun!  

Why do I need to learn math?

An inspiring video created by WeUseMath.org team, featuring some of the brightests minds, and how they use math.

How do you get students from the worst school systems in the US to and through college

Now I know why LAS VEGAS says “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” The city isn’t really bragging, it is just embarrassed. There are probably a lot of reasons for that embarrassment, but here are the two I just discovered after watching this video:

First, they have some of the worst public schools in the entire country.

Second, some of those poor Las Vegas schools have no computers.

Some say math instruction is unnecessary ... really?

After many years as a math teacher, John Bennett has come to believe that higher math (algebra and beyond) is wasted on most students. 
Worse, he believes teaching higher math is downright destructive in many cases, bringing on "math anxiety" rather than math proficiency.
His answer is to stop teaching higher math except to those students that actually want it and to find another means of instructing students in inductive and deductive reasoning, perhaps with puzzles and games.

Educational heresy?
Perhaps, but the cogent reasons he gives in this video are based on his long experience as a math teacher and are worth a debate.
One argument in particular, that most people (99% is his estimate) will never use higher math after leaving school, bothers us greatly here at RobotsLAB.
If John Bennett is right about the numbers (and we disagree with his thesis that only math teachers, scientists and engineers will ever use higher math in the real world), then we still have too few math teachers, scientists and engineers.

To keep this nation’s competitive edge, we need more of all of the above, not less.

Many students, including this writer, came late to appreciating higher math and often wish their math teachers had bedeviled them with algebra, trig and geometry a bit longer.

Besides, just as modern technology demands more math teachers, scientists and engineers, it also provides today’s students with exciting new technological marvels like our own RobotsLAB BOX to inspire them.

The blackboard has been replaced with the tablet and the computer screen.

Instead of hard to relate to chalk scribbles, students can now experience the universe of meaning behind such once-seemingly exotic puzzles as quadratic equations and vectors by interacting with our exciting robots.