If you’re looking for apps and games that not only keep young kids occupied but also encourage them to explore, learn, and express themselves, we have some great suggestions.
The apps we cover in this guide are good learning apps not because they’re designed to make kids smarter, to drill facts, or to replace in-school learning, but because they each offer something fun, unique, and interesting for kids and adults.
As with our guides to STEM and learning toys, we didn’t test scores of apps to try to find the “best” ones. Rather, most of our favorite apps have been chosen by teachers for their students in classrooms, used by Wirecutter parents and their kids, or recommended by the experts and educators we spoke with.
SATs Have Never Been About Equity — from insidehighered.com by Pepper Stetler The history of the SAT raises questions about how we value and measure intelligence, Pepper Stetler writes.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Even though the overwhelming majority (about 80 percent) of the country’s colleges and universities will remain test optional for the Class of 2029, our national conversation about the role of standardized admissions tests in higher education focuses almost exclusively on elite colleges, whose enrollments represent only 1 percent of students. Such a myopic perspective will do little to increase access to higher education. Real change would require us to reckon with the history of standardized tests and how they have persistently disadvantaged large numbers of students, particularly students of color and students with disabilities.
One hundred years later, academic success is defined as the capacity to do well on a standardized test. It does not just predict a person’s academic ability. It defines academic ability. And those who have the most time and resources to devote to the test are the ones who will succeed.
Trend #1: Schools Are Using Career Technical Education to Increase Student Engagement
Trend #2: Districts Are Looking to Scale Up Tutoring
Trend #3: Virtual Learning Solutions Can Help Address Teacher Shortages
Understood.com | Everyone deserves to be understood Understood is the leading nonprofit empowering the 70 million people with learning and thinking differences in the United States.
An internet search for free learning resources will likely return a long list that includes some useful sites amid a sea of not-really-free and not-very-useful sites.
To help teachers more easily find the best free and freemium sites they can use in their classrooms and curricula, I’ve curated a list that describes the top free/freemium sites for learning.
In some cases, Tech & Learning has reviewed the site in detail, and those links are included so readers can find out more about how to make the best use of the online materials. In all cases, the websites below provide valuable educational tools, lessons, and ideas, and are worth exploring further.
How to Kill Student Curiosity in 5 Steps (and What to Do Instead) — from edweek.org by Olivia Odileke The unintentional missteps teachers and administrators are making
I’ve observed five major ways we’re unintentionally stifling curiosity and issue a call to action for educators, administrators, and policymakers to join the curiosity revolution:
Nvidia reported $6.12 earnings per share and $26 billion of sales for the three-month period ending April 30, shattering mean analyst forecasts of $5.60 and $24.59 billion, according to FactSet.
Nvidia’s profits and revenues skyrocketed by 628% and 268% compared to 2023’s comparable period, respectively.
This was Nvidia’s most profitable and highest sales quarter ever, topping the quarter ending this January’s record $12.3 billion net income and $22.1 billion revenue.
Driving the numerous superlatives for Nvidia’s financial growth over the last year is unsurprisingly its AI-intensive datacenter division, which raked in $22.6 billion of revenue last quarter, a 427% year-over-year increase and a whopping 20 times higher than the $1.1 billion the segment brought in in 2020.
Per ChatPGT today:
NVIDIA is a prominent technology company known for its contributions to various fields, primarily focusing on graphics processing units (GPUs) and artificial intelligence (AI).Here’s an overview of NVIDIA’s main areas of activity:
1. **Graphics Processing Units (GPUs):**
– **Consumer GPUs:** NVIDIA is famous for its GeForce series of GPUs, which are widely used in gaming and personal computing for their high performance and visual capabilities.
– **Professional GPUs:** NVIDIA’s Quadro series is designed for professional applications like 3D modeling, CAD (Computer-Aided Design), and video editing.
2. **Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning:**
– NVIDIA GPUs are extensively used in AI research and development. They provide the computational power needed for training deep learning models.
– The company offers specialized hardware for AI, such as the NVIDIA Tesla and A100 GPUs, which are used in data centers and supercomputing environments.
3. **Data Centers:**
– NVIDIA develops high-performance computing solutions for data centers, including GPU-accelerated servers and AI platforms. These products are essential for tasks like big data analytics, scientific simulations, and AI workloads.
4. **Autonomous Vehicles:**
– Through its DRIVE platform, NVIDIA provides hardware and software solutions for developing autonomous vehicles. This includes AI-based systems for perception, navigation, and decision-making.
5. **Edge Computing:**
– NVIDIA’s Jetson platform caters to edge computing, enabling AI-powered devices and applications to process data locally rather than relying on centralized data centers.
6. **Gaming and Entertainment:**
– Beyond GPUs, NVIDIA offers technologies like G-SYNC (for smoother gaming experiences) and NVIDIA GameWorks (a suite of tools for game developers).
7. **Healthcare:**
– NVIDIA’s Clara platform utilizes AI and GPU computing to advance medical imaging, genomics, and other healthcare applications.
8. **Omniverse:**
– NVIDIA Omniverse is a real-time graphics collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines. It’s designed for industries like animation, simulation, and visualization.
9. **Crypto Mining:**
– NVIDIA GPUs are also popular in the cryptocurrency mining community, although the company has developed specific products like the NVIDIA CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) to cater to this market without impacting the availability of GPUs for gamers and other users.
Overall, NVIDIA’s influence spans a broad range of industries, driven by its innovations in GPU technology and AI advancements.
Are Colleges Ready For an Online-Education World Without OPMs?— from edsurge.com by Robert Ubell (Columnist) Online Program Management companies have helped hundreds of colleges build online degree programs, but the sector is showing signs of strain.
For more than 15 years, a group of companies known as Online Program Management providers, or OPMs, have been helping colleges build online degree programs. And most of them have relied on an unusual arrangement — where the companies put up the financial backing to help colleges launch programs in exchange for a large portion of tuition revenue.
…
As a longtime administrator of online programs at colleges, I have mixed feelings about the idea of shutting down the model. And the question boils down to this: Are colleges ready for a world without OPMs?
This conversation went in a bunch of unexpected directions. And that’s what’s so fun about it. After all, podcasting is all about bringing audio back and turning learning into leisure. And the question Guy and his partner Mindy Thomas asked a while back was: Why not bring kids in on the fun? Guy shared how his studio, Tinkercast, is leveraging the medium to inspire and educate the next generation of problem solvers.
We discussed the power of audio to capture curiosities and foster imagination, how Tinkercast is doing that in and out of the classroom, and how it can help re-engage students in building needed skills at a critical time. Enjoy!
NEW: Is this America’s next big middle-class job?
28,000 more “technicians” will soon be needed to run giant machines that make tiny semiconductor chips used in phones, cars, missiles, etc.
Education Companies in the Education industry, which includes schools and universities, cut the second-most jobs last monthwith 8,092 for a total of 17,892. That is a 635% increase from the 2,435 cuts announced during the first four months of 2023.
“April is typically the time school districts are hiring and setting budgets for the next fiscal year. Certainly, there are budgetary constraints, as labor costs rise, but school systems also have a retention and recruitment issue,” said Challenger.
The lifetime rate of return for a college education differs significantly by major, but it also varies by a student’s gender and race or ethnicity, according to new peer-reviewed research published in the American Educational Research Journal.
A bachelor’s degree in general provides a roughly 9% rate of return for men, and nearly 10% for women, researchers concluded. The majors with the best returns were computer science and engineering.
Black, Hispanic and Asian college graduates had slightly higher rates of return than their White counterparts, the study found.
I recently created an AI version of myself—REID AI—and recorded a Q&A to see how this digital twin might challenge me in new ways. The video avatar is generated by Hour One, its voice was created by Eleven Labs, and its persona—the way that REID AI formulates responses—is generated from a custom chatbot built on GPT-4 that was trained on my books, speeches, podcasts and other content that I’ve produced over the last few decades. I decided to interview it to test its capability and how closely its responses match—and test—my thinking. Then, REID AI asked me some questions on AI and technology. I thought I would hate this, but I’ve actually ended up finding the whole experience interesting and thought-provoking.
From DSC: This ability to ask questions of a digital twin is very interesting when you think about it in terms of “interviewing” a historical figure. I believe character.ai provides this kind of thing, but I haven’t used it much.
Summary:
Most corporate learnings aren’t cutting it. Almost 60% of employees say they’re interested in upskilling and training, but 57% of workers also say they’re already pursuing training outside of work. The author, the former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, argues that creativity is the missing piece to make upskilling engaging and effective. From his experience, he shares four strategies to unlock creativity in trainings: 1) Encourage “What if?”, 2) respond “How else?” to challenges, 3) give people time to think by encouraging playfulness, and 4) make training a game.
Having elementary students make their own videos instead of consuming content made by someone else sounds like a highly engaging educational experience. But if you’ve ever tried to get 25 third graders to use a video editing software platform that they’ve never seen before, it can get really frustrating really fast. It’s easy for the lesson to become entirely centered around how to use the software without any subject-area content learning.
Through years of trial and error with K–6 students, I’ve developed three guiding concepts for elementary video projects so that teachers and students have a good experience.
Like actors, students are often tasked with memorization. Although education has evolved to incorporate project-based learning and guided play, there’s no getting around the necessity of knowing the multiplication tables, capital cities, and correct spelling.
The following are movement-based games that build students’ abilities to retain spelling words specifically. Ideally, these exercises support them academically as well as socially. Research shows that learning through play promotes listening, focus, empathy, and self-awareness—benefits that build students’ social and emotional learning skills.
Financial and life skills uncertainty: One-third of recent graduates don’t believe they have or are unsure they have the financial and core life skills needed to succeed in the world.
Appetite for non-academic courses: 68% of recent graduates think non-academically focused courses in formal education settings would better prepare students for the real world. This belief is especially strong among respondents that attended public schools and colleges (71%).
Automotive maintenance skills are stalled: More than any other skill, nearly one in five recent graduates say they are the least confident in handling automotive maintenance, such as changing a tire or their oil. This is followed by financial planning (17%), insurance (12%), minor home repairs (11%), cooking (11%), cleaning (8%) and organizing (8%).
Financial planning woes: A majority (79%) of recent graduates said financial planning overwhelms them the most – and of all the life skills highlighted in the survey, 29% of respondents said it negatively impacts their mental health.
Social media as a learning tool: Social media is helping fill the skills gap, with 33% of recent graduates turning to it for life skills knowledge.
From DSC: Our son would agree with many of these findings. He would like to have learned things like how to do/file his taxes, learn more about healthcare insurance, and similar real-world/highly-applicable types of knowledge. Those involved with K12 curriculum decisions, please take a serious look at this feedback and make the necessary changes/additions.
Integrating technical skills into the high school curriculum can inspire and prepare students for diverse roles. This approach is key to fostering equity and inclusivity in the job market.
By forging partnerships with community colleges and technical schools, high schools can democratize access to education and ensure students from all backgrounds have equal opportunities for success in technical fields.
High schools can expand career possibilities by providing apprenticeships as viable and lucrative alternatives to traditional four-year degrees.
Below are some items for those creatives who might be interested in telling stories, designing games, crafting audio-based experiences, composing music, developing new worlds using 3D graphics, and more.
The sounds of any game can make or break the experience for its players. Many of our favorite adventures come roaring back into our minds when we hear a familiar melody, or maybe it’s a special sound effect that reminds us of our time performing a particularly heroic feat… or the time we just caused some havoc with friends. With Lightfall sending Guardians to explore the new destination of Neomuna, there’s an entire universe hidden away within the sounds—both orchestral and diegetic—for Guardians to uncover and immerse themselves in. We recently assembled some of Destiny’s finest sound designers and composers to dive a little bit deeper into the stunning depths of Neomuna’s auditory experience.
Before diving into the interview with our incredible team, we wanted to make sure you have seen the Lightfall music documentary that went out shortly after the expansion’s release. This short video is a great introduction to how our team worked to create the music of Lightfall and is a must-see for audiophiles and Destiny fans alike.
Every game has a story to tell, a journey to take players through that — if done well — can inspire wonderful memories that last a lifetime. Unlike other storytelling mediums, the art of video games is an intricate interweaving of experiences, including psychological cues that are designed to entrance players and make them feel like they’re a part of the story. One way this is achieved is through the art of audio. And no, we aren’t just talking about the many incredible soundtracks out there, we’re talking about the oftentimes overlooked universe of audio design.
… What does an audio designer do?
“Number one? We don’t work on music. That’s a thing almost everyone thinks every audio designer does,” jokes Nyte when opening up about beginning her quest into the audio world. “That, or for a game like Destiny, people just assume we only work on weapon sounds and nothing else. Which, [Juan] Uribe does, but a lot of us don’t. There is this entire gamut of other sounds that are in-game that people don’t really notice. Some do, and that’s always cool, but audio is about all sounds coming together for a ‘whole’ audio experience.”
On the Transformation of Entertainment
What company will be the Pixar of the AI era? What talent agency will be the CAA of the AI era? How fast can the entertainment industry evolve to natively leverage AI, and what parts will be disrupted by the industry’s own ambivalence? Or are all of these questions myopic…and should we anticipate a wave of entirely new categories of entertainment?
We are starting to see material adoption of AI tools across many industries, including media and entertainment. No doubt, these tools will transform the processes behind generating content. But what entirely new genres of content might emerge? The platform shift to AI-based workflows might give rise to entirely new types of companies that transform entertainment as we know it – from actor representation, Hollywood economics, consumption devices and experiences, to the actual mediums of entertainment themselves. Let’s explore just a few of the more edgy implications:
At this moment, as a college student trying to navigate the messy, fast-developing, and varied world of generative AI, I feel more confused than ever. I think most of us can share that feeling. There’s no roadmap on how to use AI in education, and there aren’t the typical years of proof to show something works. However, this promising new tool is sitting in front of us, and we would be foolish to not use it or talk about it.
…
I’ve used it to help me understand sample code I was viewing, rather than mindlessly trying to copy what I was trying to learn from. I’ve also used it to help prepare for a debate, practicing making counterarguments to the points it came up with.
AI alone cannot teach something; there needs to be critical interaction with the responses we are given. However, this is something that is true of any form of education. I could sit in a lecture for hours a week, but if I don’t do the homework or critically engage with the material, I don’t expect to learn anything.
Survey: K-12 Students Want More Guidance on Using AI — from govtech.com by Lauraine Langreo Research from the nonprofit National 4-H Council found that most 9- to 17-year-olds have an idea of what AI is and what it can do, but most would like help from adults in learning how to use different AI tools.
“Preparing young people for the workforce of the future means ensuring that they have a solid understanding of these new technologies that are reshaping our world,” Jill Bramble, the president and CEO of the National 4-H Council, said in a press release.
Students at the University of Nottingham will be learning through a dedicated VR classroom, enabling remote viewing and teaching for students and lecturers.
Based in the university’s Engineering Science and Learning Centre (ELSC), this classroom, believed to be the first in the UK to use a dedicated VR classroom, using 40 VR headsets, 35 of which are tethered overhead to individual PCs, with five available as traditional, desk-based systems with display screens.
I admit that I was excited to see this article and I congratulate the University of Nottingham on their vision here. I hope that they can introduce more use cases and applications to provide evidence of VR’s headway.
As I look at virtual reality…
On the plus side, I’ve spoken with people who love to use their VR-based headsets for fun workouts/exercises. I’ve witnessed the sweat, so I know that’s true. And I believe there is value in having the ability to walk through museums that one can’t afford to get to. And I’m sure that the gamers have found some incredibly entertaining competitions out there. The experience of being immersed can be highly engaging. So there are some niche use cases for sure.
But on the negative side, the technologies surrounding VR haven’t progressed as much as I thought they would have by now. For example, I’m disappointed Apple’s taken so long to put a product out there, and I don’t want to invest $3500 in their new product. From the reviews and items on social media that I’ve seen, the reception is lukewarm. At the most basic level, I’m not sure people want to wear a headset for more than a few minutes.
So overall, I’d like to see more use cases and less nausea.
From DSC: As I’ve long stated on the Learning from the Living [Class]Room vision, we are heading toward a new AI-empowered learning platform — where humans play a critically important role in making this new learning ecosystem work.
Along these lines, I ran into this site out on X/Twitter. We’ll see how this unfolds, but it will be an interesting space to watch.
From DSC: This future learning platform will also focus on developing skills and competencies. Along those lines, see:
Scale for Skills-First— from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain An ed-tech giant’s ambitious moves into digital credentialing and learner records.
A Digital Canvas for Skills
Instructure was a player in the skills and credentials space before its recent acquisition of Parchment, a digital transcript company. But that $800M move made many observers wonder if Instructure can develop digital records of skills that learners, colleges, and employers might actually use broadly.
…
Ultimately, he says, the CLR approach will allow students to bring these various learning types into a coherent format for employers.
Instructure seeks a leadership role in working with other organizations to establish common standards for credentials and learner records, to help create consistency. The company collaborates closely with 1EdTech. And last month it helped launch the 1EdTech TrustEd Microcredential Coalition, which aims to increase quality and trust in digital credentials.
Post-AI Assessment Design — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman A simple, three-step guide on how to design assessments in a post-AI world
Excerpt:
Step 1: Write Inquiry-Based Objectives
Inquiry-based objectives focus not just on the acquisition of knowledge but also on the development of skills and behaviours, like critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and research skills.
They do this by requiring learners not just to recall or “describe back” concepts that are delivered via text, lecture or video. Instead, inquiry-based objectives require learners to construct their own understanding through the process of investigation, analysis and questioning.
Just for a minute, consider how education would change if the following were true –
AIs “hallucinated” less than humans
AIs could write in our own voices
AIs could accurately do math
AIs understood the unique academic (and eventually developmental) needs of each student and adapt instruction to that student
AIs could teach anything any student wanted or need to know any time of day or night
AIs could do this at a fraction of the cost of a human teacher or professor
Fall 2026 is three years away. Do you have a three year plan? Perhaps you should scrap it and write a new one (or at least realize that your current one cannot survive). If you run an academic institution in 2026 the same way you ran it in 2022, you might as well run it like you would have in 1920. If you run an academic institution in 2030 (or any year when AI surpasses human intelligence) the same way you ran it in 2022, you might as well run it like you would have in 1820. AIs will become more intelligent than us, perhaps in 10-20 years (LeCun), though there could be unanticipated breakthroughs that lower the time frame to a few years or less (Benjio); it’s just a question of when, not “if.”
On one creative use of AI — from aiandacademia.substack.com by Bryan Alexander A new practice with pedagogical possibilities
Excerpt:
Look at those material items again. The voiceover? Written by an AI and turned into audio by software. The images? Created by human prompts in Midjourney. The music is, I think, human created. And the idea came from a discussion between a human and an AI?
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How might this play out in a college or university class?
Imagine assignments which require students to craft such a video. Start from film, media studies, or computer science classes. Students work through a process:
I continue to try to imagine ways generative AI can impact teaching and learning, including learning materials like textbooks. Earlier this week I started wondering – what if, in the future, educators didn’t write textbooks at all? What if, instead, we only wrote structured collections of highly crafted prompts? Instead of reading a static textbook in a linear fashion, the learner would use the prompts to interact with a large language model.These prompts could help learners ask for things like:
overviews and in-depth explanations of specific topics in a specific sequence,
examples that the learner finds personally relevant and interesting,
interactive practice – including open-ended exercises – with immediate, corrective feedback,
the structure of the relationships between ideas and concepts,
Designed for K12 and Higher-Ed Educators & Administrators, this conference aims to provide a platform for educators, administrators, AI experts, students, parents, and EdTech leaders to discuss the impact of AI on education, address current challenges and potentials, share their perspectives and experiences, and explore innovative solutions. A special emphasis will be placed on including students’ voices in the conversation, highlighting their unique experiences and insights as the primary beneficiaries of these educational transformations.
The use of generative AI in K-12 settings is complex and still in its infancy. We need to consider how these tools can enhance student creativity, improve writing skills, and be transparent with students about how generative AI works so they can better understand its limitations. As with any new tech, our students will be exposed to it, and it is our task as educators to help them navigate this new territory as well-informed, curious explorers.
The education ministry has emphasized the need for students to understand artificial intelligence in new guidelines released Tuesday, setting out how generative AI can be integrated into schools and the precautions needed to address associated risks.
Students should comprehend the characteristics of AI, including its advantages and disadvantages, with the latter including personal information leakages and copyright infringement, before they use it, according to the guidelines. They explicitly state that passing off reports, essays or any other works produced by AI as one’s own is inappropriate.
Thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence tools like Dall-E and ChatGPT, my brother-in-law has been wrestling with low-level anxiety: Is it a good idea to steer his son down this path when AI threatens to devalue the work of creatives? Will there be a job for someone with that skill set in 10 years? He’s unsure. But instead of burying his head in the sand, he’s doing what any tech-savvy parent would do: He’s teaching his son how to use AI.
In recent months the family has picked up subscriptions to AI services. Now, in addition to drawing and sculpting and making movies and video games, my nephew is creating the monsters of his dreams with Midjourney, a generative AI tool that uses language prompts to produce images.
To bridge this knowledge gap, I decided to make a quick little dictionary of AI terms specifically tailored for educators worldwide. Initially created for my own benefit, I’ve reworked my own AI Dictionary for Educators and expanded it to help my fellow teachers embrace the advancements AI brings to education.
Merlyn Mind, an AI-powered digital assistant platform, announced the launch of a suite of large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for the education sector under an open-source license.
Designing courses in an age of AI— from teachinginhighered.com by Maria Andersen Maria Andersen shares about designing courses in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) on episode 469 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.
With generative AI, we have an incredible acceleration of change happening.
But whereas Finland’s schools are still characterized by a culture of teaching, Oodi stands as a beacon of learning — self-organizing, emergent, and overflowing with the life force of its inhabitants. .
From DSC: As the above got me to thinking about learning spaces, here’s another somewhat relevant item from Steelcase:
Addendum on 6/6/23:
Also relevant to the first item in this posting, see:
Looking for Miracles in the Wrong Places — from nataliewexler.substack.com by Natalie Wexler An “edutourist” in Finland finds the ideal school, but it isn’t a school at all.
Counterpoint/excerpt:
It sounds appealing, but any country following that route is not only likely to find itself at the bottom of the PISA heap. It’s also likely to do a profound disservice to many of its children, particularly those from less highly educated families, who depend on teachers to impart information they don’t already have and to systematically build their knowledge.
Of course it’s possible for explicit, teacher-directed instruction to be soul-crushing for students. But it certainly doesn’t have to be, and there’s no indication from Mr. X’s account that the students in the schools he visited felt their experience was oppressive. When teachers get good training—of the kind apparently provided in Finland—they know how to engage students in the content they’re teaching and guide them to think about it deeply and analytically.
That’s not oppressive. In fact, it’s the key to enabling students to reach their full potential. In that sense, it’s liberating.