All too often, kids are taught the result of other people's thinking and are not taught to think for themselves. A program called BioKIDS  at 22 Detroit schools hopes to change that by teaching fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders complex scientific reasoning skills. Students will learn to explain, predict, and pose scientific arguments based on evidence, and apply conclusions to new contexts.

This Detroit district has struggled with low test scores, high dropout rates, and job losses from the auto industry. But on a recent April day, students were darting around their urban playground, turning rocks over, and digging in the patchy grass. They returned to their classroom with a collection of worms, centipedes, slugs, and other bugs. Over the next days, the students examined their collection, documented their observations, and presented their findings to the class. They will learn to divide the schoolyard into zones and acquire the vocabulary needed to study the biodiversity in their corner of Detroit.

Results so far have been promising: at the 22 participating schools, science scores on the state exam have risen. Individual students are also getting higher grades on tests of their science-reasoning abilities.

Programs like this and our own Science A-Z work because they combine multiple powerful learning methods. Students touch, observe, discuss, and question. Rather than being taught the answer, students are taught how to find the answer.

Back in the day, the three "Rs" were taught at school: Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic.

Part of 'Riting in those days was penmanship, and children spent as much as forty-five minutes a day practicing. Over the years, penmanship has taken a back seat to other lessons and today is practiced, on average, less than ten minutes a day. Yet in my local paper the other day was a cute article about first-grader Cole Kipling, who will represent the state of Arizona in a national penmanship competition. His teacher said that Cole has perfectionist tendencies no matter the subject, but the boy said the reason he practices his penmanship is that "people need to read your handwriting."

Smart boy.

Many experts believe that handwriting is key to learning. Emily Knapton, director of program development at Handwriting Without Tears, believes that "when kids struggle with handwriting, it filters into all their academics. Spelling becomes a problem; math becomes a problem because they reverse their numbers. All of these subjects would be much easier for these kids to learn if handwriting was an automatic process." In fact, Newsweek reported that a 2007 study by Vanderbilt University showed that most primary-school teachers believe that students who wrote easily and legibly turned in more work as well as work of a higher caliber, leading to better grades.

While many of us may lean toward using the keyboard for letters and memos, handwriting remains important. After all, just because we have calculators doesn't mean we don't need to learn math. At the simplest level,  handwriting is an effective and inexpensive recording and communication method. It can provide a connection to historical documents and diaries, and, in the case of a power outage, may be a crucial means of communication. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, medical orders and records were written out by hand. While I don't believe students need to spend hours mastering the Spencerian curlicues made famous in the Coca-Cola logo, I certainly hope that students learn to read and write legibly and easily.

In a recent blog, I talked about librarians for the digital age. Now there's a library for the digital age.

Four years ago, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, had the idea of making the world's cultural treasures--rare books, manuscripts, maps, drawings, films, and sound recordings--easily accessible through a website.

He felt that the world's treasures should be available to everyone. Other nations agreed, and on April 21, 2009, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) launched the World Digital Library. Roughly 1,200 artifacts from North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania are available at the click of a mouse.

I felt as if I were in the world's most interesting library as I wandered from continent to continent, exploring treasures like the 1507 Map of the Entire World, the 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia from China, and the 1493 Columbus Manuscript.

The website contains images of prehistoric rock paintings, a late-1800s recording of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise," oracle bones from 1200 B.C. inscribed with ancient text about the seasons and equinoxes, and examples of early Persian poetry.

I was inspired by my first visit to the World Digital Library. What a great resource for older students, as well as students looking for a greater challenge, to have access to source documents for the studies of history, geography, art, language, science, and astronomy. I look forward to seeing this digital collection grow.