With so many kids turned off to boring, ‘No Child Left Behind’ teaching-to-the-test rote learning that’s causing high drop out rates at a time when education is what’s needed in this post industrial society (even more so once the recession is over), creative ideas like this could generate interest in learning and stimulate young minds into thinking creatively when they are the most able to do so.
Here’s more about David Merrill and Siftables. Also, check out more videos of talks at this and past years TED-fests.
Interesting, but won’t address or fix why the public schools are failing.
#1–Paddy==you’ve stumbled correctly into one issue. The other: “creative ideas like this could generate interest in learning and stimulate young minds into thinking creatively when they are the most able to do so.” is also highly suspect.
The “real” creativity here was shown/experienced by the software engineers who thought these siftables up. Most games don’t exercise creativity at all, just time wasters. All you “discover” is what the soft ware is capable of.
Kiddies would be much better off learning to read and finding subjects they like reading about==then go outside and play.
Anybody remember what “outside” is?
#2
Bingo.
Cute but the people that own scrabble might not be happy with you.
Dominoes are no longer under patent.
I did note that you didn’t actually seem to be interacting with other people playing with this so it isn’t going to do much for your social skills. That often means once the novelty is gone in about thirty minutes or less, so is the interest.
Last and not least is any of this covered by the patent trolls and how much do these toys cost?
Because of the human interaction factor I’d say stick with scrabble and dominoes.
Right on #2
Looks like a damned expensive toy to me….
The technology needed to do it – the software, actually – is amazing, but I don’t see anything else there if you’re not blinded by panaceas like “No child left behind”….
Anyone who thinks that NCLB is the reason for the drop-out rate is a idiot. The drop-out rate was bad before NCLB and continues to be bad.
Yes, the kids are bored. I listen to these kids every day, they’re always complaining about the teachers who’s teaching methods are “out-of-date”, old school.
The classes they like are the ones that allow them to submit projects electronically, use multimedia, etc. But, technology is only a partial solution.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a supporter of NCLB, but it’s not the reason, it’s more of a poor attempt to resolve a bigger problem.
Every generation thinks learning in school is boring. It doesn’t matter how you dress up the material, most teenagers will not be active participants in their own learning. At least with preschool and elementary students, they are willing to give learning a shot.
As for these siftables, they include at least two senses: touch and sight. May be sound could be incorporated into them so that hearing can also be used. These little blocks could teach language, math, art and pattern recognition with feed back. A teacher can have students construct sentences or equations. When students get things right, there is visual feedback as well as encouragement from the teacher.
I think these Siftables have a great potential.
#8–bac==did you grow up with siftables?
No, the answer is more than obvious. Its the PARENTS FAULT: too lazy to beat the kiddies at a drop of the hat making schools a refuge from their squalid homelife.
Imagine being sent home for punishment? That would motivate them.
Did you see that kid “making” his own story by holding up siftables? Not one word out of him. How that’s supposed to be stimulating young minds is beyond me. It certainly doesn’t seem to encourage speech if the projected TV image produces all the sounds for him.
What’s wrong with playing with blocks, figures and kids using their imagination and creativity to make up stories with them? Century-old mechanisms of playing and learning by playing are not suddenly outdated just because man invented the computer.
Don’t take away from our kids’ childhoods by introducing even more redundant electronic gadgets. There are already too many.
# 9 bobbo said, “#8–bac==did you grow up with siftables?”
Good point. The people who developed this high tech environment were taught “old school”.
What evidence does anyone have that the dropout rate is any different than it was 10, 20, 30, 40, years ago? When I went to high school in California you only had to go to school until you were 16. What was the dropout rate then. Actually, nobody knows. School districts have been lying about this for so long that now that we have better statistics it makes it look like we are doing worse but the truth is, we are probably doing better than in the past.
They are in a demo/beta stage on the hardware and software, and they are certainly not teachers. Thus all of your arguments about it not helping learning are facetious.
I can see some really good learning tools coming from these — word/spelling applications, spacial and color/sound apps, and collaborative writing and design. Just because you have no imagination, don’t presume that the world works the way you do guys.
This has a lot of potential, though it need polishing and some high-powered educational folks to make it into something really usable in the classroom and boardroom. It is designed as a physical interactive interface, similar to a touchpad or a mouse or keyboard — as a consequence, it should be extensible to many different applications with some thought and good design.
I”m amazed at how people like to beat dead horses instead of actually thinking ahead and seeing potential — and then they wonder why they don’t get anywhere.
No Child Left Behind testing only leads to dropouts if the tests are hard and enforced. Teaching to the test is a good thing if the tests are covering the right material.
I agree. These have a tremendous potential. Kids will learn to program them to do whatever they want them to do.
Pretty cool, but like a lot of Apple’s demos, I fail to see the practicality of much of it.
Whenever I see stuff like this, I feel that it is designed more as a sales tool to separate investors from their money than anything else. It looks cool and impressive, but what are the practical applications?
scrip–ted
give me your money
And we will make heaven
#12 – The high school dropout rate was higher in the 1950s then in later decades.
#14 – Teaching to the test isn’t good when this “test teaching” starts in kindergarten for a multiple choice test to be taken in second grade.
Goldberg, rubes.
RBG
It is not the intelligent students who make up the high dropout rate. Constant testing may bore them but it doesn’t run them off. The dropouts are primarily social misfits (thugs, delinquents) and those severely academically challenged who can’t pass and finally give up.
Are dropout rates higher than in the past? Yes, because the first group mentioned above grows larger and larger. The second group we have always had.
I learned using pencil and paper. I didn’t see a computer until high school. Computers may be a useful adjunct to real learning but mostly they are distraction.
wish I had some when my children were little….love them…want the music ones 🙂
Interesting technology. Hope they find a practical purpose for it. As for “Siftables”? I doubt we’ll ever hear of them again.
While the US has been slipping down the list of literacy, of industrialized nations. It’s been increasing its involvement in every countries problems, with military force and solutions. I don’t believe this is a coincidence. And that the goal isn’t to educate the american youth too much. Because as career professionals they’d get out of an economic draft. And maybe even the next mandated one. IOW, doctors and lawyers don’t fire rifles, GED students do. So you can bet the Dick Cheneys of the US military, don’t want kids to become too smart to to fight a war. Or at least not for the piss poor wages they’ve been doling out. Weapon systems get more expensive, but soldiers’ pay and health benefits barely keep pace with inflation. And that’s the way “they” want to keep it. Smarter kids wouldn’t stand for it. So they’re kept dumb, to keep them from wanting better. Or qualify for non-combatant jobs, or civilian ones. The Volunteer Army plan only works as long as their are plenty of low scoring students, and lack of civilian employment, to make a military “career” seem attractive, or the only recourse. The NCLB policy was about as effective as subprime loans were in strengthening the economy. Perhaps on purpose.
#24 Interesting theory. Works well for the Libs too (who control the schools via the Teachers Union). Create kids who can’t compete and need gov’t $ via welfare programs and thus want to reelect the people who feed, clothe, house & provide them with medicine…
“new human computer interface” – well, it’s hard to predict the future . . . I wonder what this will morph into in a few years. My teenage son son wants a gamer’s desktop computer instead of a car and I sure didn’t expect that!