The writeup I submitted on October 19, 2020 entitled "Phantom Grandmaster (idea)" has been moved back onto Cool User Picks! by receiving a Cool from esteemed noder Uri E Bakay and I have been wanting to explain a little about this purely fictional vignette. Now seems like as good a time as any. Phantom Grandmaster was inspired by the work of Sugata Mitra, an Indian computer scientist and educational theorist. Mitra placed a tamper-proof computer terminal in a recess in the outside wall of the New Delhi office building that he worked in. He called this the "Hole in the Wall" project. Dr. Mitra wanted to see what would happen if inner city street urchins with little or no access to education were provided access to an internet connected computer. The result was astounding. In a short time, children were teaching other children how to teach yet other children and education happened. He went on to set up other internet kiosks in remote locations.
I wanted to apply a related principle to chess. The general idea is to build curiosity and see if the students would begin to discuss the game thus displayed. It is not intended as a teaching method so much as a stimulus to provide an opportunity to self-teach or seek out more information (which is plentiful) from peers, mentors or the internet. The setup is designed to require no more investment of time, knowledge or effort than that of: 1. Placing a tamper-proof chess set (or wall hanging set) in a classroom. 2. Making one move per day during a time when children are not present. Games could be selected to demonstrate chess principles appropriate to the students.
I still haven't actually done this. Hopefully, a future update will document the result of this idea being tried out in an actual classroom setting. For now, it's just something that I think would be fun to try. Thanks for tuning in.