“Problem-Solving with Minecraft’s Zombies,” by Bruce Handy, in The New Yorker

“Brooks, forty-eight, was playing Minecraft with his young son when he realized that the game might be ‘the most important teaching tool we have since the first printing press […]. Since the nineteenth century, we have had the Prussian model of education. There’s only one way to solve a problem. Binary. If you do it the right way, you get rewarded by getting kicked up to the next grade.’ This approach was useful, Brooks said, when it came to educating a conventional workforce—as well as designing most video games, with their obvious rewards and increasing levels of difficulty. It is less useful in a gig economy, ‘where everyone suddenly has to become the master of their own destiny. How do you train our children to be creative problem solvers?’ he continued. ‘I struggled with that as a new parent. Then Minecraft came along, and I thought, Oh, my God.’ Playing with his son, Brooks would say, ‘See? You just learned that there are a million ways to solve a problem like Don’t Starve.’ The lessons he hopes future Uber drivers and freelance content makers will absorb from his novels are codified in study-guide appendices—e.g., ‘Don’t dwell on mistakes; learn from them’.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

The future of learning will depend on helping learners to distinguish between known problems with known solutions and unknown problems with unknown solutions.

The future of learning will also depend on helping students not to “dwell on mistakes,” but rather to “learn from them.”

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“What Should Schools Look Like Next Fall,” by Michael Horn, on the The Future of Education substack

“In the conversation around combating learning loss, people are throwing out all sorts of ideas: from redshirting every student to having more summer school. But many of the ideas suffer from something in common. They would have students just do more of the traditional schooling experience that was already failing so many. Doing the exact same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. As Diane said, we should be focused on changing the system itself: personalizing learning for each child, understanding what they need through one-on-one conversations, moving to mastery-based learning, and the like.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

At a moment when school leaders see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, it may be hard to think about escaping the “local maximum” of the status quo.

Yet, as a mentor once told me, good leaders and great leaders both know what they’re supposed to do. The only difference is that the great ones actually go ahead and do it.

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“Why this popular college guide will stop publishing ACT and SAT score ranges,” by Eric Hoover, in The Chronicle of Higher Education

“The debate about standardized testing is now unfolding in a world that’s reeling from the pandemic, which has intensified longstanding racial and socioeconomic inequities. The introduction includes a strongly worded statement describing that context. ‘There was a time when one could make a credible argument that, since the tests, especially the SAT, were not curriculum-oriented, they offered colleges an independent way to identify “diamonds in the rough” — talented applicants, especially those from racial or ethnic minorities or from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose abilities might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In some cases, this still happens, but the broader argument no longer holds water. … Indeed, a wide body of research has shown that SAT and ACT scores closely track with socioeconomic data and may say more about a student’s ZIP code than about their academic potential’.

“Still, the change is a noteworthy sign of the times. Though the ACT and the SAT were created to measure an applicant’s potential, test scores long ago insinuated themselves into a whole set of products designed to measure the quality of a given institution. Those products, which have long emphasized the importance of test scores, form the vast scaffolding around higher education, shaping many people’s perceptions of what those numbers tell you, about a college or a student.

“That scaffolding will endure. But one small piece of it just fell away.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Pre-pandemic, many colleges were moving to test-optional applications (including the entire University of California system, phased in over a number of years).

During the pandemic, more colleges joined that movement. Several even declared their intention to go test-blind (ie, they won’t consider test scores that are submitted as part of an application).

Now the Fiske Guide will eliminate a popular test score metric that helps families determine whether a school is a realistic option… or perhaps not “elite” enough for them.

Things change slowly, then all at once.

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