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Even though I would absolutely recommend DragonBox, it still frustrates me. The main reason is that, in order to teach algebra, they’ve had to strip out all of the “why”. The game abstracts algebra (which is already an abstraction of the real world) to the point that it’s unlikely that someone will walk away from […]
June 13, 2012
I just discovered DragonBox, an “Angry Birds”-like game that is all about solving algebraic equations. It may sound boring but they’ve done an excellent job of presenting the math in the form of a puzzle so that you don’t even know you’re solving math equations until it’s too late. Instead of “x” and “y” you […]
June 5, 2012
If we want to promote of a love of learning (and that is essentially my only goal in education) we need to promote a love of the process, not a love of the reward. I fell in love with learning again after college. My first startup was finally profitable and I had a little more […]
May 24, 2012
Have you ever seen those creative answers to tests that make their way around the Internet? If not, here are a few: These answers were of course marked incorrect, but they are all actually correct. In many ways they represent the most useful skill we can encourage in students, creativity. In the real world the […]
May 3, 2012
This may be one of the simpler ways to explain education through puzzles and The Puzzle School: A great educational puzzle enables the students to figure it out for themselves. Rather than presenting the student with information or presenting them with a problem and giving them instructions on how to solve that problem, puzzles are […]
April 23, 2012
Here’s a fun example of a puzzle that celebrates our ability to pattern match. See if you can figure out what these are. Once you get them you’ll be blown away by how effectively this puzzle leverages just simple pattern matching to create a challenging puzzle that seems obvious as soon as you’ve figured it […]
April 21, 2012
As an example of how much we love puzzles, this puzzle went viral on Facebook: I think the main reason it went so viral is the copy that says “Pre-school children solve this in 5-10 minutes, programmers in an hour…” This sets up an expectation for surprise that the puzzle effectively delivers on (the solution […]
April 18, 2012
More and more I believe that puzzles represent one of the, if not the, most effective way to approach education. More and more everyone I explain this too looks at me like I’m crazy. This makes me think that I’m either crazy and need to come to my senses (I’m really wrong) or I’m on […]
April 16, 2012
I’ve set out on a path to try and create/discover puzzles for The Puzzle School that will help people learn a myriad of subjects by making the content more engaging and the process more motivating by presenting the content in a puzzle-like format rather than teaching the content directly. Why are puzzles more effective? Well […]
April 12, 2012
I just read a fascinating article in the Atlantic, The Most Dangerous Gamer. It details the efforts, life, and thoughts of an independent game maker, Jonathon Blow. At one point Blow provides the following quote: The games I like are ones that have shown me something I wouldn’t otherwise have seen, and Marc’s creating an […]
June 13, 2012
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