I remember hearing an interview with a woman who was doing charter school-type work in the UK (IIRC), where most of her students were thought of as "underperforming".
She was successful because they emphasized drills, lots of drills, and more drills.
Teachers and students hate drills. Teachers, because they're tedious to grade, and students because they're boring. But they work. It's no different than doing the same Super Mario Bros. level again and again until you time your jumps just right.
I've often thought that gamification of drills would be a great way to get kids to learn their math facts or whatever, but there seems to be an allergy to doing this in the US education system. What the US education system seems to be addicted to is moving from one hype/fad to the next, as that's where the money trough seems to be.
I love learning high-level knowledge using conceptual overviews and I remember them very well too. I’m just not wired to remember the nitty-gritty of things and I found drills are the only way forward provided they are implemented intelligently like Anki.
My view on them changed as well. First I found them stupid and mind-numbing. Now my life is busy and chaotic and drills are one of the few easy, zen-like moments. Maybe students need harder lives to actually come to appreciate their repetitive and simple nature.
There is definitely a market for this in the same realm as MMOs. Provide children educational problems to solve and then reward them with items that allow them to increase their ability to interact or decorate the world around them. Let the parent company guide the actual curriculum and allow kids to become creators ala Roblox to increase the number of assets available to them. They end up wanting to learn in order to get the shiny thing, and the company who puts it out gets a motivated audience.
She was successful because they emphasized drills, lots of drills, and more drills.
Teachers and students hate drills. Teachers, because they're tedious to grade, and students because they're boring. But they work. It's no different than doing the same Super Mario Bros. level again and again until you time your jumps just right.
I've often thought that gamification of drills would be a great way to get kids to learn their math facts or whatever, but there seems to be an allergy to doing this in the US education system. What the US education system seems to be addicted to is moving from one hype/fad to the next, as that's where the money trough seems to be.