There's no shortage of new theories about how kids help to learn better.   Unfortunately when it comes to kids and education, the only way to measure success is after the fact when it may already be too late.

The newest idea in the 'Science of Learning' is 'social learning'.  It says that infants and young children learn from imitation and by following the actions of those around them, adopting mannerisms and speech patterns.  A new University of Washington study sought to compare television and computers versus face-to-face human interaction.

Many people think a theory is just a wild guess that scientists use to explain how something works.  To scientists though, a theory is an explanation of the rules about nature.

Imagine if you were watching two people play a game and you had no idea what the rules for that game were.  As you watched you'd see them make different moves and it would seem like a complete mystery about what they were doing.