Tag: education

Minecraft for education

This is pretty good actually.

Playing Minecraft can teach kids creative thinking, geometry and even a bit of geology, and research shows they can learn experimentation, teamwork and problem solving skills, as well. The Journal of Adolescent Research published a study comparing kids that played video games to those that didn’t. “Video game players, regardless of gender, reported higher levels of family closeness, activity involvement, attachment to school and positive mental health. Video game players also had less risky friendship networks and a more favorable self-concept.”

Maybe education can be saved?

i am amused by these articles popping up everywhere. it’s always the same: some liberal arts writer complaining how hard STEM is, taking an online class, and then ending on a hopeful note that people will learn useful skills in the future, for a change.

Ideally, Udacity and other MOOC providers will help strip away all the distractions of higher education — the brand, the price and the facilities — and remind all of us that education is about learning. In addition to putting downward pressure on student costs, it would be nice if MOOCs put upward pressure on teaching quality.

College counseling

College counseling remains garbage. apparently colleges now make you go through counseling when you get a student loan to explain to you that you will owe money at the end of your degree. it’s unclear whether they also tell you that with the job prospects of your degree, it will take 3 lifetimes to pay back the loans?

Literacy means condensing

a stunning essay on what literacy means: condensing. an art we have lost when words became cheap. even artificial constraints like 140 characters seem to primarily bring out the moronic, not the profound.

Many hours of thought went into this 11-word candidate for eternal quotability. When I was done, I was tempted to immediately unpack it in a longer essay, but then I realized that that would defeat the purpose. Maxims and aphorisms are about more than terseness in the face of expensive writing technology. They are about basic training in literacy. The aphorism above is possibly the most literate thing I have ever written. By stronger criteria I’ll get to, it might even be the only literate thing I’ve ever written, which means I’ve been illiterate until now.