By "weak area" I meant (for example) the 5% a student gets wrong when they score 95% on a test, not a "subject" they're weak in. This weak area could be in a subject they are very good at and enjoy. And when you talk about tests not being an effective form of motivation, that's exactly what I meant too. Unfortunately, the argument that students wouldn't be motivated to learn without upcoming tests is one I've heard numerous times, and it's just wrong. In fact, I agree with everything you say. If there was a misunderstanding, it may be due to the fact that language was a weak subject of mine as well.
Our school specifically gives choice to students so they are able to follow their interests. We expose them to everything, but where it leads is up to them. Unfortunately, there's not much good information online about our elementary programs, but at least here's a quick comparison vs. mainstream education.
I'm certified to teach K-5 in one of the US states but currently teach in another country. I've looked into this idea quite a bit.
There is evidence to show that extra school time benefits children in families that don't give much academic support at home (especially prevalent in poor, inner-city neighborhoods). For example, standardized test scores in reading often rise after summer vacations in affluent areas, but not so much in poor areas. The assumption is that many affluent parents tend to read and encourage their children to read during the summer. It's simply a disparity of time reading. To combat this, some experimental, inner-city schools have had success raising scores with very long days. However, I haven't seen anything showing that longer days help elsewhere. Homework (no matter how many hours) has been shown to have no significant effect raising scores for elementary students. (Up to 2 hours helps high school students, but over that seems to give no additional benefit.)
Honestly, I would first look at reducing time giving children tests. In many schools, children are given about an hour of tests a day, on average (amount varying from day to day, class to class, school to school). Tests are specifically to help adults (administrators, teachers, parents). Children are not allowed to practice their weak areas (the main thing that helps them learn) during a test. Although tests give children goals to strive for, motivational goals can be given many other, more effective ways. That's often 180 hours of test time a year (36 days of school, considering 5 hours a day of "in-class" time).
In my school we give 1 standardized test a year, and no testing outside that. Our scores are usually average or better than average on the standardized test (despite having many special-needs students). The teachers have more time to work with the students (and therefore know exactly where each child is). We also have more time to plan (instead of correcting tests during prep time).
Common questions we get are about how we communicate a child's level, without grades (given from tests). Simply put, we give more in-depth reports to parents & other schools. It works, but this is the part that scares most administrators and parents. Frankly, this part is more work for the adults. But if the main focus is on what's best for the children, frequent testing should be abolished. From the perspective of a child's education (practicing difficulties and learning new things), testing is one of the least efficient uses of time. And if we truly want more class time, that's where educators should start.
They seem to be talking about Google Trends, where they are currently making cutesy graphs of what people are searching for about the World Cup.
Calling this a "newsroom" seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is NOT "Google News" where I see "humiliation", "shame" and "misery" in the top stories when searching for "Brazil World Cup".
This had me really confused (and it seems like many of the readers here as well), but the article and summary are misleading.
Uh, they most certainly have extremely crisp boundaries. Species are classified by the ability of two organisms to breed with one another.
The "Species problem" shows this not to be the case. The specific issue you mention is in the introduction:
"Another common problem is how to define reproductive isolation, because some separately evolving groups may continue to interbreed to some extent, and it can be a difficult matter to discover whether this hybridization affects the long-term genetic make-up of the groups."
That being said, I was taught the same way as you and only learned differently when I started teaching it myself. Now when I explain classification, I try to intersperse phrases like "usually classified as..." or "One good way to classify it is...". I usually try to reinforce that there are many ways to classify, show them the most common way(s), and encourage them to make their own classifications if those ways fail. This is especially prevalent in biology where phylogenetics (usually based on RNA, dividing groups into clades) is currently intermixing with more traditional taxonomy (usually based on morphological traits, dividing groups into Linnaean classification)[1].
This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no". The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.
"If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in psychological status, that's experimentation," says James Grimmelmann, a professor of technology and the law at the University of Maryland. "This is the kind of thing that would require informed consent."
One could argue that advertising is not always done with informed consent.
you go to shard A, get weapon A1, go to shard B and get armor B1 because the monster that carries said armor is very susceptible to A1 [...] , then go to shard C where every monster [...] is really hard to kill... unless you have weapon A1 which deals a damage these mobs don't have any resistance to [...]
Congratulations to everyone involved. The few Athene videos I saw when he started were lowest common denominator attempts at shock value, but I'm glad something good is coming out of it.
As an early education teacher, I am convinced that the quest for knowledge is innate, and is repressed by classrooms that ask preadolescent children to barely move or speak for 4 to 6 hours every day. I believe the "trigger" you mention could be areas of a stifled, developing brain finally getting what it desires, like a cold glass of water in hell.
I work in a school where most lessons are planned with sensory motor function in mind, where art, language, math, etc are shown to be intertwined, and where students often preform higher on standardized tests, despite me never giving them a single, formally graded test the rest of the year.
For more than half of the children that transfer into my school after spending 3 or 4 years in a public school (factory structured, lecture based model), I have to spend the initial months detoxifying the child, showing them that it's okay to be creative, unsuppressed, and use their interests to learn.
The developing brains of young children are extremely sensitive to visual, tactile experiences that the various arts provide. Their psychology is very different from an adult's, yet many adults often project their own learning styles onto them. This leads to continuously keeping subjects separate (such as art & math). While key concepts should initially be presented in isolation to avoid confusion, the follow up activities should combine multiple areas. In other words, expose the children to everything possible, show them how it all interconnects, and use what the child's mind is sensitive to, practicing multiple areas in conjunction and forming deep understanding.
I find it highly likely that the statistically significant increase in critical thinking, social tolerance, and historical empathy that this study found not only comes from the initial exposure, but also from teachers integrating the experience into follow-up lessons / activities.
The above "Insightful" comments didn't seem to RTA.
It makes the case that the Core is badly designed FOR EARLY EDUCATION, and this test is merely a reflection of that.
Are the standards reasonable, appropriate and developmentally sound—especially for our youngest learners? In order to answer that question, it is important to understand how the early primary standards were determined. If you read Commissioner John King’s Powerpoint slide 18, which can be found here, you see that the Common Core standards were “backmapped” from a description of 12th grade college-ready skills. There is no evidence that early childhood experts were consulted to ensure that the standards were appropriate for young learners. Every parent knows that their kids do not develop according to a “back map”—young children develop through a complex interaction of biology and experience that is unique to the child and which cannot be rushed.
It goes on to compare the US Core with the standards from other countries such as Finland and Singapore.
It then shows the very real and large problem that it was "Pearson Education" that made this poorly written test.
This Pearson first-grade unit test is the realization of the New York Common Core math standards. Pearson knows how the questions will be asked on the New York State tests, because they, of course, create them.
Children and schools are evaluated based on State tests. Do you want your job being evaluated by something like this?
Countdown timers on RED traffic lights decrease accidents, as it decreases irritability and road rage.
Countdown timers on GREEN traffic lights increase accidents, as people seem to speed up when they see the light will soon change.
600 cars going 50 MPH on a one-mile stretch of 4-lane freeway is extremely dangerous. 60 cars going 80 MPH on that same mile of freeway is must less dangerous.
These Microsoft Corp. Comm. people are more disconnected from reality than I expected.
No, I think they know what's going on, even though the things they say are carefully crafted attempts at making us think the opposite. When I was a kid, we called that "lying".
The sentence could be corrected by moving "necessary" after the direct object: "...a game console that will make their own Linux-based software platform necessary,"
(This assumes the term "correct grammar" is defined as a description of how most native speakers speak, rather than a prescription of rules to make oneself understood.)
For a long amount of time, a very large amount of people have only used PCs for the same functions that you can now find in any mobile device (emails, checking news, entertainment, etc). The rest of the "opportunities" a PC provides are unused bloat for many people.
But a "Post-PC" era isn't coming anytime soon (unless you count today as a "Post-TV" era).
This! CC-BY-NC-ND is already an extremely open license. It can be shared and read freely so that other researchers can get ideas from it for their own research.
What other people CAN'T do:
BY: they can't plagiarize (they must attribute the work)
NC: they can't sell it (non-commercial purposes only)
ND: they can't paraphrase and take things out of context (if someone copies it, they copy the full paper, in its original form)
The article worries about the inability to do text mining and translations. Good points, and they mention an organization working on a license just like the CC-BY-NC-ND that would allow text mining and translations. Good for them.
The rest of it is FUD claiming researchers don't understand the license. I disagree. CC-BY-NC-ND is being used the most because its the best license for openly sharing while still protecting their work.
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820
This could only be modded funny by people who aren't scientists. I've lived my entire life in a community of research PhDs (entire immediate family and friends) and very few of them aren't religious. Every religion is represented (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.)
Most do not view holy books as literal truth like religious fundamentalists, but rather guidelines and proverbs on the meaning behind life and how to live it well. Nor do they believe in creationism and other pseudoscience. But there are a large number of chemists, biologists, virologists, toxicologists, medical doctors, etc. that go to church, temple, mosque, etc.
'Since Star Wars takes place in a fantasy world, the characters need to be identifiable so that the audience can connect to them,' says Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Dear Mr. Lucas,
Please tell this to whomever wrote and directed episodes 1, 2, 3. A lack of identifiable characters the audience can connect with was one of the biggest problems. Please refer that guy to Plinkett's reviews and this guy, who point this out, quite clearly.
In fact, you might consider firing that "director/writer" guy you've got, and finding talents like you did when you hired Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett and Irvin Kershner to write and direct Empire Strikes Back. Their story still holds up many years after the special effects have become dated. Lawrence Kasdan is still alive. Maybe he knows some good people. Maybe they could do a re-imagining of 1, 2, 3 that would actually be watchable.
Slashdot Mirror
By "weak area" I meant (for example) the 5% a student gets wrong when they score 95% on a test, not a "subject" they're weak in. This weak area could be in a subject they are very good at and enjoy. And when you talk about tests not being an effective form of motivation, that's exactly what I meant too. Unfortunately, the argument that students wouldn't be motivated to learn without upcoming tests is one I've heard numerous times, and it's just wrong. In fact, I agree with everything you say. If there was a misunderstanding, it may be due to the fact that language was a weak subject of mine as well.
Our school specifically gives choice to students so they are able to follow their interests. We expose them to everything, but where it leads is up to them. Unfortunately, there's not much good information online about our elementary programs, but at least here's a quick comparison vs. mainstream education.
I'm certified to teach K-5 in one of the US states but currently teach in another country. I've looked into this idea quite a bit.
There is evidence to show that extra school time benefits children in families that don't give much academic support at home (especially prevalent in poor, inner-city neighborhoods). For example, standardized test scores in reading often rise after summer vacations in affluent areas, but not so much in poor areas. The assumption is that many affluent parents tend to read and encourage their children to read during the summer. It's simply a disparity of time reading. To combat this, some experimental, inner-city schools have had success raising scores with very long days. However, I haven't seen anything showing that longer days help elsewhere. Homework (no matter how many hours) has been shown to have no significant effect raising scores for elementary students. (Up to 2 hours helps high school students, but over that seems to give no additional benefit.)
Honestly, I would first look at reducing time giving children tests. In many schools, children are given about an hour of tests a day, on average (amount varying from day to day, class to class, school to school). Tests are specifically to help adults (administrators, teachers, parents). Children are not allowed to practice their weak areas (the main thing that helps them learn) during a test. Although tests give children goals to strive for, motivational goals can be given many other, more effective ways. That's often 180 hours of test time a year (36 days of school, considering 5 hours a day of "in-class" time).
In my school we give 1 standardized test a year, and no testing outside that. Our scores are usually average or better than average on the standardized test (despite having many special-needs students). The teachers have more time to work with the students (and therefore know exactly where each child is). We also have more time to plan (instead of correcting tests during prep time).
Common questions we get are about how we communicate a child's level, without grades (given from tests). Simply put, we give more in-depth reports to parents & other schools. It works, but this is the part that scares most administrators and parents. Frankly, this part is more work for the adults. But if the main focus is on what's best for the children, frequent testing should be abolished. From the perspective of a child's education (practicing difficulties and learning new things), testing is one of the least efficient uses of time. And if we truly want more class time, that's where educators should start.
That's a swell joke.
They seem to be talking about Google Trends, where they are currently making cutesy graphs of what people are searching for about the World Cup.
Calling this a "newsroom" seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is NOT "Google News" where I see "humiliation", "shame" and "misery" in the top stories when searching for "Brazil World Cup".
This had me really confused (and it seems like many of the readers here as well), but the article and summary are misleading.
Uh, they most certainly have extremely crisp boundaries. Species are classified by the ability of two organisms to breed with one another.
The "Species problem" shows this not to be the case. The specific issue you mention is in the introduction:
"Another common problem is how to define reproductive isolation, because some separately evolving groups may continue to interbreed to some extent, and it can be a difficult matter to discover whether this hybridization affects the long-term genetic make-up of the groups."
That being said, I was taught the same way as you and only learned differently when I started teaching it myself. Now when I explain classification, I try to intersperse phrases like "usually classified as..." or "One good way to classify it is...". I usually try to reinforce that there are many ways to classify, show them the most common way(s), and encourage them to make their own classifications if those ways fail. This is especially prevalent in biology where phylogenetics (usually based on RNA, dividing groups into clades) is currently intermixing with more traditional taxonomy (usually based on morphological traits, dividing groups into Linnaean classification)[1].
This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word "no". The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.
Advertising frequently uses psychological pressure (for example, appealing to feelings of inadequacy) on the intended consumer, which may be harmful.
Criticism of advertising
...was my 1st thought when reading...
"If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in psychological status, that's experimentation," says James Grimmelmann, a professor of technology and the law at the University of Maryland. "This is the kind of thing that would require informed consent."
One could argue that advertising is not always done with informed consent.
you go to shard A, get weapon A1, go to shard B and get armor B1 because the monster that carries said armor is very susceptible to A1 [...] , then go to shard C where every monster [...] is really hard to kill... unless you have weapon A1 which deals a damage these mobs don't have any resistance to [...]
Megaman?
Here is financial info for Save the Children if anyone is interested. 2012 operating revenue was $597mil.
Congratulations to everyone involved. The few Athene videos I saw when he started were lowest common denominator attempts at shock value, but I'm glad something good is coming out of it.
The home team is called "humanity". So I'm not sure what all of you are going on about. Maybe you're playing a different game?
As an early education teacher, I am convinced that the quest for knowledge is innate, and is repressed by classrooms that ask preadolescent children to barely move or speak for 4 to 6 hours every day. I believe the "trigger" you mention could be areas of a stifled, developing brain finally getting what it desires, like a cold glass of water in hell.
I work in a school where most lessons are planned with sensory motor function in mind, where art, language, math, etc are shown to be intertwined, and where students often preform higher on standardized tests, despite me never giving them a single, formally graded test the rest of the year.
For more than half of the children that transfer into my school after spending 3 or 4 years in a public school (factory structured, lecture based model), I have to spend the initial months detoxifying the child, showing them that it's okay to be creative, unsuppressed, and use their interests to learn.
The developing brains of young children are extremely sensitive to visual, tactile experiences that the various arts provide. Their psychology is very different from an adult's, yet many adults often project their own learning styles onto them. This leads to continuously keeping subjects separate (such as art & math). While key concepts should initially be presented in isolation to avoid confusion, the follow up activities should combine multiple areas. In other words, expose the children to everything possible, show them how it all interconnects, and use what the child's mind is sensitive to, practicing multiple areas in conjunction and forming deep understanding.
I find it highly likely that the statistically significant increase in critical thinking, social tolerance, and historical empathy that this study found not only comes from the initial exposure, but also from teachers integrating the experience into follow-up lessons / activities.
Are the standards reasonable, appropriate and developmentally sound—especially for our youngest learners? In order to answer that question, it is important to understand how the early primary standards were determined. If you read Commissioner John King’s Powerpoint slide 18, which can be found here, you see that the Common Core standards were “backmapped” from a description of 12th grade college-ready skills. There is no evidence that early childhood experts were consulted to ensure that the standards were appropriate for young learners. Every parent knows that their kids do not develop according to a “back map”—young children develop through a complex interaction of biology and experience that is unique to the child and which cannot be rushed.
It goes on to compare the US Core with the standards from other countries such as Finland and Singapore.
It then shows the very real and large problem that it was "Pearson Education" that made this poorly written test.
This Pearson first-grade unit test is the realization of the New York Common Core math standards. Pearson knows how the questions will be asked on the New York State tests, because they, of course, create them.
Children and schools are evaluated based on State tests. Do you want your job being evaluated by something like this?
Smellevision replaced television back in 2000. This is old news.
"pseudo-anonymous data"
ay @gri wIT yu k@mplitli. @nfOrtS@n@tli, wEbsAyts layk sl{SdAt wont lEt mi tayp D@ k@rEkt k{rIkt@rz, so ay h{d tu yus SAMPA InstEd.
Countdown timers on RED traffic lights decrease accidents, as it decreases irritability and road rage.
Countdown timers on GREEN traffic lights increase accidents, as people seem to speed up when they see the light will soon change.
Rory Sutherland talks about this (starting around 8:37) on his TED talk: "Perspective is Everything".
600 cars going 50 MPH on a one-mile stretch of 4-lane freeway is extremely dangerous. 60 cars going 80 MPH on that same mile of freeway is must less dangerous.
[citation needed]
These Microsoft Corp. Comm. people are more disconnected from reality than I expected.
No, I think they know what's going on, even though the things they say are carefully crafted attempts at making us think the opposite. When I was a kid, we called that "lying".
Actually the grammar in the summary is technically not correct.
An adverb should not be placed between the verb it is modifying, and the direct object.
The sentence could be corrected by moving "necessary" after the direct object:
"...a game console that will make their own Linux-based software platform necessary,"
(This assumes the term "correct grammar" is defined as a description of how most native speakers speak, rather than a prescription of rules to make oneself understood.)
For a long amount of time, a very large amount of people have only used PCs for the same functions that you can now find in any mobile device (emails, checking news, entertainment, etc). The rest of the "opportunities" a PC provides are unused bloat for many people.
But a "Post-PC" era isn't coming anytime soon (unless you count today as a "Post-TV" era).
What other people CAN'T do:
The article worries about the inability to do text mining and translations. Good points, and they mention an organization working on a license just like the CC-BY-NC-ND that would allow text mining and translations. Good for them.
The rest of it is FUD claiming researchers don't understand the license. I disagree. CC-BY-NC-ND is being used the most because its the best license for openly sharing while still protecting their work.
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820
This could only be modded funny by people who aren't scientists. I've lived my entire life in a community of research PhDs (entire immediate family and friends) and very few of them aren't religious. Every religion is represented (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.)
Most do not view holy books as literal truth like religious fundamentalists, but rather guidelines and proverbs on the meaning behind life and how to live it well. Nor do they believe in creationism and other pseudoscience. But there are a large number of chemists, biologists, virologists, toxicologists, medical doctors, etc. that go to church, temple, mosque, etc.
207, or 190 without sovereignty disputes. So Microsoft expanding to 180 is only missing between 10-27 countries in the entire world.
'Since Star Wars takes place in a fantasy world, the characters need to be identifiable so that the audience can connect to them,' says Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Dear Mr. Lucas,
Please tell this to whomever wrote and directed episodes 1, 2, 3. A lack of identifiable characters the audience can connect with was one of the biggest problems. Please refer that guy to Plinkett's reviews and this guy, who point this out, quite clearly.
In fact, you might consider firing that "director/writer" guy you've got, and finding talents like you did when you hired Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett and Irvin Kershner to write and direct Empire Strikes Back. Their story still holds up many years after the special effects have become dated. Lawrence Kasdan is still alive. Maybe he knows some good people. Maybe they could do a re-imagining of 1, 2, 3 that would actually be watchable.