Advance personalized learning - Engineering Challenges. For years, researchers have debated whether phonics or whole-word recognition is the best way to teach children how to read. Various experts can be found who will advocate one approach or the other. Ask an astute first-grade teacher, though, and the answer is likely to be that it depends on the kid. Some pupils respond more favorably to the whole-word approach; others learn faster with phonics. Young brains (and older brains, for that matter) are not all alike. Learning is personal. Throughout the educational system, teaching has traditionally followed a one-size-fits-all approach to learning, with a single set of instructions provided identically to everybody in a given class, regardless of differences in aptitude or interest.
In recent years, a growing appreciation of individual preferences and aptitudes has led toward more “personalized learning,” in which instruction is tailored to a student’s individual needs. Why is personalized learning useful? References Canales, A. et al. 2007. Challenge Browser. Reverse-engineer the brain - Engineering Challenges. For decades, some of engineering’s best minds have focused their thinking skills on how to create thinking machines — computers capable of emulating human intelligence. Why should you reverse-engineer the brain? While some of thinking machines have mastered specific narrow skills — playing chess, for instance — general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) has remained elusive. Part of the problem, some experts now believe, is that artificial brains have been designed without much attention to real ones.
Pioneers of artificial intelligence approached thinking the way that aeronautical engineers approached flying without much learning from birds. It has turned out, though, that the secrets about how living brains work may offer the best guide to engineering the artificial variety. Discovering those secrets by reverse-engineering the brain promises enormous opportunities for reproducing intelligence the way assembly lines spit out cars or computers. The progress so far is impressive.
NASA Announces Three New Centennial Challenges. For Solvers. Home : Naturejobs.