[Seth_Kriticos]

I agree that KA is a wonderful site, but not a panacea.

What I miss from the article is to present the solution for it.

My girlfriend is a teacher and she tells me about her days. Generally it's like taming lions many times. Kid's don't get the stuff they are being taught, because it's endlessly boring and they don't care. Not a bit. I assume they generally hate math classes.

And I can see why: they don't actually accomplish anything, have no context, just pound on basic formulas (which the article actually highlights well in the beginning).

So, I think that the solution is to package the knowledge in creative tasks. Give the kids assignments that they can creatively engage in. Give some leeway on the solutions. Let them work in small groups. This would give a bit of cooperation in the groups and competition between. Give good grades to the most efficient solutions. Structure the tasks so that the students need a basic understanding of the current topic that has to be learned and add them the resources (like KA). Then you might end up with them actually learning something.

And knowledge that is acquired during the solution of particular problems actually tends to stick longer than the next test.