Falling for JiJi

Confession: I have spent a large part of the day trying to make the penguin JiJi go across my computer screen.

I justify this by telling you a secret: unlike a newspaper, which can pile up the bad news until Mt. Everest looks like a sugar cube, a blog cannot. So this evening—no rants about the Catholic Church (give it UP, Marc); no more tales of the byzantine, tropical political schemes (PLEEEEEZE!); no more jeremiads of any kind. Today is a good news day!

And the good news is that some guy in Southern California has got it figured out: most education is based on words, on language. But most students? Well, a significant portion of kids are learning English as a foreign language. Then there are those who simply learn visually, not verbally. As well, there are kids with various learning difficulties, one of which is dyslexia.

That was the case with Matthew Peterson, who suffers from dyslexia, as did, apparently, Einstein. And it was Einstein who said that words played no part in his math or scientific thinking.

Think back to your school—what was happening in the classroom? Well, the teacher was up front, talking and writing on the chalkboard. He or she was teaching, but were the kids learning?

No—according to the video below. Seventy percent of American kids are below grade level in math. So why not throw everything upside-down? Why not get rid of words? Why not advance a little technologically beyond chalk? Why not have the kids play games, instead of giving them homework? And why not have the games be interactive, so that kids get feedback and learn?

“I don’t teach, I observe learning,” I used to say to my students. Or how about this: “I don’t teach, I create the environment to learn.” And that’s why, in those days when I was working at Wal-Mart, I spent a lot of time learning PowerPoint. Because even something as rudimentary as PowerPoint can be powerful.

“Oh, baby, you are zeee BEST,” said a sultry little animation that I borrowed from the Internet; that was when the student got the right answer. The wrong answer? A bomb went off, or a 16-ton weight got dropped on a kitten, or the computer made a disgusted sound.

The games were nowhere as cool as JiJi, I have to say—but they were cool enough, and the students liked them. But the 600,000 kids in 35 states who are involved with JiJi? The numbers are impressive—in some cases the improvement is double or even triple the rate for the control group.

I’d believe it, because there’s something wonderfully addictive about JiJi. Unfortunately, the company won’t sell the games to individuals, but only to schools, since they believe that the presence of a teacher is important.

Damn—I’m already totally in love with JiJi!

Hmm, if I ran up to the local public school and bought the damn thing, do you think they’d let me play?