{"id":19590,"date":"2013-11-09T18:51:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-09T18:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/how-a-radical-new-teaching-method-could-unleash-a\/"},"modified":"2013-11-09T18:51:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T18:51:44","slug":"how-a-radical-new-teaching-method-could-unleash-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/how-a-radical-new-teaching-method-could-unleash-a\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses<\/a><\/p>\n

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azspot<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Mitra argues that the information revolution has enabled a style of learning that wasn\u2019t possible before. The exterior of his schools will be mostly glass, so outsiders can peer in. Inside, students will gather in groups around computers and research topics that interest them. He has also recruited a group of retired British teachers who will appear occasionally on large wall screens via Skype, encouraging students to investigate their ideas\u2014a process Mitra believes best fosters learning. He calls them the Granny Cloud. \u201cThey\u2019ll be life-size, on two walls\u201d Mitra says. \u201cAnd the children can always turn them off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitra\u2019s work has roots in educational practices dating back to Socrates. Theorists from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi to Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori have argued that students should learn by playing and following their curiosity. Einstein spent a year at a Pestalozzi-inspired school in the mid-1890s, and he later credited it with giving him the freedom to begin his first thought experiments on the theory of relativity. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin similarly claim that their Montessori schooling imbued them with a spirit of independence and creativity.<\/p>\n

In recent years, researchers have begun backing up those theories with evidence. In a 2011 study, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa scanned the brain activity of 16 people sitting in front of a computer screen. The screen was blurred out except for a small, movable square through which subjects could glimpse objects laid out on a grid. Half the time, the subjects controlled the square window, allowing them to determine the pace at which they examined the objects; the rest of the time, they watched a replay of someone else moving the window. The study found that when the subjects controlled their own observations, they exhibited more coordination between the hippocampus and other parts of the brain involved in learning and posted a 23\u00a0percent improvement in their ability to remember objects. \u201cThe bottom line is, if you\u2019re not the one who\u2019s controlling your learning, you\u2019re not going to learn as well,\u201d says lead researcher Joel Voss, now a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

funny how it\u2019s still considered radical, or is it just link-baiting on Wired\u2019s part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses azspot: Mitra argues that the information revolution has enabled a style of learning that wasn\u2019t possible before. The exterior of his schools will be mostly glass, so outsiders can peer in. Inside, students will gather in groups around computers and research topics that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-55Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}