Have you ever gotten lost in a book? The first book I recall immersing myself in was Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet. I read it over the summer when I was ten years old and was transported to Northern Canada with Brian Robeson, the main character, as he learned how to survive alone in the wilderness. […]
Gamification [n]: the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. That idea is the heart and soul of Brain Chase and the reason the Summer Learning Challenge is a big opportunity to boost students up a level this summer. Our work is to harness the best elements of game design and bring them to […]
Throughout the Brain Chase website you read about how the Challenge begins at 9am Eastern on June 30th. But what does that mean exactly? Can children participate even if they’re not logged in at that very moment? Can they participate if they’re traveling, in summer camp, or just not in the mood to log […]
Startling research shows that kids lose more ground academically over the summer than one might expect. In fact, summers are arguably one of the least recognized yet most important causal factors for underachievement in schools. This 2011 RAND study found that by the end of summer, students perform, on average, one month behind where […]
In designing Brain Chase, we took advantage of the surprisingly large collection of research about how to help children stay smart over the summer. One great resource is the book Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning. Its author is Jennifer Sloan Combs, Ph.D., a senior officer at the RAND Corporation. Here […]
Online learning is a disruptive innovation that is transforming the way the world learns. Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, along with co-authors Michael B. Horn and Curtis Johnson, made that claim in 2008 when they first published the best-selling book Disrupting Class. Many reacted with skepticism initially, but with the passage of time, […]