After spending a decade as an educator, I can confidently state that very few people can apply concepts that they have just learned. However, many people will be able to apply those concepts when they revisit them. That seems to be true even if they forgot what they originally learned.
That experience leads me to believe that JIT education simply would not work in practice, even though it sounds great. The demand for a traditional education, even for jobs that didn't require an education in the past, leads me to believe that employers know that JIT education (i.e. on the job training) is a risky investment at best and that they may even see it as ineffective.
I hope that GM and other manufacturers go all of the way with online sales. Car dealerships consume an absurd amount of commercial realestate, and it is frequently prime commercial realestate.
The Arduino, and similar microcontroller based products, are the equivalent of those little electronics kits. Some vendors even bundle the board with a guide and assorted electronics components to help people get rudimentary emperical experience with electronics.
These boards are much more than tiny computers. They will happily accept analog signals. You can also create analog outputs with a rudimentary circuit. This allows you to hang traditional passive and active components off of the I/O ports, which is what most people do. The big difference is that you can create simpler circuits that do more powerful stuff, because the microcontroller can take the output from one part of the circuit, process it, then use it as output to another part of the circuit. You don't have to design a complex circuit to interface the two parts. You just have to figure out the code.
In some respects, it isn't all that different from those old electronics kits. If you didn't have the ability to design a circuit that did the interfacing, you would buy a chip to do the job for you. The big difference is that chip usually completed a single function (e.g. counter, drivers for 7-segment displays) so you had to spend money to obtain the appropriate chip for each project and spend a lot of time sourcing it. With a microcontroller, you simply reprogram the same chip over and over.
Just because you don't agree with a democratically elected government doesn't mean that it is corrupt, and it doesn't mean that its policies are unpopular. (By unpopular, I assume you mean that the majority disagree with it.)
I also find it mildly ironic that a person who accuses the government of corruption seems to feel that the current situation is normal, since misappropriating a law that deals with the government's budgetary process in order to combat a law that would otherwise pass through the legislature strikes me as corruption.
Seriously. Textbooks have used multiple representations of fractions for years, one of which is linear, because the education research has indicated that different children learn better with different representations of fractions.
Well, at least we now know how long it takes for education research to trickle into the classroom: decades.
As others have mentioned, arrange a time and have an adult help your child use Skype (or something along those lines). After all, you need to keep in touch with your child. You don't need to be able to contact them 24/7, nor do they need to contact you 24/7.
The benefits of this approach are enormous. It is much less expensive. You don't have to worry about the phone being lost or broken. You don't have to fret about them using it at inappropriate times since it is much easier to monitor a computer (or livingroom game console if you let them play video games). It will be easier to encourage them to get out and play with friends, or to play with toys that they manipulate physically. That's important, since toys encourage more imagination than games (or videos, or books for that matter). Scheduled calls also help to establish routines, rather than impulsive behaviours.
Upon reflection, I found that my bias was towards the technically able. That's true whether they are able to execute the project or not.
The reason is simple enough: I've found that many people of many abilities are great at coming up with ideas. Yet they fail to actually take into consideration whether their ideas work, and what they will look like in their final form.
... and adventure games died out because they depended upon puzzles to regulate the flow of the game.
If you thought like the game designer, that was great because you could explore the world and think your way through the puzzles that you encountered.
If you didn't think like the game designer, it was a nightmare because you would be trapped in a small part of that world without being able to figure out how to escape. In some cases you didn't even know that you could escape. In other cases you knew exactly how you should be able to progress, but the game designer didn't think that way so you had to figure out the game designer's solution.
Since different game designers thought in different ways and different gamers thought in different ways, buying a game was always hit and miss.
Other than that, I'm trying to figure out how Myst was different from prior games. You certainly had adventure games before Myst (Infocom being the classic example), and you had graphical adventure games (Sierra Online was famous for them), and you had sophisticated rendered graphics in games. About the only difference that I can think of is that Cyan tried to make it photo-realistic, within the obvious limitations of technology back then, and they threw in video clips. It required a CD-ROM in order to conveniently store that much data, which was uncommon for games of that era.
I have seen some horrific driving because people were following GPS directions. Those drivers could not plan far enough ahead to navigate traffic safely. (GPS software may give advance notice, but there are times when it is insufficient to change lanes and adjust your speed safely.) And those were proper GPS units, which involve less fiddling around than the software on most phones.
... you shouldn't be in control of a piece of heavy machinery (in this case an automobile).
Before red-light gadget users argue that they are in control of their habits, ask yourself why you're texting at a red light. It only takes a couple of minutes to remove yourself from the flow of traffic, do the texting, and safely reinsert yourself into the flow of traffic.
The scientists being muzzled are employees of various departments of the federal government. While several departments of the federal government give grants for scientific research, the scientists who receive those grants may be employed by other bodies. One example are universities. Universities are heavily funded by the government, but they are managed independently of the government. In that case, the scientists are not in the employment of the government so they are not under the same degree of control. (Of course the government can refuse to provide further grants to that scientist, but that is the limit of their control.)
At any rate, the whole point of my original post was that grant-funded research is not equivalent to outcome funded research.
One thing to keep in mind is that government scientists are pretty much in the same position as scientists who work in industry: they are there to serve the interests of their employer.
In the case of government scientists, their role is to conduct research that relates to policy or to support the civil service. For example: environmental scientists may be conducting research into acceptable harvest levels for fisheries or how to manage land in a flood plain. It is unfortunate when a government distorts that research to support their policies rather than using the research to inform policy, but that shouldn't be unexpected.
More concerning is the cutbacks to academic research, which has been more independent in the past. Academic scientists have not, traditionally, been tied to the interests of government so they have had much more leeway to express their results independent of external pressure.
Maybe Apple isn't releasing the figures because the 5c has 10 million units in preorders and they don't want people who would otherwise buy a 5s to figure out how great the 5c is!
Wow! Wow! Wow! That must be it. Yes! That must be it! After all, no information is as good as solid figures!
These parents are teaching their children. When you consider child development, it is probably a good way to teach them. Sitting down with a 5 year old and telling them that they're spending too much time on an iPad just ain't gonna work. Making it into a game just may work. Appropriate age. Appropriate technique. Oh, and it sounds like the game will end before the eldest enters grade 1 so it won't interfere too much as the children grow up.
Even though I agree with what you're saying, moderation is something that is hard to achieve if you're already out of control. Moderation is hard to achieve unless you have a concrete goal. Moderation is hard to achieve if you're a young child.
I see what they're doing as entirely reasonable. It isn't all that different from families in the 1980's refusing to get a video game console or computer, banning television from the household, or the many other things that could be construed as anti-technology. And yes, that was fairly common back then. And no, it wasn't always based upon cost.
The only reason why it feels weird is because they said they're living like it's 1986 and because electronics have become so ingrained in our lives that many people refuse to accept that anyone can live without it.
The [i]fact[/i] is that students [b]pre[/p] WWII were better educated in every discipline because people dropped out of school. Prior to the second world war, the high school graduation rate was virtually always below 50% (contrast that to over 70% today). Even citing a figure that high is misleading because the graduation rate had been consistently increasing from 10% to 55% between the wars and there were a substantial number of drop-outs as early as the elementary grades.
And all of that assumes that they were better educated. Much of the knowledge that we feed to students today was being developed during WWII, so those pre-war students could have hardly learnt it.
I wonder how much the rights holders would want to release the Feynman Lectures into the public domain, or a CC license that will ensure free access to this text.
After all, the Feynman Lectures cannot be that valuable to them. While it is widely recognised, it is definitely directed towards people specializing in physics and engineering. As far as I know it's rarely used as a course text either (age, lack of supporting curricular materials, etc.).
Feynman was known for his contributions to physics, for communicating concepts clearly and in an interesting manner, as exhibiting certain traits known as "being human".
Now there are physicists who did far better in each of the three areas than he did, but very few (if any) did as well as he did in all three areas.
We are all missing details. While modern consumer and academic/business oriented operating systems do allow administrators to full access to the system, this does not have to be the case. Indeed, I was under the impression that computers employed by certain government agencies ensure that this was not the case.
Even in the case of consume and academic/business oriented operating systems, the are ways to ensure the confidentiality of data at the application level.
The fact that NSA computers were not employing proper security mechanisms is definitely a cause for concern. Granted, I am happy that they didn't in this case.
... it strikes me that the main reason to buy Windows RT over the competition (e.g. Android or iOS) is Office. Realistically, Office needs a keyboard so offering a keyboardless version is just another part for Dell to manage. It likely leads to poor reviews and extra support issues as well, since some ill informed people are going to buy the cheaper keyboardless version and expect Office to work as well as it does with a keyboard.
Any action is going to have positive and negative consequences. The question is: does the good outweigh the bad?
It's probably too early to tell if your actions served the greater good.
On the other hand, what you did was important for your country: the United States is a representative democracy. In order for your government to work as intended, both the representatives and electorat must have information regarding both policies and how those policies are implemented. Without that information, decisions are ill informed (at best) and possibly even manipulated to serve the interests of the government, a particular branch of the government, or a small group of individuals (at worse).
The article is talking about fixing what you can. It simply outlines how to prioritize the issues in order to figure out what you can fix with limited resources.
Slashdot Mirror
After spending a decade as an educator, I can confidently state that very few people can apply concepts that they have just learned. However, many people will be able to apply those concepts when they revisit them. That seems to be true even if they forgot what they originally learned.
That experience leads me to believe that JIT education simply would not work in practice, even though it sounds great. The demand for a traditional education, even for jobs that didn't require an education in the past, leads me to believe that employers know that JIT education (i.e. on the job training) is a risky investment at best and that they may even see it as ineffective.
I hope that GM and other manufacturers go all of the way with online sales. Car dealerships consume an absurd amount of commercial realestate, and it is frequently prime commercial realestate.
The Arduino, and similar microcontroller based products, are the equivalent of those little electronics kits. Some vendors even bundle the board with a guide and assorted electronics components to help people get rudimentary emperical experience with electronics.
These boards are much more than tiny computers. They will happily accept analog signals. You can also create analog outputs with a rudimentary circuit. This allows you to hang traditional passive and active components off of the I/O ports, which is what most people do. The big difference is that you can create simpler circuits that do more powerful stuff, because the microcontroller can take the output from one part of the circuit, process it, then use it as output to another part of the circuit. You don't have to design a complex circuit to interface the two parts. You just have to figure out the code.
In some respects, it isn't all that different from those old electronics kits. If you didn't have the ability to design a circuit that did the interfacing, you would buy a chip to do the job for you. The big difference is that chip usually completed a single function (e.g. counter, drivers for 7-segment displays) so you had to spend money to obtain the appropriate chip for each project and spend a lot of time sourcing it. With a microcontroller, you simply reprogram the same chip over and over.
Just because you don't agree with a democratically elected government doesn't mean that it is corrupt, and it doesn't mean that its policies are unpopular. (By unpopular, I assume you mean that the majority disagree with it.)
I also find it mildly ironic that a person who accuses the government of corruption seems to feel that the current situation is normal, since misappropriating a law that deals with the government's budgetary process in order to combat a law that would otherwise pass through the legislature strikes me as corruption.
If you're pointing out that there is a difference in micromanaging people and micromanaging a product, your right.
If you're whining about accepting direction from your employer, then you should be fired.
... and somebody read a school textbook.
Seriously. Textbooks have used multiple representations of fractions for years, one of which is linear, because the education research has indicated that different children learn better with different representations of fractions.
Well, at least we now know how long it takes for education research to trickle into the classroom: decades.
... if they can emulate the tactile feedback of those old terminal keyboards. :)
As others have mentioned, arrange a time and have an adult help your child use Skype (or something along those lines). After all, you need to keep in touch with your child. You don't need to be able to contact them 24/7, nor do they need to contact you 24/7.
The benefits of this approach are enormous. It is much less expensive. You don't have to worry about the phone being lost or broken. You don't have to fret about them using it at inappropriate times since it is much easier to monitor a computer (or livingroom game console if you let them play video games). It will be easier to encourage them to get out and play with friends, or to play with toys that they manipulate physically. That's important, since toys encourage more imagination than games (or videos, or books for that matter). Scheduled calls also help to establish routines, rather than impulsive behaviours.
Think about it.
Upon reflection, I found that my bias was towards the technically able. That's true whether they are able to execute the project or not.
The reason is simple enough: I've found that many people of many abilities are great at coming up with ideas. Yet they fail to actually take into consideration whether their ideas work, and what they will look like in their final form.
... and adventure games died out because they depended upon puzzles to regulate the flow of the game.
If you thought like the game designer, that was great because you could explore the world and think your way through the puzzles that you encountered.
If you didn't think like the game designer, it was a nightmare because you would be trapped in a small part of that world without being able to figure out how to escape. In some cases you didn't even know that you could escape. In other cases you knew exactly how you should be able to progress, but the game designer didn't think that way so you had to figure out the game designer's solution.
Since different game designers thought in different ways and different gamers thought in different ways, buying a game was always hit and miss.
Other than that, I'm trying to figure out how Myst was different from prior games. You certainly had adventure games before Myst (Infocom being the classic example), and you had graphical adventure games (Sierra Online was famous for them), and you had sophisticated rendered graphics in games. About the only difference that I can think of is that Cyan tried to make it photo-realistic, within the obvious limitations of technology back then, and they threw in video clips. It required a CD-ROM in order to conveniently store that much data, which was uncommon for games of that era.
RTFS
I have seen some horrific driving because people were following GPS directions. Those drivers could not plan far enough ahead to navigate traffic safely. (GPS software may give advance notice, but there are times when it is insufficient to change lanes and adjust your speed safely.) And those were proper GPS units, which involve less fiddling around than the software on most phones.
... you shouldn't be in control of a piece of heavy machinery (in this case an automobile).
Before red-light gadget users argue that they are in control of their habits, ask yourself why you're texting at a red light. It only takes a couple of minutes to remove yourself from the flow of traffic, do the texting, and safely reinsert yourself into the flow of traffic.
The scientists being muzzled are employees of various departments of the federal government. While several departments of the federal government give grants for scientific research, the scientists who receive those grants may be employed by other bodies. One example are universities. Universities are heavily funded by the government, but they are managed independently of the government. In that case, the scientists are not in the employment of the government so they are not under the same degree of control. (Of course the government can refuse to provide further grants to that scientist, but that is the limit of their control.)
At any rate, the whole point of my original post was that grant-funded research is not equivalent to outcome funded research.
One thing to keep in mind is that government scientists are pretty much in the same position as scientists who work in industry: they are there to serve the interests of their employer.
In the case of government scientists, their role is to conduct research that relates to policy or to support the civil service. For example: environmental scientists may be conducting research into acceptable harvest levels for fisheries or how to manage land in a flood plain. It is unfortunate when a government distorts that research to support their policies rather than using the research to inform policy, but that shouldn't be unexpected.
More concerning is the cutbacks to academic research, which has been more independent in the past. Academic scientists have not, traditionally, been tied to the interests of government so they have had much more leeway to express their results independent of external pressure.
Maybe Apple isn't releasing the figures because the 5c has 10 million units in preorders and they don't want people who would otherwise buy a 5s to figure out how great the 5c is!
Wow! Wow! Wow! That must be it. Yes! That must be it! After all, no information is as good as solid figures!
These parents are teaching their children. When you consider child development, it is probably a good way to teach them. Sitting down with a 5 year old and telling them that they're spending too much time on an iPad just ain't gonna work. Making it into a game just may work. Appropriate age. Appropriate technique. Oh, and it sounds like the game will end before the eldest enters grade 1 so it won't interfere too much as the children grow up.
Even though I agree with what you're saying, moderation is something that is hard to achieve if you're already out of control. Moderation is hard to achieve unless you have a concrete goal. Moderation is hard to achieve if you're a young child.
I see what they're doing as entirely reasonable. It isn't all that different from families in the 1980's refusing to get a video game console or computer, banning television from the household, or the many other things that could be construed as anti-technology. And yes, that was fairly common back then. And no, it wasn't always based upon cost.
The only reason why it feels weird is because they said they're living like it's 1986 and because electronics have become so ingrained in our lives that many people refuse to accept that anyone can live without it.
The [i]fact[/i] is that students [b]pre[/p] WWII were better educated in every discipline because people dropped out of school. Prior to the second world war, the high school graduation rate was virtually always below 50% (contrast that to over 70% today). Even citing a figure that high is misleading because the graduation rate had been consistently increasing from 10% to 55% between the wars and there were a substantial number of drop-outs as early as the elementary grades. And all of that assumes that they were better educated. Much of the knowledge that we feed to students today was being developed during WWII, so those pre-war students could have hardly learnt it.
I wonder how much the rights holders would want to release the Feynman Lectures into the public domain, or a CC license that will ensure free access to this text.
After all, the Feynman Lectures cannot be that valuable to them. While it is widely recognised, it is definitely directed towards people specializing in physics and engineering. As far as I know it's rarely used as a course text either (age, lack of supporting curricular materials, etc.).
Feynman was known for his contributions to physics, for communicating concepts clearly and in an interesting manner, as exhibiting certain traits known as "being human".
Now there are physicists who did far better in each of the three areas than he did, but very few (if any) did as well as he did in all three areas.
We are all missing details. While modern consumer and academic/business oriented operating systems do allow administrators to full access to the system, this does not have to be the case. Indeed, I was under the impression that computers employed by certain government agencies ensure that this was not the case.
Even in the case of consume and academic/business oriented operating systems, the are ways to ensure the confidentiality of data at the application level.
The fact that NSA computers were not employing proper security mechanisms is definitely a cause for concern. Granted, I am happy that they didn't in this case.
... it strikes me that the main reason to buy Windows RT over the competition (e.g. Android or iOS) is Office. Realistically, Office needs a keyboard so offering a keyboardless version is just another part for Dell to manage. It likely leads to poor reviews and extra support issues as well, since some ill informed people are going to buy the cheaper keyboardless version and expect Office to work as well as it does with a keyboard.
Any action is going to have positive and negative consequences. The question is: does the good outweigh the bad?
It's probably too early to tell if your actions served the greater good.
On the other hand, what you did was important for your country: the United States is a representative democracy. In order for your government to work as intended, both the representatives and electorat must have information regarding both policies and how those policies are implemented. Without that information, decisions are ill informed (at best) and possibly even manipulated to serve the interests of the government, a particular branch of the government, or a small group of individuals (at worse).
The article is talking about fixing what you can. It simply outlines how to prioritize the issues in order to figure out what you can fix with limited resources.