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Collaboration Our primary goal at this point is to prove or disprove the effectiveness of puzzles as a learning strategy. If you are a teacher who would like to experiment with these ideas in your classroom please contact us. We'd love to work with you. In fact, regardless of who you are, if these ideas seem promising and you'd like to help or try them out, please contact us. We're very open with our work and are interested in collaborating with anyone we can, within the constraints of our very limited resources. You can reach us at info@puzzleschool.com Our Mission The Puzzle School was started with the mission of creating educational environments that will inspire a greater love of learning. We strongly believe that learning is something people truly love to do when it is presented in a way that gives the learner a sense of progress toward their learning goals. We focus on puzzles as they provide one of the most effective ways of creating a learning environment that is interactive, giving students an immediate sense of progress as they try to "figure out" the material they are learning. The methods we use at The Puzzle School mimic the learning environments that children thrive in while learning how to walk and talk. This model can best be summed up as hypothesis and error driven learning, where students develop a hypothesis toward solving a problem and are able to test that hypothesis using feedback loops, learning from a success or failure as they move closer to a solution. This model has been used successfully in thousands of schools around the world, most notably Montessori Schools. We simply want to highlight this method and make it so that all students have access to environments where they can learn in this way. We believe this will encourage a love of learning in all students.

Australian outfit Bridge 8, who have the admirable mission of devising "creative strategies for science and society," and animator James Hutson have created six fantastic two-minute animations on various aspects of critical thinking, aimed at kids ages 8 to 10 but also designed to resonate with grown-ups. Inspired by the animation style of the 1950s, most recognizably Saul Bass, the films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government. The animations - which are part Minute Physics, part The Dot and the Line, part 60-Second Adventures in Thought - are released under a Creative Commons license and cover the basics of logic and the scientific method, as well as specific psychological pitfalls like confirmation bias and Gambler's Fallacy.

this is so much better than glyfos. Destiny Quest® is a K-12 student-friendly searching interface included with Destiny Library Manager, the comprehensive, award-winning K-12 library automation solution.Online Searching for the K-12 Digital NativeWhen was the last time your students called library software 'sweet'? That's what they say about Destiny Quest, the first library search interface designed to appeal to today's digital native students. Destiny Quest engages students in a visually appealing and highly graphic online searching experience, leveraging Destiny's proven K-12 research strategies to help them easily locate and identify appropriate resources. Students can apply the web-savvy skills they already know and expand the skills they need to thrive as 21st century learners.With Destiny Quest, students can see the top 10 books and new arrival titles highlighted on the Destiny Quest homepage, search the library collection, browse the scrolling carousel of bookshelves, view book covers, and link to title details from any computer with an Internet connection. Visually appealing, customizable themes make searching the library a comfortable and familiar experience for today's plugged-in generation.Students become more active learners using Destiny Quest's engaging interface, which invites them to explore and dig deeper through "You May Also Like" automatic suggestions. They can refine their search results by author, subject, series and more, and find the best titles for their interests or reading levels and save their favorites for easy retrieval with the easy drag and drop functionality of 'My List'. Younger students or non-English speakers can easily find materials using a picture-based icon search option.

Thus, the competition places a particular emphasis on higher order thinking skills, problem solving and creativity. Students working collaboratively in teams are highly stimulated by competing in tasks that encompass engineering, mathematics, code breaking, games of strategy, art and poetry, Science, English and forensic sleuthing.

"The educators at Cochrane Collegiate Academy, in Charlotte, North Carolina, have developed an instructional model called Interactive Learning (IL). It is a collection of their ten best practices, which they call their non-negotiables, and teachers must implement them in every lesson, every day. "