solutuon to education crisis

solution to education crisis – Part 2

Part II

What is the Leapfrog Project?

It is a quest to establish a framework for a broad coalition of educators, technicians, and scientists to design an optimal teaching/ learning process appropriate for the needs of the 21^st century. The goal is to integrate technology and recent discoveries about how people learn into a new way of formatting subject presentations that harnesses the dynamics of human nature to make learning fun, inter-active and relevant. It proposes using technology to enable teachers (and “smart” text books) to customize presentation of material around the student’s perspective and thus fundamentally change the dynamics of how students participate in the learning process. Perhaps most controversial, it redefines the purpose of education to be the teaching of all the skills necessary for students to become happy, responsible, self-sufficient adults. Literacy remains the top priority but it is supplemented with a new focus on courses designed to teach the social/emotional skills needed to be happy, the practical skills needed for success in personal and business life, and the maturity needed for responsible behavior. My school has an 18 year track record proving that “fun learning” greatly shrinks the time required to teach traditional academics and, by so doing, makes time available for these new curriculum priorities.

I propose major changes in six fundamental areas:

Educational Philosophy – using a child centered model with a priority on personal growth.
Curriculum Content – redefining our goals & synchronizing course material accordingly.
Motivational Formatting – harnessing human nature to motivate students to want to learn.
Teaching Methodology – changing the fundamentals of how teachers interact with students.
Textbooks Design – proposing software driven, inter-active, smart textbooks.
Learning Habitats – integrating technology into school/classroom design & equipment.

The vast majority of “drop outs” quit because they feel school is boring and irrelevant. The solution is a detailed analyses of what motivates each age group and then formatting “teaching targets” around presentations that are linked to the things students care about. With younger children this entails linking teaching targets to play and entertainment behavior. If learning can be made more fun than traditional play/entertainment, then we can harness the intrinsic enthusiasm that these activities engender and expand the learning process outside the school environment. The most important thing is that it achieves success for every student. Sesame Street successfully demonstrated both these dynamics 40 years ago when it linked an emerging technology (television) to “fun learning” and had national impact. The Leapfrog Project extrapolates the principles pioneered by Sesame Street to the teaching of all age groups.

Visit the leapfrog learning center nj and see where the solution to the education crisis evolved