Two DR K-12 projects were featured in the NY Times Special Issue on Learning What Works (Tuesday, September 3, 2013).
Scratch Jr., a collaborative project led by Mitchel Resnick and Marina Bers, was featured in the article, "Very Young Programmers."
Ten years ago, a computer programming language called Scratch emerged from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Using colorful stackable icons to represent the sequencing and logic of computer code, Scratch was designed to make programming easy for children 8 and older. Today the free program is used in more than 150 countries and thousands of schools, with more than 1,500 animations and games uploaded to the online Scratch community each day. Even third and fourth graders call themselves coders...Read the full article.
Next Generation Preschool Math, a project led by Ashley Lewis Presser was featured in the article, "Field-Testing the Math Apps."
Elias was shy at first. “He’s 4,” his teacher whispered when he would not say his age. He made no sound as his peers rushed to the tables with the iPads. When a friend grabbed the device to take his photo, he covered his eyes with his hands.
Maybe it was the room full of strangers that had him a little spooked. Six software developers and designers from WGBH, the Boston public television station, had descended on his classroom at the Little Sprouts child care center here, bearing a fleet of rubber-cased iPads.
Their mission was to test prototypes of math apps they had been working on for months — tools designed with the help of researchers in child development and cognitive science — and to learn from pupils like Elias...Read the full article.