Many people in the United States are not happy with our current education system. Of course, many people in other countries are not satisfied with their current education systems. I recently read the following article that discusses changes going on in the United States and China.

Coppola, Brian P. and Zhao, Yong (2/5/2012). U.S. Education in Chinese Lock Step? Bad Move. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2/28/2012 from http://chronicle.com/article/US-Education-in-Chinese/130669/.

If brief summary, the United States seems to be trying to get “back to basics.” In some ways, the US is moving in the direction of the way the Chinese education system has been. On the other hand, in many ways the Chinese government is trying to move their education in the direction of the current US education system.

Information Age Education is now publishing some books for the Kindle and Kindle-format readers that are available for computers, iPad, and other machines. See http://iae-pedia.org/IAE_Kindle_Books.

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter." (Blaise Pascal; French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and child prodigy; 1523–1662.)

I am often reminded of this quote—both by myself and by others— as I sit down at my keyboard and begin to compose a document. Sometimes it seems my fingers take over—and they do not want think precisely enough to compose well-written, short documents.

Recently my close friend and co-author Bob Albrecht shared with me examples of a category of math problem used in some elementary school math classes. (We are currently co-authoring a book on use of games to enhance math education for K-8 students.)

Add to 15: List as many ways as you can to use the numbers 1 through 9 to add up to 15, without repeating any of the numbers in a single equation. If you can, try to list all possible ways.

Example 1.  3 + 4 + 8 = 15

Click here to learn about Dave Moursund's free book on science and technology education for teaches and parents of K-8 children.

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Situated learning is one of many different learning theories. In brief summary, it says that much learning is quite specific to the situation (activity, context, culture, environment) in which it occurs. See http://www.learning-theories.com/situated-learning-theory-lave.html. Quoting from  http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html: