“Education is not the learning of facts,” said Albert Einstein, “but the training of the mind to think,” The Globe and Mail reports. Before his name became synonymous with scientific genius, Einstein was a teenager struggling to stay engaged in his secondary studies at Munich’s Luitpold Gymnasium, his creativity and passion nearly dashed by the rote learning style of his formal education. Thankfully, the world has changed dramatically over the century since, and educational approaches have changed with it. But have they changed enough? Could the next Einstein – or Curie or Banting or Hawking – be languishing in a high-school classroom right now, their intellectual potential stifled by the very system that is supposed to ignite it?
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Recipe for high-school success: be curious, work late, ignore the textbooks
I didnʼt start biomedical research to learn more about stem cells or skin regeneration back in ninth grade, reports The Globe and Mail. None of my peers, friends, or even teachers at the time knew exactly where I would be now. Looking back, it turned out to be the best journey I could have imagined for my high-school career. Iʼm a high school researcher who works toward translating and making stem cell transplants as a therapeutic option for emergency wards worldwide. I started my work in ninth grade by joining a team of scientists at the University of Calgary where Iʼve been working for nearly three years…
…Read MoreResearchers develop ‘camera’ that will show your mind
Among the great enigmas of human existence, few have proven so intractable as the human brain. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says our current understanding of the body’s most complex organ approximates what we knew about chemistry in the 19th century: in short, not much. On a scale of 100, estimates Toronto psychiatrist Colin Shapiro, our comprehension of how the brain actually functions ranks at a lowly 2. Now, two Toronto doctors, a general practitioner and a medical biophysicist, are laying claim to a research innovation that could expand our knowledge exponentially, reports the Globe and Mail. Using one of the earliest imaging technologies, the electroencephalograph (EEG), Mark Doidge and Joseph Mocanu have written software that creates dynamic, real-time, three-dimensional colour movies of the brain…
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