Learning

“There are some big unanswered questions in the policy debate of whether charter schools should be allowed to expand,” Elizabeth Setren says; key among these are questions pertaining to how well the schools serve special education students and English language learners, and what happened when charter schools expanded in 2010.

An economist delves into charter schools

PhD student Elizabeth Setren brings data to bear on questions about local education policy.

June 21, 2016

MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Professor Emerita Suzanne Corkin

Professor Emerita Suzanne Corkin dies at 79

Over half a century at MIT, Corkin made lasting contributions to the biology of memory and cognitive disorders.

June 1, 2016

“Children seem to interpret disjunction like conjunction,” observes MIT Linguistics Professor Danny Fox. However, Fox adds, although “it has been claimed children are very different from adults in the interpretation of logical words,” the study’s larger implication is almost the opposite — namely that “the child is [otherwise] identical to the adult, but there is a very small paramet...

Why children confuse simple words

Study: Kids have “and/or” problem despite sophisticated reasoning.

May 23, 2016

Since 2013, John Hart (standing, center) has been teaching the MIT graduate course 2.S998 (Additive Manufacturing), which explores the fundamentals of 3-D printing.

3-D Printing 101

As MIT course challenges students to reinvent 3-D printing, professor aims to share approach with others.

May 11, 2016

Instructors modeled the competition’s obstacle course after major landmarks from the American Revolution, including replicas of Boston’s North Church, Concord’s Old North Bridge, and the “H.M.S. Beaver.”

2.007 robots battle it out, revolutionary-style

Motors smoking, robot reenacted Paul Revere’s ride to win competition.

May 6, 2016

A committee of MIT faculty and staff, along with representatives from the new Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning, selected three proposals to fund.

Grant funds innovation in teacher education

New program provides funding for three projects working to improve STEM education.

May 3, 2016

"The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world’s most underresourced children," Cynthia Breazeal says. Pictured are students in Ethiopia.

Can technology help teach literacy in poor communities?

Project to provide children with tablets loaded with literacy apps reports encouraging results in Africa, U.S.

April 26, 2016

MIT neuroscientists discovered that the protein CPG2 connects the cytoskeleton (represented by the scaffold of the bridge) and the endocytic machinery (represented by the cars) during the reabsorption of glutamate receptors. Each "car" on the “bridge" carries a vesicle containing glutamate receptors.

How neurons lose their connections

Scientists identify protein that allows brain cells to dampen their sensitivity.

January 14, 2016

New PBS KIDS ScratchJr app launches

Developed in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and Tufts University, the PBS KIDS ScratchJr app helps children ages 5-8 learn coding concepts.

December 3, 2015

When zebra finches first begin to sing, they produce only nonsense syllables similar to the babble of human babies. Now researchers at MIT have uncovered the brain activity that supports the birds’ song-learning process.

Singing in the brain

Neuroscientists identify neural patterns birds use to learn their songs.

November 30, 2015

Motor neurons (green) form synapses (highlighted in magenta) on muscle fibers in a fruit fly. MIT neuroscientists have discovered a pathway that contributes to strengthening these synapses.

Neuroscientists reveal how the brain can enhance connections

Newly identified mechanism allows the brain to strengthen links between neurons.

November 18, 2015

What counts as fair?

Neuroscientists find that children’s ability to count is key to distributing resources based on merit.

November 10, 2015

Learning spoken language

System learns to distinguish words’ phonetic components, without human annotation of training data.

September 14, 2015

Early-response genes, which are important for synaptic plasticity, are “switched off” under basal conditions by topological constraints. Neuronal activity triggers DNA breaks in a subset of early-response genes, which overrides these topological constraints, and “switches on” gene expression. Shown here is the topological constraint to early-response genes represented as an open switch (le...

DNA breakage underlies both learning, age-related damage

Process that allows brains to learn and remember also leads to degeneration with age.

June 4, 2015

Neuroscientists from MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have identified two populations of neurons in the amygdala that process positive and negative emotions.

How the brain tells good from bad

Neuroscientists identify neurons in the amygdala that assign emotions to experience.

April 29, 2015

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Browse By

Topics

Departments

Centers, Labs, & Programs

Schools

Topic