MindShift

Flickr: Amitburst By Katrina Schwartz Advanced Placement courses have long been the standard for high achievement in high school. The classes are modeled on college courses and are meant to represent the difficulty and breadth of material that students are expected to handle when they get to college. For that reason, some colleges give in-coming … Continue reading →

Slate author Lisa Guernsey loves all the great things Minecraft has taught her girls, but also laments the day it entered her house. “I love that they are creating things, talking about their creations, and planning ahead for new projects. But I hate that the real thing—their Legos, the cardboard boxes saved for building forts—can’t … Continue reading →

Flickr:Miish By Jennie Rose In his new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author Paul Tough makes the case that persistence and grit are the biggest indicators of student success. Being resilient against failure, he says, is the fundamental quality we should be teaching kids, and he gives examples … Continue reading →

John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4′x5′ plywood board and lets his 4th-graders solve them. In this TED Talk, Hunter, who’s been named one of Time Magazine’s education activists for 2012, explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous, and always … Continue reading →

Keep kids’ brain muscles flexed with fun learning exercises. This year’s Summer Learning Series features 10 Awesome Outdoor Learning Ideas, 10 Fun Indoor Learning Projects, Four Ways to Prepare for College This Summer, and to round out the numbered lists, all these ideas. Continue reading →

Interesting premise: getting girls interested in video games will also lead them to learn how to they’re made. “The leap toward more advanced computing comes not only from playing games—today, 94 percent of girls are gaming, compared with 99 percent of boys—but in becoming curious about how they work and then beginning to tinker with … Continue reading →