An Engineer at 3-years-old?

Surely, just because Andrew's such a clever three-year-old playing
with his Legos, doesn't mean he's going to grow up to be an engineer. After all his Dad played with Legos too, and he's not an engineer.

But wait. Seems elementary schools across the country are
teaching engineering . . . with help.

City College of New York (CUNY) promotes a program to teach
kindergartners engineering concepts. "Stuff that Works" only costs $17 per teacher to implement. CUNY also has a program to teach
engineering to Girl Scouts. And City College of New York isn't alone.

The Boston Museum of Science with funding from Intel charges $6,000 to fully equip an entire elementary school for Engineering is Elementary. Texas Instruments funds the Infinity Project developed by Southern Methodist University for high school students.

Once you move into middle school and high school, the price goes up. Project Lead the Way, partnering with Lockheed Martin, charges high schools $75,000 for a four-year program to teach kids engineering principles. 2,200 schools have found the money to take advantage
of this opportunity.

Even Lego's doing it's share of engineering outreach. Sponsored by Tufts University and paid for by NASA, LegoVIEW is designed to teach engineering concepts K-12. Using software and those little plastic bricks, kindergartners in Medford, Massachusetts built their own town with automated bus stops.

Why? Lockheed, Texas Instruments, and Intel care about the severe shortage of engineers. Fewer and fewer American kids are going on to graduate school in engineering.

And schools care about test scores in math and science. Remember those Finnish kids from a few blog posts ago? Maybe having working scientists help write the curriculum and boosting the work with corporate money will help save U.S. kids from being at the bottom of the heap in science and math.

We don't know yet. The research isn't in. It's too early in this experiment to see if test scores are higher for kids who take these classes. Much less to know if a corporate-funded K-12 engineering curriculum increases the number of engineers. But given our current track record, these programs are sure worth a try.

I'm not alone here. Massachusetts requires engineering content in grades K-12. New Hampshire and New Jersey followed suit. And Texas is considering it, as corporate engineering groups lobby school boards and state legislatures. Even the U.S. Department of Education agrees and will include technology and engineering concepts in national assesment tests in 2009.

However, in order for any engineering, science, or math projects to work, we need to focus on brain-based learning with programs like Brain Gym to help right-brain dominant kids use the left-side of their brain. I sure don't know any right-brain dominant engineers!

Hmm. Wonder if the shortage of engineers and low math and science test scores are related to the ever-increasing number of right-brain dominant children?

Who knows? Given his head start with Legos, maybe in two years, Andrew will be in the advanced placement kindergarten engineering class after all.

MaryJo

P.S. Wondering if your child is right-brain or left-brain dominant? They can take the kids' brain dominance test Want to know about your class? All the kids can take the quiz. And you can take the grown-up version

Paper Dolls: A Waste of Time or a Brain Booster?

Yesterday I was going to blog about what to tell our kids about awful things in the news when they ask (of course, we hope they won't ask): Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace, Britney's 14-year-old sister's pregnancy, Lil' Romeo's USC basketball scholarship based on fame instead of ball-paying talent and need.

And don't think kids don't ask. The "New York Times," which couldn't get enough of the Spitzer scandal, asked parents what they said when their kids asked why the Governor of New York resigned. That's where I got the idea for the bad news blog post in the first place.

O.K. so I didn't write the post yesterday. I didn't write it again today. And I love posting to my blog. So what gives? Still procrastinating, and feeling a bit guilty, I stumbled onto online paper dolls which inspired blogging.

Obviously, time to lighten up.

I kid you not, two hours later I had chosen clothes for Holly Hobby (she talks when you choose her clothes: "Ooh, cool outfit"), Disney princess dolls, a boy basketball player (not much fun since you don't get to choose earrings, purses, and tiaras.) little girl dolls, older girl dolls and my favorite "Catwalk Dress Up 3" where you get to choose skin color, lipstick, and the latest ridiculous fashions from Paris.

Now I have always loved paper dolls. I still have some paper dolls my older cousin Peggy made for me. And doing paper dolls with the granddaughters? Talk about fun!

Is having fun a brain booster? Absolutely. Add laughing to the fun and you and your kids start producing the so-called good-feeling endorphins like crazy. It's a no brainer: all of us learn faster and more effectively when we're happy.

So the next time your kids are having fun, giggling, laughing uproariously, hooting at a silly knock-knock joke, rest assured that it's good for their brains. Laugh with 'em. It's good for you too.

MaryJo

P.S. Yes, I know paper dolls also fall into those boring categories like "improves eye-hand coordination," "fosters creativity," "encourages imagination."

P.P.S. And I'm gearing up for the "They've All Got It: Managing ADHD" telechat. It's going to be fun too. Lots of non-drug alternatives for ADD and a bit of Brain Gym too. Stay tuned for more details and mark April 1 on your calendar. (No, it's not an early April Fools joke.)

Maybe No Child Left Behind isn't a Failure After All

Don't want to forget to remind you that I've got a spot open for you in tonight's Brain Gym Basics TeleChat. Learn to lower stress, stop procastinating, and stay on track.

Was looking for a location for the June, Colorado Springs, Brain Gym class this morning and thought of my friend Debbie. Wondered if her school might be interested in playing host.

Since two teachers come free in exchange for the room, figured it could be a win/win. When her school email bounced, I gave her a ring.

Now she's working with Success for All, a reading and math program used in more than 1,500 schools around the country. And was delighted to find that a teacher she's working with in a North Dakota classroom was doing Brain Gym with the kids too.

The program's not cheap, 75,000 to initiate and $10,000 a year to keep it going. But what a success it's been. Principals at Title I schools have said it's worth every penny. Because Success for All meets the Federal requirements of Reading First (a requirement of No Child Left Behind), grant funding is available.

The Seattle Times reports that it's common to find students reading all the time and loving it! And school officials are loving it too since they've seen a boost in test scores.

At Minnie H. School in North Dakota, only 23 percent of the kids read at grade level. After implementing Success for All, one amazed 1st grade teacher reported an entire class reading at grade level.

In the Bronx, PS 65 became the 5th most improved school in NYC after using both reading component and Math Wings of this remarkable program.

Success for All backs up their claim with the numbers, including state by state by state statistics.

To improve reading, Success for All includes programs emphasizing intense and immediate intervention, language development, family literacy, helping struggling readers, building phonics skills and reading comprehension. And works to coordinate family, community, and school resources.

What makes Success for All work? It's teacher and whole school training and committment plus persistence. Same thing that makes Brain Gym work.

When a teacher or a parent tells me Brain Gym doesn't work, I ask "How often do you do Brain Gym with the kids?" Invariably the answer is "Oh, we tried it a couple of times."

A couple of times just doesn't do it--whether it's Success for All or Brain Gym. And I vote for using both programs! Success for All is the curriculum, the motivation, the involvement. Brain Gym gets the brain moving to work efficiently and quickly.

With all the negative press about No Child Left Behind--even in this blog--it's exciting to report on the success of Success for All. I love being wrong when something that helps kids works after all--if even just some of the time.

MaryJo

Dungeons and Dragons on the Living Room Floor

Now he plays kiddie computer games with his children. But back in the 80s, Stephen played Dungeons and Dragons, aka D & D, on the floor at our house in Eugene.

D & D required rule books (which required proficiency in reading) , little pewter figures, pencil and paper, and intense concentration.

Stephen's friend Ian would come down from Portland for the weekend. The boys would stay up all night playing, just stopping long enough for pancakes in the morning. Although D & D players have been called "nerds," "extreme geeks," and even "social outcasts," Stephen and Ian certainly didn't fit that description.

When Ian wasn't around and Stephen wasn't riding his bike, he read J.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," over and over. Three times? Maybe four times? Delighting in telling the minute details of the adventures of the Middle Earth creatures.

"Mom, I gotta tell you what happened. See, it all started when Bilbo Baggins . . . but Frodo . . . except that Gandalf . . ."

I hadn't thought about D & D for years until I read that Gary Gygax, the game's creator, died last week. The game reached such popularity that well-meaning grown-ups debated its grand virtues--fosters creativity, imagination, critical thinking, verbal skills, and team building.

Or argued its terrible faults--too violent, doesn't prepare young people for the "real" world. Doesn't teach the difference between fantasy and reality. Promotes devil worship. Encourages kids to kill themselves. Two D & D enthusiasts did commit suicide. Their Mom denied any connection whatsoever to Dungeons and Dragons, but "60 minutes" picked up the story anyway.

And "aren't you afraid your kid'll grow up to be a serial killer if he plays too much D & D"? No, not really.

Instead of creating axe murderers, our love affair with wizards and magic had just begun. We went from D & D to fantasy video games with dizzying visual effects. From "Lord of the Rings" to Harry Potter, with a delicious six books to the series, four blockbuster movies, games, and fan clubs galore. Now adults are playing and reading too.

In an op/ed piece for the Boston Globe, Ethan Gilsdorf, who spent his teen years playing Dungeons and Dragons, defends the game: "The game won't let you hide behind avatars and computer screens, in lonely bedrooms behind closed doors." (However, online versions of D & D do exist, along with a now defunct TV show.)

And Gygax defined role-playing games as group, cooperative experience. "There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character." Although some pundits dub Gygax as the father of modern video games which go far beyond simply playing a character's role. And nothing high tech about Dungeons and Dragons in the 80s.

I'm not much for that tired old nostalgia, "Well when I was a girl, we . . . ," but I'll take Stephen sprawled out on the living room floor playing Dungeons and Dragons with Ian any day versus today's mind-numbing, addictive, and even more violent fantasy video games.

I rate Dungeons and Dragons and any game requiring imagination and creativity as Brain Boosters.

And Harry Potter rocks! I've read all six but have to admit once Bilbo Baggins left home, I never quite made it through "Lord of the Rings."

So let me know what games your kids play that foster creativity and engage imagination. Let's get a list going.

MaryJo

P.S. Well, I finally listened myself to the free 60-minute Introduction to Brain Gym audio. Yes, you do get 17 pages of great handouts with the audio, some good Brain Gym tips, and an explanation of what Brain Gym's all about.

But frankly I think yours truly needs to re-record it. Needs an update. Skip all that nonsense in the beginning. Good task for next week.

In the meantime, there's still time for you to sign up for Brain Gym Basics. Starts Tuesday, March 11 and jam packed with fabulous Brain Gym tools you can use everyday. No traveling, no complicated webinar stuff, just a telephone.

Whaddya Mean They Can't Find New York?

A couple days ago we had a discussion about driving to Fort Worth, Texas from our house in Marble, located in the mountains of Western Colorado.

A guy Eric works with suggested going over to Utah and then to Texas.

Huh? Drive west to go east. Only airplane pilots do that! Not long ago, our son was routed to Cleveland from Denver by way of Phoenix!

Somebody else came up with going south into New Mexico and then east. But thanks to snow and avalanche danger, the mountain passes south from Marble were closed.

I suggested Denver and across Kansas on I-70 to Wichita and then south through Oklahoma into Texas. Now I don't know for sure if that's really the most efficient, but MapQuest agreed with me.

We may have figured out how to drive to Texas, but unhappily kids don't seem to know much geography. A 2002 National Geographic study discovered that only half of the young people polled between ages 18-24 could find New York on a map. Six out of ten couldn't find Iraq.

And eleven percent couldn't find the U.S. on a map!

However, geography's having a real come back. Traveler IQ Challenge boasts 1.6 million games installed on FaceBook. Although the Challenge starts out with something simple like "Find London," it progresses to more difficult places like Ashkabat, Turkmenistan.

Talk about a Brain Booster!
Especially since the game
bases your score
on the speed with
which you found Ashkabat.

To help kids advance to Traveler
IQ Challenge, start them out
with fun online geography games

National Geographic also has games for kids Schools can register to take part in the National Geographic's GeoBee And kids
can play GeoBee even if their school isn't registered. Of course
you can play too.

MaryJo

P.S. Have you listened yet to the free 60-minute Introduction to Brain Gym? Downloaded the free 17-page handout complete with a personal action plan? What're you waiting for?

Lots of Ways for Kids to be Smart but Does It Help

All kids are smart. We call it individual differences.

Just because Jason doesn’t read very well, doesn’t mean he’s dumb. After all, he’s really good in art. His drawings are exceptional for his age.

Susan’s flunking her academic classes but she’s great on the girls varsity softball team. So, as the reasoning goes, Jason and Susan are smart.

In good classrooms, teachers honor these differences. In the best classrooms, teachers are encouraged to teach to these differences. And it’s not easy.

This year we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of Howard Gardner’s groundbreaking book. “Frames of Mind.” Gardner, a developmental psychologist at Harvard, identified seven intelligences in his book, “Frames of Mind.” Our standard academic classes including literature and writing, math and science, music, art, and P.E. correspond to the first five intelligences.

In Gardner’s terms, the intelligences include linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial (art), and bodily-kinesthetic. The other two include interpersonal (I understand you) and intrapersonal (I understand myself). Gardner later added more intelligences to his list.

Gardner’s work eventually made its way into the classroom as teachers developed Multiple Intelligences curriculum for K-12 with books like Thomas Armstrong's Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom and Kristen Nicholson-Nelson's Developing Students' Multiple Intelligences.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, we need to honor all children and their individual strengths.

But does labeling a child “bodily-kinesthetic” or “spatial” help this youngster get on in the world? Once she’s got that label, does she assume she’ll never be able to develop linguistic or logical-mathematical abilities?

What if Sarah wants to go to an elite college. She won’t make it if
she doesn’t have good grades in all subjects, participates in sports,
plays in the school orchestra, and includes extracurricular activities,
esp. community service.

That means she needs proficiency in all the intelligences. In other words, well-rounded.

And what of overlapping intelligences? If Sarah chooses to major in music, she’s probably excellent in math. And she wrote a terrific application essay to get into that elite college. So, she’s got great language skills too.

If we’ve taught to a child’s individual difference, do we help them get on in life? How does a non-reader find the driver’s license bureau in the phone book? How does an artist figure out the best ways to invest their earnings from their sculpture?

So how can we honor all children while encouraging proficiency in all intelligences?
Brain-based learning, whole-brain learning, movement-based learning, and Brain Gym offer answers. Kids really can become proficient in more than one intelligence because the brain isn’t hard-wired!

Want to check your intelligence? Take this fun quiz—just don’t take it too seriously.

Tomorrow we’ll look at how we get these intelligences. (It’s not all inborn, by the way.)

MaryJo

P.S. Discover how Brain Gym can help you (not just your kids) lower stress and focus on a difficult task you’ve been putting off. Download the handouts and listen to the free audio. Then sign up for Brain Gym Basics. Starts March 11. All you need is a phone to learn enough Brain Gym to see immediate results at home and in the classroom.

More on Those Finnish Kids and Their Teachers

Not surprisingly, the "Finnish kids beating everybody else in test scores" is all over the internet and featured in "Time" magazine. Just Google something like "Finish Kids the Smartest."

So what makes Finnish teachers different?

Finland (and other high scoring countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, Hong King, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan) pour resources into teacher training, set high standards for teaching, and respect teaching as a profession. And reward teachers by paying them salaries similar to competing occupations.

What a concept!

In Finland the best high school students are recruited for graduate-level teacher-preparation traing, paid by the government. Teachers learn to create a curriculum based on research, inquiry, and critical thinking. They study how to teach to different abilities and learning styles.

Every new teacher gets an experienced teacher as mentor. Every teacher receives 100 hours of professional devleopment and a whopping 20 hours a week to collaborate and learn from each other.

In short, teachers are given the time and resources to become the best teachers they can be.

So it's not that Finnish students are smarter. It's not that Finnish teachers are smarter. Finland as a country and a culture simply supports great teaching at all levels. Spends money for great teaching and requires, by U.S. standards, extraordinary standards. It's paid off.

In addition, although nobody but this blogger seems to have noted the connection, Finland also has world class music education programs for everyone.

As educators and folks from the U.S. Department of Education travel to Finland to discover the secrets behind high scores in science and math, U.S. music educators extoll the virtues of Finland's music education program.

And music educators know that learning music increases learning in all other areas--math, reading, science. Stay tuned as we'll jump into the music equals learning equation in future blog posts. I'll even show you some of the research

In the meantime, please don't let your school board dump the music program. Won't help anybody's test score!

MaryJo

P.S. Not sure why you should sign up for the next Brain Gym Basics Telechat starting March 11? Want more information? Listen to the audio and learn some Brain Gym you can use yourself--and with kids too.

So What do the Finns know about Brain Boosters?

Finnish teens waste time online in chat rooms and downloading music. They rebel by dying their hair black. No different than the teens I know.

So why do Finnish kids score higher in science and math than U.S. kids do? Way higher. The US isn't even in the top ten!

Now it certainly isn't because our kids are dumb! They're just as smart as Finnish kids. Or any other kids who are scoring higher in math and science.

Fanny Salo, whose picture here appeared in the "Wall Street Journal," attends Norsii School in Jyvaskyla. She loves to shop for clothes, read "Gossip Girl" books, and watch "Desparate Housewives" on TV. Nothing out of sync here.

They don't do more homework. They don't start reading at 3. In fact, they don't start school till age 7--a year later than most U.S. kids. TV and video games aren't banned.

But kids play more. And kids read more. When a baby is born, her parents get a gift pack that includes a child's picture book. Libraries are in shopping malls. If you can't get to the mall, a book bus will come to your remote area.

And kids become independent at an earlier age. The Finns don't hover over their children. Kids walk to school in near darkness. Pick their own lunch. No internet filter in the school library.

And kids are taught at the youngest age possible to put on their own skates and skiis. Obviously this indicates that kids are outdoors playing and moving, even in cold winter weather.

What's the message for us? Kids need more playing, reading, and moving. And we need to foster more independence.

Tomorrow: Find out what the Finnish schools are like and how teachers teach.

MaryJo

P.S. Of course, Brain Gym involves playing and moving and certainly helps with making reading easier. Learn a couple of Brain Gym exercises that you can use immediately. Be sure to download the 17-page handout first.

One Laptop per Child: A Brain Booster for Poor Kids

Some days seems it feels like I could just do blog posts all day long. Top of my list are several blogs about the importance of music for brain boosting including Rock Band, and Guitar Heroes

And I’ve got great info on grading neighborhood schools. And a new game for geography. And how MySpace is moving forward to protect your kids from sexual predators.

Of course, we have to see why kids in Finland are the smartest in the world. The Wall Street Journal just published the latest test scores. The U.S. rank? Not good news! What do the Finns know about brain-based-learning that we don’t? The picture of these Finnish teens sure doesn't tell us much?

Have a couple of posts planned on best sites for information about the brain that are learning oriented, fun, and not too technical or theoretical.

And there’s always more on reading. And, of course, Brain Gym Whoa. Slow down. One post a day is enough!

After all I need to finish my Brain Boosters ebook, do the next Brain Gym Basics TeleChat on March 11, and get the new ADHD TeleChat that’s coming up in April ready to roll. (I’m so far behind on that project, I can’t even give you a link.)

But today it’s all about One Laptop per Child founded by Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor. His plan was—and despite enormous hurdles—and still is to provide his open source XO laptop to 2 billion children in poor and remote parts of the world.

Because most of Negroponte’s kids don’t have electricity at home or school, the XO is hand cranked or recharged through a solar panel and uses less than two watts of power. In comparison, your laptop uses 35-40 watts of power. The sturdy XO costs $187 right now. Negroponte’s goal is getting it down to $100 and then even lower.

And it’s not just about passing out laptops. This MIT prof has a terrific view of education. You can Listen to him For starters, because his laptop is open source, means the kids can suggest changes, can add to the software, can be involved. It’s all about sharing and collaboration.

One child suggested getting rid of the all caps key. Negroponte complied. How many times have you accidentally hit the caps lock key? The child was right. It’s a nuisance.

The XO is even being used in some New York City schools where kids are too poor to have a computer at home.

Some precocious kids in countries all over the world (including Rwanda, Mongolia, Nigeria, Costa Rica, Brazil, Afghanistan, to name just a few) are writing html code and improving on the hardware.

They’re sharing their creations on the One Laptop per Child wiki The wiki, translated in more than 17 languages, has 5, 377 pages and 2,000 contributor files.

Negroponte argues fiercely that it’s not a laptop project, it’s an education project. He emphasizes learning by doing, peer-to-peer teaching, exploring, and expressing themselves.

“In one school, 100 percent more kids showed up for 1st grade the next year. They were not coming from the neighboring village. No. What happened is that the six-year-olds in school told those who were not that school is cool.”

And the teachers support Negroponte’s view:

“Pupils go even beyond what I can teach in the class. It's a very interesting thing to use. I personally have a better idea about teaching... We discovered that giving them time to discover something and to do it in their own way, they feel more happy and they are so excited in using it that, ‘Yes, I discovered it! Yes, I can get it!! Yes, I can do this on my own!!!’ Teaching is getting more interesting and less stressful.” — Mr. O., Galadima School, Abuja, Nigeria

What do the kids think?

“I use my computer very carefully so that it will not spoil. I use it to type, I use it to write, I use it to draw, I use it to play games... I'm using my computer at home to type assignments.”

Negroponte’s predicting 2-3 million computers distributed in 2008. Read more of the distribution specifics and challenges.

Meanwhile, let’s all contribute to this fabulous project $200 will pay for the laptop and delivery. Keep watching. It won’t be long before $200 will pay for two laptops.

I just emailed to find out if a class or school can sponsor XO laptops, get pictures of the kids who receive them, email back and forth, and so forth. I’ll let you know when I hear back. I hope so. What a wonderful classroom project.

Of course there’s been lots of criticism. So if you’re a “both sides of the argument” person, you can read what some people don’t like. Scroll down to criticism. Kermit Pattison’s article “No Child Left Offline” talks about the corporate backlash and has a great interview with Negroponte.

MaryJo