In a VICE News Tonight climate segment, MIT postdocs Volodymyr Koman and Seon-Yeong Kwak explain their technique for making plants glow in the dark to a first-grade class in Boston. Following a demonstration mixing plant glucose with the specialized nanoparticles, one student exclaims in disbelief, “no battery or anything!”
The “One Laptop Per Child” project, originated in the Media Lab, was the subject of a study that revealed the importance of having a laptop in the home for “access to information, educational games, and tools for self-expression.” In an op-ed for Mashable, Sandra Nogry calls on educators to encourage the use of technology for learning in developing countries.
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are donating $30 million to an MIT and Harvard initiative to improve child literacy. Reach Every Reader, which will be funded for five years, “will combine scientific research with new methods of tracking and predicting students’ reading abilities,” writes Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald.
The Associated Press reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Harvard and MIT, to help improve literacy skills in elementary school students. “[S]truggling to read can be a crushing blow with lifelong consequences,” said President Rafael Reif.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Reach Every Reader, an MIT and Harvard initiative that aims to tackle low elementary school literacy rates. Students younger than third grade will be the focus as “early intervention can have the most profound effect on turning students into proficient readers,” writes James Vaznis for The Boston Globe.
In an article for the Financial Times about the best economics books of 2017, Martin Wolf highlights new works by Prof. Andrew Lo and Prof. Peter Temin. Wolf writes that in Temin’s “important and provocative book, [he] argues that the US is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with ever fewer households in the middle.”
WHDH speaks with MIT staff member Maia Weinstock, who designed the original concept for the Women of NASA LEGO set. Weinstock explained that she is “really excited to see teachers and parents and kids tell me their stories of how they are going to use the set.”
In an article for The Boston Globe about the Boston school system’s new dual-language program in Haitian Creole, James Vaznis speaks with Prof. Michel DeGraff, who is assisting Boston with the program. DeGraff says that the program provides Boston with an opportunity to, “produce new material in Haitian Creole that in time can become models for programs in Haiti.”
Writing for The New York Times about educational technology, Prof. Cynthia Breazeal describes her research examining the importance of social cues in learning from technology. “If we want to use technology to help people learn, we have to provide information in the way the human mind evolved to receive it,” she explains.
CNN Greece highlights the "Maker Summer School," a weeklong workshop for unaccompanied refugees in Athens developed by researchers from the MIT D-Lab. The article, which is in Greek, explores how participants spent six days learning the design process by making real products they can use in their daily lives.
FOX 25 reporter Bob Dumas features a dance-party lamp developed by MIT researchers aimed at getting girls interested in STEM fields. “There’s research that shows girls, around middle school age, their participation in STEM classes and curriculum starts to drop off," explains Prof. Maria Yang. She adds that she wants to, "get girls back on the STEM train by engaging their interests.”
Mercury News reporter Jasmine Leyva highlights how students in Campbell, California are participating in the Zero Robotics program, which “aims to take students’ work to the moon and beyond, all while teaching students about space exploration, computer science and coding.” The Zero Robotics program is led by the MIT Space Systems Lab, Innovation Learning Center and Aurora Flight Sciences.
Preston County News & Journal reporter Theresa Marthey writes that students from Preston County, West Virginia are working on code to move SPHERES satellites on the International Space Station as part of the Zero Robotics program. Instructor Amanda Rehe explains that, “students have direct access with students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to use as a resource and assist with coding help.”
Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Fox writes about a new study by MIT researchers examining whether math games can be beneficial in helping children learn. The researchers found that, “children who played math games consistently showed a better grasp of the concepts…but that understanding did not appear to help in elementary school.”
Times Higher Education reporter Nicola Ingram examines Prof. Peter Temin’s latest book, which examines the state of the U.S. economic system. Temin, “provides an engaging commentary on the complexities of policy developments and their impact on workers’ conditions, as well as the problematic voting behaviour that seals their fate.”