Downtime and free play are all-too-often overlooked ingredients in student success and new technologies such as the Metaverse and AI might soon help educators harness that potential.
Linked to the concept of downtime is the importance of play, which is also often overlooked in education, says Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Faculty Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Temple University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Standardized test scores improve when play is prioritized in schools, she says, and more interventions for a student are not always better. “Learning loss shouldn't mean accelerating by getting more and more and more. It’s time to change the mindset on how we teach,” she says.
