The Pattern of Decentralization-Centralization

There are two categories of true believers, in my mind. There are those who, for example, are building a new decentralized user-empowering financial system. And to them, history teaches us that there will always be new avenues for power to become centralized. In fact, the entire history of the computer industry was radical openness, which led to a lot of innovation, which later led to closing it down. For example, IBM released the PC specs. Everybody could build a PC. Michael Dell was a col...

 Gamification Set Collection

I recently codeveloped a game with a colleague who teaches a course in global studies to advanced high school students. We called the game Global Shuffle, and it was meant to simulate two realities of the 21st century global marketplace. First, the developed world creates certain kinds of resources, and the developing world creates different resources. Though this is true, these resources relate to each other and have a reflexive quality; resources that are available or made in the developed ...

 Technology Brings “Growth Mindset” to Schools

With funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, New York City-based Mindset Works developed SchoolKit, an app designed to strengthen academic and socialemotional success. Through animations, assessments, and classroom activities, students learn a growth mindset—the understanding that ability develops with effort. Pilot research in nine middle schools found significant increases in students’ growth mindset, which related to increases ...

 Essays Should Not Need to Argue a Point

The Age of the Essay September 2004 Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like figure. Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one. Mods The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real ess...