ED Network
The words that could unlock your child
- Category: ED Network
- 20 Apr
- Hits: 551
As children face their final month of revision before the exam season starts, many parents are looking for the words to motivate their offspring. But could they be mistakenly praising the value of ability over effort, asks Matthew Syed.
ake a glance at these expressions of encouragement:
"You learned that so quickly, you're so smart!"
"Look at that drawing. Are you the next Picasso or what?"
"You're so brilliant - you passed that exam without really studying!"
Gaming in the Triangle gets serious
- Category: ED Network
- 20 Apr
- Hits: 571
Aten Inc.'s new free iPhone game Rhythmatical teaches students the connection between music and math.
Thomas Vaidhyan admits he can attribute much of what he’s learned about gaming to his young son.
When Vaidhyan, now the CEO of IT firm and game developer Aten Inc., first arrived in the Triangle, he realized quickly something was missing in the classroom.
“When I started getting involved with sending my son to schools here, I started researching quite a bit on that and found out very surprisingly, for me, a lot of the technologies and innovations that we’re getting incubated in our universities and developed in our industries weren’t necessarily percolating into our school systems,” he said.
To him, pulling gaming into the classroom was a no-brainer.
“It made a lot of simple common sense to use games for translating some of the abstract concepts in a very simple, easy-to-understand means to children,” he said.
That’s why his company, guided by a growing body of educational research, has been working to develop engines and applications in the rapidly expanding field of serious games, which teach and test users’ skills while they play.
Poll: Students grade high school down, college up
- Category: ED Network
- 20 Apr
- Hits: 515
Young adults say high schools are failing to give students a solid footing for the working world or strong guidance toward college, at a time when many fear graduation means tumbling into an economic black hole. Students who make it to college are happy with the education they get there, an Associated Press-Viacom poll says.
Most of the 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed gave high schools low grades for things that would ease the way to college: A majority say their school wasn't good at helping them choose a field of study, aiding them in finding the right college or vocational school or assisting them in coming up with ways to pay for more schooling.
Read more: Poll: Students grade high school down, college up
Thomas Vaidhyan: CEO, Aten Inc. Interview with Douglas Crets
- Category: ED Network
- 12 Apr
- Hits: 600
Thomas Vaidhyan, CEO, Aten, sat with me for a few minutes and talked about his company and the role he wishes to play in improving public education. Thomas is spurred on by his son’s experience in education and his experiences growing up in India.
Douglas: Can you start by telling us about some of your ambitions for making a more “intelligent” education system,” or could you explain what is an intelligent education system? How does it incorporate digital learning and interactive gaming?
Thomas Vaidhyan: One of the challenges that teachers face constantly in their classes is to understand at what level each student learns and to try to ensure as much of an individualized approach as possible to challenge the brighter students and bring up the weaker students, while catering to the average student relying largely on instincts and experience.
Read more: Thomas Vaidhyan: CEO, Aten Inc. Interview with Douglas Crets
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