The psychology of winning - and losing. (CBS News) The phrase "Win some, lose some" will be little consolation for the players and fans of whichever team loses in today's Super Bowl. Just ask somebody who's been there. Our Cover Story is reported by Susan Spencer of 48 Hours: In football-crazed Buffalo, the Bills are revered . . . and to this day, so is the number 12. Jim Kelly (whose jersey number is the only one the Bills have retired) proudly wore number 12 for eleven years, winning more than 100 games. Starting in 1990, he did something that no other quarterback in history has ever achieved: He led his team to FOUR straight Super Bowls. It hasn't happened since, and Kelly said, "It will never happen again. Also unheard of: the excruciating outcome. Kelly told Spencer he's hasn't watched any of the replays: "Never have seen a game film of any of the Super Bowls, never watched one.
" Why not? Fine. Robertson has studied winning, and what winning can mean. Feel better . . . and, it seems, even live longer. / Al Bello/Getty Images. SimCityEDU: Using Games for Formative Assessment. Big Ideas Digital Tools Teaching Strategies SimCity As game-based learning gains momentum in education circles, teachers increasingly want substantive proof that games are helpful for learning. The game-makers at the non-profit GlassLab are hoping to do this with the popular video game SimCity.
GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. Scheduled to be be released in the fall of 2013, it builds on SimCity’s city management theme, but provides specific challenges to players in the subject of STEM. “The big pain point we’ve heard from teachers is that they cannot entertain their kids to the level that they are being entertained outside of the classroom,” said Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab. “None of the other games are trying to do formative assessment to the level we are.
“These kids are fascinated by the environment,” Lindl said. Related. 5 Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn. Helping students learn how to learn: That’s what most educators strive for, and that’s the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. Those observations are as important as the content they learn or the projects they create. “We want students thinking about their thinking,” said Leslie Maniotes a teacher effectiveness coach in the Denver Public Schools and one of the authors of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century.
“We want them reflecting on the process and the content.” A good example is a long term research project. Feedback for Learning:Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Do kids really learn from failure? Why conventional wisdom may be wrong. (Bigstock) How many times have you heard that children need to experience failure sometimes because they learn from it. Well, maybe not. Here’s a different view from Alfie Kohn, the author of 12 books about education and human behavior.
Kohn explains why this has become a problem when it comes to school reform. His books include “The Schools Our Children Deserve,” “The Homework Myth,” and “Feel-Bad Education… And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling.” He lives (actually) in the Boston area and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org. Kohn writes: Education experts have long known that there is more to success — in school or in life — than cognitive ability. But a funny thing has happened to the message since then. Closely connected to this sensibility is the proposition that children benefit from plenty of bracing experiences with frustration and failure. Is failure rare? Is failure useful? Have some people experienced failure but then gone on to be wildly successful?