4 . A British woman, Dr. Mantri, growing up in India started to notice her son, Dhruv, was struggling with simple math problems when he was in the fifth grade. After noticing this, she started using an abacus (算盘) to help her son visually (形象化地) understand mathematics.

“I would ask him something like 35 minus 13 but he ‘couldn’t’ do it,” said Dhruv’s mom Dr. Mantri. “I decided to change the way he looked at numbers,” she said. “An abacus is a tried and tested method, and the Egyptians used them for building the pyramid.” In just six days he started to make progress in using the abacus and would go on to become an outstanding kid with numbers, with even his classmates’ parents reaching out for help.

She never thought she would teach her son to use an abacus, which she used as a child in India and it was always helpful. Within six days she started to notice a difference and see results. So dramatic was the change that school staff asked him to perform with the abacus at a meeting, where some parents even came to ask for advice on using it for their kids.

IT specialist Dr. Mantri said the humble abacus can be used for calculations and kids enjoy learning on it because it’s like a game. “It becomes a playing tool for younger children, for it feels like a game. I think the success comes because children can touch and feel an abacus and visualize them,” she added.

By the age of 12, Dhruv was giving online cyber security class and is now pursuing a career in data science and analytics. Dhruv has now got an apprenticeship (实习) at an international firm. During the four-year apprenticeship, he will spend one day a week studying Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Glasgow Caledonian University. “He is so confident now and I am so proud,” Dr. Mantri said, with Dhruv adding, “I don’t think my teachers would have guessed that I would be following a career in data science at that time.”

I know I`ll have to study harder as a senior high school student and get used to       1     a lot more. I`m a bit worried about     2     the other students in my advanced course, and it`ll be quite difficult to get used to all the homework.

8 . Children are more creative when they learn in natural surroundings, according to new research from Curtin University. Primary school students in Australia and England were put to the test to see whether writing poetry in a natural outdoor setting produced more creative outcomes than writing in a classroom, and the answer was yes.

Dr Paul Gardner and Sonja Kuzich from Curtin’s School of Education ran relative trials with 10-year-old students in both countries and the results, recently published in the Cambridge Journal of Education, gave a big thumbs-up to the positive influence of natural settings. “We found that students who had direct contact with nature by immersing (沉浸) themselves in a bush or forest setting were much more descriptive and vivid in the language they used than the classroom-based writers who ‘imagined’ being in nature through photos,” Dr Gardner said.

In total, 97 students took part in the study, divided into four classrooms, including two based at an English primary school and two from a primary school in Western Australia. In each country one class visited a natural bush or forest before writing a poem based on what they saw, smelt and felt. The other class viewed a pile of images of the same bush or forest setting.

Ms Kuzich said the difference in creative language used between the classes was obvious with twice as many UK forest students using figurative (比喻的) language compared with the class-based students. In Australia that figure rose to more than four times when comparing the poetry of the forest-based students with those who remained at school.

The researchers say further studies of larger groups are now recommended to a gain greater understanding of the influence of natural spaces and “green learning” in schools.

10 . In the coming era of budget cuts to education, remote learning could become a common thing.

The appeal to those in charge of education budgets to trade teachers for technology is so strong that they tend to ignore the disadvantages of remote learning. School facilities are expensive to build and maintain, and teachers are expensive to employ. It’s true that online classes do not require buildings and each class can host hundreds of people, which can result in greater savings, but moving away from a traditional classroom in which a living, breathing human being teaches and interacts with students daily would be a disaster.

Physically attending school has hidden benefits: interacting with peers and communicating with teachers are important skills to cultivate（培养）in young people. Moreover, schools are more than simple places of traditional learning. They are also places that provide meals, places where students receive mental help and other support.

Those policy-makers are often fascinated by the latest technology in education and its potential to transform education overnight. But online education does not allow a teacher to keep a struggling student after class and offer help. Educational videos may deliver academic content, but they are unable to make eye contact or assess a student’s level of engagement. Distance education will never match the personal teaching in a traditional classroom. In their first 18 years of life. American children spend only 9% of their time in school. Yet teachers are expected to prepare them to be responsible citizens, cultivate their social skills, encourage successful time management, and improve their capacity to compete in a competitive job market. Given these expectations, schools should not become permanently “remote”.

The power of the classroom is rooted in the qualities of the people gathered in the same place, at the same time, including their nature, empathy, devotion and so on. Technology, no matter how advanced, should simply be a tool of a good teacher.