[math4] Excellent article on helping children excel in learning.

[Gary C Martin]

On 5 Jun 2009, at 13:51, Karlie Robinson wrote:

> I hope a few of you can take a little time to read the article below.
>
> The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine  
> (thanks
> to Quaid for the link)
> http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
>
> Why am I suggesting it? Well it has a lot of good background on what
> motivates children to excel at life.
>
> The article discusses the common "Positive Self-Esteem" theories that,
> as the article argues, are ineffective and even cause children to do
> less with their talents as a result of receiving positive feedback.
>
> Obviously I can't do a 5 page article justice in this email, but  
> what I
> learned from the article is that it's not helpful to simply say "good
> job" when a child does well. It's more important to show that their
> success is a direct result of their effort.
>
> “When we praise children for their intelligence,” Dweck wrote in her
> study summary, “we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look
> smart, don’t risk making mistakes.” (taken from first paragraph on  
> page 2)
>
> So perhaps we should think of ways we can encourage effort in the
> activities we create? I know this may not be possible, since some  
> games
> just aren't designed to do much more than play through right now, in  
> any
> case it's probably a good thing to keep in mind as we go.

Disclaimer: I have no kids and am not a teacher; but yes to more  
praise for _effort_, and not specific successes. At least that's my  
understanding :-)

FWIW, David Van Assche raised some interesting Activity ideas at  
SugarCamp Paris and I'm interested/active in getting us to at lease  
'demo' state in the Sugar 0.86 release timeframe. The idea is to focus  
on an 'awards' mechanism/style to encourage exploration and provide  
(sometimes) unexpected rewards. Idea is that Activity authors can  
define a range of badges/medals/icons for certain behaviours/ 
accomplishment in an attempt to get students to dig deeper (mix of  
'easter eggs' and specific goals). It's mainly Activity side work (a  
demo activity to start with) but perhaps could find a home in the  
Journal (through an ability of Activity to set some private entry tag  
and for Journal to display that in a user appealing graphical form).

Even for something as hard to measure as the Write Activity, there  
could be 'awards' (hidden or hinted at) for things like "found 10 or  
more collaborators for one document", "gained at least 100 words each  
from 5 or more collaborators", "wrote more than 1,000 words", "you  
used the word entomology!". The idea is many would be hidden  
("surprise, you did something cool!") and that some initial more  
obvious and visible 'awards' would hint that others were there for  
discovery.

Regards,
--Gary

P.S. Mechanisms for 'awards' could hook into services like Moodle, the  
Journal, or via collaboration (so perhaps a shared Write session would  
show awards gained by the collaborators). Having a view to show all  
Activity Awards would also be a good driver (could be an activity, or  
ideally at some point part of Journal). The general idea for awards  
drifts in from the gaming environment, where awards are used to  
increase re-playability and tempt folks to try some other possible path.

> ~Karlie
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