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"Brainology® raises students' achievement by helping them develop a growth mindset. When students have a fixed mindset, they believe their intelligence is just fixed-they have a certain amount and that's that. This mindset makes them afraid to look dumb and curtails their learning. But when students have a growth mindset, they understand that their intelligence can be developed. Instead of worrying about how smart they are, they work hard to learn more and get smarter. Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. "

But this is expensive - about $4,500 for KS3 students to go through the programme.

Howard Rheingold 03 Feb 12 10:09:30 Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically. Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.

"Conference presenter Stephanie Hirsch says collaborative teamwork among teachers is a key to 21st-century student achievement"

The Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI) is the core underlying technical scaffolding for the badge ecosystem that supports a multitude of issuers conferring badges into the ecosystem, and many displayers or earners using badges to share their competencies and achievements. Any given learner/badge earner can earn badges across many issuers, collect them in one place tied to their identity, and then share them with various websites and audiences including career sites, social networks or personal portfolios. Mozilla is building this infrastructure including the core repositories and management interfaces (each user's Badge Backpack), as well as specifications required to push badges in (issuers) or pull them out (displayers).

"Some of these reformers do see Khan Academy as "revolutionizing" education, while others, including lots of educators, contend that Khan Academy is actually far from that. As the title of Clive Thompson's Wired article observes correctly: the rules of education are changing. But is Khan Academy the cause? Or the symptom?"

Instant comment bank! Brilliant!