Ratio Studiourm

Emotions And Learning: Part I

2010-02-22T12:29:00.000-05:00

Emotions And Learning: Part I: "I’ve never done a formal survey, but I’m going to guess that the majority of online courses don’t have a strong emotional impact on their audience. This is true even though it’s been known for some time that appealing to the emotions is one of the keys to motivating people, attracting their attention and facilitating memory.
I

Brought to you by: eLearning Learning"

10,000 Galaxies in 3D

2010-02-11T09:33:00.000-05:00

10,000 Galaxies in 3D: "

In 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope captured 10,000 galaxies in an image that’s now called the Ultra Deep Field. It’s our deepest look into the universe. The video above animates the Deep Field image and puts it into 3D. No need to read more. Just watch.

10,000 Galaxies in 3D is a post from: Open Culture, the home of Free Audio Books, Free Courses, Free Movies, Free Foreign Language Lessons, a Free iPhone App and other intelligent media!

The Open Culture iPhone App

When Galaxies Collide

Google Rebuilds the Tower of Babel with Real-Time Language Translation

2010-02-08T11:42:00.000-05:00

Google Rebuilds the Tower of Babel with Real-Time Language Translation: "

If our attempts at getting such simple information as bus schedules or account balances from automated voice recognition systems are any indication, then we imagine Google has a lot of work to do in its latest endeavor - real-time, spoken-language translation.

According to the Times UK, Google is working on developing software for a mobile phone that would translate what you were saying into the language of the speaker on the other end of the line and vice versa.

Sponsor

As you may have noticed, Google already has a hand in the translation business, with its web page translation service. Google Translate currently translates between 52 languages, which includes a number of languages with completely different alphabets.

The Times UK spoke with Franz Och, head of Google's translation services, who said that this new service should be up and running and 'work reasonably well in a few years' time.'

'Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch,' said Och. 'But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you.'

Och is referring to the fact that the software would have the opportunity to learn your accent, dialect and general manner of speaking over time, becoming more accurate. But we can only imagine the difficulty of the task ahead, especially with languages such as Mandarin or Cantonese, which are tonally based. In Mandarin, for example, the word 'ma' can have four different meanings according to the tone used. If the speaker uses the first tone, a constant high pitch, then the word means 'mother'. If they use the third tone, a dropping then rising pitch, however, the meaning changes to 'horse'.

The fun doesn't stop there, the Times UK article points out, as handling the vast number of accents and dialects is also an immense task. Much like the web-based translation that Google does, though, the system would become more accurate over time, essentially learning from its experience.

We hope that one of the first things it learns is not to call our new Chinese friend's mother a horse.

Discuss

Does slum tourism make us better people?

2010-02-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

Does slum tourism make us better people?: "Slum tourism is a growth industry with more and more wealthy travelers opting to visit the poorest parts of the world. What is it that is prompting slum tourism? Is it a new trend? What impact does slum tourism have on the people who opt for this kind of ‘holiday’? Do they become better people as a result and does the experience prompt a call to action for social change?"

Metric Map: Which Countries Don’t Belong With The Others?

2010-02-08T06:51:00.000-05:00

Let's just switch. No conversions. Just wake up one morning and we're metric. Get it over with!

Metric Map: Which Countries Don’t Belong With The Others?: "

Map : author

What sets the U.S apart from the rest of the world?

The U.S. is one of only three nations in the world (the other two being Liberia and Burma) which clings to its outmoded system of measurement, failing to get on board with the rest of the world and use the metric system.

We don’t even use the British Imperial system (that the British don’t even use anymore) – we use some bastard child of the Imperial system called “the United States customary system.” Ask any American how many ounces are in a gallon or feet are in a mile and you’re almost sure not to get a correct answer.

What does this mean for you as an American? It means that when you travel you look like an idiot. When someone asks you for directions, you are suddenly at a loss, unable to estimate distance in kilometers. If one of your South American friends asks you how cold it is, you have no idea what to say. Is 30 degrees hot? Is it cold?

There are more communist countries than there are countries not using the metric system. Everyone else has come to the conclusion that it just makes for sense to use the system everyone else in the world is using in which all units are divisible by ten.

Just try to pass the right wrench to someone and you’ll see how stupid this system is. “I need the five sixteenths hex wrench. No! I said the five sixteenths!” Of course you did.

OK. Maybe it wouldn’t be cost effective to tear down all those mile markers, but just imagine the jobs it would create to start adding kilometer markers to every highway in the U.S. of A.

The Truth About College Plagiarism

2010-02-05T20:02:00.000-05:00

The Truth About College Plagiarism: "Despite all the concern over increased plagiarism in the Internet age, concrete figures on the trend are hard to come by. In a new working paper, Brian Jacob (an occasional Levitt co-author) and Thomas Dee conducted a natural field experiment at a 'selective post-secondary institution' to shed light on the determinants of student plagiarism."

WSJ: Playfish creating social game based on 'well-known EA brand'

2010-02-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

I have the feeling that this could be a big development: if not for Playfish, at least in the sense that something big's afoot for social networking.

WSJ: Playfish creating social game based on 'well-known EA brand': "

The Wall Street Journal today examines 'Why Playfish Sold Itself to EA.' Um, wouldn't you sell yourself for $300 million? While such an investigation might seem trivial, the WSJ calls in Playfish president and GM Kristian Segerstrale, who reveals that several hundred million is merely chump change. Playfish certainly considered a road to riches paved in the arduous process of going public as an independent company, but 'as we advanced our conversations with EA, what became clear was that this would be genuine opportunity to accelerate our pace of growth and build a billion-dollar business faster,' Segerstrale explains.

To realize this dream -- to get rich really quick -- Playfish clearly saw it would take more than its prowess as a stand-out developer in the burgeoning social games arena. It would take brand power. According to the WSJ, as suggested by Segerstrale, 'there will be a social game based on a well-known EA brand this year.' Hardly a revelation, to be sure, but it's at least confirmation of a killer strategy. Take an established IP -- likely EA's The Sims -- and adapt it for a network of social gaming experiences that spans persistent platforms like Facebook and the iPhone. Oh, so that's why Playfish sold itself to EA.

[Via Develop]

WSJ: Playfish creating social game based on 'well-known EA brand' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Playing History - History Games

2010-01-28T14:57:00.000-05:00

Not a perfect site, but there are some interesting games for students.

Playing History - History Games: "Playing History is a collection of 128 games related to topics in US and World History as well as civics and geography. The games come from a variety of sources across the web. Feedback on every game and suggestions for future additions are welcomed by the hosts of the site. Visitors to Playing History can search for games by using the tag cloud, by using the search box, or just browse through the entire list. I clicked on the tag 'Supreme Court' and found nine games that I could use next fall in my US Civics course.

Applications for Education
Playing History offers a wide array of educational games for use in elementary, middle, and high school social studies course. Find a game that matches your curriculum and add it to your classroom website or blog to provide your students with fun review activity that they can use at home or at school.

Here are some related resources that may be of interest to you:
HeyZap - Strategy Games for Your Class Website
Think About History Trivia Game
200+ Free Games for Your Class Blog or Website

Seventh Circuit Rules Dungeons & Dragons A Threat to Prison Security

2010-01-28T13:01:00.000-05:00

Finally, the true danger of d&d is revealed. It explains a lot.

Seventh Circuit Rules Dungeons & Dragons A Threat to Prison Security: "

Predictably, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons in high school. Just as predictably, I didn't lose my virginity until I stopped. It's an established fact that Dungeons & Dragons is a bigger threat to human reproduction than all the gay marriages in the world.

But I did not know until this day that D&D could also pose a security risk. A Wisconsin prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, sued Wisconsin's Waupun Correctional Institution after the guards confiscated his D&D materials.

Why did the prison guards take away this guy's D&D paraphernalia? I'll let Judge John Tinder of the Seventh Circuit explain:

Waupun's long-serving Disruptive Group Coordinator, Captain Bruce Muraski, received an anonymous letter from an inmate. The letter expressed concern that Singer and three other inmates were forming a D&D gang and were trying to recruit others to join by passing around their D&D publications and touting the "rush" they got from playing the game. Muraski, Waupun's expert on gang activity, decided to heed the letter's advice and "check into this gang before it gets out of hand."

A gang? A gang that needs to be checked? I've never been to prison, but I have watched Oz. I'm forced to believe one of two things: (a) any D&D "gang" member would find themselves tossing salads faster than you can say "saving throw against horrific prison justice ... fails," or (b) if you could beat up the D&D kids in your high school, then you can go to Wisconsin, commit violent crimes with impunity, get sent to prison and live like a God.

Singer sued the prison for violating his First Amendment rights. The district court ruled with the correctional facility on summary judgment, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed.

Does that mean we get to hear the Seventh Circuit argue that D&D is gang-like? Yes it does. Will that be hilarious? More fun than hacking through an encampment of goblins with a dwarven ax of immolation.

Details after the jump.

Singer collected the affidavits of numerous prisoners and statements by three role playing game "experts" (i.e., eunuchs), who all stated that that Dungeons & Dragons is not a gang. The prison had the testimony of Captain Bruce Muraski, a gang specialist. His testimony makes me wish that we had better gang specialists:

[Muraski] explained that the policy was intended to promote prison security because cooperative games can mimic the organization of gangs and lead to the actual development thereof. Muraski elaborated that during D&D games, one player is denoted the "Dungeon Master." The Dungeon Master is tasked with giving directions to other players, which Muraski testified mimics the organization of a gang. At bottom, his testimony about this policy aim highlighted Waupun's worries about cooperative activity among inmates, particularly that carried out in an organized, hierarchical fashion.

Look, I know the title 'dungeon master' sounds scary and important. But don't let the words confuse you. We're talking about a guy who sits around all day drawing maps and debating whether a cloak of anti-venom can protect you from a fictional rat bite. (Note: It can't, rats have diseases, anti-venom contemplates poisons, those are two completely different things. Please don't tell my wife about this.)

But, the Seventh Circuit bought Muraski's logic:

Singer maintains that his fifteen affiants delivered compelling testimony challenging Muraski's assertion that D&D could promote gang-related activity. His eleven inmate affiants--who collectively served over 100 years in prison--all testified that they had never heard of any gang-related or other violent activity associated with D&D gameplay or paraphernalia. In Singer's view, this testimony adequately rebuts Muraski's testimony that D&D gameplay mimics the organization of a gang and as a consequence could lead to gang behavior. In our view, it does not.

Okay, 11 people who have been in prison for a hundred years say that linking D&D to gang behavior is ridiculous. In response, the court ignores them on the "silly criminals" theory of jurisprudence:

The question is not whether D&D has led to gang behavior in the past; the prison officials concede that it has not. The question is whether the prison officials are rational in their belief that, if left unchecked, D&D could lead to gang behavior among inmates and undermine prison security in the future. Singer's affiants demonstrate significant personal knowledge about D&D's rules and gameplay, and offer their own assessments that D&D does not lead to gang
behavior, but they lack the qualifications necessary to determine whether the relationship between the D&D ban and the maintenance of prison security is "so remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational." ...

(Of course, many of Singer's affiants are present or former inmates, but their experiential 'expertise' in prison security is from the wrong side of the bars and fails to match Muraski's perspective.) The expertise critical here is that relating to prisons, their security, and the prevention of prison gang activity. Singer's affiants conspicuously lack such expertise.

The Seventh Circuit conspicuously lacks the expertise in Dungeons & Dragons or role-playing games, but they get to wear the robes. I just hope they're happy when, stripped of their D&D responsibilities, Singer and his merry band of players join the Nation of Islam, become radicalized, and trade in their multi-sided dice for singled-edged blades.

I mean, let's be clear, it's not like Singer is a peaceful man. Singer is in jail on a life sentence for first degree murder. He killed his sister's boyfriend with a sledgehammer (and now you see why I suggested that Singer probably plays a Dwarf, warrior class). If he's found an outlet for some of his more violent tenancies, isn't that a good thing?

The court says that it is not a good thing, not necessarily:

While Cardwell and his other affiants, including a literacy tutor and a role-playing game analyst, testified to a positive relationship between D&D and rehabilitation, none disputed or even acknowledged the prison officials' assertions that there are valid reasons to fear a relationship running in the opposite direction. The prison officials pointed to a few published circuit court cases to give traction to their views. We view these cases as persuasive evidence that for some individuals, games like D&D can impede rehabilitation, lead to escapist tendencies, or result in more dire consequences.

More dire consequences than what, precisely? He's already beaten somebody to death with a freaking sledgehammer; what the hell else can he do?

Sorry, obviously, this is where my bleeding heart gets the best of me. Because all this is about is punishment. It's not about rehabilitation, it's not about security, it's about old-school vengeance carried out by state actors. He killed somebody, and we as a society found something else he liked that we can take away. So we're going to take it away. It's Christopher Lloyd playing a Klingon in Star Trek 3 telling Kirk he won't beam up Spock 'because you wish it.'

I guess that is our right. I guess there is no compelling interest in making the life imprisonment of a murderer a little less horrible. But vengeance, even when legal, is still ugly. The Seventh Circuit just made a Lawful Evil decision here.

Singer v. Raemisch [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (PDF)]

Game Over: Inmate Can't Play Dungeons & Dragons [New York Times]

Dungeons & Dragons - Crime - Dungeon Master - Crime and Justice - Prison"

High School, College Instructors Differ on Students' Readiness

2010-01-28T08:28:00.000-05:00

High School, College Instructors Differ on Students' Readiness: "

What does it mean when far more high school teachers think their students are ready for college than do the college instructors who teach them? It means we have a pretty big disconnect between what high schools think is needed for success in college and what actually is needed.

This is not exactly news. We know there are many reasons that high school students fail to make it to college, or fail to thrive once they're there. But a new survey of thousands of high school and college teachers, conducted by ACT Inc., fleshes out a few of the key reasons why.

One reason is that high school teachers and college instructors have differing views of what skills are important in college. High school teachers, for instance, rate things like media literacy and financial literacy as far more important than do college professors, who value the content areas of math, English, and science more.

Another is that high school teachers think they've prepared their students for the rigorous types of reading they will encounter in college, but college professors disagree. Science and math teachers in high school say it's important for students to master reading strategies in those subjects, but they spend little or no time teaching such things.

Expectations play a role, too. High school teachers say that they or their colleagues have lower expectations for students who are perceived as not being college-bound.

These are key new findings of the survey. The report also reiterates many other interesting findings from earlier ACT curriculum surveys that are worth examining. For example, high school teachers tend to see as crucial for college a very wide swath of content and skills, compared with college professors, who believe in a shorter list of essential skills and knowledge.

This is interesting stuff to keep in mind as the debate about defining and measuring college readiness rolls on. The full survey is packed with data; a shorter version that highlights the findings and focuses on their policy implications is also available.

How Madden is Raising a New Generation of Football Player [Sports]

2010-01-28T08:21:00.000-05:00

How Madden is Raising a New Generation of Football Player [Sports]: "

When Denver's Brandon Stokely caught a game-winning pass against Cincinnati earlier this year, he veered parallel to the goal line en route to the end zone, to both burn time and celebrate. He told Wired it was a Madden-inspired move.

It's one of the more jaw-dropping anecdotal instances of how sports video games - specifically Madden - have raised a different generation of competitor, especially in American football. Increasingly, kids are reporting to the gridiron better versed in football terminology and more perceptive of circumstances on field, like disguised coverages and tricks to expose them.

And it's not just innate knowledge. Madden and other sims are increasingly used in preparation for actual games, Wired says:

At the Pop Warner Super Bowl in 2006, the winning team had 30 offensive plays, which it had learned through Madden. ('I programmed our offense into Madden to help me memorize our plays,' one 11-year-old told Sports Illustrated. 'It was easier than homework.') Dezmon Briscoe, an all-conference wide receiver for the University of Kansas, credited Madden 2009 with teaching him how to read when defenses 'roll their coverages' - move their defensive backs to disguise their strategy. Chuck Kyle, a high school coach who has won 10 state championships in football-mad Ohio, has programmed his team USA playbook into Madden and uses it to teach players their assignments. So have coaches at Colorado State, Penn State, and the University of Missouri, among other schools.

I can tell you that Madden's effect isn't limited to performers. Simulation-quality Madden taught me to recognize certain formations and coverages, and how I wrote about high school football is noticeably different before and after my exposure to the game. It may not have as profound an impact as 22 players on the field, all growing up playing Madden, but it too influences the public's knowledge and appreciation of a very complicated sport.

Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes [Wired]

U.S. Navy: Video Games Improve Brains, "Fluid Intelligence" [Effects]

2010-01-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the new world:

U.S. Navy: Video Games Improve Brains, "Fluid Intelligence" [Effects]: "

The cognitive effects of certain video-game-style activities are not only impressive but can last a couple of years, a researcher for the Navy recently explained.

If gamers don't want to believe that video games have an effect on them — at least any effect that will cause them to do antisocial things — will they accept research that suggests games make their brains work better?

Here's Ray Perez, program officer for the Office of Naval Research's warfighter performance department:

'We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players,' s

...

'We know that video games can increase perceptual abilities and short-term memory,' he said. They allow the player to focus longer and expand the player's field of vision compared to people who don't play video games, he added.

While there is empirical evidence of increased brain plasticity in video gamers, Perez said, the process behind it is not well understood. His belief, he said, is that the neural networks involved in video gaming become more pronounced, have increased blood flow, and become more synchronized with other neural networks in the brain.

Perez credits games and game-like simulations with giving people the ability to more quickly adapt new mental strategies for problem-solving. He says that, for 50 years, it was believed that no training could improve a person's "fluid intelligence" — the ability "to work outside your present mindset, to think beyond what you have been taught, to go beyond your experience to solve problems in new and different ways."

But video games, the Navy researcher believes, are proving to be able to improve fluid intelligence, for two to two-and-a-half years. To get the nuances here, be sure to read this report in full.

Adults Benefit from Playing Video Games [U.S. Department of Defense's Armed With Science site] [PIC: Brain made of lime jello]

Study: Not All Kids Are Computer Whizzes

2010-01-28T08:19:00.000-05:00

Is this really all that shocking to anyone who is even slightly fluent in the use of tech? From NPR:

Study: Not All Kids Are Computer Whizzes: "

A study reveals that kids have more trouble searching on the Internet than we may think. Guest host Audie Cornish speaks with Allison Druin, the director of the human-computer interaction lab at the University of Maryland. Durin discusses ways to help kids search more effectively online.

» E-Mail This » Add to Del.icio.us

New, deeper AP program

2010-01-28T08:18:00.000-05:00

This eases my mind a bit about the AP program...

New, deeper AP program: "[This is my Local Living column for Jan. 28, 2010.] If someone told you the College Board was about to rip apart the SAT and rebuild it, would that excite/surprise/aggravate/frighten you? Me too. It’s about to happen, not to the SAT, but to our nation’s second-most influential test, Advanced Placement, with large consequences for our high schools and colleges. The AP program has such a tight grip on the school curriculums of suburban areas such as ours that it has come close to inspiring the same fear and consternation as the SAT and ACT. [See my new rankings of all Washington area schools, based on AP and International Baccalaureate test participation, this Monday on this blog and in the Post.] I think that’s good. AP is better than the SAT or ACT. It is a challenging series of courses in three dozen subjects ending in three-hour exams, independently written

"

US Navy: Gamers '10 to 20%' better at fighting terror

2010-01-27T12:44:00.000-05:00

From Joystiq:

US Navy: Gamers '10 to 20%' better at fighting terror: "

[Image Source]

The Office of Naval Research is currently conducting research in video game training that it says has 'surprising' results in regards to military personnel reaction time and adaptability in the fight against terror. According to an article available on the Department of Defense's official website, doctor of educational psychology and program officer Ray Perez said the research has discovered that video game players perform '10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability' than non-gamers.

Citing a need for soldiers to be 'agile problem solvers' and 'agile thinkers,' Perez notes that video game training can help field adaptability and the 'cognitive advances' derived from the training can last up to two and a half years.

'We know that video games can increase perceptual abilities and short-term memory,' Perez said, adding games allow players to focus longer and expand the field of vision compared to non-gamers. If it means the brave men and women serving have a better chance of coming home, we're all for it.

[Via GamePolitics]

US Navy: Gamers '10 to 20%' better at fighting terror originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments"

High School, College Instructors Differ on Students' Readiness

2010-01-21T14:16:00.000-05:00

From Curriculum Matters:

High School, College Instructors Differ on Students' Readiness: "

Expectations play a role, too. High school teachers say that they or their colleagues have lower expectations for students who are perceived as not being college-bound.

Google's Eric Schmidt on Gaming

2010-01-15T08:06:00.000-05:00

From Google's Blogoscoped:

Google's Eric Schmidt on Gaming: "

From H+ Magazine:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made news at the recent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, suggesting that multiplayer video games provide good career training – particularly in technology – where workplace collaboration stimulates innovation. “The game world is good training for a career in tech,” he said. “It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.”

“Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game,” said Schmidt to this international audience. “If I were 15 years old, that’s what I would be doing right now.”

[Thanks Destinyland!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google's Eric Schmidt on Gaming | Comments]

[Advertisement] Books about Google available on Ebay"

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go

2010-01-04T11:38:00.002-05:00

A great article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about the dangers of pursuing an advanced degree in the humanities. It's a sad state of affairs, and I wish it were otherwise, but that's not the case.

Here's the killer quote for me:

Most undergraduates don't realize that there is a shrinking percentage of positions in the humanities that offer job security, benefits, and a livable salary (though it is generally much lower than salaries in other fields requiring as many years of training). They don't know that you probably will have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete — and, as a result, they don't make any fallback plans until it is too late.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen Calls for End to Homework in Elementary School

2010-01-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

From the Blog Stop Homework:

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen Calls for End to Homework in Elementary School: "

(Welcome back and thank you so very much for your generous donations to Stop Homework)

Over a decade ago, the economist and Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, formed the Partichi trust to examine the issues of primary education and health in India. Last month, he released the Partichi Education Report II, which recommended ending homework in elementary school and focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic during school hours. The report also stressed the importance of recognizing and addressing the role of class barriers in educational under-achievement.

According to thehindu.com,

Prof. Sen said: “A somewhat counter-productive overloaded curriculum, incomplete education during school hours and necessity of homework are the reasons that there is a perceived necessity of private tuition since the parents try to supplement at home the education which could not be completed in school.”

He recommended “re-examination of the curriculum and banishing the necessity of homework at the elementary level” to overcome the situation.

Prof. Sen also emphasised the deep social impact the system has among the economically disadvantaged sections.

“It [the problem of class division] applies particularly to the first-generation school-goers, whose parents remain illiterate … the parents can neither help their children with their homework nor can they afford a private tutor. So then, instead of removing inequality through education, we perpetuate inequality between the haves and the have-nots.”

Can a Smart Phone Make You More Patient?

2009-12-18T12:14:00.000-05:00

Pretty insightful stuff from Harvard Business Review's Conversation Starter:

Can a Smart Phone Make You More Patient?: "

On your way to meet a colleague, you get stuck in traffic. Radio traffic reports tell you it's a ten-minute backup. You can spend ten minutes inching forward, or you cut out and take a circuitous route that will add 15 minutes to your drive, but it'll be 15 minutes in which you're moving. Which do you you choose?

The logical answer, the rational economist's answer, is to spend ten minutes inching forward since it will take you less time to get where you're going. But if you're like me, you'd rather spend fifteen minutes actually driving than ten minutes staring at a bumper in front of you. It doesn't really make sense that I'd voluntarily choose to take longer to get where I'm going, but it's also proof of what I consider one of my personal failings: a severe lack of patience.

Lucky for me, then, that I have an iPhone, the impatient person's best friend. Just two years ago, I found myself tapping my foot or tugging at my hair during traffic jams or any of life's little waiting games. Bank queues. Lines for the bathroom. The wasted minutes at the start of meetings waiting for everyone to arrive.

Today, my iPhone (any smart phone will do; I happen to own the iPhone) rescues me from all these micro-delays. A traffic jam becomes time to listen to a podcast. I check Twitter during a bank line-up. I can check Facebook while waiting for the loo and I can do email at the beginning of meetings.

Delays that would formerly have driven me into a frenzy pass very happily now. And if you're looking at measurable outcomes — my willingness to wait for a delayed colleague, the courtesy with which I (finally!) greet the bank teller, the number of hairs left on my head when traffic finally starts moving — then Alex-with-iPhone looks a lot like Alex-with-patience.

But it's not, really. Patience isn't just about measurable outcomes. Patience is an internal state. It's the ability to be present with the thoughts, emotions and anxieties in a vacant moment. It connects us with the inner voice that gets drowned out by the constant background noise of phone calls, e-mail and TV. And it's important. Being truly patient helps us improve and solve problems. In patient moments, we suddenly see the solution to an engineering problem, or come up with that tag line for an ad campaign. We think about telling the boss what we really think — and find a constructive way to do just that. We may realize that we've gone off-track and think of ways to get back on track.

Some people find this patience through exercise, meditation, church or other spiritual practices. Others — especially those of us attached to our smart phones — do whatever we can to avoid these moments and prevent them from finding us.

In fact, far from fostering patience, my now-reflexive reach for the iPhone is an evasive action, a way to avoid reflection. On the rare occasion when my iPhone runs out of juice (I've got a backup battery. What, you don't?) or actually breaks (I've got a spare phone. What, you don't?) I quickly rediscover that I'm still that impatient person spending extra time driving around traffic. My intolerance for waiting, for quiet, for nothingness is still there and I'm forced to recognize that my iPhone isn't 16 gigabytes' worth of patience: it's 16 GB of distraction.

So I thought the phone was good for my personal failing, but now I think that it's exacerbating it. The serendipitous gaps that used to be part of even the most hectic modern life can now be reduced to near zero. The emotional muscles stretched by those moments of emptiness — the ability to tune into one's self, to tolerate the anxieties that swim up, to even experience a moment of absolutely nothing — are quickly atrophied. We lose the inspirations and innovations that come from quiet, but we also escape uncomfortable, necessary questions that come from there, too. Am I doing meaningful work? Am I living with integrity? Am I happy? We keep them at bay, along with the possibilities that might arise from searching for real answers.

I still use my phone in those moments. And to the outside observer, compulsive smart phone users like me may look like the very picture of calm. With screens to fill our every waking moment, our lack of patience won't be betrayed by tapping feet or chewed nails.

But let's not kid ourselves: filling your time checking your phone doesn't make you more patient on the inside. Patience is a virtue. There's not an app for that.

Alexandra Samuel is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, and the co-founder of Social Signal, a Vancouver-based social media agency. You can follow Alex on Twitter as awsamuel or her blog at alexandrasamuel.com.

“Older workers don’t suffer from the deficiencies that a lot of people think they do.”

2009-12-18T12:10:00.000-05:00

This seems like an obvious point, but the discrimination against veterans seems pretty widespread and is, in my view, entirely too stereotyped and dismissive.

“Older workers don’t suffer from the deficiencies that a lot of people think they do.”: "

A study in which “seniors” (those over 50) were pitted against “juniors” (those under 30) in three different decision-making tasks – risk taking, competitiveness, and cooperation – found that seniors “hold their own.” They’re also more cooperative, contributing more during the cooperation test. The NY Times reports that researchers also found “groups with a mix of ages outperformed homogeneous groups.”

(There are many great ideas in the NY Times series so you should click the second link too.)

The Myth of the Deficient Older Employee | The 9th Annual Year in Ideas | The New York Times | 18 December, 2009

Via Neuroanthropology (where you’re sure to find a link you like in this list of research papers on culture, evolution, the mind, and anthropology.)

At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker

2009-12-18T08:08:00.000-05:00

The New York Times outlines another reason I'm kinda glad I left academia for the independent school world.

At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker: "Graduate students in languages and literature may face a sharp decline in faculty positions as the recession forces cutbacks in university hiring."

Don’t force your child to fit in at school. Find a school to fit your child.

2009-12-17T16:03:00.000-05:00

Great post from The Innovative Educator

Don’t force your child to fit in at school. Find a school to fit your child.: "Anyone who has or works with children knows that we have a huge crises in education and it has nothing to do with test scores. Our students are literally bored to tears in disconnected schools that kill their creativity, force them to power down as soon as they pass through the school doors and are completely disconnected from their passions, talents, and interests. In many cases these are students who are bright and gifted but struggling in school in some cases to the point of being medicated (see highlighted portion of previous link) so that they can survive the day and fit into an environment they find boring and/or irrelevant. Sadly in many cases rather than fix the boring schools, we try to fix the bored child. This often leaves parents in deep despair and children and teachers frustrated and feeling stuck in their situation accepting this as “the way things are.”

But, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is help. There is a solution. And, it’s a little out of the box.

Get your child to a school that fits him or her…however you can. This is not as difficult as it may sound at first blush. There is a growing recognition that many schools are outdated relics from the past that sit awkwardly in a 21st century world. In response to this, there are pockets of educators, schools, even systems around the world that are rising up to the challenge of educating the 21st century child rather than the current industrial model of education that is pervasive in most schools. In fact a new batch of schools has just cropped up in New York City designed specifically for students who have zoned out in the traditional system.

The iZone schools have been specifically developed to challenge the following assumptions about current practice:

Schools are comprised of similarly-operated classroom units in which one adult delivers content to a room of between 12 and 34 students, for a set number of minutes per day and days per year
Adults dictate a course of study to children, who receive and process information for adults to evaluate
As part of one job, teachers manage classroom organizations; research and deliver content; differentiate the course of study according to student needs; assess performance; and deliver feedback
Special education students are best grouped and planned for according to class size requirements

These schools recognize the problem which they define as such.

Since 2002, the number of New York City students graduating from high school has increased every year, and more students than ever before are headed to college. The fact that a full third of our youth still do not graduate from high school, however, is a call to action. And that of those who enroll in college, only 50% graduate from four year colleges within six years and only 28% graduate from associate programs within the same time frame, is a call to change. (Statistics are from public school graduates who enroll in CUNY colleges)
Today’s schools are structured for an industrial model that is increasing obsolete to the 21st century knowledge economy where students will spend their working lives. The foundation of education has in many ways remained unchanged in that it assumes that information and skills must be provided only by adults who are physically in the same room as learners, performing jobs defined in the 19th century, on a notably rigid and brief daily schedule ]
In today’s schools, students are grouped in ways that do not maximize the potential of each and every student to personalize their learning.

The schools strive to address the problem with this powerful vision.

Transform our schools from a traditional, industrial model to one that reflects and embodies 21st century skills, tools, and experiences, so that our students graduate ready for success in college and in the workforce, regardless of race, language or socioeconomic background.
Personalize each student’s learning experience to meet their diverse and individual needs to the maximum feasible extent.

The Innovation Zone has adopted an approach of launching schools that embody a set of innovations that can be evaluated for scaling potential. The core innovations are:

Expand student learning time, stretching the school day and the school year without adding teacher work time
Optimize a match between individual student learning needs, learning modalities, content and instructional resources through an algorithmic engine
Blend distance and online coursework modules and personalized learning management systems into a brick and mortar environment in ways that allow students to differentiate their pace of learning
Apply gaming theory to standards-based content, creating challenge-based curriculum and an instant feedback and assessment loop
Create job embedded teacher teams as a vehicle for teacher organization and adult learning

If you're reading this and wondering how many thousands of dollars need to be dished out for parents to send their children to such schools, the answer is not a cent. In fact, schools like these have innovative leaders at the helm who believe that the fundamental right of children and responsibility of public education is to provide every child with the opportunity to attend the best schools. These leaders believe that in fact regardless of background or SES You Can Get a Dalton Education at a NYC Public School.

If you are curious What a 21st Century School Might Look Like here is a sampling of the iZone schools. You can see videos about each school here.

Quest to Learn - Design and innovation are at the heart of Quest to Learn (Q2L), a school committed to helping every student to achieve excellence in the skills and literacies necessary for college and career readiness. The school believe that students today can and do learn in different ways, often through interaction with digital media and games. Q2L builds on this belief to create a nurturing and vibrant 6th-12th grade school environment that supports all students in the pursuit of academic excellence, social responsibility, respect for others, and a passion for lifelong learning.
iSchool - The NYC iSchool has taken a problem-based learning approach to education. Teachers collaborate on thought provoking topics to integrate into the classroom while ensuring they still meet state mandated subjects and testing standards. Students learn in the context of real world problems, and just like the real world, they have access to a host of technology and information anytime, anywhere, and from anyplace. The NYC iSchool is leading the way in creating a culture in education that truly engages students with successful results.
The Cinema School - The Cinema School is an academic high school that prepares students for top level colleges through a liberal arts education grounded in creative activity. They emphasize filmmaking because it deepens students’ learning while building confidence, responsibility and leadership. Our curriculum helps students become stronger thinkers and develop the skills needed to accomplish great things. Admission to The Cinema School is competitive no film making experience necessary.
The School of One - The mission of School of One is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction. To achieve this mission, School of One re-imagines the traditional classroom model. Instead of one teacher and 25-30 students in a classroom, each student participates in multiple instructional modalities, including a combination of teacher-led instruction, one-on-one tutoring, independent learning, and work with virtual tutors. To organize this type of learning, each student receives a unique daily schedule based on his or her academic strengths and needs. As a result, students within the same school or even the same classroom can receive profoundly different instruction as each student’s schedule is tailored to the skills they need and the ways they best learn. Teachers acquire data about student achievement each day and then adapt their live instructional lessons accordingly.

There are schools like these cropping up around the globe. Parents, students, and educators need to start voting with their feet, not as they are currently doing by leaving the school system with high school drop out rates above 50% in many cities, but by investigating what schools will suit the needs of their 21st century learning and teaching styles and then figuring out how to attend or work in such environments. The schools are hungry for innovative educators and students who will thrive in these new environments. Now parents, go find the right school for your child and teachers who are frustrated by their outdated employment situation, start connecting with these school leaders. They're looking for you.

Almost Everyone Is a Gamer Now

2009-12-17T14:27:00.000-05:00

Almost Everyone Is a Gamer Now: "

Very interesting book review in the Wall Street Journal about the casual-game revolution.

The gist is that the original video games in the 1970s (like Pong) attracted people of all ages.

Then video games got complex and attracted mostly young males.

Then simple, intuitive games (like the Wii) came along and digital games attracted all ages again.

While the bulk of console gamers are still adolescent boys and young men, the Entertainment Software Association estimates that 40% of all gamers are women over the age of 18; and 25% of Americans over the age of 50 play videogames.

(TW)

How Everybody Got Game | 15 December 2009

Strategic Thinking About Informal Learning

2009-12-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

From Workplace Learning Today. A really interesting piece on setting up a strategic thinking process. Reminds me of what we are trying to do at Collegiate.

Strategic Thinking About Informal Learning: "

The Innovative Learning Group has a nice exercise to foster strategic thinking about informal learning.

They present two scenarios and ask you to identify informal-learning approaches that would work there.

They also list candidly some downsides of informal learning (difficult to track, difficult to control accuracy, and so forth).

(And they list all five items in their Strategic Thinking series here.) (TW)

Strategic Thinking #5: Informal Learning

Animating the News: How Videogame Technologies Can Alter Our Perceptions of Real Life Events

2009-12-14T12:48:00.000-05:00

Animating the News: How Videogame Technologies Can Alter Our Perceptions of Real Life Events: "

Before photography caught on in newspapers, artists rendered their conceptions of newsworthy events through woodcuts. These pictures served as a basis for shaping perceptions among consumers of the news.

Now, a Chinese company called Next Media has pioneered videogame animations to offer its readers artists’ conceptions of events through online animations. Gordon Crovitz over at The Wall Street Journal notes that millions have seen Next Media’s conception of Tiger Wood’s car wreck.

Just as in the 19th Century, when there was no camera present an artist visualized what the scene must have looked like, and presented it to the audience through the dominant medium of the day (newspapers). Now, when there is an incident not recorded by video camera, artists again are imagining what the scene must have looked like, how things transpired, and presenting it to consumers through the dominant medium of the day (the web).

As before, Crovitz notes, those on the tail end of this technological and media revolution are protesting, and are being dragged kicking and screaming into the new way of things. But technology keeps steaming along. Here’s Crovitz’s key paragraph:

These animations are the latest brainstorm of Jimmy Lai, the founder of Next Media, which launched what are now the most popular Chinese-language newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Reflecting on how newspaper stories have more background about events than television news reports have, as he told me last week, “I thought, hey, why not make those missing images of the background into animated images?” He hired 160 software developers and engineers in Taiwan, who spent more than two years perfecting the technique. Reporters describe their interpretation of what happened to engineers and actors who serve as the models for the animation. Mr. Lai says that his team can create an animated video in 90 minutes, producing about 20 a day.

Are there issues with this technique? You bet. For one thing, what if the reporters’ and artists’ conception of events is entirely wrong? If their video is widespread enough, the wrong conception may be permanently etched into public memory. One could see how public opinion could be greatly manipulated were this powerful new media tool misused. Probably only a matter of time: Crovitz indicates that Lai is working on advancing the technology, making the animations more realistic as techniques and tools develop. He is also intent on sharing the technology with other media companies across the globe.

References:

Crovitz, G. (2009, December 14). Tiger Woods and the animation of news. The Wall Street Journal, A23. [Online.] Retrieved December 14, 2009 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703757404574592093833268688.html

Behind The Awkwardness: I Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts

2009-12-09T16:31:00.000-05:00

Behind The Awkwardness: I Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts: "

“I’m the boy in the picture with my family. Apparently, the ghostbusters craze got the best of my mom and she made us walk through the mall in those stupid shirts to get our picture taken. From the look on my sister’s face, I don’t think she was too thrilled with the whole idea either.”

(Submitted by Trevor)

Mnemonics Compilation Site Helps Stick Facts to Your Brain [Learning]

2009-12-03T12:06:00.001-05:00

Mnemonics Compilation Site Helps Stick Facts to Your Brain [Learning]: "

Mnemonics are great memory-boosters when your learning requires rote memorization, like the bones of the skeletal system or edible berries. Next time you need a study aid, check out this compilation of mnemonics on topics that range from physics to religion.

You may already know a few mnemonics without really thinking of them as that. For instance, ' Righty, tighty, lefty loosey' is a common way to remember which way to remove or tighten a screw, and ROY G. BIV helps you recall the colors of the rainbow. This guide has plenty of familiar mnemonics, plus obscure ones that will help you tell camels apart or remind you what James Bond films starred Sean Connery.

What are your favorite mnemonics for remembering things? Share them in the comments.

Mnemonics Guide

Mnemonics Compilation Site Helps Stick Facts to Your Brain [Learning]

2009-12-03T12:06:00.000-05:00

Mnemonics Compilation Site Helps Stick Facts to Your Brain [Learning]: "

What are your favorite mnemonics for remembering things? Share them in the comments.

Mnemonics Guide

Should children be watching films at school?

2009-12-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

From The Times Online:

Should children be watching films at school?: "

Joanne Jacobs asks this question, about School Time TV on her blog. She writes about how children in (American) schools seem to be watching an inordinate amount of videos during school hours and quotes one mother who discovered that her daughter had watched Enchanted in English class and Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Ice Age and Finding Nemo in German class. This mother asked her daughter:

“How many movies do you watch a week?”

She thought a bit, counting up on her fingers and trying to remember. “Oh — I don’t know — five or six, maybe more. We watch TV pretty much every day in at least one class and any time we have a sub they put in movies or something."

It's worth reading the post to see how many people have had similar experiences. And my feeling is that this happens here too, and not just at the end of term. I recently wrote about using Night at the Museum 2 for educational purposes, so I'm not anti "modern" aids in the classroom, but I do think they need to be relevant. I remember watching Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet at school, but that's about it. My daughter has recently watched (and for no apparent educational reason) Oliver and Harry Potter (which I would quite like to have known about in advance, as it's not something I would necessarily have shown her in case she got too scared!), while my son has seen some of Ice Age 2. I've also heard stories of children who watch videos as a regular part of the school day. What happens during wet-play is another moot point.

What do you think? Are films useful in a classroom, or just as an occasional treat? And are they being used as babysitting tools when children should be learning...?

Read School Gate:

Three DVDS in one day. Shouldn't kids do something more useful at the end of term?

Film rentals go up in line with exam texts. Which is your favourite?

Would you send your child to Hogwarts?

How a hit film can make learning come alive

Video-Game HR Recruiting a Near Reality

2009-12-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

From Read Write Web:

Video-Game HR Recruiting a Near Reality: "

Editor's note: we offer our long-term sponsors the opportunity to write 'Sponsor Posts' and tell their story. These posts are clearly marked as written by sponsors, but we also want them to be useful and interesting to our readers. We hope you like the posts and we encourage you to support our sponsors by trying out their products.

Would your company recruit skilled employees using a video game?

That isn't a rhetorical question. Recruiting the right people is an unavoidable and costly challenge for many organizations.

Sponsor

Enter SkyTroller (iTunes link). This $1.99 iPhone app lets would-be air traffic controllers assign flight altitudes to aircraft entering their airspace. The game ends on the third 'critical separation loss.' And, if the stars align, high scorers might one day receive a call from an ATC recruiter.

SkyTroller could help address a pressing HR issue. The Federal Aviation Administration, on which Ronald Reagan hit the reset button early in his presidency, faces a huge loss of ATCs around 2016.

The FAA also suffers ongoing ATC shortages, at least according to the ATCs. The FAA insists that US control towers are not understaffed, but echoes of this 'disagreement' can be heard in places like Australia and Europe as well.

Could SkyTroller help match ATC organizations worldwide with people who show the raw talent to keep the skies collision-free? Maybe.

SkyTroller concept originator Dale Leier, a 20-year ATC vet (retired) with Nav Canada, now with iPhone app incubator HeavyLifters Network Ltd., says that the game contains about as much of the real thing as HeavyLifters could wedge into a phone screen.

And NavCan, Leier's old employer, has shown interest. (SkyTroller hasn't yet registered on the FAA's radar.)

Using technology to find promising staff is nothing new. There's even a B-movie precedent, The Last Starfighter, in which aliens recruit the protagonist, an American teen, using a video game based on the gunships used in a far-off intergalactic war. That game notified the recruiter when the teen recorded a high score.

To help aspiring ATCs get jobs, SkyTroller would need a similar alert mechanism, on top of buy-in from the FAA and its sister organizations.

While this recruiting scenario remains incomplete, it still seems promising:

One low-cost app that could be used to test budding ATCs.

Millions of iPhones and iPod Touches sold that run the app.

Perpetual worldwide demand for ATCs.

Extra time for newly unemployed owners of these Apple products to figure out if they can help meet that demand.

Do you know of other 'recruiting apps' made for handhelds? Would you develop such an app for your company? Let us know what you think.

Discuss

Royal Society puts 60 seminal scientific papers online

2009-11-30T15:53:00.000-05:00

Boing Boing, you never let me down...

Royal Society puts 60 seminal scientific papers online: "The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (aka The Royal Society) is celebrating is 350th birthday next year. Spun out in part of the fantastically cool Invisible College, the Royal Society's members have included Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Charles Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee, Lise Meitner, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Francis Crick, and countless other smart folks. The organization kicks off its big anniversary year with Trailblazing, a new interactive timeline that includes 60 choice articles from the journal Philosophical Transactions. From the Royal Society's announcement :

Leading scientists and historians have chosen 60 articles from amongst the 60,000 published since the journal first began in 1665. Trailblazing will make the original manuscripts available online for the first time alongside fascinating insights from modern-day experts who are continuing the work of scientific giants such as Newton, Hooke, Faraday and Franklin and making vital new breakthroughs of their own in areas such as genetics, physics, climate change and medicine.

Highlights include:

• The gruesome account of an early blood transfusion (1666)

• Captain James Cook’s explanation of how he protected his crew from scurvy aboard HMS Resolution (1776)

• Stephen Hawking’s early writing on black holes (1970)

• Benjamin Franklin’s account of flying a kite in a storm to identify the electrical nature of lightning – the Philadelphia Experiment (1752)

• Sir Isaac Newton’s landmark paper on the nature of light and colour (1672)

• A scientific study of a young Mozart confirming him as a musical child genius (1770)

• The Yorkshire cave discovery of the fossilized remains of elephant, tiger, bear and hyena heralding the study of deep time (1822)

Royal Society's Trailblazing (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

Image: 'Frontispeice to Thomas Sprat's A History of the Royal Society (1667)'

K12Online09 Presentation Schedule Available

2009-11-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

Last year's K-12 Online Conference was excellent and this year's promises to be even better. Take a look at their schedule.

K12Online09 Presentation Schedule Available: "

Our schedule of presentations for the 2009 K-12 Online Conference is now online and available! This schedule is linked from the following locations:

At the top of our conference blog, in the header as the SCHEDULE link.

In the right sidebar of our conference blog, as the “2009 Schedule” link above our archive links.

On our conference Ning, as the main “Events” tab link at the top of each page.

On our conference wiki, on the main homepage, on the “For Participants” page, and in the left sidebar as “2009 Schedule.”

Per the posted schedule, our 2009 K-12 Online Conference begins tomorrow at 12 pm GMT, which is 7 am EST, with Kim Cofino’s pre-conference keynote, “Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence, and the Future of Education.” Use this link to view the exact time when the keynote will “go live” in your local time zone.

If you have not already, read Kim’s post from October 11th giving more background about what’s coming in her keynote.

Bookmark / favorite our 2009 Conference Schedule page! As presentations are published each day of our main conference weeks, links to those videos will be added to the conference schedule as well as posted here on our conference blog. (They’ll “go live” here on the blog first.) Presenters will also be adding embedded links to their videos on our conference Ning, and adding discussion posts for their presentations in our Ning forum.

If you have not already, please join our conference Ning to participate in discussions there throughout and following our 2009 conference.

Technorati Tags:

education, k12online, k12online09, schedule, school, technology

Ask the Administrator: How to Change a Culture?

2009-11-30T11:36:00.000-05:00

This is a really perceptive article from Inside Higher Ed that addresses the issues of cultural change in an academic environment. Much of it applies to k-12 settings as well.

Ask the Administrator: How to Change a Culture?: "Dean Dad"

Justice

2009-11-30T11:33:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen Michael Sandel's lectures, rush over to the series web site.

Justice: "

Talking of political philosophers’ job descriptions, Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (UK) has been out for a while now, but only just reviewed in the NYT (by Jonathan Rauch). It has the virtues that Sandel has honed over the years (and were notably absent from his first, influential, book): he has the remarkable ability to keep things clear and complex at the same time, and resists the temptation to repeat himself for the sake of the ungenerous or slow-witted reader. Rauch is right that the chapter on Kant is a gem, but equally striking is the chapter on Rawls which is accurate (as the earlier book wasn’t always), fair-minded, and to the point (and even, at the end, inspiring). The Economist review says, that he nudges the reader toward Aristotle, by being harder on the consequentialist and Kant-inspired accounts of justice, but that’s not really my read of the book: unless his experience has been radically different from mine, he believes that his students (and, probably, many of his readers) are unduly reluctant to incorporate a concern with personal virtue into their judgments and the book attempts to overcome that bias, putting the different accounts on a more level playing field. Every page makes some real world or literary reference that will be familiar to the non-philosophical reader. A couple of social scientist friends have recommended it to me as something to recommend to other social scientists as an excellent introduction to the field.

But more to the point, his TV show is almost all up online now, free.

I’ve only watched the first and eleventh episodes, which are both brilliant: the rest will wait till the break when my eldest has time to watch them with me. I’ve not been to see him teach this course, and now I probably won’t bother (at least I read the book). I have to say that his teaching seems superb—at the start he looks a bit of a showman, but that impression disperses quickly, and it must be the case that most of the students in the class are thinking most of the time during the class. His certainty that the class will not get away from him when he hands it over to the students, and (justified) confidence that he can structure things so that they teach each other are… awesome.

A question occurred to me while I was watching it: will the fact that we can all watch Sandel doing this now, on TV, radically improve the quality of moral philosophy teaching at American universities in the coming year or so?

(Parenthetically, this might be a good moment to thank Alan Bostick for his acerbic comment 4 years ago that had a substantial impact on the way that I teach).

Why Big Media's Anti-Google Counter-Revolution Will Fail

2009-11-25T12:31:00.000-05:00

Why Big Media's Anti-Google Counter-Revolution Will Fail: "

The Empire always strikes back. Every revolution inspires a counter-revolution. Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance didn't win independence overnight — and neither, it seems, will the www.

Microsoft is negotiating with News Corp to pay it to remove its content from Google's index. Uh-oh: the Empire — industrial-era business as usual — is striking back. Will the rebels be crushed?

Not a chance. Blocking Google is about as smart as eating a pound of plutonium. Here's why MicroFox is making a big mistake.

Substitution. The simplest flaw in the MicroFox's strategic logic? MicroFox is trying to create artificial scarcity instead of value. That might have worked in the 20th century, but in a hyperconnected world, creating artificial scarcity kills orthodox businesses dead. That's because though MicroFox can block Google, there's no way to block people from using Google to find stuff that doesn't suck. Artificial scarcity is usually a one-way ticket to oblivion, as people simply defect to better alternatives.

Network economics. Search engines live or die by network effects. Murdoch's challenge isn't "de-indexing" the stuff of the newspaper — but de-indexing all the viral and network effects that flow from newspapers. If MicroFox could remove all the tweets, links, and blog posts that flow from newspapers, their threat would begin to be credible. But they can't — and so the threat is limited in value.

Conflict. I spent a couple of days discussing MicroFox's move with investors, entrepreneuers, and media bigwigs. Many said: "a little competition in search? Isn't that great"? It would be — but this ain't competition. It's what I've termed conflict: the opposite of competition, or anti-competitive behaviour. MicroFox's goal isn't to offer a better alternative to consumers. It's explicitly, simply, to deny Google. It's what regulators call "exclusive dealing."

Unnovation. Isn't, I said to one notable investor, real competition about building a better search engine — not just cornering the market on content? That competition and conflict are so easily confused by those at the very pinnacle of the economy speaks volumes about why our economy's in a mess. The fundamental challenge of the 21st century is learning to make radically better stuff, because for the last several decades, most industries have been unnovating. MicroFox is just deal-making — not making a radically better search engine, or better news media. And for that simple reason, Google will always outcompete it.

Scarcity. As I point out in my recent IdeaCast, the challenge for newspapers is scarcity — real scarcity, not artificial. Can newspapers offer distinctive perspectives, rich with knowledge, expanded into topics, that make readers authentically better off? That's what scarce, distinctive news might look like.

Thick value. The real challenge for every industry today is learning to create thick value — value that makes society smarter, healthier, authentically better off. Yet, MicroFox, as ever, illustrates the shortcomings of 1.0 strategy perfectly. Murdoch's move is a page straight out of the thin value playbook: bluff, threaten, withhold. Yet, if Murdoch "wins," society is worse off. Readers lose, because choice in news is limited, and prices inevitably jacked up, without better news having been created.

At the end of the day, what MicroFox is missing is the big picture. The future of advantage is fair, not unfair.

Every Constructive Capitalist knows that Google's revolution wasn't just about search. It was about learning to not engage in unfair tactics like these. Google's far from perfect — but it strives to be less evil, less unfair, less, well, 20th century, than rivals. Its next great challenge? To get even more radically fair. Google's big flaw is that it hasn't kept exploding the boundaries of fairness in recent years, leaving its suppliers beggared. Today, Google must find radically innovative ways to share a portion of the thick value it has created with content guys, without the exclusive dealing that MicroFox uses. There's no reason that sharing value has to involve kickbacks and side deals.

What kind of publishers are likely to seek these sorts of exclusive deals? Those whose content isn't competitive on a level playing field to begin with. The same is true for search engines. That's classic adverse selection — uncompetitive players falling into each others' arms. And it's why this strategy is easily dominated.

Let me try and put it even more simply. FairTrade is turning food upside down through the power of a fair advantage. Who will create a FairTrade for media? That's every media player's next great challenge. MicroFox, still trapped in the confines of strategy 1.0, can't take it on. But somewhere out there is a Constructive Capitalist who will — and when they do, kiss big media goodbye.

Empires always strike back, but the Force is with the fair. It's awesomeness that gives you the power to, like Google, create real value. So how unfair is your business? Is the force with you?

* * *

NB — Here's some more basic econ for those who are interested:

How much will Bing will be willing to pay News Corp? The value of the advertising revenue that marginal traffic generates for Bing. But that value depends first on how valuable Bing ads are. If Bing ads were maximally relevant, no exclusive deal would need to be struck in the first place. The fee is an admission that ads aren't valuable enough to publishers alone. When Google's ads are valuable enough to offset the marginal gains from fees to publishers, exclusivity will fall apart. Conversely, Google will always be able to offer greater exclusivity fees than Microsoft, should it choose to do so.

More American Homes Play WoW Than You Probably Think [Christmas]

2009-11-25T10:11:00.000-05:00

More American Homes Play WoW Than You Probably Think [Christmas]: "

Terrifying statistic incoming. According to research performed by the NPD Group, 14% of American homes have an online game subscription. Not 14% of homes connected to the internet. 14% of homes.

That figure covers any and all games requiring a subscription, so don't go laying all the blame at World of Warcraft's feet. Spare a little for EVE, Age of Conan and LOTRO as well.

'Despite concerns that the recession would cause consumers to reduce spending on entertainment subscription services, most forms of subscription entertainment are doing just fine,' NPD's Russ Crupnick said in a press release. 'Consumers are clearly looking to the value offered by entertainment subscriptions and like what they get for their money.'

New NASA Game Gets Kids to Map Mars for Space Agency

2009-11-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

New NASA Game Gets Kids to Map Mars for Space Agency: "

Child labor or science education. You be the judge.

For just about ten years, between 1997 and 2006, the Mars Global Surveyor was in a perpetual state of free fall around the Red Planet. Its mission — snapping pics of the planet and taking laser altimeter and emission spectrometer readings from a height of 250 miles. Since the craft orbited Mars about 45,000 times and took more than 240,000 images during it's ten-year stint, NASA has more than just a little data to deal with. So it's started recruiting kids.

Working with Microsoft, NASA has created the Be a Martian website, where kids are crowdsourced into helping the space agency knit all of those Surveyor images into a single, coherent 3D map of Mars.

The site offers two games. In one, players are given three images from the Martian surface and must line them up with the background. NASA says the players' efforts will help them build more accurate models of the planet.

Another game asks kids to lasso Martian craters in the images. The results are used to estimate the relative ages of different regions of the planet, which provides clues to whether Mars was once habitable.

In exchange, kids are awarded 100 'reptuation' points for each task they complete. Achievement 'badges' can also be earned.

Games with a purpose — see Foldit and Louis von Ahn's work for other examples — are easily the most interesting genre of 'serious game.' Harnessing human cognition to our intense love of play has enormous potential...

"Not now, Mom, I'm raiding Kil'jaeden...oh and I'm curing cancer, too."

Laugh while you can.

[via The Register]

Curt Bonk's Flat Classroom Keynote

2009-11-25T09:41:00.000-05:00

Curt Bonk's Flat Classroom Keynote: "I've mentioned how much I like Professor Curtis Bonk's new book The World Is Open a couple of times in the past. You can read those posts here and here. Today, on YouTube I found a video of Curt Bonk in which he gives a quick and entertaining overview of the concepts and people discussed in his book. If you've been considering purchasing his book, watch this video and decide for yourself if you want to read the book. After watching the video I think you will want to read it.

FTC Disclosure: I did receive a free copy of Professor Bonk's book 'The World Is Open' and a copy of his book 'Empowering Online Learning.' That said, even if I had paid for the books, I would still be recommending them.

Educational Video Games Mix Cool With Purpose

2009-11-25T09:39:00.000-05:00

Educational Video Games Mix Cool With Purpose: "One of KC Phillips’s favorite video games is the Xbox shoot-’em-up Halo, because, he says, his dad taught him how to play it when he was younger. Now 15 and a high school sophomore in Madison, Wis., KC views the game with a more discerning eye. Last year, he played Gamestar Mechanic, an educational video game that asks players to solve a set of puzzles in order to win enough power to design and create their own video games.
“Now every single time I play video games, I really ..."

When Teachers Are the Experts. From Tradtional to Collaborative Pro. D.

2009-11-25T09:38:00.000-05:00

This article from Ian Jukes' blog is a great summary of where I think professional development is heading. It's exciting to think of the equal access that the internet will provide for schools that haven't traditionally been able to afford the high-cost programs we've grown accustomed to.

When Teachers Are the Experts. From Tradtional to Collaborative Pro. D.: "I think I’m going to miss the coffee and Danish most of all. I won’t miss staring at the clock with my politely disengaged colleagues. And I won’t miss the guy up front, some former principal or ace teacher, who’s going to teach us about some topic that has been deemed important for the entire staff. These whole-school workshop sessions that many of us have experienced are what I’ll call “old PD”: professional development in the form of an expert up ..."

Empire of the Word to examine the last 5000 years of reading

2009-11-25T09:28:00.000-05:00

Empire of the Word to examine the last 5000 years of reading: "

The written word: in prehistoric times, it took the form of drawings in caves. Today it speeds past on the screens of our electronic devices at the touch of a finger. How did the simple act of reading come to be? How has it shaped our lives? And what role does a modern society play in providing and protecting literacy for all?

The Canadian network TVO will be broadcasting the world premiere of Empire of the Word, a fascinating four-hour documentary series chronicling the origins of reading and writing and its impact on 5,000 years of human history.

Hosted by renowned Canadian-Argentine author Alberto Manguel and based on his A History of Reading, Empire of the Word explores how reading and writing were born; how we learn to read; who or what might prevent us from reading; and the future of reading.

Eight years in the making and shot in 15 countries, the series journeys from prehistory to present day and beyond, illustrating how reading and writing are inextricably linked to human evolution and existence.

We witness some of the people and events that create the story of the written word: the genesis of the alphabet; the earliest forms of portable reading; Alexander the Great’s dream of the first universal library; the role of Irish monks in saving reading during the Early Middle Ages; the groundbreaking concept of interpreting your own meaning from a text; the printing press; and the challenges and opportunities for reading in a digital world. At the heart of the series is the question of why reading has survived throughout the ages despite poverty, resistance by organized religion, authoritarian rule, censorship, learning or health impediments and interactive media.

While the invention of the Gutenberg press some 500 years ago made reading a universal possibility, the ability – and freedom – to read and write is not as universal as we may think, even in the 21st century.

After the series has premiered in Canada, it will screen in Australia, Ireland and France. It will also be available to the rest of the world online, along with a series of interactive features.

Click here to go to the Empire of the Word website.

Click here to go the Empire of the Word Facebook page

Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge

2009-11-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

A really interesting article from the NY Times that poses some thoughtful questions about the potential benefits and risks of online education.

Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge

Virtual iPhone Phrasebook Brings Us Closer to the 'Babel Fish'

2009-11-25T09:14:00.000-05:00

Virtual iPhone Phrasebook Brings Us Closer to the 'Babel Fish': "In Douglas Adams's best-selling novel The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a space traveler could stick the Babel fish right into his ear, making it so he could understand speakers in any language. Emirates airlines' iLingual iPhone app doesn't exactly realize his dream, but it's a step in the right direction."

Scholarship on Ancient and Medieval Middle East Becomes Free Digitally

2009-11-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

Scholarship on Ancient and Medieval Middle East Becomes Free Digitally: "A wealth of material that documents the ancient Middle East has become available through a new, free online service at the Oriental Institute.
¨
The material comes from the extensive collection at the institute, which is a major publisher of important academic books on the languages, history and cultures of the ancient Middle East. The effort began in 1906, when the University started issuing publications that have been essential for studying the past.

Since that time, more than 272 books have been published, ranging from dictionaries of the Assyrian and Hittite languages, to historical and archaeological studies and oversized folio volumes that document Egyptian temples and tombs.

Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute, said, 'Our publications are the lasting record of our excavations and research. They are fundamental tools for scholars of the ancient Middle East throughout the world. Making these books available to our colleagues, to educators and the public reflects our mission to share knowledge.'

Publication of its research is a central tenet of the mission of the Oriental Institute. Equally important is making that research accessible to scholars and individuals throughout the world.

Toward that end, in October 2004, the Oriental Institute announced the Electronic Publications Initiative, which stated that all publications of the Oriental Institute would be simultaneously published in print and electronically.

New titles are made available for free download at the same time they are issued in print. Individuals, libraries and institutions may download one complimentary copy for personal use from the Oriental Institute's Web site: https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/.

More than a thousand copies of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary have been downloaded since May 2008. To date, 147 Adobe PDFs (portable document files), each containing an entire book, can be accessed at the site. Many of those titles are older publications that have long been out of print. An additional 125 older titles, which comprise the institute's Egyptological collection published since the 1920s, such as the Epigraphic Survey, are being scanned in preparation for free Internet distribution.
¨
Another 138 older titles, which document the institute's research on Anatolian, Arabic, Iranian, Mesopotamian, Syro/Palestinian cultures, among others, will continue to be scanned and distributed as time and funds permit.

Medieval Titles include:

Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Donald Whitcomb

Bir Umm Fawakhir Survey Project 1993: A Byzantine Gold-Mining Town in Egypt, by C. Meyer et al.

Ayla: Art and Industry in the Islamic Port of Aqaba, by D. Whitcomb

Daily Life Ornamented: The Medieval Persian City of Rayy, by Tanya Treptow

European Cartographers and the Ottoman World, 1500–1750: Maps from the Collection of O. J. Sopranos, by Ian Manners

Response to the EPI has been overwhelming, with positive comments received from all over the world. Complimentary Web distribution ensures that publications of the Oriental Institute, whether new or old, are made available to everyone with access to the Internet, especially in countries where the institute conducts research.¨

Thomas Urban, manager of the Publications Department at the Oriental Institute, said, 'Technology now makes it possible for us to make these works widely available. So much effort goes into each volume—the author's original research, editorial work, artwork and photography. It is rewarding that these books, many of which are long out of print, can be consulted.'

Statistics on downloads of electronic files and sales of printed books have been carefully tracked, and the Publication Sales office has noted that the availability of free downloads has not adversely impacted the sale of the printed volumes. In fact, the availability of free PDFs of titles has increased print sales. After the complimentary distribution of 21 titles—books that had not been accessible via the Internet before 2008—print sales of those same titles increased by 7 percent compared to the previous two years.

'It seemed counterintuitive that making the electronic files available without charge would actually stimulate the sale of hard copies, but that is what we are seeing,' Urban said. 'We suspect that people are sampling the book through the download, then they decide they want a hard copy. This is an important message to others who are contemplating making their books available on the Internet,' he added.

Archaeologists May Have Found Remains of Lost Persian Army

2009-11-10T18:30:00.000-05:00

Archaeologists May Have Found Remains of Lost Persian Army: "

2,500 years ago, an army of 50,000 men left an oasis in western Egypt and were never heard from again. Now, archaeologists think they may have uncovered the missing troops, who were probably killed in a sandstorm.

...the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area. Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls. 'We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold to American tourists,' Castiglioni said.

And now, unless popular film and novels have lied to us all, every last one of those skeletons will struggle to its feet and--enraged at the disruption of a centuries' long slumber--visit destruction upon archaeologist and Bedouin alike.

Vanished Persian Army Said Found in Desert, from MSNBC, via Martin Bosworth, who agrees with me about the inevitable walking skeletons. In your heart of hearts, you know we're right.

Image courtesy Flickr user spratmackrel, via CC

"

Best book ever on how to prepare students for college

2009-11-06T09:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not always a Jay Matthews fan, but the book he discusses here looks like it's worth a read.

Best book ever on how to prepare students for college: "We have had blue ribbon commissions, congressional committees, corporate roundtables, university consortiums and dozens of non-profit organizations struggle with the central question of American education: How do we prepare students for success in college? The written output of these groups numbers tens of thousands of pages, at least. And yet I just got more useful information from a 198-page book written by an unknown assistant professor of education at Seton Hall University than I ever learned from those stacks of well-intentioned reports.

"

Use Humility to Improve Performance

2009-11-05T15:41:00.000-05:00

A recent posting by harvardbusiness.org on humility in the workplace. A crucial and often overlooked trait.

Use Humility to Improve Performance: "

I've written before about the importance of humility as a leadership trait. But, as was recently pointed out to me, humility is an important trait in employees, too.

When people act humbly, they are acknowledging their limitations and accepting that they cannot go it alone. This mindset is valuable to a team because it serves as an invitation for others to help. Humility, however, is not an excuse for slacking. It also means having the willingness to help others do their jobs when the need arises. It is a means for allowing different personalities to coordinate with each other.

Rick Hensley, an executive with Messer Construction, reminded me of the importance of this trait in employees after I mentioned humility in keynote address I recently delivered at Miami University. Rick, a vice president for information technology, has developed a 'personal humility index' that he uses when interviewing job candidates.

Among the things Rick looks for are self-awareness, a 'strong sense of modesty,' the 'use of we and team versus I and me,' and the candidate's desire to develop different levels of employees. Rick wants candidates to 'see themselves as others see them.' Trustworthiness, along with integrity and honesty, are essential.

Fostering humility at work requires leadership and putting what you believe into action. Here are some suggestions.

1. Look for signs of humility. You can spot hubris, the arrogant disregard of others and the opposite of humility, during job interviews. A job interview is the ideal time to talk about yourself, but arrogant employees will take credit for accomplishments while demonstrating a lack of awareness about what it takes to work with others. This shows up when you ask questions about failures; some may not know how to answer those questions because in their minds, mistakes were other employees' faults, not theirs. More humble employees will talk of the contributions of others, particularly when talking about how they solved challenges or dealt with problems. These candidates may make for stronger collaborators.

2. Show humility. If you expect your employees to be humble, lead by example and be humble yourself. Never ask the impossible. Support people with resources and manpower, and in crunch time, pitch in with the work load. Listen more than you speak, and actively encourage your employees to voice their ideas. Then, delegate authority and responsibility to them.

3. Insist on cooperation. Make it known that people on your team must work together to get things done. Cooperation requires respect for other people's abilities, that's easy. What's not so easy is an acknowledging that you may not be as good at a particular task as someone else. A good manager will find the right fit for your talents but you'll need to accept role and harmonize with others. Some of us have terrific presentation skills; others of us may be great with spreadsheets. Acknowledging that you lack a skill requires humility and facilitates cooperation. (Of course, as time goes on, you can seek to add new skills through training and development opportunities.)

Humility can be practiced by everyone in the workplace. Its presence makes for a more harmonious and collaborative work environment because people feel they can share their ideas without fear of being 'one-upped' or put down.

Americans Are Lonelier, but Don't Blame the Internet, Report Says

2009-11-05T15:13:00.000-05:00

This confirms what I've thought for a while...

Americans Are Lonelier, but Don't Blame the Internet, Report Says: "

Americans tend to have fewer close confidants today than they did two decades ago -- but that isn't because they're all huddled over their computers playing World of Warcraft or reading the Volokh Conspiracy.

A report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that the Internet and other new communication technologies have, if anything, a modestly

Military Tries Out Virtual Schools – Las Vegas Review-Journal

2009-11-05T12:47:00.000-05:00

Yet another move towards online education.

Military Tries Out Virtual Schools – Las Vegas Review-Journal: "This news item was posted to the iNACOL forums yesterday.
Military tries out virtual schools
Students, classes will move together
By RICHARD LAKE
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Oct. 19, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/news/military-tries-ou…s-64720407.html
When members of the military are stationed overseas, they usually bring their families. They live in Germany or Japan or some other faraway place with a military base [...]"

What is Strategic Innovation?

2009-11-04T14:12:00.001-05:00

This is a pretty interesting presentation I ran across. I don't remember how I found it, but it seems to mirror some of the things we're trying to do.

What is Strategic Innovation?

View more documents from Marc Sniukas.

A Family Man Dabbles in Ivy-League Learning

2009-11-04T13:18:00.000-05:00

The future of education?

A Family Man Dabbles in Ivy-League Learning

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has died

2009-11-03T13:09:00.000-05:00

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has died: "

The man widely considered to be the father of modern anthropological study has passed away at 100 years of age. NYT, Bloomberg, Wikipedia, AFP.

'Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called 'primitive' races and those of modern western societies.'

Cartoon: "Greetings, Earthling."

2009-11-02T16:34:00.000-05:00

Cartoon: "Greetings, Earthling.": "

Educational Video Games Mix Cool With Purpose

2009-11-02T13:30:00.000-05:00

Educational Video Games Mix Cool With Purpose: "A series of games may have overcome the “chocolate-covered broccoli” model that prevailed in the 1980s and 1990s."

Robbing Students and Teachers of Joy

2009-11-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

Robbing Students and Teachers of Joy: "

Maybe I'm just too lazy or unimaginative so I stole the title of my last post to make this one. Whatever.

I'm not sure why but this topic runs pretty deep with me. I found Alfie Kohn's article this morning on twitter (I like the fact that he brings back stuff from the archives, I wish more people would do that. Old is not bad) and thought I'd highlight a few gems found inside it.

While I recognize many peoples opposition to Kohn's highly progressive, Deweyesque slants, I find myself more in agreement with him than opposition. In the case of this article, I find it hard to disagree.

I would begin by defining joy as a clear sense of satisfaction at the work or relationships that surround us. That's the definition, I'll use as I explore this idea. This does not equate with happiness, it's perhaps part of it but I'm talking about a sense of purpose and success. This is directly linked to a passion based learning environment.

Joy has been in short supply in some classrooms for as long as there have been classrooms. But I join Deborah Meier in wondering whether things are worse now, not only because more people are less happy but because this is taken for granted; we don’t even see it as a problem that requires our attention.

I can't remember having "joy" or "student's attitude toward school" on any meeting agenda in 20+ years in education. It's less important than if the school sports teams get new uniforms or if we'll stop allowing students to bring potato chips as snacks.

It’s simply stunning, therefore, that some traditionalists actually complain about an excessive concern with children’s happiness. Earlier this year, I came across an essay by an administrator who attempted to explain the supposed inferiority of U.S. schools by asserting that, whereas parents in other countries ask their children, "What did you learn in school today?," American parents ask, "Did you enjoy school today?"

Would that it were true! The author Frank McCourt, who taught at a prestigious New York City high school for 18 years, told the journalist John Merrow that only once in all that time had a parent ever asked him, "Is my child enjoying school?" Instead, all he—and, presumably, the students themselves—heard from parents were questions about test scores, college applications, and getting the work done.

It bugs me when my own kids, who do very well in school say they don't really like school. I know that it's the right thing to say when you're a kid but even when we get past the surface response, it's clear that learning isn't all that pleasureable. This is not because we have bad teachers, it's because we have schools that place student satisfaction way below everything else. "It doesn't matter if they like it or not." Really? What are the chances your student's will be proficient in using Mathematics after high school if they hated it? Again, this is about everything we do being akin to spending 6 hours playing HALO, but there has to be an element of joy, don't you think? Those classrooms where joy is the unspoken or spoken default environment, are the ones where good learning happens everyday. I have no data to back that up so you can dismiss that as opinion but I'd stand by the claim. But as I consider what we're doing to teachers in the quest for "higher achievement", I think we could remedy much of their stress but supporting them and encouraging them more strongly to make learning a joyful experience.

Academic excellence, the usual rationale for such decisions, is actually far more likely to flourish when students enjoy what they’re doing. "Children (and adults, too) learn best when they are happy," as Nel Noddings observes in her book Happiness and Education. How they feel—about themselves, about their teachers, about the curriculum and the whole experience of school—is crucially related to the quality of their learning. Richer thinking is more likely to occur in an atmosphere of exuberant discovery, in the kind of place where kids plunge into their projects and can’t wait to pick up where they left off yesterday.

But in pointing this out, I fear that I’m appearing to accept an odious premise—namely, that joy must be justified as a means to the end of better academic performance. Not so: It’s an end in itself. Not the only end, perhaps, but a damned important one. Thus, anyone who has spent time in classrooms that vibrate with enthusiasm needs to keep such memories alive in all their specificity to serve as so many yardsticks against which to measure what we’ve lost: 6-year-olds listening to a story, rapt and breathless; teenagers so immersed in an activity that they forget to worry about appearing cool; those little explosions of delight attendant on figuring something out.

Nobody seeks to snuff out joy intentionally, it just happens. The antidote is to be intentional about including joy in the classroom. We can fall into the same trap as parents. The fact we love our children should make this minimal but we've all been guilty of getting so caught up in accomplishing our various goals that we forget to experience joy and live in world where mistakes are valued, where working together on a project is fulfilling and where we celebrate completing a challenging task. Again, this is not some airy, fairy thing, this is, as Kohn suggests, an end, in and of itself. These not be separate, but seriously, if I had to choose between rigor and joy, I'd pick joy every time. But I don't think we have to choose.

I'll end with this quote from Taylor Caldwell

"Learning should be a joy

and full of excitement.

It is life's greatest adventure;

it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men."

Now there's a mission statement that matters.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by John-Morgan

NBA Players Rely on Video Games to Round Out Their Play

2009-11-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

NBA Players Rely on Video Games to Round Out Their Play: "

Sports video games have always tried to bring the best of the sport to the gamer, with developers looking at players to pick up their nuances, habits and tendencies to make the game as realistic as possible for the person who plays the video game. But it appears some players are taking it a step further and taking what they see in the video game and incorporating it into the real life game.

Take for example the game of basketball. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, Memphis Grizzlies guard Michael Conley is an avid player of NBA 2K9. Recently, while playing the game, he noted a move and shot by the virtual version of Rajon Rondo. Conely was so impressed with the move that he incorporated it into his on-court repertoire and dubbed it the Euro Step. And Conley isn't the only one.

According to the LAT story:

New York Knicks guard Nate Robinson said he invented and practiced his dunk moves on NBA2K9 three weeks before winning the slam-dunk contest at the All-Star game last February. Robinson watched his avatar do alley-oop dunks from the baseline and windmill dunks, and catch balls off the glass and turn them into dunks. He imagined the possibilities in real life.

"With the video games, you can try different dunks that people have never seen before," Robinson said.

Apparently, more an more players are playing the video game counterpart to their sport to pick up what other players or teams may do.

It interesting look at how life is imitating art.

Molyneaux, Milo, Sky Net and Artificial Intelligence in 'Cloud Gaming'

2009-11-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

This kind of thing is, for me, absolutely fascinating and is the future of gaming and probably humanity. It may well be the Terminator meets the Matrix, but wow!

Molyneaux, Milo, Sky Net and Artificial Intelligence in 'Cloud Gaming': "

Fable teller Peter Molyneaux is a grand visionary, and even if his games don't always reach the heights of his aspirations for them, he's well worth listening to. That vision and Lionhead's cutting-edge work in artificial intelligence for games are just two of the reasons Microsoft tapped Lionhead to build a Project Natal tech demo for E3 and made Molyneaux creative director of its Game Studios Europe this year. In an interview with Tech Radar's Home Cinema blog, the Milo maestro rejects Microsoft's Project Natal as a 'control' scheme and makes an interesting point about the power of cloud gaming.

For Microsoft, the gesture-driven, player-sensing Project Natal is key to delivering that sense of wonder. Molyneaux promotes this theme by making an interesting distinction between 'control' and interactivity. Riffing on a line he drew in his Milo demo at E3, Molyneaux explains:

You don't meet computer game characters when you use a controller. You control computer game characters. And that is fundamental.

And yeah, I can sit back and watch someone playing and controlling a character and I think that's very entertaining and I've got completely used to it. But when I am actually sitting or standing or interacting with something who can obviously see me and obviously react to me, then that is meeting something – and it doesn't matter if it is a robot or a boy or a senior citizen or whatever – it is so totally new and different that you cannot help but make people feel slightly self-conscious.

So self-conscious, in fact, that a few observers thought Milo seemed a bit creepy. Turns out those folks may just have Sky Net on the brain:

When you present this to people then some people have that reaction. There was a high correlation between people whose favorite film was "Terminator" and the people who were creeped out by it!

Molyneaux also gives some insight into how Natal is forcing him to rethink the language of game design:

I had to stop myself thinking as a designer "okay, how am I going to get the player to navigate, what is the equivalent of the thumb-stick? How am I going to get the player to put some things into the game, what is the equivalent of the button presses..."

And I had to stop myself thinking like that, because this is completely new and different. It is like when I went from mouse-based games to controller-based games. When I first did that I was always constantly thinking "god, how am I going to get the player to look round?"

But gestures are only part of the game where Natal is concerned. The real promise lies in the ability to tie the object recognition to artificial intelligence that can infer players' emotions and intentions, using that data to drive more responsive worlds and realistic characters. You know, the kind that are actually worth 'meeting.' Finding the computing power to create these sophisticated characters hasn't been easy. Molyneaux sees the distributed power of cloud gaming as the answer.

The cloud is really important. When you actually start thinking about what we can do in the cloud, especially with artificial intelligence – which people really haven't talked a lot about.

Our human brains have evolved through millions of years to be able to recognize objects with no effort at all. What with the cloud, what we can do is that when we release something that has object recognition in it, the database of things that are being recognized and held in the cloud can continue to grow and improve. By the millions of people actually interacting with objects locally down here and sending the information back 'up' to the cloud, behind the scenes.

And from that some amazing and wonderful things will happen. The same with speech. The idea that the whole experience you have with the cloud doesn't need to be locked to the content on your DVD or content that you download. It is very much a living world that we can create now.

Good to know: Molyneaux plans to suck us in with the wonder of cute AI children who can recognize our emotions, remember every object we've ever touched or thing we've said and store it in a giant database in the 'cloud.' Sounds like the creeped out reaction of 'Terminator' fans to Milo could be spot on. I guess the robot revolution won't be televised; instead, we'll be interactively charmed into submission. Thanks, Molyneaux.

Enough With The School Projects!

2009-11-02T09:08:00.000-05:00

Enough With The School Projects!: "

First, disclaimer. I think my local schools are great and the vast majority of teachers that I’ve worked with have been wonderful.

But this emphasis on getting children to learn “creatively” is not always more fun and a better way to teach.

Not for me. Not for my kids.

For the past week, my son has been tasked with taking digital photos of different geometric shapes.

The above flowers are supposed to be an example of symmetry.

And I am at a complete loss as to how this helps my son learn geometry better than, say, giving him a written test on symmetry, angles, hexagons, and pentagons.

I realize this is supposed to make them aware of geometric shapes in the world around us. But think of the work what went into this. First, the school had to make sure that kids with no digital cameras or computers were supplied with school cameras and time to upload photos there. And even if you take them at home, each kid has to upload fifteen photos and caption them to the school computers.

I can only image the time it’s going to take the teachers to correct all of these projects.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient to use the technology for something else, something it’s more suited for, when it seems a written test could do for simply recognizing geometric shapes? Or maybe you could have a test with real world photos and present a slide show as a test.

I realize that some kids are visual learners and this plays to their strengths. But time after time, I’ve seen my children struggle with these visual projects. The theory seems to be that they’ll learn plotting and writing technique better if they create a poster with pockets in which to place plot elements and main characters. They’ll learn to absorb stories better if they create a diorama of their favorite scene for their book report.

No doubt some kids do and these are a godsend to them. But, meanwhile, there are also kids–including mine–struggling so hard with making a pretty diorama or a lovely poster that they completely lose track of the lesson, which is to learn how to analyze books. Then, of course, the kids are judged on how well they did their art project, not how well they absorbed the lessons. And the kids who get a bad grade are frustrated because the grade is low not because they didn’t learn the lesson but because they’re not good at art.

I’m not sure what this geometry project is teaching my kid other than how to take photos with a digital camera and upload the photos, something he already knew how to do. It is teaching him that his mother gets very cranky when her work computer, the only one set up to upload photos, gets taken over for several hours for a school project.

It would be very good if schools and teachers would not only consider the kids who learn best visually or “creatively” but also the kids who learn better through the written word and start giving kids the choice about which to do.

And, I, for one, could stop investing in countless quantities of poster board, stop saving various sizes of cardboard boxes, and stop trying to figure out how to staff a diorama with other than stick figures.

And I could get my computer back.

Humans, Shmumans: What Mars Needs Is an Armada of Robots and Blimps

2009-10-29T16:03:00.000-04:00

Humans, Shmumans: What Mars Needs Is an Armada of Robots and Blimps: "The best way to study the surface of Mars is with a slew of small, cheap ground rovers guided by a fleet of airships that communicate with orbiters, according to researchers at Cal Tech.

Survey Shows Parents Would Rather Talk Drugs Than Science or Math

2009-10-29T14:48:00.000-04:00

Survey Shows Parents Would Rather Talk Drugs Than Science or Math: "

Better than drugs. Math books. (image: pentrust.org)

There is a point in every family when it’s time for the talk. No, not that talk. Not that one either. I’m talking about the science and math talk. The kind of talk that should happen every time your child is having trouble or even just working on their homework. Though most parents, having been through primary school themselves at some point, have a difficult time with this talk. In fact, according to a recent survey conducted through the Intel Corporation parents are more comfortable talking with their kids about drugs than about science and math.

Some key points from the survey:

More than 50 percent (53 percent) of parents of teenagers admit that they have trouble helping their children with math and science homework.

Nearly a quarter of parents (23 percent) who admit to being less involved in their child’s math and science education than they would like say their own lack of knowledge in these subjects is a key barrier.

Another 26 percent of parents who are less involved than they would like wish there was a one-stop shop with materials to refresh their existing, but unused math and science knowledge so they can better help their kids.

Talking about drugs is easier for parents because it’s a vague subject. It doesn’t have much depth to it. You can get the message across in just a couple short sentences, or an example of someones’ life gone wrong thanks to the influence of drugs. Not to mention, it’s a talk that almost every competent parent has with their child at some point in their lives, right up there with the good ‘ol sex talk.

Science and math are not vague subjects. Not only is there extreme depth to be found, but there is commonly a generational gap between the parent and the child. Science and math hasn’t changed, but the amount of knowledge and the understanding has. We know more as adults than when we were children, but we have to relate to them on a child’s level, rather than on an adult level understanding of the material. This is where it becomes difficult for parents. From Shelly Esque, vice president of Intel’s Corporate Affairs Group:

“Our survey points to a difficult reality for our nation’s parents: While they may recognize the importance of math and science, they are unable to engage with their children around these subjects due to limited understanding of the topics and scarcity of resources to help. We need to help parents help their kids make the best choices, including taking math and science courses so they are prepared to succeed.”

Even though 98 percent of parents believe that science and math are critical to the future of the country and 91 percent believe that parental involvement is key to their children’s success parents are still having trouble talking to their children about science and math. Sure, it’s easy to express the importance of the subjects, but when it comes down to actually doing something - that is where we’re lacking. Even I have trouble helping with math and science sometimes. Not because I’m not knowledgeable, but because it’s hard to transfer my knowledge to that of an eight year old.

The problem is, parents recognize that math and science are critical to their child’s future success, but they also realize that speaking to their children about drugs and alcohol is critical to their child’s survival. Especially when it comes to talking to teenagers, it’s hard enough just saying hello to them, much less trying to connect with them on their school work. So the drug talk is always easier.

What parents need, and by the percentages mentioned above they know they need it, is help. Normally I’d say that it’s all up to the parents and they should work on the effectiveness without outside intervention. However, when a company like Intel is willing to step up and put in the time and resources to come up with solutions to assist parents in connecting with their children on math and science, I’ll make an exception. Through their initiatives they are looking to bridge the gap and create tools that parents can use to better understand what their children are working on and what they can do to help. More from Shelly Esque:

Over the past decades, Intel has worked extensively with teachers, students, communities and governments to help inspire and prepare the next generation of innovators with a solid math and science education. We haven’t, though, worked with parents, who we think are a critical piece of the education equation. Our goal in releasing the results of this survey is to raise awareness among parents that they aren’t alone in their challenges so they feel more confident seeking out assistance to encourage their kids to take an interest in math and science, and we hope resource providers will come forward to help them.

Parents, take note. When a company like Intel is stepping in to provide a means to assist you in bridging the educational gap with your children - take full advantage. To that point, if you have the resources to help feel free to do so. While it’s important that your kids grow up drug free and healthy, it’s just as important that they grow up educated as well. You can almost guarantee that the less you focus on their education, the more you are going to be focusing on the drug talks.

To learn more about the Intel Education Initiative, visit www.intel.com/education. To join Intel’s community for change in global education, visit www.inspiredbyeducation.com.

Drugs An Easier Topic for Parents Than Math or Science: Survey

2009-10-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

Drugs An Easier Topic for Parents Than Math or Science: Survey: "There's a point in every family when it’s time for the talk. No, not that talk — the science and math talk. The kind of talk that should happen every time your child is having trouble with or even just working on their homework. But according to a recent survey, parents fear these topic so much they'd rather have the drug talk.

Los Angeles Goes Google: City Votes To Outsource Email, Web Services

2009-10-28T14:38:00.000-04:00

Los Angeles Goes Google: City Votes To Outsource Email, Web Services: "

LOS ANGELES — City Council members tentatively approved a multimillion-dollar proposal Tuesday to tap Google Inc. for government e-mail and other Internet services, a boon for the Web giant as it seeks to wrest market share for office software from rival Microsoft Corp.

The Council voted unanimously for the $7.2 million deal with contractor Computer Sciences Corp. to replace many city computer systems with the so-called Google Apps services.

An amendment added shortly before the vote makes the contract contingent on Computer Science agreeing to pay a preset penalty if a security breach occurs. The contractor's project manager David Barber said he believed such an agreement would be reached.

The city's police officers' union and privacy advocates had raised security concerns over the Google contract because it places data online rather than on individual computers under the city's direct control.

Under the deal, Google will provide e-mail, calendar, online chatting and other services to 30,000 city employees.

The Council chose Google's offer over competing bids from Microsoft and more than a dozen other technology firms eager to score the nation's second second-largest city as a client.

The move will also end the city's 7-year contract to use Novell Inc.'s GroupWise e-mail and record-keeping software, which city workers have complained is slow and crash-prone.

Novell senior vice president said during the Council hearing that many city departments were not using the most recent version of GroupWise and reiterated an offer to provide additional services for free.

'The titans are fighting, and they all want our attention,' said Councilman Tony Cardenas, who sponsored the legislation granting the contract to Google.

The vote came amid a push by Mountain View-based Google to market its "cloud computing" services – applications that run remotely on the company's own servers instead of users' desktop machines – to governments and large security-conscious corporations.

'In our view, this can be a watershed agreement,' said Dave Girouard, president of the Google division that provides business services. 'There's a lot of cities and counties around the state and around the nation who were watching this.'

The shift toward cloud-computing is troublesome to Microsoft, the fortunes of which are largely tethered to operating systems and office software that run on desktop machines, said technology analyst Rob Enderle.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company's failure to seize the Los Angeles contract represented a setback in its efforts to compete with Google for Web-based e-mail and other applications, Enderle said.

'Losing something of this size has to be really painful,' he said. 'It's not the death knell for them, but it's a big red flag.'

Microsoft vice president of state and local government Gail Thomas Flynn stressed in an e-mail that Los Angeles city workers will continue to use the company's Office software.

She said that Glaxo Smith Kline PLC and Coca Cola Enterprises, as well as Ohio's statewide university system and the city of Carlsbad, Calif. use the company's cloud-computing services.

'In any cloud solution the true measure of success lies with standing up and deploying the solution as well as ensuring the security and privacy of citizens,' she said.

Google's e-mail service is being phased in among city workers in Washington D.C. and many large companies, such as Genentech Inc., use the company's suite of online applications.

For Google, getting the Los Angeles contract is a chance to demonstrate its ability to securely handle data for a large number of users, something it is sure to highlight as it seeks more large clients, Enderle said.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who introduced the security breach amendment, voted for the contract despite reservations over whether the company's system had been sufficiently tested.

'It's unclear to me whether we're on the cutting edge or if we're on the edge of a cliff about to step off,' he said.

Proponents repeated a City Administrative Officer estimate that the new contract would save the city some $5 million in service costs over five years, in addition to allowing the city's technology department to shed nine positions.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl said he thought being Google's first big city customer was an advantage, since the company would be especially careful in the knowledge that other governments were watching.

'I don't mind being the poster boy for the big cities,' he said.

YouTubing the liberal arts campus: Washington and Lee

2009-10-28T10:24:00.000-04:00

YouTubing the liberal arts campus: Washington and Lee: "

Another liberal arts campus has a YouTube Channel: Washington and Lee University, http://www.youtube.com/user/joverholtzerwlu.

a href=”http://www.youtube.com/user/joverholtzerwlu”>

Does your campus have a YouTube channel?

New Bioshock 2 Trailer

2009-10-27T11:23:00.000-04:00

New Bioshock 2 Trailer: "It's here:

Everything's bigger, faster, louder -- in other words very sequel-y. But it's still about moral choices, people. You're not actually supposed to enjoy incinerating splicers with your awesome plasmids!
The bits where you're actually underwater -- either you're outside, or Rapture is flooded -- look amazing. The trailer is focused intensively on combat, rather [...]"

The 10 biggest misconceptions we learn in school

2009-10-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

The 10 biggest misconceptions we learn in school: "

There are some myths which become firmly ensconced in people's minds, even though they are quite definitely wrong. I saw this on my blog recently, when those commenting on a post about nursery rhymes were keen to prove to others that Ring a Ring of Roses was not written about the plague.

These ten are are some of the best - though I'm not sure they can all be blamed on the school system. Thanks very much to Manolith, and a post written by a teacher, Paul Jury, whose list they are. Please let me know if you can think of any more!

1) Einstein got bad grades in school.

Generations of children have been heartened by the thought that this Nobel Prize winner did badly at school, but they're sadly mistaken. In fact, he did very well at school, especially in science and maths (unsurprisingly). Jury explains this as being down to Americans interpreting Einstein's 4's as D's. Karl Kruszelnicki, however, explains that it was all to do with changes to the system of marking at Einstein's school (back in1896). Either way, the myth is not true, and children do need to work to succeed. Sorry!

2) Mice like cheese

Dear oh dear. While any young child could tell you this, any mice would (if they could speak rather than squeak) explain otherwise. It appears that mice enjoy food rich in sugar, as explained in the Times, as well as peanut butter and breakfast cereals (things, as Paul Jury points out, that are rich in grains and seeds, which they are used to). So a Snickers bar would go down much better than a lump of cheddar.

3) Napoleon was short.

Ah, the aggressive short man (often called, ironically, the Napoleon) complex. Short men love a hero and Napoleon appears to fit the bill. In fact, it appears that a mistranslation explains why some said he was just 5ft 2. He was actually around 5ft 7, completely average for the 18th/19th century.

4) Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.

I don't know how many times I've heard this one and wanted to point out that it's just damn wrong! Edison invented a lot of things - in fact he's one of the most famous inventors of all time - but the light bulb wasn't one of them. What he did was develop a light bulb at the same time as the British man, Joseph Swan, who came up with it originally...

5) Lemmings throw themselves over cliffs to commit suicide

Why do we have such negative opinions of lemmings? The poor old things are sometimes so desperate for food that they do, according to the BBC "jump over high ground into water", but they aren't committing group suicide. Paul Jury blames Disney for showing the lemmings doing this in an early nature film. They've been tarnished ever since.

6) Water flushes differently in different hemispheres

No it doesn't. Sorry!

7) Humans evolved from apes

Darwin didn't actually say this, but he's been misreported ever since. What he did say was that we, and apes, and chimpanzees for that matter, had a common ancestor, once, a long, long time ago.

8) Vikings had horns/helmets with horns.

This may upset an awful lot of people, but it's pure myth. According to the Jorvik Centre, it appears that Vikings may have been buried with their helmets and with drinking horns. When they were dug up by the Victorians, they assumed that the helmets had horns....(I have to say that, until now, I had believed this one!)

9) Columbus believed the earth was flat

He didn't, you know. He may not have known how big the world was, but he wasn't worrying about falling off the edge of it. Read Teaching History on this very issue.

10) Different parts of the tongue detect different tastes

You do have different taste buds on your tongue and some are more sensitive than others. But they aren't divided into perfect, easy-to-teach sections. See BBC Science for more on this...

Read School Gate:

Eight reasons why non-teachers will never understand teachers

Why children should learn about kings and queens

7 ways to get your children to do their homework

Ashok Banker, Indian Science Fiction Writer

2009-10-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

I ran across this in Wired today. Looks interesting, and might be worth reading?

Ashok Banker, Indian Science Fiction Writer: "

*This guy’s quite a character.

http://worldsf.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/exclusive-interview-with-ashok-banker/

(…)

What made you decide to write in English? Are there any nuances with that particular language that you’re not quite able to accomplish in Hindi?

Not-Lol. I’ve met this particular cultural bogey before and it remains as unfunny as ever! My mother tongue was English, not Hindi, and in fact, there are more English-speaking people in India than in the US – it’s one of our two official national languages in fact. And of course, you probably know that India has the fastest growing publishing industry and English-literate readership population in the world – I believe our publishing business is No. 3 right now and on track to be No. 1 at this rate in the next two decades or less. I grew up speaking only English, learned Hindi only later in school because it was a compulsory subject (as were either Marathi or French – I took French), and English remains the only language I’m completely fluent in even today. So I have no idea what cultural stereotype you have of me, and am not responsible for it but it’s as offensive as my asking someone named Johnson why he chose to write in English instead of Swedish! Still, I guess you didn’t mean anything by it, so let’s chuckle and move on. :~)

In your opinion, what is the power of writing? Do you think fiction needs to be able to affect change in the world in order to be “good”?

I think writing, like people, either matters, or doesn’t. Sure, it’s possible to simply live, or even to just exist. Just as it’s possible to write without aiming to do anything more than just provide readability. But that’s like the difference between an IV drip and a gourmet meal. The difference between a sharecropper genre whore (like the writers churning out Halo or Star Wars novels, and so on) or a commercial novelist who makes a living while creating work that attempts to do more than simply extend a franchise and delivery mass-consumption product may not seem very vast, but it’s a significant line. Every writer can choose to cross that line, stand and deliver, or sit down and cash the check and shut up. If some don’t feel they have that choice, they’re not just wrong, they’re self-delusional. We all can, and we do, everyday. I’ve made the wrong choices more often than the right ones, I’ve written a whole bunch of crap that probably does nobody any more good than landfills do for the environment. But I ask myself one question now everytime I write if possible, and certainly everytime I finish writing something and consider sending it out for publication: Is this something that only I could write and which says something, however tiny and seemingly insignificant in the larger scheme, that might make a difference to somebody out there? If the answer is no, I caress it fondly and put it away regretfully. Only the ayes go forth boldly into the brave cold world to do battle.

What made you decide to write your Ramayana series? Since it’s not just an epic for Hindus but also a true story, did you receive any criticisms from the literature scene there or the Hindutva movement?

Here’s the interesting thing: I’m not Hindu. Even my birth certificate, which has a slot for Religion/Caste as was mandatory in those days (1964 to be precise) simply says “Indian”. I’m of Dutch-Scots-Irish-Goan-Gujarati-SriLankan parentage, grew up in a Catholic household, in a Christian-Jewish-Muslim neighbourhood, with Parsi and Iranian friends, and never thought of myself as “Hindu” by any stretch of the imagination….

(((It gets even better:)))

The only challenges I faced then, and face now, and will always face I suppose – as will every other writer who isn’t white, Judeo-Christian and/or American – is of getting read and getting published in the UK and USA. Writing is what I do, it’s what I love to do. It’s like breathing. I write. The real challenge is in getting American or British agents and editors to even look at any work by a non-white, non-Judeo/Christian, non-American author, regardless of how good that work may be.

To be honest, I’ve all but given up on getting published anywhere outside India and have stopped trying. The system itself is designed in such a way that it’s become all about pleasing agents and editors, not about writers talking to readers directly. At least in India, the onus of success or failure is still left to the author: If you have something to say here, at least you get a chance to say it and then publishers will see whether enough readers want to read what you have to say or not before deciding to continue publishing you. In the US and UK publishing industries, particularly in the genre of Science Fiction and Fantasy, it’s like a coloured man trying to exercise his right to vote in an all-white Southern town in the 1950s. Sure, we have the right. But try getting past those guys in the white sheets and hoods holding the burning cross up high.

I won’t mince words here: SFF publishing in the US today is the Klu Klux Klan of the publishing world. It’s anachronistically misrepresentational in its racial mix, religious mix, cultural mix. The few exceptions to the rule only prove the endemic, systemic and deeply bred bias in the field. There are even editors who claim to champion ‘coloured’ writing, by publishing anthologies that segregate non-white non-Judeo/Christian non-American authors of speculative fiction from their ‘mainstream’ genre counterparts.

There are editors who take non-white editorial assistants or even sponsor non-white writers in the name of progressiveness, and at panels in conventions, the non-white writers are often herded together conveniently. But where are the non-white Editorial Directors, Publishers, big-name literary agents, etc? For that matter, where are the non-white authors? In the ghetto, that’s where. And this ghetto is the size of the planet! SFF publishing in the US today is 50 years behind the rest of the world.

And that’s the reason why the genre itself is being increasingly sidelined, losing sales and readers, and being overtaken by ‘mainstream’ fiction with every passing year. Because like the Klu Klux Klan, nobody respects a closed group of inbred rednecks and crackers. It’s about time the entire genre was dismantled, outed, exposed and shut down. SFF as a rigid, white-dominated, Judeo-Christian-pushing, American nationalistic genre has jumped the shark. The old guard is dead and gone and the young (and old) turks running the show are fighting a losing battle against the very progressiveness and futurism that the genre is supposed to espouse! Besides, SFF has permeated mainstream literature and popular culture. We don’t need to label a book SF or F to cater to the dwindling handful of snobs who think that the term SFF on a book means it’s superior in some way to other books.

For decades SFF has been accusing mainstream literary critics, readers and authors of being snobbish and denying them their due. In fact, it’s the other way around: SFF’s pathetic cries of outrage and refusal to change with the times are proof of SFF’s own snobbishness and bias. SFF is dead and rotting. Long may it stay dead! We who love the elements that make great SFF don’t need the label so Klansmen can recognize work by other Klansmen. We don’t care if our milk was drawn by brown hands, black, or white. We just want our milk!

The top 30 books you should read before your Oxbridge interview...

2009-10-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

The top 30 books you should read before your Oxbridge interview...: "

So, the applications are in, and all those students who applied for Oxford and Cambridge are nervously waiting to see if they get interviews. But is there anything they can do to prepare?

Well, according to Oxbridge Applications(who help students prepare for entrance to Oxford and Cambridge), there is. They have compiled a list of the top 30 subject specific books which they recommend bright would-be Oxbridge applicants to read as they prepare for their interview over the coming weeks. Read on to find out what they are (the explanations are in Oxbridge Applications own words...)

‘"Reading around your subject syllabus is fundamental," says James Uffindell, the graduate who founded the company in his final year at Oxford in 1999. "It gives applicants the chance to display their powers of lateral thinking, develop their own ideas about a subject and show how they can manage their own intelligence confidently. It can form the basis for stimulating intellectual discussion - the key to a good interview.

"Of course there are thousands of books we could have chosen," he adds. ‘This is just a shortlist of our top recommendations."

However, let me just sound a little note of caution. Don't pretend to have read these books if you haven't. I know of numerous students who have been caught out this way. Mind you, I also know one who was caught out having lied on his form (about reading Tom Jones). He's convinced that, because he then relaxed during his interview (he assumed he hadn't got in) the tutor got to see the "real him" and offered him a place!

Politics & Social Sciences

Machiavelli, The Prince- rarely seen on Personal Statements, a classic book that analyses the use of power. To quote one Oxford PPE graduate, ‘the book possibly has a permanent home on Lord Mandelson’s bedside table.’

David Marquand, Britain Since 1918 – a superb study of post 1918 British political history.

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis – a graphic novel about an ordinary girl’s life in Tehran. Beautifully illustrated and an interesting insight into what life might be like under a religious dictatorship.

Sattareh Farman Farmaian and Dona Munker, Daughter of Persia: A Woman's Journey from Her Father's Harem Through the Islamic Revolution - an interesting personal account exploring life as a member of a dynasty important under the old Shah, but who was forced to flee during the Islamic Revolution as a result of her relations and connections.

Humanities & Arts

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Imperium- Pulling together his journalism from three visits to disparate parts of the Soviet Empire, in the 1960s, mid 1980s and just after the collapse of the USSR, critically acclaimed author and journalist Kapuscinski’s account is easy to read, yet full of terrible but captivating stories.

Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War– an account of children’s experiences in Germany and the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, Stargardt uses a range of surprising sources such as children’s letters to their parents, diaries and pictures to explore how a whole generation of European children were shaped by the horrors of 1939 – 1945.

Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy – an evocative and highly readable account of Hillary’s own experiences as a fighter pilot in World War II, (he was studying at Trinity College Oxford when he joined up in 1939) in which he was shot down and spent months in hospital, undergoing plastic surgery (then in its infancy) to rebuild his face and hands.

Henri Barbusse, Le Feu (‘Under Fire,’ in English) – one of the first accounts of the First World War from the perspective of the French trenches.

W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants– four meandering and beautifully written stories of displaced characters. The use of words, the subtlety of the expression and feeling, and the evocation of mood, is Sebald at his best and a classic of our generation.

Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory – broken down into easy to read chapters which make quite complex ideas manageable. They also have lots of suggestions for further reading. Definitely a saviour for lots of English students all the way through to finals.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women – one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy, responding to traditional eighteenth century political and educational theory that believed women should not have an education.‘

Philosopy & Theology

J.S Mill, Utilitarianism– essential reading for any budding philosopher. One of the most important and contentious works of moral philosophy. Its articulation of a ‘hedonic calculus’ and its development of Mill’s mentor’s (Bentham) ideas on what makes mankind ‘happy’ make it a classic.

The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Rousseau argues for the preservation of individual freedom in political society. An individual can only be free under the law, he says, by freely embracing that law as his own.

John Gray, Straw Dogs – This is a march through the history of philosophy.

Alain de Botton, Consolations of Philosophy– In this, Botton explores different philosophies to cope with the stresses of modern day living. A great introduction to the philosophers he uses, while at the same time being a useful way of feeling better about your life (and not getting in to your chosen university if that is the way it turns out).

Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ– one of the best known books on Christian devotion. An insight into how Catholic devotion was changing in this period in Northern Europe and how far removed it was from common practices today.

Mohsin Hamad, The Reluctant Fundamentalist – A novel exploring how American culture might have fostered Islamic fundamentalism.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge, God is Back, How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World – A new book by Editor in Chief of the Economist and Washington Bureau Chief about the rise of fundamentalism in the West as well as the East.

Maths & Economics

James Gleick, Chaos, Making a New Science - Covering the physical side of maths, this is an accessible introduction to Chaos Theory, which has been quite popular over the last 50 years.

Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money – tells the history of banking, brilliantly written, giving great insights into how globalisation came about.

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, Nudge – how you can get people to do things by making them opt out rather than opt in – a more psychological approach to economics.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan – Arguably the most pertinent book to read right now on flawed economics.

Science, Medicine & Engineering

Adrian Vaughan, Isambard Kingdom Brunel – the biography of one of the greatest engineers who ever lived.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, Emperor of all Maladies – a look at modern day views on cancer as a disease and its various treatments.

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia – Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University looks at the healing effect of music on the brain. An interesting interdisciplinary approach.

Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution- Everyone has read The Selfish Gene, but this is the latest offering from Dawkins. With every book, he continues in his relentless crusade against creationist theories. Like his others, this is well written, but be careful not to adopt too many of his opinions without proper thought and deliberation. Even better…what DON’T you agree with?

Steve Jones, The Single Helix– ‘I read this when I was applying’ says one of Oxbridge Applications’ PPP graduates (Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology) – brilliantly written overview of where research currently stands on genetics. Obviously a few years old now, so not fully up-to-date but still fascinating.

Also, worth noting, Jones has recently published a book called Darwin’s Island. He is a less well known Dawkins, but with similar values and an excellent scientist. One Oxbridge Applications’ tutor suggests it may be interesting to put his writing in the context of ‘Everyone reads Dawkins, but does Jones give a much better argument?’

Richard Feynman, several different works - From Six Easy Pieces to Six Not-so-easy Pieces, right through to his imaginative Lecture series. A great read from a prestigious and witty physicist. Some would say legendary within the physics community.

Read School Gate:

Oxbridge - one student explodes the myths

Oxbridge interview questions and how to answer them

Is Oxbridge now discriminating against private schools?

Heil Heidegger! - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

2009-10-22T10:49:00.001-04:00

A great review of Emmanuel Faye's new biography on Heidegger. Please, please, please somebody put this ponderous Nazi windbag out of circulation!!!!!!!

http://chronicle.com/article/Heil-Heidegger-/48806

Africa Past and Present: The Podcast about African History, Culture, and Politics

2009-10-22T08:39:00.000-04:00

Great resource for African History:

Africa Past and Present: The Podcast about African History, Culture, and Politics: "

Podcasts continue to gain popularity in both social and academic realms, becoming a routine part of Internet lingo. Africa Past and Present offers podcasts that center on the history, culture, and politics of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Article By: Jessica Pritchard

Burned Out? Take a Creative Sabbatical

2009-10-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

This makes so much sense, but who's willing to do it in our current environment?

Burned Out? Take a Creative Sabbatical: "

In an early episode of the excellent TV series Mad Men, agency partner Roger Sterling walks into creative director Don Draper's office to find Don gazing off into space.

'I'll never get used to the fact that most of the time it looks like you're doing nothing,' Sterling quips.

Sterling should take comfort in the fact that our best creative work is done in times of reflection and idleness. Studies have shown that the wandering mind is more likely to have a 'Eureka!' moment of clarity and creativity. Taking breaks and zoning out from everyday tasks gives our brains time to do a kind of long-term, big-picture thinking that immediate engagement with bosses and clients and email and meetings does not.

Designer Stefan Sagmeister takes these findings seriously. He works time off into his schedule in a way that will make you green with envy. Every seven years, Sagmeister closes his New York City–based design studio for an entire year of creative rejuvenation. During his sabbatical, Sagmeister "works," but not for clients. (He's serious about that, too. Last year, he turned down an opportunity to design a poster for the Obama campaign while he was on sabbatical.)

As he explains in his 18-minute TED talk below, Sagmeister's goal is to take five years off of his retirement and intersperse them throughout his working years. He's taken two such sabbaticals, and he uses the 'experiments' he conducts during them to inform what he produces during working years. His full talk is worth watching, but if you don't have 18 minutes, see this interview with Sagmeister about his sabbaticals in Print Magazine.

For many, taking an entire year off may not be practical. But there are less extreme ways to work big-think time off into any schedule. Sagmeister draws a parallel between his 'seven-year itch' sabbatical and Google's famous '20% time,' when engineers can work on whatever they want. Bill Gates took a twice-yearly 'Think Week' to read technical papers. His successor, Ray Ozzie, takes time off not to read but to 'dream' — and comes back to the office filled with new ideas.

While creative retreats aren't exactly idle time, Sagmeister's talk reminded me of one of my favorite essays of all time, published in a 2004 issue of Harper's. Entitled 'Quitting the Paint Factory,' its author Mark Slouka makes a case against constant busyness (and business). He writes:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had 'too much time on our hands.' They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, 'Quick, look busy.'

How do you use time off to refresh, rejuvenate, and yes, even make yourself more productive? Let us know in the comments.

Adios to Spanish 101 Classroom

2009-10-21T11:12:00.000-04:00

Disruption on the way. R'uh r'oh. Are we the next newspaper industry?

Adios to Spanish 101 Classroom: "

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is moving introductory Spanish courses completely online. Some students are worried, but department officials are not.

Is Tenure Conservative?

2009-10-20T07:55:00.000-04:00

Is Tenure Conservative?: "

The ultimate in job security discourages the challenging, innovative scholarship it was designed to protect, writes Mark Kingwell.

The trucker pulp fiction of Germany

2009-10-19T12:45:00.000-04:00

How does Boing Boing find this stuff?

The trucker pulp fiction of Germany: "

At Ectomo, John Brownlee has launched an investigation into those books from the former East Germany* that concern the heroic exploits of truck drivers.

Note the fleeing children. Each is rendered with the garish ineptitude of a palsied Mört Drücker, and each reacts to the crushing onslaught of Der Katastrophen Truck with bizarre discordance. Perhaps most understandable of all their reactions, the eyes of the first child seem drawn to the hovering ghostly head -- as massive as the sun -- of who I can only imagine to be Der Katastrophen Trucker-King himself, Michael Connors.

*Allegedly.

DDR Pulps [Ectomo]

Universities - recorded lectures better than live

2009-10-19T11:15:00.000-04:00

Universities - recorded lectures better than live: "

Universities, in their current guise, have become closed, inward-looking, traditional, elitist institutions. Shut for much of the year, empty buildings, three lectures a week, poor teaching – the current financial squeeze will hopefully force us to re-examine the model.

Imagine a world in which some universities simply opened their doors to learners, even offering courses for free. There are signs that such a paradigm shift may be happening on the web. Suddenly a huge amount of good content is available on the web, for free, as some of the biggest brands on the web act as conduits for higher education content, with hefty foundation grants paying the bill.

YouTube EDU

Simple enough, video lectures with ratings and details of number of downloads, from over 320 Universities such as; Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford,, and so on. Cambridge, Coventry, Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham, OU, The top lecture has received 10.5 million views! But even physics lectures are beating the 350,000 mark. Compare this with the once a year, lecture from a typical living academic – let’s say 100 students once a year for 15 years (and that’s really pushing it). You’re effectively extending the life of a good physics lecturer by thousand of years!

YouTube lectures can be public or private, structured as playlists embed on your site or show on a mobile phone. YouTube Insight gives you loads of useful stats on; views, referrals, gender, age, geography.

iTunes U

Like YouTube EDU, iTunes U is all free content, currently at 200,00 audio and video items, from major Universities. You can download all the tracks on a specific topic or just one. You can also subscribe to receive new stuff automatically. Top downloads – Intensive English, Introduction to Mac OS, Building a Business, beginners’ French etc. One distinct advantage is that you can play audio or video on your iPod, iTouch, iPhone, MP3 player, Mac or PC. iTunes U Reports give you lots of stuff on downloads, unique users and so on.

Open Learn

Open Learn is the OUs Moodle based system is much more sophisticated on support for learners with its learning tools, knowledge maps, shared activities and activity reports. All you need do is register with a personal profile. The content and forums are then available for group discussions, you can do the self-assessment, where you answer questions, then compare your answers with model answers. You can rate and review units, create a learning journal and use Learning Space to organise your study. Pretty impressive.

MITOPENCOURSEWARE

That guy Walter Lewin, physics lecturer, is at the top of the downloaded courses with his Physics 1 Classical Mechanics lecture with its subtitles/transcript, lecture notes, assignments/solutions and exams/solutions. More of him later.

MITOpenCourseware has an annual running cost of $3.6 million (10% lower than last year) they’re constantly lowering their cost base. Over 1900 courses, some translated, at both undergraduate and graduate level, this is an astonishingly rich resource of free lecture notes, videos and exams from MITs actual courses. There’s translations in Chinese, Thai and Persian. Zipped downloads and lots of user controls coming

The stats are astounding 40 million visits by 31 million people from almost every country in the world. The majority view this stuff for personal learning 62%. Overall the breakdown is 49% self-learners, 32% students, 16% educators.

University of the People

The ‘free’University , yes ‘free’. Just started this year but puts forward a model that may be ideal for the developing world (see my previous post).

WikiBooks

A growing resource of ‘Open books for an open world’ are available with the usual wiki functionality of discussion, source and history for each book. There’s also print-ready and PDF books available.

Project Gutenberg

At 2.5 million downloads per month, Project Gutenberg is starting to motor. What’s interesting is the eclectic nature of the downloads. The top ten contains fiction such as Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, but also a science book, the Kama Sutra and a book on the history of Furniture. They also have their famous ‘Distributed Proofreading’ system, where volunteers proofread e-books, a page a day.

Wikipedia

The greatest single, searchable store of knowledge on the planet and growing still. It’s a miracle fo the web, and I’d persona;lly give Jimmy Wales the Nobel Prize for knowledge dissemination. Who doesn’t use this thing? It’s wonderful beyond belief. Who cares if a few errors are noted, they’re soon fixed. It quite simply the greatest knowledge sharing show on earth.

Open Education

OER (Open Education Resources) is a rapidly growing movement with the not-for-profit OER Foundation launched last month on the back of a $200,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation and support from the Learning4Content project.

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration is up and running, a sort of manifesto fo future development. The Opencast Community site has a wealth of information on podcasting in Higher Education. The Matterhorn project is of real interest with $1.3 million from Melloin and Hewlitt Foundations to develop software that will schedule, capture, encode and deliver audion and video content to the likes of YouTube EDU and iTunes U. Should be ready by summer 2010. WkiEducator is one of many communities operating in the field, where you can join, and create free content. They promise to ‘turn the digital divide into digital dividends’.

Funding

So how is all of this funded? Well, there’s a number of sources; foundations, most notably, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, institutions themselves, free contributions, donations and payment. The foundation money (mostly from private sector benefactors) tends to seed the initiative, which then gains momentum either in a University or community. The real progress comes when you get a slingshot effect from altruistic contributors (as in Wikipedia).

Recorded lectures – better learning?

Are Youtube video lectures better than the real thing? I think the evidence is in the video themselves. In the cutaways to the audience you see some students attention wander and always towards another student. You don’t have that distraction in your own company. Lewin understands and explains at the start of his lecture series, that lectures complement other forms of study. He is NOT lecturing the book. It’s about demonstrating physics, selling physics, exciting people about physics. It’s about motivation, as well as understanding.

What I love about Walter Lewin is his style – he walks around, he shouts, he gesticulates, he demonstrates, he stands up on his desk, gets students up, he quips – he’s a livewire. He does the very opposite of playing that ‘I’m an academic and have to be serious, grave and dull’ routine.

Case study 1: University of Texas - Austin

Major findings included:

Attendance was not significantly affected by webcasts, even given the limited degree to which some students repeatedly substituted webcasts for attending class.
Students perceived webasts to be a helpful tool for learning, but the impact of webcasts on their performance in terms of grades and test scores is not clear.
Students used webcasts for learning benefits (e.g., reviewing course content) and psychological benefits (e.g., anxiety reduction, course satisfaction).
A majority of students watched webcasts at least once, typically 1-7 times, before exams or 1-3 times a month, at night from home through high-speed connections.
Most students watched the entire lecture and typically they both listened to the lecture and watched videos and slides.
Female students and students who cared about their course grades perceived webcasts as more beneficial than did male students or those who did not care about their grades respectively. Also, those with certain difficulties non-native speakers of English, students with a learning disability, and students with difficulty in understanding the professor’s speech) did not report benefits from webcasts, contrary to our expectations.
Students rated most current and future webcast interface features as important, in particular stop/rewind (current feature), scan (current feature), manipulating the slides or video window (current feature), and better quality or full screen animation/video (future feature).
Students and instructors were generally satisfied with webcasts’ quality and did not experience many technical problems. Many problems they did report can be resolved through training of instructors, students, and camera operators.
Both students and instructors in general indicated that webcasts were good supplemental learning resources but not a substitute for attending class.

Case Study 2: University of Michigan - Flint http://tiny.cc/9q0fI

The results presented here now further extend the benefits of the cyber classroom by demonstrating a significant improvement in student outcomes as assessed by final grades with a nearly half grade improvement in mean grades, a 56% drop in failing grades, and a 36% increase in grades B+ and above.

Case study 3: ICTP Trieste

Another comes from ICTP in Trieste, who have been using recorded lectures for some time. Assessed learning improves, students watch 2 hours per night after live daytime lectures and even watch lectures from other courses they’re not taking.

Does The Brain Like e-Books?

2009-10-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

Does The Brain Like e-Books?: "

Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?

Alan Liu, English professor

Sandra Aamodt, author, 'Welcome to Your Brain'

Maryanne Wolf, professor of child development

David Gelernter, computer scientist

Gloria Mack, professor of informatics

Chinese-American Scholar on American Education, and Foreign Competition

2009-10-05T13:06:00.000-04:00

Maybe we worry too much about "competitiveness"?

From Curriculum Matters:

Chinese-American Scholar on American Education, and Foreign Competition: "The United States education system should build upon its strengths, rather than replicating the flaws of foreign nations' schools, a scholar argues.

Is Oxbridge really beginning to discriminate against private schools?

2009-10-02T09:53:00.000-04:00

Is Oxbridge really beginning to discriminate against private schools?: "

There has been much gnashing of teeth recently at private schools. Many seem convinced that the top universities - and particularly Oxbridge - are discriminating against them, in favour of state school candidates. It's an interesting supposition, and one which is worrying many parents. Here John O'Leary, author of the Good University Guide, looks not at the emotions, but the evidence...

"There is a widespread assumption in independent schools that the odds are now stacked against them at many colleges in Oxford and Cambridge – just as many in state schools have always believed the opposite.

Such suspicions should be easy to allay since both universities publish their admissions statistics in great detail. The trouble is that the numbers are so small that a few decisions this way or that can produce seemingly dramatic swings.

In 2008, for example, the proportion of state-educated entrants to Oxford leapt by more than 2 per cent. Was this the dons finally succumbing to pressure to discriminate against privileged schools? No, it was normal service being resumed after a decline in state school enrolments the previous year. The switch involved a total of 50 out of more than 10,000 applicants.

Discerning patterns in the selection policies of individual colleges is, thus, even more uncertain – especially when enrolments are affected by the number of places each can offer in different subjects. Independent schools produce nearly three times as many applicants as the state sector for Oxford classics degrees, whereas three-quarters of applications for law come from the state sector.

That said, there are colleges that year after year take significantly more than average from the state or independent sectors. At Oxford, Brasenose has taken less than 40 per cent of its entrants from maintained schools or colleges over the past three years, while St John’s has taken almost 65 per cent, when the average has been 54 per cent.

Often, such differences become self-fulfilling prophecies, as schools draw their own conclusions and pass them on to candidates. The proportion of state-educated applicants at St John’s is consistently among the highest of all the Oxford colleges, while Brasenose has among the lowest.

The same is true, not surprisingly, at Cambridge, where more than 80 per cent of last year’s applications and acceptances at Lucy Cavendish were from the state sector, but that applied to barely half of the applications and only 42 per cent of the acceptances at Peterhouse. Even Clare, one of the colleges that pioneered a system giving extra attention to applicants from low-performing schools, awarded a minority of places to state-educated candidates in 2008, although it took a much higher proportion the previous year.

Because the numbers applying to each college are so small, it is dangerous to base any assumptions on a single year. Oxford publishes three-year averages, as well as the most recent figures, and statistics from previous years are not hard to find on either university’s website.

Even plumping for a college with a record of high admissions from the state or independent sector is a risky strategy – your carefully chosen college may be trying to redress that balance. And, while colleges do have a distinctive character, the dons who carry out the interviews are all different. Every college recruits from both sectors, so any tutor will advise you to try the one that attracts you.

One trend that might be worth noting, however, is when the proportion of candidates admitted from one sector or the other is out of line with a college’s applications. Again, there are complications when a college takes large numbers from the ‘pool’ of applicants passed on by their first choices. But over the last three years at Oxford, for example, a clear majority of applicants to St Edmund Hall have been from independent schools, but more than half of the places have gone to state-educated students. At New College, the gap is narrower but the trend has been in the opposite direction.

See applications and offers to Oxford Colleges

See applications and offers to Cambridge Colleges

Read School Gate:

A student explodes the Oxbridge myths

Which is better, Oxford or Cambridge? Two graduates discuss...

The easiest colleges to get into at Cambridge

Is studying at Oxford or Cambridge more expensive than at other universities?

Will There Be A War In Asia? - Forbes.com

2009-10-02T08:09:00.001-04:00

Read this and despair...

Healthcare Napkins All

2009-10-01T09:16:00.001-04:00

This is a pretty good explanation of the Health Care debate. The presentation is really well done and worth looking at.

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

Google Wave Will Revolutionize Online Classroom Instruction

2009-10-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

I just got my invite for Google Wave this morning and am really excited, but since I don't have anyone to work with yet, it's sort of just sitting there...

Google Wave Will Revolutionize Online Classroom Instruction: "

Today is the day. Thousands of new users will be presented with the opportunity to get their hands on Google Wave.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a brand new technology that positions itself as the way Email would have been made if it were invented today. (Watch the 1:20:12 long video clip)

Imagine a combination between Email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and Skype all bundled into one. Now imagine it being drag-and-drop easy, live-updated, and being constantly improved. Then throw on top of that an eager community of developers seeking ways to make it even easier to use and more powerful.

Cool, but what does it look like?

I haven’t gotten my invitation yet, but am eagerly awaiting one soon. Lifehacker has a great Google Wave First Look that they posted today. It has some really cool pictures that help you get a better idea of what’s going on. Back when it was announced on May 28th, Mashable posted Google Wave: A Complete Guide.

And how could it be used in my classroom?

Here are some of the uses I can see

Replace wikis

I know a lot of teachers out there use wikis, and they are useful. I like the functionality that they pose, but I also know there are some challenges they have. One nice feature of Google Wave is that it allows a combination of public as well as private communication within a wave.

Playback

Ever been absent during an extended group project? Wonder what you missed? The playback function of Google Wave is amazing in that it allows you to see step-by-step what has happened in the development of the wave. This can also come in handy for the teacher to see how well groups are working together and how much participation is going on.

Group work

One of the huge advantages to Google Wave is that each person in the wave can edit things at the same time. We’ve all been in groups where one person writes, another person thinks, and the other people sleep. I also remember some group work on computers where so much time was wasted trying to find the right font. What if Font girl is responsible for making it look pretty, smart guy is responsible for doing research, and keyboarding goober is responsible for typing it all in? Everyone could be assigned a specific role and work on the same project together.

Teacher involvement

The way I see it, each group would be set up by the teacher and each wave would include the teacher as well as the students in the group. One reason I didn’t like group work when I was in school was because I either did way more or way less work than the other people in the group. If an individual student has a complaint for the teacher, he can simply private message the teacher, explain the problem, and then the teacher can view the playback and see that the other students may not be working as hard. Tattling has never been this simple!

Publishing (Embedding)

After a project is completed, it can be embedded into a website or Facebook group page or something. Yes, there are even plugins to embed waves into blog posts (at least for WordPress and Blogger).

So needless to say, I am excited about this new project and looking forward to seeing how I can use it both personally as well as in my teaching. It won’t be an overnight transformation, and I don’t see email being abolished completely, but I do see it as a pivotal point in the development of online communications.

How do others see Google Wave impacting education?

I thought I would do a quick blog search to see what other people are talking on this subject:

Google Wave & Education, First Impressions

Google Wave has great potential for education

Google Wave in Online Education

The Google Wave Will Change Education Forever

Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change The Web

How Google Wave Could Improve Education: Group Work

The Real Meaning of Google Wave

Who will ride Google’s Wave?

Related Articles:

Social Media Update: Become A Facebook Fan

Asperger’s

Find A Mirror (Total Teacher Transformation Day 2)

The Blog Revolution: Day 2 – Keywords Are The Key

Mark Your Calendars, The Blog Revolution Project Is Coming…

7 Things About Me

Top 50 Edublogs?

SYWTT Celebrates Two Years – A Brief History (2008)

What My Classroom Is Really Like

Habit 1: Communication Procedures

Texas Math Teacher Makes Homework Optional and Only 5 of 45 Parents Request It

2009-10-01T08:56:00.000-04:00

I cannot say I'm 100% behind the no homework movement, but I think it's such an interesting concept that I can't stop reading about it:

Texas Math Teacher Makes Homework Optional and Only 5 of 45 Parents Request It: "

The other day, I was thrilled to receive an email from Jason, a 4th grade math and science teacher in Houston, Texas, who told me that, after doing a lot of research and thinking, he had decided to make homework optional in his class. This was quite a turnaround for the Jason who posted several comments on this blog last spring. (He also posts as ACP Texan.) In one of his early Comments in March, he wrote:

I teach 4th grade math and science. Much of what I teach is basic skills. As any athlete or musician will tell you, developing basic skills is about practice, practice, practice. If I assign my class to complete a sheet of two-digit by two-digit multiplication problems for homework, I do not care what their motivation for completing it is…. [T]the students will be better at the skill after having completed the work.

By May, he was really grappling with new ideas and he wrote in one of his Comments:

I want to assure you I do not have an ego attached to any of these ideas. I’m completely willing to throw away everything I’ve always thought and try to do better. I’m still new to this teaching thing so I was kind of operating on the, “just do what has always been done and make it through the day” approach. Now that I’m finishing up this year I think I’m ready to make some changes in the way I do things.

Jason told me that this summer he did more reading, including The Homework Myth, Understanding By Design, The Trouble With Boys, A Framework For Understanding Povertyand Getting To Got It. “As a result I asked my principal for permission to make homework optional for my students this year. To her credit, she had read Rethinking Homework and was very open to new ideas. Of my 45 students, only 5 parents responded asking that the homework continue to be sent home. Here is the letter that went home with my students at the beginning of this school year”:

Dear Parents,

I have asked permission from my administration, and have been granted the freedom to institute a homework policy for my classes that is more aligned with current research. I have done this for several reasons:

1. It has come to my attention that homework often encroaches on “family time.”

2. I understand that parents, after a full day of work, may not want to spend the limited time they have with their children acting as task masters to see that the homework gets done.

3. The frustration, anxiety, and fighting that often results because of homework outweighs any benefit homework might have.

4. Research indicates that group homework (same homework for all students) may have little to no academic value at the elementary level.

Here is how the policy will work:

· The district math and science homework will not be sent home except by parent request.

· Whether a student completes or does not complete the district homework will have no impact on their grade.

· There will be no rewards or negative consequences for completing or not completing the district math and science homework.

· All students will receive an “S” under the conduct heading “completes homework.”

· All district math and science homework will be available for download on my website at all times.

· On occasion students will be asked to finish, at home, assignments that were not completed in class.

The Jetsons

2009-09-28T16:19:00.001-04:00

Just ran across this little gem: the Violent Femmes playing Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah

'eBay for teachers' makes its debut - USA Today

2009-09-28T14:30:00.000-04:00

From "Online Learning Update"

'eBay for teachers' makes its debut - USA Today: "A new startup thinks it can help fix the USA's under-funded and overtaxed education system. EduFire http://edufire.com fancies itself as an eBay for teachers. The one-year-old site has recruited and attracted more than 5,000 teachers, who offer 150 to 200 online classes a day to some 30,000 students. The courses typically are in language, test preparation and technology training. Most classes are free, but teachers have the option of charging for others, and pocketing 85% of the fee. A SuperPass of $30 per month gives students unlimited access to all courses.

The Mesopotamians

2009-09-28T13:15:00.003-04:00

They Might Be Giants: pretty much my favorite band. They are uber-geeky, science loving, experimental hipsters (in the best sense of the phrase). Here Comes Science is a masterpiece and now I run across an older song on the Mesopotamians. Just watch, listen and enjoy.

Chimp see, chimp do: Clues to empathy

2009-09-24T16:44:00.000-04:00

This made me yawn. Says a lot about me.

Chimp see, chimp do: Clues to empathy: "

The researchers used contagious yawning to test empathetic response. “Yawns are contagious in the same way other emotional responses, like smiles, frowns, and fear, are contagious,” says lead researcher Matthew Campbell.(Credit: Devyn Carter)

EMORY—Researchers have documented the first example of a chimpanzee empathizing with 3-D animation—in this case, a yawning ape. The findings could help in the design of animation therapy for children with autism.

“We know humans often empathize with fictional displays of behavior, including those in cartoons and video games, even though the displays are obviously artificial,” says lead researcher Matthew Campbell, a post-doctoral fellow in psychobiology at Emory University.

“Humans experience emotional engagement with characters, empathizing with happiness, sadness, or other emotions displayed by the characters,” says Campbell. “Previous studies have suggested this type of emotional engagement may be to blame when children mimic violent video games and cartoons, so we thought it important to learn more.”

He and his team at the at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center showed chimpanzees 3-D animations of chimpanzees yawning and showing control mouth movements. The chimpanzees yawned significantly more in response to the yawning animations than they did to the animations showing control mouth movements.

“Yawning in response to the animated yawns showed an empathetic reaction to the animations,” says Campbell. “Because they showed only involuntary responses to the animations, we believe they empathized with the animations, while knowing they were artificial.

“This is important for us to know because we can present animations in future experiments knowing the chimpanzees will identify with the animations as if they are other chimpanzees. This opens up the possibility of using animations in many other types of studies,” Campbell adds.

Researchers next plan to show chimpanzees improved and degraded animations of chimpanzee yawns to see how they respond to more and less lifelike animations. This may help researchers understand whether different aspects of animations make them more or less likely to be imitated.

“Such knowledge could tell us how to design animations for children to promote imitation when used therapeutically, as with children with autism spectrum disorder, or to limit imitation when used for entertainment, as with video games,” says Campbell.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Emory University news: http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/

What Your Playlist Says About You

2009-09-24T14:54:00.000-04:00

From Richard Florida's Creative Class blog:

What Your Playlist Says About You: "

What does the music you listen to say about your personality, and what determines the kinds of music we like? Watch this video by path-breaking Cambridge University psychologist Jason Rentfrow and find out.

Is the Internet melting our brains? | Salon Books

2009-09-24T12:14:00.001-04:00

Salon's book review section has an interview with the author of a book that seems to sum up my thoughts on the whole fear of technology thing.

By now the arguments are familiar: Facebook is ruining our social relationships; Google is making us dumber; texting is destroying the English language as we know it. We're facing a crisis, one that could very well corrode the way humans have communicated since we first evolved from apes. What we need, so say these proud Luddites, is to turn our backs on technology and embrace not the keyboard, but the pencil.

Such sentiments, in the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that's been displaced. Far from heralding in a "2001: Space Odyssey" dystopia, Baron believes that social networking sites, blogs and the Internet are actually making us better writers and improving our ability to reach out to our fellow man. "A Better Pencil" is both a defense of the digital revolution and a keen examination of how technology both improves and complicates our lives.

Recently, Salon spoke with Baron by phone about emoticons, the way Facebook and MySpace make us better friends and a not-too-distant future when everyone is a writer.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/09/19/better_pencil/index.html

It’s reality - high school classes are going virtual

2009-09-24T12:05:00.000-04:00

Online classes are pretty close to ubiquity.

It’s reality - high school classes are going virtual: "Sean O’Brien attends Concord-Carlisle High School, but at least once a day he checks in with a teacher he’ll never meet face to face.

"

Sleepless in Academic Affairs

2009-09-24T08:39:00.000-04:00

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting take on the opportunities offered by the newest economic realities:

Sleepless in Academic Affairs: "

To get through today's economic travails and what's to come, writes Jeff Abernathy, college administrators -- working closely with their faculties -- must try things they've never done before.

The Decline of the English Department

2009-09-23T10:48:00.001-04:00

The Decline of the English Department

Posted using ShareThis

Brent Schlenker: Marketers and Game Developers Know More About Learning Than We Do!

2009-09-22T17:14:00.000-04:00

From the blog Learning Visions comes this interesting take on gaming and education:

Brent Schlenker: Marketers and Game Developers Know More About Learning Than We Do!: "

Live session with Brent Schlenker: Marketers and Game Developers Know More About Learning Than We Do! hosted by Training Magazine Network.

***********

Disclaimers: “I am not a marketer or a game developer.” (Although he plays a LOT of games).

When he listens to game developers talk, feels like they’re in the learning prof.

Everything IS about learning.

Brent’s background:

What I am: 15+ yr learning professional, lifelong learner, player, consumer.

news – using media to tell stories.
Masters degree in Instructional Systems Design Process
10 years at Intel working in tools.

How do we use new and emerging technologies in the learning space?

We don’t typically create the new tools in eLearning – that innovation is happening in other places – e.g., marketing.

What’s coming down the pike so we can prepare our learners for them?

Point of today’s conversation: talking training, design and development if a marketing person were doing it. Or a game developer. What cool things are other areas doing that we can leverage to make us better designers and developers?

Comment (Julie S): “My first boss said that training is very much selling.”

Marketers are REALLY good at understanding who their target audience is.

People, Context, Content

Corporate ISD:

When working with a Subject Matter Expert (SME), they have a tendency to put everything into the training.
In corp learning space, we have a tendency to give in to that. We bow to the will of the SME…
Little room for creativity

New technology gives us new tools.

Marketing Depts:

Marketing dept always has the money. That’s where most creative talent in organizations go. This is where business finds the value, which is why marketing is where the dollars go.
They also get the resources to analyze the data.
What are they doing that’s different?
How do they measure success? Are the expectations on marketing depts greater than on training?
Marketing brings in the money.
A big part of marketing IS education -- what is the product? how does it add value? why should you buy it? This is the greatest connection between what we do…

Learners need to change behavior…which is what marketing does.

Event-based learning vs. Learning Campaigns

Marketing talks about a CAMPAIGN. Learning talks about a curriculum.

A campaign is a series of events/operations/continuing storyline – not just a “set of courses”.

A campaign that’s a continuous storyline involving a set of adventures and characters (learners) to achieve a set goal…

Design and develop learning campaigns that involve storylines, adventure, social media, people – every campaign has a structure to it – there is a formal development/design process. But there’s room to move. Different media involved in an ad campaign. Let people engage with others in the learning process.

New tools make this easier to implement from cost perspective, but still a big time cost to developing/designing learning campaigns.

A learning campaign is different than a marketing campaign. It’s not about t-shirts and email blasts – it’s about providing more ways for learners to engage with and access content.

World of Warcraft: getting people into a shared space to figure out together how to get the boss (the bad guy). Someone in comments wrote “sounds like a business strategy meeting!”

Get the Learner’s Attention

We use a lot of “fake” ways to get people’s attention…fun flash movie and then slide into the boring content…but I got their attention! (Yes, we need to sustain that attention.)

Each person’s individual desire to learn something is what makes for engagement. We’re not talking about “dressing up” content to fake that it’s engaging.

Book Recommendations:

Made to Stick (idea of attention – marketers do something shocking and unexpected, “unexpectedness”.)

A Theory of Fun (“games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life”) The most serious issues we have to approach are puzzles.

Don’t just read learning design and pedagogy books. Extend what you can do – think outside of your field.

Common Craft Videos

Great at explaining. Now companies are coming to them to do marketing – to explain their products.

ShamWow

Why are these so memorable? What can we learn from these infomericals? What are they doing – how do they display information and what' they’re teaching us about their product? Seems like an ID at work in there.

YouTube – videos – short hits to educate. 30-90 seconds. A whole lot of info, but the right info when you need it.

Production costs have dropped – we can start adding a lot more media/engagement to our programs.

Quickly produce short tips.

Attention – ways marketers and game developers get our attention. They do this well.

Analysis – really know their audience.

Objectives --

Measurement --

What you can do?

Keep it quick
Make it short
Be really creative
Make something that actually affects behavior (marketers want people to change their behavior – drink pepsi not coke, drink coke not pepsi)
Make it truly memorable

Don’t just need IDs on your staff – get some creatives in there who look at things a bit differently.

Understand gaming theory and gaming design.

Put the customer/consumer/learner first. We say we do…but we don’t often do it.

The best stuff is not trickery – it’s an engaging game; it’s a great product or service. That’s all. (Jeopardy is really kind of lame…)

Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change

2009-09-22T14:31:00.000-04:00

From the blog "Read Write Web":

Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change: "

Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it's not Gen Y that's getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.

Forrester's analysis is that despite their different view of technology, Gen Y, Millennials, or whatever you want to call those 29 and under, don't yet have the clout within organizations to make real change. The same Gen X employees who are the fastest growing demographic in Facebook are the ones getting management to accept new technology as more than a fad.

Sponsor

Just Ask Employees

A common method for researching about how people use technology is to ask industry experts and management about what they've provided to workers and how they think it's being used. That's how many market researchers go about their business.

But Forrester has decided to just ask the employees directly in their new 'Workforce Technographics' survey. Despite the imposing name, it's basically just asking people who work with computers about how they use technology, instead of going over their heads to IT and management. The survey of 2,000 individuals was conducted online in April, and was limited to those who work in companies with more than 100 employees.

It's All About Influence

A favorite argument among those who talk about the gap between Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y is that the youngest demographic is more adept with technology. According to the survey results, that's just not true.

Gen X employees contribute to discussion forums and social networks just as much as their Gen Y counterparts. The use of blogs and wikis was either equal or different by just a couple percentage points.

But the most significant difference was not in usage stats. It was how effective employees are at getting new software to be accepted. 22% of Gen X said they felt they have the 'clout in their organization' necessary to introduce new technology, while only 13% of those under 29 said the same.

Even if Gen Y was significantly better at using social software, it wouldn't matter at this point. Obviously younger employees will increase their stature within organizations as the years pass. But the idea of Millennials at the vanguard of innovation in the enterprise is a myth.

Discuss

Next Up For Disruption? College - TechDirt

2009-09-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

From Online Learning Update. Dare I say r'uh r'oh?

Next Up For Disruption? College - TechDirt: "The article in Washington Monthly discusses a company called StraighterLine, which offers online college classes, but it totally disrupts the traditional business model of university learning. In the opening story of the article, a woman completes four full classes in just two months -- for a grand total of $200. Taking those same classes at either local universities or online would have cost thousands, and would have taken much longer to complete. And, it's not as if the StraighterLine courses skimp either. According to the article, they use the same materials found in many college courses.

Game Within a Game: Freedom and Control in Assassin's Creed

2009-09-22T11:25:00.003-04:00

The Video Games and Human Values Initiative is an interesting effort to foster a meaningful dialogue on video games' place in our society. They've published an article on the game Assassin's Creed that's worth a look. It's entitled "Game within a game: freedom and control in Assassin's Creed" by Justin Keverne

The Video Games and Human Values Initiative are pleased to publish here our first proceeding. This article is the pilot of what we hope will be a new approach to scholarly publication in the interdisciplinary discourse on video games. Readers are invited and encouraged not only to discuss the article, but also to provide the benefits that traditionally have been in the hands of peer-reviewers--that is, generally, assistance in ensuring that the article makes a genuine contribution to its fields. One very important part of those benefits will be, we hope, the unstinted flow of suggestions of a bibliographic nature--in terms both of specific citations and background readings. Your comments are therefore most welcome, in particular if they take the form of suggestions for improvement.

At regular intervals, the article will be updated here and on the archive at the VGHVI wiki, in response to the discussion here. We believe that this arrangement could well represent a significant step forward in the development of the form of the scholarly article.

Mentoring Is Overrated. Try Tutoring Instead

2009-09-22T10:33:00.000-04:00

From the Harvard Business Review web site.

Mentoring Is Overrated. Try Tutoring Instead: "

The idea that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it may be the bane of undergraduates left to the mercies of graduate teaching assistants, but it's remarkably true. In medical school, the cliché 'See one; do one; teach one' has become a dominant pedagogical principle. In fact, George Bernard Shaw's notorious anti-educational quip gets flipped &#8212 instead of "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach," it's "Those who teach effectively learn how to do."

The power of this practice was recently reinforced at a statistical software customer conference I attended. A participant complained that one of the training sessions was really more of a 'technical demo' than a class. The session leader was less a teacher or facilitator that a presenter. The collective frustration was palpable. This seminar's attendees could 'see' what the presenter was doing and observe the outcomes but they simply couldn't 'get' the underlying principles. You really couldn't divorce getting business value out of the software from understanding the core statistical techniques.

So what happened? Three participants &#8212 each from different companies &#8212 got together during the break to teach themselves (and each other) how to marry the software to the statistics. Intriguingly, this ad hoc group had synergistic skills: One knew the software but had a shaky understanding of the statistics; another understood stats but had only a casual acquaintance with the software; and the third had a problem he thought the software could solve. Fifteen minutes of explanatory give-and-take around the keyboard later, everyone had clearly "learned" more about their own skill and competence by attempting to "teach" their colleagues. The software jockey gained greater fluency with the package as he demo-ed how to integrate the problem with the statistics. The stats geek got a better sense of the math in the course of helping translate the problem into the software. The guy with the problem better understood its underlying challenges in the course of defining it for the statistician and the software.

Of course, they each came away with a better understanding of their colleagues' expertise too &#8212 a win/win/win. My opinion: None of these individuals could have succeeded on their own. Just as significantly, the challenge of "teaching" their particular expertise to their two other partners had really pushed their own understanding of their particular skill. I was impressed. I wasn't surprised.

Nobel laureate physicists such as Enrico Fermi and Leon Lederman took pride in teaching bright undergraduates because it forced them to keep in touch with the fundamentals of their field and express themselves simply and clearly. Teaching wasn't merely imparting knowledge &#8212 it was a learning experience. I see this all the time in software and finance: The 'power user' isn't the individual who has spent the most time digging through and learning the intricacies of the code; it's the person who is teaching others how to use that software to solve unusual problems. Similarly, the 'quant' designing a novel financial instrument typically discovers details, nuances and substantive insights in the course of 'educating' colleagues about what makes that innovation special.

When I observe how communities of practice and expertise evolve in entrepreneurial firms or global enterprises, I'm struck by how often the designated 'teachers' get so much more value from the experiences than the fledgling 'learners.' Indeed, what really creates critical mass and momentum is a surge in those small three-or-four person 'study groups' where it's delightfully unclear whether the individual participants learn more by teaching or by collaborative learning. That's one reason I believe "mentoring" is overrated as a human capital investment. I suspect that there are CMOs and CFOs who would become far more expert &#8212 and effective &#8212 in their roles if they took the time to explicitly teach people core skills and competencies in their specialty. Better yet, the scalable impact would come when those "students," in turn, sought to reinforce their learning by teaching others. See one; do one; teach one.

It would be a wonderful &#8212 if appropriate &#8212 irony if the new paradigm for "executive education" emphasized that the best way for executives to learn well is to insist they teach well. When you look at what Jack Welch did with Crotonville, you can't help but wonder if the best way to have a 'learning culture' is to invest in a 'teaching culture.'

A researcher at MIT Sloan School's Center for Digital Business and a visiting fellow at the Imperial College Business School, Michael Schrage is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas. His research focuses on the behavioral economics of innovation through models, prototypes, simulations and experiments.

“The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes”

2009-09-22T07:57:00.000-04:00

From Larry Ferlazzo's site:

“The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes”: "

The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes is an excellent post by by Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University and Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc.

It’s geared towards college-teaching, but much that’s discussed in applicable to K-12.

Thanks to Jason Flom for the tip.

Research: Students can be motivated by tough math

2009-09-18T14:43:00.000-04:00

From ASCD's Smart Brief:

Research: Students can be motivated by tough math: "

A study conducted by Rutgers University discovered that allowing students to grapple with difficult math problems had the pot -More-

Philosophy Still Matters

2009-09-17T15:28:00.000-04:00

Michael Sandel on the Today Show. The man is amazing.

Philosophy Still Matters: "

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel appeared on the Today Show this morning, and got four minutes to make the case for philosophy. If you’re not familiar with him, Sandel is a very popular Harvard professor. Some 15,000 students have taken his courses over 30 years, and to get a feel for his teaching, you can watch his 30-minute lecture online. It’s called Justice: A Journey into Moral Reasoning, and it’s one of the very few open lectures that Harvard has put online. (A disappointment, I must say.) The lecture also otherwise appears in our collection of Free University Courses.

Reform: The Case Against Innovation

2009-09-16T12:54:00.000-04:00

An interesting correction to our recent innovation mania. I'm all for innovation, but remain skeptical that we really understand the process as much as we think we do.

Reform: The Case Against Innovation: "

"Innovation is, after all, one of those things just about everybody is for."

Genius Is Overrated Miller-McCune