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the kind of software motivational tricks that make it so hard for kids to pull away from video games

ordinary people with extraordinary motivation can achieve remarkable performance through a pattern of arduous work and study called deliberate practice.

a shift from credentials to certification.

teachers will be able to encourage each student to dig deeper into some particular interest that student has—well beyond the teacher’s own knowledge.

There is one other force that will propel the transformation of education: a shift from credentials to certification. In most of the current system, the emphasis is diplomas and degrees—credentials saying a student has been sitting in class so many hours, while paying enough attention and cramming enough not to do too much worse than the other students on the exams. More and more, employers are going to want to see some proof that a potential employee has actually gained particular skills. So certificates that can credibly attest to someone’s ability to write computer code, write a decent essay, use a spreadsheet, or give a persuasive speech are going to be worth more and more. And any training program that takes the need to maintain its own credibility seriously can help students gain those skills and certify them for employers in a way that bypasses the existing educational establishment. Just witness the current popularity of “coding bootcamps.” That model can work for many other skills as well. For many students, that kind of certification of specific skills is a very attractive alternative to a two-year degree. 

This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four. A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem.

If you program a robot’s every movement, she says, it can’t adapt to anything unexpected. But when scientists build machines that are programmed to try a variety of motions and learn from mistakes, the robots become far more adaptable and skilled.