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some more on Kinect and homebrew uses in education. read about a contest in progress, scroll down for video of current experiments.

Those of you who have read about the Netflix contest probably know it's fascinating, and this NYTimes blog presents a good summary. More interesting is the fact that this type of work on algorithms may have other applications, beyond telling you what other movies you might like (e.g. commercial, scientific, perhaps even educational?). Therefore, it is tangentially related with our discussion on AI :)

Three out of five of the winners of Google's "10 to the 100" contest ($2 million each) are education-oriented.

" eInstruction"

I think private companies running contests like this is really undignified.

Big money for games that help young children learn STEM

Maybe you or someone could comment on what this has in common with the Tesla project (or what is different). Would love to hear more. As a future middle school teacher, this inspires me. The contest geared toward middle school age validates my conviction that middle schoolers can and should be learning technology ... yes, even in BPS there's got to be a way.

TESLA is studying both how we can make math education more effective and what types of motivational inductions appeal to various types of students in grades 5-9. The emphasis in engagement is on building intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy in math, rather than using external motivation to "sugar-coat" math as yucky, but necessary. The intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is often ignored by game designers,and as a result kids who are momentarily engaged in STEM can actually be demotivated longer term. TESLA is trying to established a more nuanced view of how to build this type of game.

"According to DARPA, the goal of the Network Challenge was to explore how "broad-scope problems can be tackled using social networking tools." It said it aimed to look at such issues as mobilization, collaboration, and trust in diverse social networking constructs."

This sounds like an interesting competition for students to be involved in. I think this would serve as a great tool that teachers can design their lessons around in order to make the learning relevant

very interesting Kinga. To throw in another STEM-related competition, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is about to begin its second year. Open to middle school, high school, and college/graduate students, the contest challenges students to create innovative video games that promote STEM learning while being accessible to underserved populations: main website: http://www.stemchallenge.org

just the latest developments in flexible display technologies that are coming. Looks like Samsung and Nokia are already demonstrating their implementations at trade shows, and we may begin seeing these as early as 2012