Play-Ed Corporation Blog

2017年4月22日土曜日

May 2017 STEM Anchor Skills (1-12) - "STEM-Ready Your Children for 21st Century Careers"

In my monthly, five-minute STEM Skill Step Up Letter, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions that you submit. To do so, subscribe to the newsletter by emailing me. I will respond to questions on the Play-Ed Corporation Facebook page when appropriate.

STEM-Ready Your Children for 21st Century Careers

As a corporate manager in Japan, I use science, technology, engineering, and math, known as STEM, every day. STEM skills are increasing in importance at an exponential rate. Understanding the three major STEM trends transforming industry can help parents prepare their children for future careers in STEM professions.

Trend One

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are all vital, but technology and math are crucial. Now that digital data is effortlessly collected on small devices for everything from your breathing rate to the temperature in your home, companies are awash in data. The demand for college graduates with coding skills to format the data and mathematical and statistical skills to analyze it already exceeds the supply. During the next 10 years, this trend will intensify. Furthermore, even employees who are not hired as specialists in data science will be expected to be proficient in MS Word applications, facile with internet tools, and capable of coding.

How to Develop these Skills

Elementary

Teach children Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
Have them do Google searches on topics of interest.
Use math lessons to expand their skills.

Middle School

Try online programs that teach coding.
Teach students enough HTML to create a simple web page.

Senior High School

Learn to type without looking at the keys (called touch typing).
Learn the basics of Python or Java Script.
Learn statistics.

Free online resources: KhanAcademy.org, Codecademy.com, Code.org

Trend Two

Some educators prefer the acronym STEAM to STEM adding arts to the mix. Pictures and diagrams are often used in STEM techniques like design thinking. Language arts are used to explain ideas. Students should receive ample expository writing and presentation practice. These communication skills are essential in sharing ideas with colleagues and explaining projects to customers. I often receive requests not only to deliver presentations, but also to train others to do so.

How to Develop these Skills

Elementary

Have students “show and tell” explanations of their favorite game or toy works.
Teach children to write expository paragraphs (LearnAmericanEnglishOnline.com).

Middle School

Have students explain an article on science or technology.
Have students write an expository essay on a science topic.

Senior High School

Have children deliver a PowerPoint presentation or Prezi presentation on a research project or a career of interest.
Ask your child to explain a recent TED talk they have watched. Ask them questions about it.

Online Resources: WikiHow.com/Write-an-Expository-Essay, Prezi.com, TED.com

Trend Three

Because English is the current lingua franca of business and technology we Americans are in the enviable position of not having to learn a foreign language. Although many STEM professionals worldwide speak English, effective communication includes a critical cultural component. Given that many STEM projects cross borders, learning intercultural communication skills is excellent preparation for a STEM career.

How to Develop these Skills

Elementary

Encourage your children to develop an international pen-pal via email.

Middle and High School

Encourage children to use Skype or Google Hangouts to exchange ideas with students in other countries or collaborate on a project with them.

Parental monitoring of these correspondences is recommended.

If your students show an interest or proclivity to STEM, I encourage you to review your instruction in light of these trends in STEM professions or discuss with your children’s teachers.

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA

Play-Ed Consulting

Author Profile
Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through Play-Ed Consulting.

STEM Lessons

For a nominal monthly fee, students may enroll in virtual STEM lessons that either I or one of my trained staff will facilitate.

Each week, I will provide one STEM challenge problem for students to solve. Then, through a virtual lesson, I will review key concepts from the problem, respond to questions, and teach students various learning strategies, problem-solving methods, and types of thinking. I will also furnish opportunities for participants to learn from one another. Finally, I will collect feedback from students for use in improving the lessons, making them more fun and didactic.The purpose of this extra-curricular training is to guide students in the application of STEM subjects to real-world problem, thereby preparing them for future careers.

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

For a nominal fee, I will set up four, 30-minute online sessions with students to tutor middle-school and high-school math, science and English each month. Students will participate in sessions with up to four others depending on scheduling. While I plan to tutor as frequently as possible, I also use tutors I have trained, usually career teachers or university instructors. Students will have access to discussion forums where they can pose questions to other students and to me. To maximize learning, I strongly encourage students in the same class to register together.

Contact Dr. Joseph Gabriella at jgabriella.played@gmail.com to register.

2017年3月26日日曜日

April 2017 STEM Anchor Skills (1-11) - " Careers in STEM Disciplines "

Dear Parents, Students and Teachers,

Careers in STEM Disciplines

Over thirty years ago, when I was a high school student, I took my first computer programming course. The school used neither Macs nor Windows, both of which had just been invented, and computers were not user friendly. We learned the relatively easy Basic language. I enjoyed the course primarily because I like mathematics, but I was frustrated by all the errors I made inputting the code for my programs. I also wondered whether I would ever use my programming skills because I was not seriously considering an engineering degree.

As I often remark to family now, who would have thought how critical programming skills would become. More importantly, who would have ever thought that using computers would be rendered so much fun that youngsters seem to regard them more as toys than as tools for serious work? Even coding is much more enjoyable thanks to the ever-increasing supply of user friendly programs, not to mention the virtually universal connectivity to the internet, where needed assistance is only a few clicks away.

Without question, the internet in specific and digital technologies more generally have transformed our lives in many ways. One profound change relates to careers. Digital technologies have spawned a variety of cross-disciplinary fields blending traditional physics, math, chemistry, and biology. In the process, digital technology has also created jobs that would have been difficult to envision even ten years ago, virtually eliminating others.

This newsletter introduces some of these fields. To help children prepare for the future, I recommend that parents discuss the options, encouraging children to explore further through internet searches. Based on the interests their children express, parents can help the former select courses in school and explore extracurricular exploration options.

Careers

Data Workers
The connectivity of many technologies to the internet referred to as the internet of things has generated an inordinate amount of data that businesses, governments, and researchers would like to use to make better- informed decisions. This desire portends continued increasing demand for what I term data workers. Included in this group are data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers. Whereas data analysts primarily manipulate and use data, data scientists analyze it and conduct studies using it. Data engineers basically acquire the data, cleaning it and organizing it for use by data scientists and analysts. Data workers require varying computer science and statistical skills depending on their specific job roles.

Application Developers
With the proliferation of Android, Apple and other mobile devices, the need for developers has predictably skyrocketted. Though application programming is intimately related to pc programming, they are not the same. Furthermore, as mobile technologies continue to evolve, the languages and tools available continue to increase. Anyone aspiring to a career as a developer should not only invest considerable time in learning several languages but also be an avid and able learner. Application developers are constantly exposed to new tools and languages.

Web Programmers
As the internet continues to develop and evolve, demand for programmers continues to surge. Those specializing in front-end technology basically design and code the interfaces for users. Front-end web developers typically use HTML/CSS and various versions of Java Script. Back-end developers write the code used to communicate with servers the world over that deliver the web pages you view in your browser. Back-end developers typically code in Ruby, Python, and Java.

Social Media Marketers
As social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter command larger and larger audiences, companies and governments have recognized the value of connecting more directly with their customers and constituents. Social media marketers specialize in developing and managing these connections. They are often involved in content generation and collection and analysis of data on user responses to websites. Not surprisingly, social media marketers should master traditional marketing theory and practice, hone writing skills, and develop some coding skills. Students interested in this career might also consider studying online marketing analytics, which involves collecting and analyzing data from the web. Google Analytics Academy, linked below, offers excellent free training. Students can also earn the Google Analytics IQ (Individual Qualification) free of charge.

Google Analytics Academy

Disciplines

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
I think of AI as teaching machines to think, learn or behave. While the concept of AI itself is not new, recent advances in psychology and technology have caused the field to proliferate into a number of subspecialties including Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Robotics. Machine learning involves developing algorithms allowing computers to teach themselves from data sets. Natural processing aims to teach computers to understand and read human languages, and robotics strives to teach machines human behavior. AI integrates knowledge from computer science, statistics, psychology, and linguistics, to mention but a few fields.

Synthetic Biology
This field essentially exploits genetic engineering technologies that have been used for decades to grow pest-resistant crops and produce insulin and other medical products using microorganisms by standardizing and mechanizing the process. Synthetic biological techniques are already being used or are likely to be used in medicine, oil exploration, materials development, and agriculture.

Environmental Science
For well over twenty years, scientists and governments have become increasingly concerned about man’s impact on the environment. Recent issues range from depletion of the ozone, to global warming, global pollution, depletion of fossil fuels and super-resistant viruses. Responding to this concern, many universities now offer majors in environmental science and engineering. Research in environmental science integrates knowledge from ecology, physics, chemistry, geology, oceanography and limnology (the study of fresh- water bodies).

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA

Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

2017年2月26日日曜日

March 2017 STEM Anchor Skills (1-10) - "Rote-Learning Renaissance"

Dear Parents, Students and Teachers,

Rote-Learning Renaissance

As an undergraduate at a competitive business school, I had to take two semesters of accounting. Fond of math, I presumed not only that I would enjoy this computation-intensive subject, but also that I would ace the class. I was wrong on both counts. I did not enjoy accounting because I had to memorize many rules. Though I could understand why many of these rules and conventions existed, I could not logically deduce them as with math. Loathe to memorize lists of rules, I felt frustrated, as if I were wasting valuable time that could be better spent studying other subjects.

I did not do well in accounting due to lack of practice. If I understood the problem examples and explanations in the text book, I did not bother to solve the practice or review problems. Had I, I would have realized that understanding an example problem and being able to solve it myself are not the same. We can understand how something is done without being able to do it ourselves. Conversely, we can do some things without understanding why or how they work. For example, we all correctly pluralize English words even though most of us do not understand the grammar rules governing when to add the suffix -s (as in books) rather than –es (as is boxes).

To give an example of the former phenomenon, I wanted to surprise my brother, who likes apple pie, by making an apple strudel for him. To learn how, I watched a YouTube video of a Bavarian pastry chef. Listening to his step-by-step explanation as I observed his demonstration, I completely understood how to make a strudel after viewing the video. However, I was unable to make one myself initially. The first time I tried, I struggled to stretch the dough. Finally doing so, I spread the apples on it, but when I tried to roll it, the dough stuck to everything. I had to practice about five times before I could make a strudel that resembled the Bavarian pastry chef’s masterpiece. Since that time, I have further improved with practice, learning to make more difficult strudels like chocolate custard-filled ones.

Another example of being able to do without understanding is plugging numbers into a formula to compute a result without understanding where the formula comes from, why it works, or how it works. I was a repeat offender of this academic sin when I studied physics, a subject where our observation-based intuitions about the world are often wrong. For this reason, I often did not understand what the answers I derived meant even though I scored well on tests. Ironically, my teacher had the opposite problem. Understanding the principles of physics well, he could effortlessly structure equations to model word and real-life problems. However, inadequately practiced in solving equations, he often made mistakes, and he sometimes was not sure if his derivations were correct when the answer key expressed the formula differently. He often asked me and other students to confirm that the two were the same.

The value of understanding and practicing, that is, rote learning, is manifest in the success of some of my fellow accounting students. A few of the ones who received perfect or near perfect scores often completed two-hour exams in 45 minutes because they did not even have to use a calculator. Recent research has verified the importance of intense practice, a hallmark of the quality Professor Angela Duckworth refers to as grit. You will enjoy her enlightening talk on the topic, which may inspire you to drill basic math and science skills and accounting rules, too.

"Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverence"

Though rote learning, still emphasized in Asia, is not adequate in and of itself, as my accounting classmates’ performance reveal, it does play an important role in overall learning, especially in STEM subjects. Parents ought to make sure their elementary-age children daily practice basic math operations without a calculator and can comfortably handle conceptually challenging topics like fractions and percentages. By so doing so, parents will position their children for success in middle and high school STEM subjects.

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA

Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

2017年1月25日水曜日

February 2017 STEM Anchor Skills (1-9) - "Lunch-Time STEM"

Dear Parents, Students and Teachers,

Lunch-Time STEM

I hesitate to confess to Mom, who lovingly prepared succulent meatball sandwiches drenched in homemade marinara sauce and fried-pork cutlet hoagies, that peanut butter and jelly was my favorite lunch. In fact, p&j is still one of my favorite sandwiches, one of the few American foods I crave in Japan. I can purchase the ingredients here, but the local peanut butter is more of a creamy, sugary spread, presumably because peanuts are quite expensive, and Japanese tastes differ. Japanese peanut spread does not stick to my hard palate like the unctuous, salty American stuff.

Whenever I think of the p&j sandwich, I am reminded of an object lesson I use to teach the importance of precise communication in teaching STEM. I encourage parents to try this task at home. Instruct your children to write a paragraph explaining how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to someone who has never made one before. Then, reading their instructions aloud one line at a time, attempt to make the sandwiches. As you do so, follow the instructions explicitly. Like you, your children will realize that the instructions are inadequate because they assume knowledge the person making the sandwich may not have. The example below illustrates the problem.

How to Make a P&J Sandwich

1. Take the bread out of the bag.

Assumed knowledge: 1.The person knows to use slice bread as opposed to a baguette; 2. The person knows that raisin bread is usually not used for p&b sandwiches. For this reason, you might try to use this type of bread to make a point. 3. The person knows that two slices are used to make a sandwich.

2. Put the peanut butter on the bread.

Assumed knowledge: 1. The sandwich maker knows to unscrew the peanut butter, scoop some out on the bread, and spread it. 2. The person knows how much peanut butter to use. 3. The person knows a knife is typically used to scoop out, then spread, the peanut butter.

3. Put the jelly on top of the bread.

Assumed knowledge similar to that in the preceding instruction.

4. Put a piece of bread on top of the sandwich.

Assumed knowledge: 1. The person is using slice bread. 2. The person knows to position the piece of bread to align with and completely cover the piece with the peanut butter and jelly on it.

Whenever I have had children or adults do this exercise, I have never succeeded interpreting the directions like a person who has never made a p&g sandwich previously.

This simple demonstration illustrates a number of powerful lessons. First, teachers of all subjects, not just STEM, should think carefully about the assumptions they make related to the level and content of students’ knowledge. If your students often seem confused by your explanations, inaccurate assumptions are a likely culprit. Second, precision is extremely important, especially in STEM areas. Computers read programs exactly as written. If one instruction is unclear, computers will often generate an error. Finally, the more general lesson about clear, precise communication is obvious. You should constantly question assumptions you are making about the listener's background and knowledge and the suitability of these assumptions not only when you are teaching someone, but also when you are discussing problems or presenting your ideas,

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA

Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

2016年12月17日土曜日

January 2017 STEM Anchor Skills (1-8) - "Digital Literacy"

In my monthly STEM Anchor Skills Series, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions submitted. To join the newsletter and submit questions, please email me at jgabriella.played@gmail.com.

Digital Literacy

Language learning is tough work. Though I had studied Japanese for many years before moving here, I struggled in my first job. Sometimes I had difficulty understanding my colleagues. More frustrating was my frequent inability to respond effectively to their questions in Japanese. However, nothing was more difficult than learning to read and write. Because Japanese use logographs called kanji borrowed from the Chinese writing system instead of an alphabet, I first had to memorize well over a thousand symbols. Like Japanese elementary school students, I spent hours writing the characters and memorizing the correct stroke orders. I also had to learn Japanese grammar and sentence patterns, which differ considerably from English. Then, I had to learn the process for typing on the computer.

In doing so, I realized that though learning to read and write English was not as frustrating, the process was lengthy and effortful. Like most middle-aged Americans, I learned to print, then write cursive. I proceeded through a series of graded readers, took spelling and vocabulary tests in elementary school. In junior high school, I remember studying literature, and in senior high school, learning how to write essays and drilling English grammar.

Learning to program is a similar process. To effectively train students for careers, schools need comprehensive computer literacy programs. Until they are implemented, parents will have to fill the void. Some suggestions for doing so follow:

1. Digital natives reared in a world of pc’s, tablets, smart phones and a plethora of other technologies, most children are comfortable using technology. However, if they are not, parents should begin orienting them to devices like smart phones and laptops, showing them how they work. Having elementary students use an online calculator to check homework or conduct searches of topics that interest provide a fun means of introducing them to the digital world

2. Parents can also show their children how to use common word processing and computational software like MS Word and MS Excel or their Apple equivalents. Similarly, parents can introduce their children to Google and other search engines in addition to teaching them how to use email and social media.

3. Children can begin to experiment with programming in playful ways using programs including those provided by coder.org, Code Monster, MIT’s Scratch, and Khan Academy, which also offers a range of lessons on topics as varied as algebra, computer science, finance, physics, and medicine.

4. By the time children are in junior high school, the should learn to code in HTML, used to create web pages, and later, Java Script. Python is another user-friendly language. R, used in statistical analysis, is also an option, especially for those who enjoy mathematics.

5. As a milestone goal, you children should aim for intermediate-level proficiency in at least one language like Python or Java by the time they complete high school. If they have not already done so, children should join online groups of coders learning the same language to share programs and obtain needed help.

6. If you do not have programming skills yourself, you might consider hiring a tutor. To learn c language, I hired a Chinese Ph.D. student at the local university. She was as delighted to earn the extra pocket money as I was to receive her able, patient, affordable assistance.

Learning computer languages is arduous work, but like English, they are spoken the world over. Investing in learning them will yield dividends for your children serving them a lifetime. Many of us will learn some useful skills in the process ourselves.

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA

Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

Author Profile

Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through his company, Play-Ed Corporation.

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

2016年11月19日土曜日

December 2016 STEM Anchor Skills (1-7) - "Scaling the Learning Mountain"

In my monthly, STEM Anchor Skills Series, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions submitted. To join the newsletter and submit questions, please email me at jgabriella.played@gmail.com.

Scaling the Learning Mountain

The study of English is a national obsession here in Japan, where I currently reside. For decades, English courses have been mandatory in junior and senior high school, to which elementary courses are being added. English conversation schools are ubiquitous. Ads for private tutors are too many to count. Strangely, few Japanese speak English well. Why?

I can suggest several reasons. One major factor is cultural: Japanese are shy and perfectionistic. They not only hesitate to talk to people whom they do not know, especially foreigners, but also fear making mistakes. Another major factor is, paradoxically, the English-education system. Their memorization-driven centered techniques are not only ineffective, but also draconian. Many students learn only to loathe English in class.

I know from my own foreign-language studies that American schools and universities achieve better outcomes by blending different teaching techniques. Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning allows us to understand why. In his now-famous framework, he separates learning into six major levels, each more difficult than the preceding. These levels are summarized below:

Knowledge (Rote Learning) – the learner can reproduce the fact or principle

Comprehension – the learner understands the principle

Application – the individual can apply learning to solve a problem or achieve a goal

Analysis – the individual is able to decompose the principle or idea into parts and explain the relationship between them

Synthesis – the learner can integrate the principle with other principles both internal and external to the field

Evaluation – the individual is capable of making judgments and assessments of the principles such as their range of application and limitations.

Mastery of a principle involves reaching the final step in Bloom’s Taxonomy. I have found this framework invaluable not only for language learning, but also for STEM learning. The follow example demonstrates how you could utilize the framework for a STEM concept.

Suppose your physics teacher is introducing the concept of velocity. He tells you that velocity has magnitude and direction. If you remember these facts, you have cleared the Knowledge level of the Taxonomy. If you can explain that magnitude is the speed or rate at which an object is moving, and direction is simply which way, you have demonstrated Comprehension. If you can explain how these concepts are used in the equation distance = velocity x time, and use that formula to calculate that a car moving at a velocity of 50 miles an hour north (velocity) will travel 300 miles (distance) in 6 hours, you have scaled to the Synthesis level of the learning mountain. Then, if you realize that because Miami, Florida is more than 300 miles away from Tallahassee, you will need to plan more time for your trip to the state capitol, you have reached Evaluation, the pinnacle.

Like climbing Mt. Fuji to see sunrise from the summit, applying Bloom’s Taxonomy is tough, but gratifying, work. I urge you to try it on for size.

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA
Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

Author Profile
Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through his company, Play-Ed Corporation.

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

2016年10月23日日曜日

November 2016 STEM Anchor Skills (1-6) - "Rote Learning Renaissance"

In my monthly, five-minute STEM Skill Step Up Letter, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions that you submit. To do so, subscribe to the newsletter by emailing me. I will respond to questions on the Play-Ed Corporation Facebook page when appropriate.

In my monthly, STEM Anchor Skills Series, I give hints like the following on improving critical cognitive and technical skills for young adults. I will also respond to questions submitted. To join the newsletter and submit questions, please email me at jgabriella.played@gmail.com.

Rote Learning Renaissance

As an undergraduate at a competitive business school, I had to take two semesters of accounting. Fond of math, I presumed not only that I would enjoy this computation-intensive subject, but also that I would ace the class. I was wrong on both counts. I did not enjoy accounting because I had to memorize many rules. Though I could understand why many of these rules and conventions existed, I could not logically deduce them as with math. Loathe to memorize lists of rules, I felt frustrated, as if I were wasting valuable time that could be better spent studying other subjects.

I did not do well in accounting due to lack of practice. If I understood the problem examples and explanations in the text book, I did not bother to solve the practice or review problems. Had I, I would have realized that understanding an example problem and being able to solve it myself are not the same. We can understand how something is done without being able to do it ourselves. Conversely, we can do some things without understanding why or how they work. For example, we all correctly pluralize English words even though most of us do not understand the grammar rules governing when to add the suffix -s (as in books) rather than –es (as is boxes).

To give an example of the former, I wanted to surprise my brother, who likes apple pie, by making an apple strudel for him. To learn how, I watched a YouTube video of a Bavarian pastry chef. Listening to his step-by-step explanation as I observed his demonstration, I completely understood how to make a strudel after viewing the video. However, I was unable to make one myself initially. The first time I tried, I struggled to stretch the dough. Finally doing so, I spread the apples on it, but when I tried to roll it, the dough stuck to everything. I had to practice about five times before I could make a strudel that resembled the Bavarian pastry chef’s masterpiece. Since that time, I have further improved with practice, learning to make more difficult strudels like chocolate custard-filled ones.

Another example of being able to do without understanding is plugging numbers into a formula to compute a result without understanding where the formula comes from, why it works, or how it works. I was a repeat offender of this academic sin when I studied physics, a subject where our observation-based intuitions about the world are often wrong. For this reason, I often did not understand what the answers I derived meant even though I scored well on tests. Ironically, my teacher had the opposite problem. Understanding the principles of physics well, he could effortlessly structure equations to model word and real-life problems. However, inadequately practiced in solving equations, he often made mistakes, and he sometimes was not sure if his derivations were correct when the answer key expressed the formula differently. He often asked me and other students to confirm that the two were the same.

The value of understanding and practicing, that is, rote learning, is manifest in the success of some of my fellow accounting students. A few of the ones who received perfect or near perfect scores often completed two-hour exams in 45 minutes because they did not even have to use a calculator.
Though rote learning still emphasized in Asia is not adequate in and of itself, as my accounting classmates’ performance reveal, it does play an important role in overall learning, especially in STEM subjects. Parents ought to make sure their elementary-age children daily practice basic math operations without a calculator and can comfortably handle conceptually challenging topics like fractions and percentages. Doing so, parents will position their children for success in middle and high school STEM subjects.

Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA
Founder and CEO, Play-Ed Corporation

Author Profile
Dr. Gabriella is an accomplished scholar and businessman. Ivy-league educated, he has served as a lecturer or professor at universities in the U.S., Japan, and China. Currently, he resides in Japan, where he is a senior manager and active consultant. A former high-school math teacher, Joseph is passionate about teaching critical STEM skills to future generations through his company, Play-Ed Corporation.

STEM Lessons

Uncle Joe's Tutoring

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