By Andrew Trotter Worcester, Mass .
Some experts claim that children's language skills improve also.
Teaching basic skills is simply more complicated than any single approach or any existing technology can address, says Carol A. Shilinsky, the principal of the Accelerated Learning Laboratory School, a K-12 magnet school here that enrolls urban and immigrant children who have plenty of catching up to do academically. Ted S. Hasselbring, the co-director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn., agrees. Educators, unfortunately, have not always understood that, he says. The development programs, which he calls instructional or tutorial approaches, consist of carefully designed puzzles, games, and activities. In math, for example, puzzles can encourage students to rely on memorizing rather than finger-counting.