education

What Can Minecraft Offer in Non-STEM Education? Plenty, According to a New Study

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Microsoft had big plans when it purchased Minecraft, the immensely popular open-world ‘sandbox’ game, back in 2014 for US$2.5 billion. Among them was to invest heavily in an educational revolution – the gamification of learning.   It’s not hard to imagine how the logic-based mechanics of Minecraft’s construction system could help teach knowledge and practical skills in fields … Read more

Teaching about Racism Is Essential for Education

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Elected officials who campaigned against critical race theory (CRT), the study of how social structures perpetuate racial inequality and injustice, are being sworn into office all over the U.S. These candidates captured voters’ attention by vilifying CRT, which has become a catch-all to describe any teaching about racial injustice. Lessons about the genocide of Native … Read more

We’re Facing a Myopia ‘Epidemic’, Scientists Say. Here’s Why

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Scientists are warning of an emerging ‘epidemic‘ of myopia or near-sightedness, having observed sharp increases in the adult onset of myopia among late baby boomers. Based on data collected from 107,442 participants in the extensive Biobank program in the UK, people born in the late 1960s are 10 percent more likely to be near-sighted than … Read more

Languages: One tongue could be lost per month this century

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By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Researchers Lindell Bromham and Xia Hua analyse data on the Gurindji language Jamie Kidston/ANU Denser road networks, higher levels of education and even climate change are just a few of the factors that could lead to the loss of more than 20 per cent of the world’s 7000 languages by the end … Read more

We’ll never understand the universe while we’re drowning in admin

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By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Jay Shaw Baker/NurPhoto via Getty Images THE best bits of being a particle cosmologist are the moments where I feel the mathematical pieces of an idea click into place. When I understand an equation or successfully solve one, I have the same experience I had over 30 years ago when I was … Read more