This article by Stephen Krashen sums up how politically motivated "reports" like this need to be dealt with. There is a peer review process for a reason.
The Scholastic 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report: Why Scholastic's Researchers Need to Read More
Stephen Krashen
www.elladvocates.org/blog
June 18, 2008
Scholastic recently released a survey on how much and what children are reading these days, interviewing 501 children, ages 5 to 17, and their parents or guardians from 25 cities (Scholastic, 2008).
As is often the case, the Scholastic report was sent to newspaper reporters before it was released to the public. In other words, scholars had no chance to read it (or as they say these days, to vet it) before descriptions appeared in the press.
This is in stark contrast to the way scientific knowledge has been traditionally disseminated: Research is first submitted to professional journals, and will only be published if it passes review by other scholars. The reviewers make sure the study is done correctly, and that there is a full and competent review of previous research in the area, so that readers can determine how the results relate to previous research. Acceptance of the report can take several months, and it could be a year until the paper appears in print. At first, it is read only by professionals, those who read the journals, who often debate the results and may attempt to replicate the study.
In the field of educational research, all this has changed. Non-academic organizations (think tanks, government agencies, and private companies) with large budgets now produce their version of research, and utilize public relations avenues to send the report immediately to the media. Scholars can only read these reports well after descriptions have appeared in the media, descriptions written by reporters who may or may not have specialized knowledge, who are often unaware of other research in the area, and who nearly always have deadlines to meet. By the time the real experts read the report, it is already old news, the results have already been widely disseminated, and often stimulate important policy changes.
When the cold fusion report was released to the media before being submitted to review by other scientists, the researchers were widely criticized. When this happens in education, there are no complaints. In fact, what happens in education is worse: The studies are now given to the media before scholars can see them, and reporters are not allowed to share them until they are officially released (they are "embargoed"). In the case of cold fusion, scientists got the information at the same time reporters did.
This was the case with the Scholastic report on reading. Not surprisingly, different media reports said different things about it. Some reporters interpreted the findings as showing that reading is on a decline, e.g. WSB radio in Atlanta posted an article with the title, "Fewer kids reading for fun," and the Desert Sun in California ran the headline "Kids don't read for fun." But the School Library Journal headline was "Kids still wild about books."
Actually, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions from the Scholastic report about whether children are reading more or less than they used to. The problem is that those who wrote the survey questions did it in such a way that it is impossible to compare the results with those done years ago. The Gold Standard of surveys is the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Unfortunately, Scholastic and NAEP asked different questions and categorized children into age groups in different ways.
For example, Scholastic asked children if they read "never, once a year, more than once a year, once a month, 2 to 3 times a month, once a week, 2 to 3 times a week, 4 to 6 times a week, every day." NAEP asked if they read "never or hardly ever, a few times a year, once or twice a month, once or twice a week, almost every day."
Scholastic divided age categories into ages 5-8, 9-11, 12-14, and 15-17. NAEP only asked questions of nine, 13, and 17 year olds.
T
You can recycle them. You can return them to the store you bought them at for recycling. You can even get a free mailing label and ship them to flexplay for recycling.
You can also shoot yourself in the face if you're dumb enough to buy this crap.
What you're talking about is essentially communism. History has shown that doesn't work. The communist bloc as a whole could not match the innovation coming out of the US. Most people work hard in large part for the monetary reward. To think otherwise is idealistic and naive.
Ihlosi is correct. You can beat a competitor's product to market, perhaps with not as strong a product as their final one, but you'll have the market lead. With copyrighted works like albums, we often see copies leak before an orchestrated release date. It wouldn't be a problem to put thousands of copies into stores if you get a couple weeks of lead time.
Patents and copyright were created to foster innovation, and the can do just that. A rapid pace of development is important for the future of humanity, especially as we try to outrace overpopulation and pollution through technology. I want my children to live forever in a clean, information rich, and peaceful world. Slowing things down won't get us there.
The goal should be to encourage innovation and creativity. Copyrights nowadays just last too long. This encourages hoarding because you can make tons of money by collecting essentially endless copyrights. It encourages lawsuits because the value is in the ownership and money earned over time, not improving the product and giving something people want to buy right now. It discourages derivative works because building off the original costs so much, which, for instance, seriously harms hip hop music. It also discourages new works from going commercial since you can sell a proven product much more easily than creating a new one and teaching the public about it.
An individual creator deserves to make money off their work because it gives them an incentive to make more and improve our lives. The current system does the opposite so the social contract is broken. Until balance is restored, I have no problem disregarding pretty much all claims of copyright, short of selling someone's product myself.
Then there's patent law...
Call Comcast during a business day and select the choices to cancel service. A customer retention person will come on and ask why. Say you're switching to DSL at $25 a month. They'll lower your rate to 33.
And in the meantime, it's 3:00pm PST and pretty much every peer that tries to leech from me is getting killed by lovely Comcast.
Thanks to scene releases, I get no standalone ads at all. Of course I do get the in-show ads, like the pushing of iTunes, Coke, and Fords, on American Idol.
Whatever my spam filters catch must be true. No matter the evidence presented, I know my penis will grow and Mr. Nabuti will give me half of his no-longer frozen assets.
When cables get cut, wouldn't you, as a service provider, want to know what ships are in the area? Might not intelligence services take a gander with their satellites to see what is happening in the area?
Slashdot Mirror
Jesus built this hot rod.
This article by Stephen Krashen sums up how politically motivated "reports" like this need to be dealt with. There is a peer review process for a reason. The Scholastic 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report: Why Scholastic's Researchers Need to Read More Stephen Krashen www.elladvocates.org/blog June 18, 2008 Scholastic recently released a survey on how much and what children are reading these days, interviewing 501 children, ages 5 to 17, and their parents or guardians from 25 cities (Scholastic, 2008). As is often the case, the Scholastic report was sent to newspaper reporters before it was released to the public. In other words, scholars had no chance to read it (or as they say these days, to vet it) before descriptions appeared in the press. This is in stark contrast to the way scientific knowledge has been traditionally disseminated: Research is first submitted to professional journals, and will only be published if it passes review by other scholars. The reviewers make sure the study is done correctly, and that there is a full and competent review of previous research in the area, so that readers can determine how the results relate to previous research. Acceptance of the report can take several months, and it could be a year until the paper appears in print. At first, it is read only by professionals, those who read the journals, who often debate the results and may attempt to replicate the study. In the field of educational research, all this has changed. Non-academic organizations (think tanks, government agencies, and private companies) with large budgets now produce their version of research, and utilize public relations avenues to send the report immediately to the media. Scholars can only read these reports well after descriptions have appeared in the media, descriptions written by reporters who may or may not have specialized knowledge, who are often unaware of other research in the area, and who nearly always have deadlines to meet. By the time the real experts read the report, it is already old news, the results have already been widely disseminated, and often stimulate important policy changes. When the cold fusion report was released to the media before being submitted to review by other scientists, the researchers were widely criticized. When this happens in education, there are no complaints. In fact, what happens in education is worse: The studies are now given to the media before scholars can see them, and reporters are not allowed to share them until they are officially released (they are "embargoed"). In the case of cold fusion, scientists got the information at the same time reporters did. This was the case with the Scholastic report on reading. Not surprisingly, different media reports said different things about it. Some reporters interpreted the findings as showing that reading is on a decline, e.g. WSB radio in Atlanta posted an article with the title, "Fewer kids reading for fun," and the Desert Sun in California ran the headline "Kids don't read for fun." But the School Library Journal headline was "Kids still wild about books." Actually, it is impossible to draw any real conclusions from the Scholastic report about whether children are reading more or less than they used to. The problem is that those who wrote the survey questions did it in such a way that it is impossible to compare the results with those done years ago. The Gold Standard of surveys is the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Unfortunately, Scholastic and NAEP asked different questions and categorized children into age groups in different ways. For example, Scholastic asked children if they read "never, once a year, more than once a year, once a month, 2 to 3 times a month, once a week, 2 to 3 times a week, 4 to 6 times a week, every day." NAEP asked if they read "never or hardly ever, a few times a year, once or twice a month, once or twice a week, almost every day." Scholastic divided age categories into ages 5-8, 9-11, 12-14, and 15-17. NAEP only asked questions of nine, 13, and 17 year olds. T
I stand corrected. I should have said, "Diamonds are for hundreds or thousands of nubile women.
... for hundreds of thousands of microseconds.
Does coming from Google automatically make something newsworthy, no matter how insignificant?
http://flexplay.com/recycling/
You can recycle them. You can return them to the store you bought them at for recycling. You can even get a free mailing label and ship them to flexplay for recycling.
You can also shoot yourself in the face if you're dumb enough to buy this crap.
If it can run ffdshow or VLC at 1080p then we're talking something special.
What's with the anti-hip hop stance on Slashdot? What's wrong with taking a recent example?
What you're talking about is essentially communism. History has shown that doesn't work. The communist bloc as a whole could not match the innovation coming out of the US. Most people work hard in large part for the monetary reward. To think otherwise is idealistic and naive.
Ihlosi is correct. You can beat a competitor's product to market, perhaps with not as strong a product as their final one, but you'll have the market lead. With copyrighted works like albums, we often see copies leak before an orchestrated release date. It wouldn't be a problem to put thousands of copies into stores if you get a couple weeks of lead time.
Patents and copyright were created to foster innovation, and the can do just that. A rapid pace of development is important for the future of humanity, especially as we try to outrace overpopulation and pollution through technology. I want my children to live forever in a clean, information rich, and peaceful world. Slowing things down won't get us there.
The goal should be to encourage innovation and creativity. Copyrights nowadays just last too long. This encourages hoarding because you can make tons of money by collecting essentially endless copyrights. It encourages lawsuits because the value is in the ownership and money earned over time, not improving the product and giving something people want to buy right now. It discourages derivative works because building off the original costs so much, which, for instance, seriously harms hip hop music. It also discourages new works from going commercial since you can sell a proven product much more easily than creating a new one and teaching the public about it. An individual creator deserves to make money off their work because it gives them an incentive to make more and improve our lives. The current system does the opposite so the social contract is broken. Until balance is restored, I have no problem disregarding pretty much all claims of copyright, short of selling someone's product myself. Then there's patent law...
Nothing for me. Beta 5 in Vista works like a charm and I LOVE the scaling. Opera looks like pixellated crud in comparison.
Call Comcast during a business day and select the choices to cancel service. A customer retention person will come on and ask why. Say you're switching to DSL at $25 a month. They'll lower your rate to 33. And in the meantime, it's 3:00pm PST and pretty much every peer that tries to leech from me is getting killed by lovely Comcast.
Have you ever seen the show? The winners generally have good album sales, as do some of the losers. It's quite successful at finding real talent.
"Elitist attitude" were the words.
What's wrong with American Idol? Hmm... elitist attitude. Are you white, college educated, and voting for Obama, perchance?
Hell no, gotta keep the ratio up.
Thanks to scene releases, I get no standalone ads at all. Of course I do get the in-show ads, like the pushing of iTunes, Coke, and Fords, on American Idol.
The ballast tanks will become gigantic soup kitchens for sharks. You'll see a train of fins following every large ship.
That's like being so hip, your bum falls off.
Whatever my spam filters catch must be true. No matter the evidence presented, I know my penis will grow and Mr. Nabuti will give me half of his no-longer frozen assets.
When cables get cut, wouldn't you, as a service provider, want to know what ships are in the area? Might not intelligence services take a gander with their satellites to see what is happening in the area?
Is it your years in the CIA or your years in the conspiracy nutjob section of the bookstore that make you so knowledgeable?
The conspiracy nuts are pitiful. I used to think they were all on the right, but now I know there are just as many if not more on the left.