IAE Blog

Research in cognitive neuroscience is providing insights into how to improve education. The IAE Blog entry titled Brain science and cognitive neuroscience for children and teachers summarizes some of the literature and contains links both to the general literature and to IAE documents. Cognitive neuroscience can be thought of as a modern extension of brain science—a discipline that goes back well before the development of the first IQ test more than a hundred years ago.

Many educators have given careful consideration to the ways computer games are designed to motivate their users. They want to use the same ideas to motivate students. They believe one way to improve education is to develop educational games that are as inherently motivating as the best of entertainment games. Tom Chatfield has written extensively about computer games. Learn more about him at http://www.ted.com/speakers/tom_chatfield.html.

I thoroughly enjoyed Chatfield's TED talk (July, 2010). He thinks about games—what we want from them, what we get from them, and how we might use our hard-wired desire for a gamer's reward to change the way we learn.

Artificial Intelligence (also known as machine intelligence) is a somewhat misleading term.

Consider humanity's long endeavor to create for aids to their physical capabilities. We routinely use all kinds of machines such as airplane, backhoe, bicycle, car, forklift, spaceship, train, truck, and so on. We do not call these tools “artificial muscle.”

The original version of this IAE Blog entry was published 2/8/2011. Subsequently, two sections have been added to reflect more recent information. 

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