using software - creating software

"Understanding procedures and processes is important, but there is a fantastic way of doing that in the modern world. It's called programming! "

Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers (on TED )
"I believe with Dewey, Montessori, and Piaget that children learn by doing and by thinking about what they do. And so the fundamental ingredients of educational innovation must be better things to do and better ways to think about oneself doing these things. I claim that computation is by far the richest known source of these ingredients."
Teching Children Thinking, Seymour Papert MIT 1970 http://www.citejournal.org/articles/v5i3seminal3.pdf
Introduction to Programming and Scratch - Harvard College
Programming concepts and skills supported in Scratch
Google - Exploring Computational Thinking
- Introduction to Python
- Mulitiplication with Fractions (using Python)
Algodoo
Gapminder

Math achievement - 8th grade vs Income per person, on Gapminder World

motivation

Önskelista till utbildningsministern från Peter Gärdenfors
http://www2.diu.se/framlar/2010/10/18/onskelista-till-utbildningsministern-fran-peter-gardenfors/
"As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance."
D. Ariely, U. Gneezy, G.Lowenstein, N.Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper No. 05-11 2005; NY Times, 20 Npov. 08

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation (on TED )

"Gamification: Using Game Design Elements in Non-Gaming Contexts"
from Gamification Research Network, http://gamification-research.org/chi2011/
Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?
"In short, some gamification projects will succeed, and others will fail. Gamification is not a universal panacea. If we are to improve the odds of gamification providing value to schools, we must carefully design gamification projects that address the real challenges of schools..."
Joey J. Lee, Jessica Hammer, Teachers College Columbia, NY
http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/files/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf