My teachers recognized that I lacked internal motivation, but they never really addressed it.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB/Gallery  

This is incredible! Such an amazing asset for thinking. I wish we had tools like this when we were kids. Reminds me of a TEDtalk by a math teacher, Dan Meyer: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover

He describes how we tend to remove all of the interesting stuff about actually solving problems- formulating questions, figuring out what framework to use, etc- and we just give people really boring questions.

> “I encourage math teachers I talk to to use multimedia, because it brings the real world into your classroom in high resolution and full color; to encourage student intuition for that level playing field; to ask the shortest question you possibly can and let those more specific questions come out in conversation; to let students build the problem, because Einstein said so; and to finally, in total, just be less helpful, because the textbook is helping you in all the wrong ways: It’s buying you out of your obligation, for patient problem solving and math reasoning, to be less helpful.”