Back to Basics?

Everything old is new again. That's seems to be true in design, in politics and in education. I see now that unit blocks are making a comeback in a big way. A unit block is a type of standardized wooden toy block for children. Known also as standard unit blocks or kindergarten blocks, these building blocks are common in preschools and some kindergarten classrooms in the United States.

The New York Times published a recent article titled "With Blocks, Educators Go Back to Basics". It discusses a renewed faith by educators in unit blocks. National school-supply companies are beginning to add more block-related products to their catalogs this year. It's a learning strategy whose time seems to have come again.

Studies going back to the 1940s have proven, among other things, that children absorb basic math concepts better when using blocks. A study published in 2001 titled "Block Play Performance Among Preschoolers As a Predictor of Later School Achievement in Mathematics." tracked 37 preschoolers and found that children got better math grades and standardized test scores if they engaged in sophisticated block play.

There was another study in 2007 by Dimitri Christakis titled, "Block-Play May Improve Language Development In Toddlers", that demonstrated significantly better language skills in those children who played with unit blocks.

In India, Turkey, and South Korea, leaders are finding ways to put technology into the hands of learners in early grades in order to expand access to learning resources and high quality instruction. We are returning to wooden building blocks. Go figure.

We are getting Closer

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a trivia game based on the concept of "the small world phenomenon" and rests on the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood, California film industry can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps.

This is a play on the "Six Degrees of Separation" concept that refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth. Well, in an article published in the New York Times titled "Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees", Facebook and the University of Milan have successfully proven that the number today is really 4.74.

Experimenting over one month, Milan wrote the algorithms and Facebook supplied the cohort: 721 million Facebook users.

Of course this requires re-evaluating the definition of what a friend exactly is. It also has to take into consideration the average age of Facebook users and that these are people who are computer literate. It still demonstrates how small the world is getting and how intertwined we are all becoming.