Australian guy here. An outside perspective. You guys are ridiculous.
It seems from the initial post, and from a great many of he posts here, that you are all desperately trying to read something in to CNN's point that they've seen the guy move on, and they're not going to identify him at this stage, because presumably they feel that this particular part of the whole violence against journalists issue is played out. It is not a threat.
Yeah. That's more or less the problem. Most teachers don't use them any more than as glorified blackboard/video projector hybrids. There's very little training available. The schools that are trying to make better use of them set up "user groups", where the teachers who have a bit more ability with them are expected to pass on their skills and knowledge to their colleagues (and be, more or less, completely ignored).
I'm pretty much at the top of the game regarding the use of the standard software, but, as I've got better with it, the clunkiness has really started to grate on my nerves. I know that the things cost a few thousand each, and I want to be able to use them to their full potential.
You wouldn't believe the battle I had to fight to get Google Chrome installed on my classroom computer and the bank of laptops that I use with my students. If you can believe it, the preference was for IE9.
Have you got a particular extension in mind? I have looked...
Yeah, I've asked this on teacher forums. Got exactly the response you expected, despite the shortcomings. Teaching is an exceptionally parochial profession, and I, personally, don't like to be limited to doing things the way that they're usually done.
I'm going to assume that this isn't just a troll post. It is a pretty freaking ignorant question.
Wearing every single one of my hats (teacher, parent, part-time academic in linguistics (and, in particular, child language acquisition), techie, etc.), I'm going to claims some authority when I say this: DO NOT GET YOUR 4YO A PHONE. Mostly I'm adding to the chorus above, so I'm not going to bother rehashing the reasons against that everyone has already given, but I will add a couple more in dot points:
@ We have enough problems with the social reliance on phones in adulthood, but in early adolescence it's a disaster, let alone infancy. For adolescents, phones bring with it all sorts of problems like increased risk of cyber-bullying, exposure to age-inappropriate content, and problems with Google/Apple sponsored apps^h^h^h^hscams. There is no good way to stop this for teenagers, so how are you planning to stop it for a toddler?
@ Remote parenting does not work, and fairly consistently causes problems - you know all those parents whose Dads were at work until late at night? How did they turn out?
@ There is no type of "play" involving a phone that isn't better done by a kid, physically, in the real world. A block sorting game on a phone? Brilliant, why not do it in real life?
What sort of idiot bombmaker would make a bomb that vibrated, ticked or had a big freaking waste of money LED showing a countdown? It's right up there with literally having a red wire and a blue wire. The extension of this, then, is what sort of idiot "airport official" closes an airport because he saw something vibrate?
You know what I find funny? Choices on reading material for students (particularly in middle school), which overwhelmingly favour girls' preferences in reading (i.e., more contemporary, more female main characters and so on). I prefer to get my students to work on books that in which they individually have an interest, rather than working on books that I like.
I think we need to ask why girls have a better attitude towards learning. Speaking as a teacher, I think that I can suggest a couple of factors and examples of why this is an important question.
TLDR: schools and schooling is overwhelmingly female oriented, and does not adapt to the needs of boys (nor anyone, really).
Schools, particularly primary (elementary for my American friends) schools are female dominated and, unfortunately, this leads to problems for boys. I taught in a school recently where I was the only male teacher at the school where there were some issues for boys. Whether there was a causative relationship or not is open to question, but the boys at the school were wild, and their achievement was substantially lower than the girls on several measures. I (simply because I was a male) was seen as the solution to an ongoing behavioural crisis among the boys in the older grades because I was seen as a role model as a boy who was interested in learning, but I think that by middle school, where I teach, it's too late for that to have much effect.
In fact, against the more influential male public role models who seem to be more interested in sport, driving, etc., than anything school-related, my effect would have been minimal (and I argued this point prior to my appointment, and my position was confirmed time after time through my appointment - in fact that failing was attributed to me which was fun). I have seen at other schools attempt to conflate an interest in sport with an interest in school by involving local sports people in reading programs at the school. The sports people come in to the school and inadvertently confirm students' beliefs, that sport and reading do not mix much. But it's a fun novelty, I suppose.
The other problem with female dominated schools is that the curriculum becomes more female dominated. At least in my experience, boys do have shorter attention spans, and do seem to have more kinaesthetic or visual approaches to learning (against girls, who more often seem to have auditory learning styles more suited to the "stand-and-deliver" lecture approach to teaching). Teaching in a single sex boys' class requires shorter lessons with more emphasis on doing stuff than discussing stuff, and this doesn't suit the approaches that a lot of teachers want to use.
Finally, there's a belief that boys are bad, whether this is explicitly stated or not, and, equally, that we should be easier on "boys being boys". In my work, I visited a school and sat through a presentation given by Year 1 students on school rules. Which was hilarious for a whole bunch of reasons, but most notably in the way that the activity seems to have been presented to the students. They were providing examples of good and bad behaviour. The teacher had chosen to tell the students to make a girl doing something good, and a boy doing something bad. The students then got up and use male pronouns for describing one scenario (where a student does something wrong) and female pronouns for describing the other (when a student does something right). The teacher corrected a student (a girl actually) twice when she said that she had drawn a girl doing something wrong, which had me on the verge of heckling the stupid woman.
As to being soft on "boys being boys", I believe strongly that we need to instil a sense of honour among boys. I had a Year 6 student a couple of years ago who incessantly physically and verbally bullied younger students and girls in the playground. I constantly brought him up on it, but was always held back from applying the school's discipline policy because "he doesn't have any great male role models", "you know his parents are really strict", or "he's just a bit energetic". The worst excuse that I heard from a colleague was that a girl he had bullied had to "share part of the blame" because she "instigated" the situation by talking to him (it's like a "she asked it by dressing that way" defence in rape cases). Over and over excuses were made for him by other staff su
1) Best overall web comic series of 2012. (Any web comic that produced content in 2012):Gunnerkrigg Court is a brilliant webcomic that has a compelling plot, interesting characters and art that has developed superbly since the comic's beginnings.
2) Funniest web comic of 2012. (This one represents the single funniest comic of any web comic series.):Evil Inc. got the most laughs out of me this year, even if a lot of the humour was a bit Dad-joke-ish. Runners up would include: Penny Arcade, XKCD, Scandinavia and the World and Overcompensating.
3) Best art in a web comic of 2012. (Web comic from 2012 with the most amazing art ever):Dresden Codak is, without any doubt, the repository of some of the most geekiest and beautiful artwork the web has ever seen. Runners up would include: Namesake, Lackadaisy Cats, Sore Thumbs and Avengelyne
4) Web comic that was most relevant to you in 2012:Real Life, because his adventures with Harper are roughly mirroring my adventures with my daughter Hailey.
Honorable Mentions (because they'd likely win categories if there were a couple more here):Bad Machinery (Best Story), Eerie Cuties (Best Black & White), Three Panel Soul (Best Drama) and Wapsi Square (Best Main Character), and Sinfest (Lifetime Achievement) among others.
Regardless of the effects on the individual, one must consider the ramifications on the larger scale. On the family level, there's strain on people who are not involved in the actual gambling (i.e., partners and children of affected individuals). Then there's the social level where gambling leads to increased social costs because of crime and mental health ramifications.
It's like smoking. Second-hand smoke has been shown to affect children and others in an environment as much if not more than the actual person who is "exercising" his/her rights to smoke. Further, my taxes pay for smokers to get treatment for diseases that they should not have. Is that fair? No.
Yeah, great. But the problem then is that those people are the ones who end up either offing themselves, mugging people at train stations, or sending their families (you know, the partner and 2.3 kids who weren't gambling) bankrupt as well. Yay social Darwinism!
Poker machines are morally disgusting. They're basically a way of imposing a tax on people too stupid or hopeful to know better. Here in Australia, there's people who literally bankrupt themselves pouring money into the bloody things. I'm all for individual responsibility, but those bloody things are designed to addict more than cigarettes or crack cocaine.
What's more, venues that have poker machines deliberately target the poor. I've walked into a couple of poker machine venues, they are literally the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern day society. Pensioners, disabled people, smoking heavily and desperate for, if nothing else, just a near-win.
Yes, this is an interesting issue. As I recall the titanic was originally designed for Extreme separation of the classes, it would almost be physically impossible for steerage class and first class to ever see each other.
This strikes me as something to which Palmer wouldn't particularly object. He's not exactly known for his philanthropy or his interest in his common man.
I can't say that this situation is all that unusual. Parents, particularly parents who are stay-at-home, have way too much time on their hands and involve themselves up to their armpits in the lives of their children. I have worked at schools where parents arrive at the schoolgrounds at lunchtime, and hang around on campus until the end of the day. For several weeks, parents lined up against the windows of one of the classrooms and stared at their children in class for the hour and fifteen minutes from the end of lunch to the end of the day. This continued until the teacher posted artwork blocking the parents view into the classroom from those windows. The parents promptly complained to the principal, and the teacher was ordered to take them down. That teacher (and almost every other teacher at the school) refuses to teach in that exposed classroom.
I've been the subject of ridiculous complaints also. I was too hard on a kid when I separated him for calling one of the girls a "cheating dog" (for using a calculator during a maths activity where I had explicitly allowed the class to use calculators). I take the roll at the wrong time of the day. I set too much homework (and, conversely, I don't set enough homework; a complaint made by the same parent). I don't hand notes out (I prefer to lay out the notes at the front of the class, and the kids are meant to pick them up as they leave). I don't insist that someone's little baby (senior elementary student) wear a raincoat if it looks rainy outside, and I don't help that student to put that raincoat on. I drink Ginger Beer which comes in a bottle that looks like it's a bottle of real beer (that it isn't is beside the point also, because Ginger Beer has the word "beer" in it, and therefore, I'm setting a poor example to students). I advocate the use of facebook (which is actually Edmodo, which, I'll admit, does look a lot like facebook, but isn't). I am biased against or for particular students because I select them for debate teams, public speaking competitions or sport (sometimes I am still biased against particular students when I'm not involved at all in the selection or non-selection of them for various opportunities). On and on and on. Most of these complaints are, as other commenters have noted, housewives with too much time on their hands. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that I have had a good principal who, for the most part, only wastes a little bit of her and my time every so often to investigate and respond to these claims.
That being said, I think that teachers and educational institutions have to acknowledge some responsibility in allowing this to happen. We encourage a dialogue between parents and teachers on an equal level, and we don't say all that much when unqualified pundits make educational claims that are simply wrong. Anyone, no matter how unqualified, will happily make claims about education and expect that those claims have equal footing with qualifie
That's nice that you say that (and it's what I happen to believe as well), but, as a teacher, I can say that you're completely out of step with society's expectations of us. More and more, parents, educational authorities, everyone is expecting us to be pseudo-parents.
My school has a cyberbullying policy, a transport/walk to school policy, a personal development program (i.e., sexual education), etc. We're required to have them, but if we didn't, the parents of our students would demonstrate their complete inability to cope. All of these things should be done by parents, but aren't.
While I appreciate that this situation is outright silly (on the part of the school), ACLU's action here seems a little foolhardy. If schools can't discipline kids for what they say on social media, etc., then how are they meant to respond to cyber bullying such as that has led to however many teen suicides? What about defamation of teachers/students (I'm not talking about the usual Mr. So-and-so is a poopoohead, but what about calling him a pedo or something)? What about cyber-stalking or threats of physical violence against teachers/students?
The alternative would be to deal with those issues through more judicial means, and that isn't necessarily better.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/kepler-22b/
At 1% of the speed of light (which is still probably technically impossible) it would take 6000 years. People would have to "sleep" (cryogenics?) to reach it. The craft would be massive, containing thousands of individuals. It would accelerate constantly to the halfway point then decelerate constantly from there; that would be a challenge in and of itself.
Lots of interesting stuff that you could just make up from there.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Australian guy here. An outside perspective. You guys are ridiculous.
It seems from the initial post, and from a great many of he posts here, that you are all desperately trying to read something in to CNN's point that they've seen the guy move on, and they're not going to identify him at this stage, because presumably they feel that this particular part of the whole violence against journalists issue is played out. It is not a threat.
Seriously, you guys need to get some perspective.
Yeah. That's more or less the problem. Most teachers don't use them any more than as glorified blackboard/video projector hybrids. There's very little training available. The schools that are trying to make better use of them set up "user groups", where the teachers who have a bit more ability with them are expected to pass on their skills and knowledge to their colleagues (and be, more or less, completely ignored).
I'm pretty much at the top of the game regarding the use of the standard software, but, as I've got better with it, the clunkiness has really started to grate on my nerves. I know that the things cost a few thousand each, and I want to be able to use them to their full potential.
You wouldn't believe the battle I had to fight to get Google Chrome installed on my classroom computer and the bank of laptops that I use with my students. If you can believe it, the preference was for IE9.
Have you got a particular extension in mind? I have looked...
Yeah. The 800 series are great. I've had a play with one at a colleague's school. They're still limited by the software used with them.
That's been suggested to me in another forum too. I'm taking a look. Cheers! If I had mod points...
Sure. Can you write something about the difference between descriptivism and prescriptivism? Cheers. :)
Yeah, I've asked this on teacher forums. Got exactly the response you expected, despite the shortcomings. Teaching is an exceptionally parochial profession, and I, personally, don't like to be limited to doing things the way that they're usually done.
Yep. *Like* that. :)
Actually, it's sort of my motto. I work with highly gifted kids who are typically "smarter than me".
...There are some Argentinians who would like to have a word with you, Unknown Lamer. ;)
I'm going to assume that this isn't just a troll post. It is a pretty freaking ignorant question.
Wearing every single one of my hats (teacher, parent, part-time academic in linguistics (and, in particular, child language acquisition), techie, etc.), I'm going to claims some authority when I say this: DO NOT GET YOUR 4YO A PHONE. Mostly I'm adding to the chorus above, so I'm not going to bother rehashing the reasons against that everyone has already given, but I will add a couple more in dot points:
@ We have enough problems with the social reliance on phones in adulthood, but in early adolescence it's a disaster, let alone infancy. For adolescents, phones bring with it all sorts of problems like increased risk of cyber-bullying, exposure to age-inappropriate content, and problems with Google/Apple sponsored apps^h^h^h^hscams. There is no good way to stop this for teenagers, so how are you planning to stop it for a toddler?
@ Remote parenting does not work, and fairly consistently causes problems - you know all those parents whose Dads were at work until late at night? How did they turn out?
@ There is no type of "play" involving a phone that isn't better done by a kid, physically, in the real world. A block sorting game on a phone? Brilliant, why not do it in real life?
Just as an aside, it's interesting that you refer to Copper as a "rare earth"...
{{citation needed}}
What sort of idiot bombmaker would make a bomb that vibrated, ticked or had a big freaking waste of money LED showing a countdown? It's right up there with literally having a red wire and a blue wire. The extension of this, then, is what sort of idiot "airport official" closes an airport because he saw something vibrate?
You know what I find funny? Choices on reading material for students (particularly in middle school), which overwhelmingly favour girls' preferences in reading (i.e., more contemporary, more female main characters and so on). I prefer to get my students to work on books that in which they individually have an interest, rather than working on books that I like.
I think we need to ask why girls have a better attitude towards learning. Speaking as a teacher, I think that I can suggest a couple of factors and examples of why this is an important question.
TLDR: schools and schooling is overwhelmingly female oriented, and does not adapt to the needs of boys (nor anyone, really).
Schools, particularly primary (elementary for my American friends) schools are female dominated and, unfortunately, this leads to problems for boys. I taught in a school recently where I was the only male teacher at the school where there were some issues for boys. Whether there was a causative relationship or not is open to question, but the boys at the school were wild, and their achievement was substantially lower than the girls on several measures. I (simply because I was a male) was seen as the solution to an ongoing behavioural crisis among the boys in the older grades because I was seen as a role model as a boy who was interested in learning, but I think that by middle school, where I teach, it's too late for that to have much effect.
In fact, against the more influential male public role models who seem to be more interested in sport, driving, etc., than anything school-related, my effect would have been minimal (and I argued this point prior to my appointment, and my position was confirmed time after time through my appointment - in fact that failing was attributed to me which was fun). I have seen at other schools attempt to conflate an interest in sport with an interest in school by involving local sports people in reading programs at the school. The sports people come in to the school and inadvertently confirm students' beliefs, that sport and reading do not mix much. But it's a fun novelty, I suppose.
The other problem with female dominated schools is that the curriculum becomes more female dominated. At least in my experience, boys do have shorter attention spans, and do seem to have more kinaesthetic or visual approaches to learning (against girls, who more often seem to have auditory learning styles more suited to the "stand-and-deliver" lecture approach to teaching). Teaching in a single sex boys' class requires shorter lessons with more emphasis on doing stuff than discussing stuff, and this doesn't suit the approaches that a lot of teachers want to use.
Finally, there's a belief that boys are bad, whether this is explicitly stated or not, and, equally, that we should be easier on "boys being boys". In my work, I visited a school and sat through a presentation given by Year 1 students on school rules. Which was hilarious for a whole bunch of reasons, but most notably in the way that the activity seems to have been presented to the students. They were providing examples of good and bad behaviour. The teacher had chosen to tell the students to make a girl doing something good, and a boy doing something bad. The students then got up and use male pronouns for describing one scenario (where a student does something wrong) and female pronouns for describing the other (when a student does something right). The teacher corrected a student (a girl actually) twice when she said that she had drawn a girl doing something wrong, which had me on the verge of heckling the stupid woman.
As to being soft on "boys being boys", I believe strongly that we need to instil a sense of honour among boys. I had a Year 6 student a couple of years ago who incessantly physically and verbally bullied younger students and girls in the playground. I constantly brought him up on it, but was always held back from applying the school's discipline policy because "he doesn't have any great male role models", "you know his parents are really strict", or "he's just a bit energetic". The worst excuse that I heard from a colleague was that a girl he had bullied had to "share part of the blame" because she "instigated" the situation by talking to him (it's like a "she asked it by dressing that way" defence in rape cases). Over and over excuses were made for him by other staff su
1) Best overall web comic series of 2012. (Any web comic that produced content in 2012): Gunnerkrigg Court is a brilliant webcomic that has a compelling plot, interesting characters and art that has developed superbly since the comic's beginnings.
2) Funniest web comic of 2012. (This one represents the single funniest comic of any web comic series.): Evil Inc. got the most laughs out of me this year, even if a lot of the humour was a bit Dad-joke-ish. Runners up would include: Penny Arcade , XKCD , Scandinavia and the World and Overcompensating .
3) Best art in a web comic of 2012. (Web comic from 2012 with the most amazing art ever): Dresden Codak is, without any doubt, the repository of some of the most geekiest and beautiful artwork the web has ever seen. Runners up would include: Namesake , Lackadaisy Cats , Sore Thumbs and Avengelyne
4) Web comic that was most relevant to you in 2012: Real Life , because his adventures with Harper are roughly mirroring my adventures with my daughter Hailey.
Honorable Mentions (because they'd likely win categories if there were a couple more here): Bad Machinery (Best Story), Eerie Cuties (Best Black & White), Three Panel Soul (Best Drama) and Wapsi Square (Best Main Character), and Sinfest (Lifetime Achievement) among others.
Regardless of the effects on the individual, one must consider the ramifications on the larger scale. On the family level, there's strain on people who are not involved in the actual gambling (i.e., partners and children of affected individuals). Then there's the social level where gambling leads to increased social costs because of crime and mental health ramifications.
It's like smoking. Second-hand smoke has been shown to affect children and others in an environment as much if not more than the actual person who is "exercising" his/her rights to smoke. Further, my taxes pay for smokers to get treatment for diseases that they should not have. Is that fair? No.
Yeah, great. But the problem then is that those people are the ones who end up either offing themselves, mugging people at train stations, or sending their families (you know, the partner and 2.3 kids who weren't gambling) bankrupt as well. Yay social Darwinism!
Poker machines are morally disgusting. They're basically a way of imposing a tax on people too stupid or hopeful to know better. Here in Australia, there's people who literally bankrupt themselves pouring money into the bloody things. I'm all for individual responsibility, but those bloody things are designed to addict more than cigarettes or crack cocaine.
What's more, venues that have poker machines deliberately target the poor. I've walked into a couple of poker machine venues, they are literally the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern day society. Pensioners, disabled people, smoking heavily and desperate for, if nothing else, just a near-win.
Yes, this is an interesting issue. As I recall the titanic was originally designed for Extreme separation of the classes, it would almost be physically impossible for steerage class and first class to ever see each other.
This strikes me as something to which Palmer wouldn't particularly object. He's not exactly known for his philanthropy or his interest in his common man.
I can't say that this situation is all that unusual. Parents, particularly parents who are stay-at-home, have way too much time on their hands and involve themselves up to their armpits in the lives of their children. I have worked at schools where parents arrive at the schoolgrounds at lunchtime, and hang around on campus until the end of the day. For several weeks, parents lined up against the windows of one of the classrooms and stared at their children in class for the hour and fifteen minutes from the end of lunch to the end of the day. This continued until the teacher posted artwork blocking the parents view into the classroom from those windows. The parents promptly complained to the principal, and the teacher was ordered to take them down. That teacher (and almost every other teacher at the school) refuses to teach in that exposed classroom.
I've been the subject of ridiculous complaints also. I was too hard on a kid when I separated him for calling one of the girls a "cheating dog" (for using a calculator during a maths activity where I had explicitly allowed the class to use calculators). I take the roll at the wrong time of the day. I set too much homework (and, conversely, I don't set enough homework; a complaint made by the same parent). I don't hand notes out (I prefer to lay out the notes at the front of the class, and the kids are meant to pick them up as they leave). I don't insist that someone's little baby (senior elementary student) wear a raincoat if it looks rainy outside, and I don't help that student to put that raincoat on. I drink Ginger Beer which comes in a bottle that looks like it's a bottle of real beer (that it isn't is beside the point also, because Ginger Beer has the word "beer" in it, and therefore, I'm setting a poor example to students). I advocate the use of facebook (which is actually Edmodo, which, I'll admit, does look a lot like facebook, but isn't). I am biased against or for particular students because I select them for debate teams, public speaking competitions or sport (sometimes I am still biased against particular students when I'm not involved at all in the selection or non-selection of them for various opportunities). On and on and on. Most of these complaints are, as other commenters have noted, housewives with too much time on their hands. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that I have had a good principal who, for the most part, only wastes a little bit of her and my time every so often to investigate and respond to these claims.
That being said, I think that teachers and educational institutions have to acknowledge some responsibility in allowing this to happen. We encourage a dialogue between parents and teachers on an equal level, and we don't say all that much when unqualified pundits make educational claims that are simply wrong. Anyone, no matter how unqualified, will happily make claims about education and expect that those claims have equal footing with qualifie
Schools are not the "child police".
That's nice that you say that (and it's what I happen to believe as well), but, as a teacher, I can say that you're completely out of step with society's expectations of us. More and more, parents, educational authorities, everyone is expecting us to be pseudo-parents. My school has a cyberbullying policy, a transport/walk to school policy, a personal development program (i.e., sexual education), etc. We're required to have them, but if we didn't, the parents of our students would demonstrate their complete inability to cope. All of these things should be done by parents, but aren't.
While I appreciate that this situation is outright silly (on the part of the school), ACLU's action here seems a little foolhardy. If schools can't discipline kids for what they say on social media, etc., then how are they meant to respond to cyber bullying such as that has led to however many teen suicides? What about defamation of teachers/students (I'm not talking about the usual Mr. So-and-so is a poopoohead, but what about calling him a pedo or something)? What about cyber-stalking or threats of physical violence against teachers/students?
The alternative would be to deal with those issues through more judicial means, and that isn't necessarily better.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/kepler-22b/ At 1% of the speed of light (which is still probably technically impossible) it would take 6000 years. People would have to "sleep" (cryogenics?) to reach it. The craft would be massive, containing thousands of individuals. It would accelerate constantly to the halfway point then decelerate constantly from there; that would be a challenge in and of itself. Lots of interesting stuff that you could just make up from there. :)