Nintendo Brain Training and Math in UK Schools

By Alvaro Fernandez | September 25, 2008

Com­put­er game boosts maths scores (BBC): — “It also found improve­ments in pupils’ con­cen­tra­tion and behav­iour.” — “The study involved more than 600 pupils in 32 schools across Scot­land using the Brain Train­ing from Dr Kawashima game on the Nin­ten­do DS every day.” — “Researchers found that while all groups had improved their scores, the group…

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Brain Teaser: Making Ends Meet

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 7, 2008 |

A quick teas­er: Imag­ine you are one of 120 peo­ple in a room. Each per­son in the room is giv­en two lengths of rope and told to chose two of his or her four rope-ends at ran­dom and to tie them togeth­er. Then each per­son is told to tie the remain­ing two rope-ends togeth­er. Then,…

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The First Step Is Failure

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 17, 2008 |

Joanne Jacobs, edu­ca­tor, blog­ger and author of Our School: The Inspir­ing Sto­ry of Two Teach­ers, One Big Idea and the Char­ter School That Beat the Odds, par­tic­i­pates today in our Author Speaks Series with an excel­lent arti­cle on how “Schools won’t improve until admin­is­tra­tors and teach­ers can admit the prob­lems, ana­lyze what’s going wrong and…

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Are Schools (Cognitively) Nutritive for Children’s Complex Thinking?

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 10, 2008 |

Today we host a very stim­u­lat­ing essay on the impor­tance of prob­lem-solv­ing and encour­ag­ing com­plex game-play­ing for chil­dren’s com­plete “cog­ni­tive nutri­tion”. Enjoy! ——————– Chil­dren’s Com­plex Think­ing – By Tom O’Brien and Chris­tine Wal­lach Pop over to your neigh­bor­hood school and vis­it some class­rooms. Is what’s hap­pen­ing cog­ni­tive­ly nutri­tive? That is, does it sat­is­fy present needs…

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