[IKE]

My original intent was not that it would turn math class into Donkey Kong, but a discussion with regards to individual pacing, reward mechanisms, and skill lessons versus challenge lessons.

The TED video is actually exactly what I was thinking. Currently I can get walk-thrus online for how to get 3 stars for a particular level of "Angry Birds", but to get some focused time of the concept of a Derivative, I would have to go to a special tutoring class, or possibly engage with something like Kaplan or other tutoring centers.

Both my mother and oldest sister are Teachers (actually mom is retiring Monday). I have a lot of discussions with them about programs, what works, and what doesn't work, and what appears to work but really isn't. I did a lot of tutoring. In middle school and high-school it was very informal. In college I was a paid physics tutor and tutored many friends. I found that many students that thought they were "dumb" just usually needed to be able to ask 3-4 specific questions with a little time to work through things between the questions. This is not readily available in many school systems, and in college involved tracking down a professor during office hours or finding a tutor for the courses that offered open tutoring (Physics at Purdue was one of the only courses I know that offered this).

Thanks for posting up this video as I am very interested in looking into that system a bit deeper. I would love to see a follow up video going into more depth of the Award and value systems, and how these systems work for a general school semester/year. Do the sprint and lags end up matching up pretty well for a given curriculum over a given time span? What do gifted students get out of a system like this? Do "slower" students on average get more value?