Posts on “ quest to learn ”

Last Friday, I had the honor of being one of the judges for the the Rube Goldberg Machines Boss Level at NYC’s Quest 2to Learn School. With all of debate surrounding assessment, it was refreshing to witness a unique approach to middle school finals (or as Quest to Learn refers to them with a kid-friendly nod, “boss levels”). A “Rube Goldberg machine” is a device that’s designed to complete a simple task in a complex fashion. For this challenge, 6th-graders teamed up to create simple machines that served different purposes – one created art using paint, another lifted a tissue out of a tissue box. In order to complete their boss levels, these 6th graders had to design a solution to complete the tasks that they were assigned. Beyond the curricular content students had to apply, they were collaboratively problem solving, planning, testing, and iterating as a team in order to complete this challenge — a very accurate set of real life skills that we employ regularly at BrainPOP.  We visited six classrooms and assessed the completed projects using rubrics, providing authentic feedback to the students from a variety of professions represented by the judging panel. Upon entering each classroom, the excitement of… Read the Rest»

How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education Click the link and read the study:  How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education, by Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.  The paper examines how blogs, wikis, social media, mobile devices, and video games are impacting education.  West finds that these tools offer “new ways for participation, engagement, and collaboration to take place.” We were thrilled to see our partners at iCivics and Filament Games got a shout out, as well as our friends at Quest to Learn. It’s a thrilling time to be in education, and we’d love to hear what you’re doing with your students along these lines. How are you using blogs, social media, and video games to improve your students’ education? Please share your ideas with us!