We’ve all had to face a tough exam at least once in our lives. Whether it’s a school paper, university final or even a test at work, there’s one piece of advice we’re almost always given: make a study plan. With a plan, we can space out our preparation for the test rather than relying on one or two intense study sessions the night before to see us through. It’s good advice. Summed up in three words: cramming doesn’t work. Unfortunately, many of us ignore this rule. At least one survey has found that 99% of students admit to cramming. You might think that’s down to nothing more than simple disorganisation: I’ll admit it is far easier to leave things to the last minute than start preparing for a test weeks or months ahead. It’s good advice. Summed up in three words: cramming doesn’t work. Unfortunately, many of us ignore this rule. At least one survey has found that 99% of students admit to cramming.

There is an age old adage that says “two heads are better than one”.  Consider collaboration in recent history:  Watson and Crick or Page and Brin (Founders of Google). But did you know it was a collaborative Computer Club about basic programming at a middle school that brought together two minds that would change the future of computing? Yes, those two were of course Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft. Collaborative learning teams are said to attain higher level thinking and preserve information for longer times than students working individually.  Why is this so?

Yesterday, Justin Tarte shared a thought about grading that’s indicative of a growing dissatisfaction with grading in education. So let’s take a look at what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it, shall we? Great point. Mark Barnes also recently started a facebook group for throwing out letter grades altogether. Clearly this is an issue, even if it’s not new. Should grades support, report, or punish? If to support, support who? If to report, report what, and to whom? If to punish–to “hold students accountable like in the real world,” does it work like that? Does this work for the students?

A boy plays with a solar-powered computer tablet on Mount Wenchi, Mirab Shewa Zone of the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. (Courtesy of Tim Freccia/Xprize) A rural tribe is living peacefully in the Kalahari desert, free of contact with the modern world. One day, a Coke bottle drops from the sky, falling from a passing airplane. The villagers find many uses for this unfamiliar new technology: a fire starter, a musical instrument, a stamp for printing on cloth. But because of its very uniqueness, they start to fight over it, and one of the villagers decides that to preserve harmony, it’s best to return this “gift” to the gods.

Every child has the potential to be anything they set their minds to, and that includes kids who don’t think they’re smart. The Khan Academy believes in this, and they think kids only need to hear four magical words to get them started on the right path.

WASHINGTON — Twenty-two percent of workers laid off in the past five years are still unemployed, according to a new survey.The John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University surveyed more than 1,100 workers, including nearly 400 who are unemployed. A slim majority of laid-off workers in the survey, or 54 percent, said they received unemployment insurance when they lost their jobs. Congress dropped extended unemployment benefits at the end of last year, despite complaints from Democrats and a few Republicans.

In education, louder than the call for innovation, engagement, thought, or self-direction is the call to be research-based. In fact, being research-based may even trump being data-based, the two twins of modern ed reform. The former stems, in part, from deserved skepticism of trends that have little evidence of performance, and the latter comes from a similar place. The big idea behind the both is “proof”–having some kind of confidence that what we’re doing now works, and that because of both data and research, we can more or less nail down what exactly it is that we’re doing that works or doesn’t work, and why.