Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged physical changes

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Gareth Jones

Looking in the Wrong Places | Edge.org - 5 views

  • We should be very careful in thinking about whether we’re working on the right problems. If we don’t, that ties into the problem that we don’t have experimental evidence that could move us forward. We're trying to develop theories that we use to find out which are good experiments to make, and these are the experiments that we build.   We build particle detectors and try to find dark matter; we build larger colliders in the hope of producing new particles; we shoot satellites into orbit and try to look back into the early universe, and we do that because we hope there’s something new to find there. We think there is because we have some idea from the theories that we’ve been working on that this would be something good to probe. If we are working with the wrong theories, we are making the wrong extrapolations, we have the wrong expectations, we make the wrong experiments, and then we don’t get any new data. We have no guidance to develop these theories. So, it’s a chicken and egg problem. We have to break the cycle. I don’t have a miracle cure to these problems. These are hard problems. It’s not clear what a good theory is to develop. I’m not any wiser than all the other 20,000 people in the field.
  • I’m still asking myself the same question that I asked myself ten years ago: "What is going on in my community?" I work in the foundations of physics, and I see a lot of strange things happening there. When I look at the papers that are being published, many of them seem to be produced simply because papers have to be produced. They don’t move us forward in any significant way. I get the impression that people are working on them not so much because it’s what they’re interested in but because they have to produce outcomes in a short amount of time. They sit on short-term positions and have short-term contracts, and papers must be produced.
  • The field that I mostly work in is the foundations of physics, which is, roughly speaking, composed of cosmology, the foundations of quantum mechanics, high-energy particle physics, and quantum gravity. It’s a peculiar field because there hasn’t been new data for almost four decades, since we established the Standard Model of particle physics. There has been, of course, the Higgs particle that was discovered at the LHC in 2012, and there have been some additions to the Standard Model, but there has not been a great new paradigm change, as Kuhn would have put it. We’re still using the same techniques, and we’re still working with the same theories as we did in the 1970s.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • That makes this field of science rather peculiar and probably explains why there hasn’t been much progress. But it’s not like we don’t have any questions that need to be answered. There are a lot of questions that have been around for decades. For example, what is dark energy? What is dark matter? What are the masses of the Standard Model particles? And what’s up with the foundation of quantum mechanics? Is a theory that's fundamentally not deterministic, where we cannot predict outcomes, the last word that we have, or is there something more to it? Is there maybe another underlying structure to reality?
  • but we haven't reached the fundamental level. Maybe we will never reach it. Certainly, the theories that we have right now are not all there is. The question is, of course, if we don’t have any guidance by experiment, how do we make progress? And are we doing the right thing?
  • We’ve reached this point where we have to carefully rethink if the criteria that we’re using to select our theories are promising at all. If one looks at the history of this field in the foundations of physics, progress has usually been made by looking at questions that, at least in hindsight, were well posed, where there was an actual mathematical contradiction. For example, special relativity is incompatible with Newtonian gravity. If you try to resolve this incompatibility, you get general relativity.
  • There are various similar examples where such breakthroughs have happened because there was a real problem. There was an inconsistency and people had to resolve it. It had nothing to do with beauty. Maybe beauty was, in some cases, the personal motivation of the people to work on it. There’s certainly some truth to this, but I don’t think it’s good to turn this story around and say that if we only pay attention to this motivation that comes from ideals of beauty it will lead to progress.
  • If we are working with the wrong theories, we are making the wrong extrapolations, we have the wrong expectations, we make the wrong experiments, and then we don’t get any new data. We have no guidance to develop these theories. So, it’s a chicken and egg problem. We have to break the cycle. I don’t have a miracle cure to these problems. These are hard problems. It’s not clear what a good theory is to develop. I’m not any wiser than all the other 20,000 people in the field.
  • The way that research is funded in foundations of physics and in many other fields just puts a lot of things at a disadvantage that are not pursued anymore. Typically, everything that takes longer than three years to complete, no one will start it because they can’t afford it. They can literally not afford it.
  • Who makes the decisions about the funding? Superficially, people say that it's a funding agency, so it’s the university who get to hire people. But that puts the blame on the wrong party. In the end it’s the community itself who makes the decisions. What do the funding agencies do if they get a proposal? They send it to reviewers. And who are the reviewers? They're people from the same community. If you look at how hiring decisions are being made, there’s some committee and they are people from the same community. They have some advisory boards or something, which contains people from the same community.
  • Even if that wasn’t so, what the people in these committees would be doing is looking at easy measures for scientific success. Presently, the most popular of these measures are the number of publications and the number of citations. And maybe also whether the person has published in high-impact journals. So, these are the typical measures that are presently being used. But what do they measure? They primarily measure popularity. They indicate whether somebody’s research is well received by a lot of people in the same community. And that’s why once a research area grows beyond a certain critical mass, you have sufficiently many people who tell each other that what they’re doing is the good thing to do. They review each other’s papers and say that that’s great and it's what we should continue to do. It’s a problem in all communities that grow beyond a certain size.
  • I later came to the United States and then Canada, and that gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about quantum gravity. I also figured out that much of what goes on in quantum gravity is very detached from reality. It’s pretty much only mathematics. Yes, the mathematics is there, but I still don’t know if it’s the mathematics that describes reality.
  • That’s the very reason why we don’t normally think of gravity as a weak force. It’s the only force that is left over on long distances, and the reason for this is that it adds up. It gets stronger the more mass you pile up. More precisely, we should say that the reason we find it so hard to measure quantum gravitational effects is that we either have a particle that has very pronounced quantum properties, like, say, a single electron or something like that, but then it’s so light that we cannot measure the gravitational field. Or we have some object that is so heavy that we can measure the gravitational field, but then it doesn’t have quantum properties. Okay, so that’s the actual problem.
Howard Rheingold

Discovering How to Learn Smarter | MindShift - 100 views

  •  
    Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck conducted the groundbreaking research showing that praise intended to raise young people's self-esteem can seriously backfire. When we tell children, "You're so smart," we communicate the message that they'd better not take risks or make mistakes, lest they reveal that they're not so smart after all. Dweck calls this cautious attitude the "fixed mindset," and she's found that it's associated with greater anxiety and reduced achievement. Students with a "growth mindset," on the other hand, believe that intelligence can be expanded with hard work and persistence, and they view challenges as invigorating and even fun. They're more resilient in the face of setbacks, and they do better academically. Now Dweck has designed a program, called Brainology, which aims to help students develop a growth mindset. Its website explains: "Brainology makes this happen by teaching students how the brain functions, learns, and remembers, and how it changes in a physical way when we exercise it. Brainology shows students that they are in control of their brain and its development." That's a crucial message to pass on to children, and it's not just empty words of encouragement-it's supported by cutting-edge research on neuroplasticity, which shows that the brain changes and grows when we learn new things. You, and your child, can learn to be smarter.
Jac Londe

Truly random numbers - 41 views

  • At a quantum scale, the motion of electrons and protons is completely and genuinely random, since it doesn’t follow a clear path of cause and effect. You basically have no idea what’s going to happen. If you can measure this somehow, than you’ve got yourself an absolutely random value.
  • “If you want to defeat an adversary who is trying to hack into your system, basically you need large quantities of random numbers,”  Sussman said.
  • “…a truly random number generator will provide impenetrable encryption for communications — be they military transmissions, secure banking, or online purchasing — that underpin the modern connected world.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The researchers used pulses of laser light, which only last a trillionth of a second, that were directed through a diamond. The light comes and goes through the diamond, however when it exists it’s changed, since it has to pass through quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. Scientists can measure these pulses of light that emerge from the experimental set-up, measurements which are the truly random.
  • random numbers
  • with quantum physics
Laura Doto

Final Report: Friendship | DIGITAL YOUTH RESEARCH - 1 views

  • Social relations—not simply physical space—structure the social worlds of youth.
    • Laura Doto
       
      A critical conclusion to be realized that can inform our assumptions as educators.
  • When teens are involved in friendship-driven practices, online and offline are not separate worlds—they are simply different settings in which to gather with friends and peers
  • these dynamics reinforce existing friendship patterns as well as constitute new kinds of social arrangements.
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • Homophily describes the likelihood that people connect to others who share their interests and identity.
  • One survey of Israeli teens suggests that those who develop friendships online tend toward less homogenous connections than teens who do not build such connections
  • Teens frequently use social media as additional channels of communication to get to know classmates and turn acquaintances into friendships.
  • Some teens—especially marginalized and ostracized ones—often relish the opportunity to find connections beyond their schools. Teens who are driven by specific interests that may not be supported by their schools, such as those described in the Creative Production and Gaming chapters, often build relationships with others online through shared practice.
  • there are plenty of teens who relish the opportunity to make new connections through social media, this practice is heavily stigmatized
  • the public myths about online “predators” do not reflect the actual realities of sexual solicitation and risky online behavior (Wolak et al. 2008). Not only do unfounded fears limit teenagers unnecessarily, they also obscure preventable problematic behavior
  • As she described her typical session on Photobucket, it became clear that a shared understanding of friendship and romance was being constructed by her and other Photobucket users:
  • The fact that they draw from all of these sources suggests that youth’s friendship maintenance is in tune with a discourse of love and friendship that is being widely displayed and (re)circulated.
  • “It’s like have you noticed that you may have someone in your Top 8 but you’re not in theirs and you kinda think to yourself that you’re not as important to that person as they are to you . . . and oh, to be in the coveted number-one spot!”
  • Taking someone off your Top 8 is your new passive-aggressive power play when someone pisses you off.
  • Top Friends are persistent, publicly displayed, and easily alterable. This makes it difficult for teens to avoid the issue or make excuses such as “I forgot.” When pressured to include someone, teens often oblige or attempt to ward off this interaction by listing those who list them
  • Other teens avoid this struggle by listing only bands or family members. While teens may get jealous if other peers are listed, family members are exempt from the comparative urge.
  • to avoid social drama with her friends:
  • The Top Friends feature is a good example of how structural aspects of software can force articulations that do not map well to how offline social behavior works.
  • teens have developed a variety of social norms to govern what is and is not appropriate
  • The problem with explicit ranking, however, is that it creates or accentuates hierarchies where they did not exist offline, or were deliberately and strategically ambiguous, thus forcing a new set of social-status negotiations. The give-and-take over these forms of social ranking is an example of how social norms are being negotiated in tandem with the adoption of new technologies, and how peers give ongoing feedback to one another as part of these struggles to develop new cultural standards.
  • While teen dramas are only one component of friendship, they are often made extremely visible by social media. The persistent and networked qualities of social media alter the ways that these dramas play out in teen life. For this reason, it is important to pay special attention to the role that social media play in the negotiation of teen status.
  • primarily a continuation of broader dramas.
  • social media amplify dramas because they extend social worlds beyond the school.
  • Gossip and rumors have played a role in teen struggles for status and attention since well before social media entered the scene
  • social media certainly alter the efficiency and potential scale of interactions. Because of this, there is greater potential for gossip to spread much further and at a faster pace, making social media a culprit in teen drama. While teen gossip predates the Internet, some teens blame the technologies for their roles in making gossip easier and more viral
  • That’s what happened with me and my friends. We got into a lot of drama with it and I was like, anyone can write anything. It can be fact, fiction. Most people, what they read they believe. Even if it’s not true (C.J. Pascoe, Living Digital).
  • finds the News Feed useful “because it helps you to see who’s keeping track of who and who’s talking to who.” She enjoys knowing when two people break up so that she knows why someone is upset or when she should reach out to offer support. Knowing this information also prevents awkward conversations that might reference the new ex. While she loves the ability to keep up with the lives of her peers, she also realizes that this means that “everybody knows your business.”
  • Some teens find the News Feed annoying or irrelevant. Gadil, an Indian 16-year-old from Los Angeles, thinks that it is impersonal while others think it is downright creepy. For Tara, a Vietnamese 16-year-old from Michigan, the News Feed takes what was public and makes it more public: “Facebook’s already public. I think it makes it way too like stalker-ish.” Her 18-year-old sister, Lila, concurs and points out that it gets “rumors going faster.” Kat, a white 14-year-old from Salem, Massachusetts, uses Facebook’s privacy settings to hide stories from the News Feed for the sake of appearances.
  • While gossip is fairly universal among teens, the rumors that are spread can be quite hurtful. Some of this escalates to the level of bullying. We are unable to assess whether or not bullying is on the rise because of social media. Other scholars have found that most teens do not experience Internet-driven harassment (Wolak, Mitchell, and Finkelhor 2007). Those who do may not fit the traditional profile of those who experience school-based bullying (Ybarra, Diener-West, and Leaf 2007), but harassment, both mediated and unmediated, is linked to a myriad of psychosocial issues that includes substance use and school problems (Hinduja and Patchin 2008; Ybarra et al. 2007).
  • Measuring “cyberbullying” or Internet harassment is difficult, in part because both scholars and teens struggle to define it. The teens we interviewed spoke regularly of “drama” or “gossip” or “rumors,” but few used the language of “bullying” or “harassment” unless we introduced these terms. When Sasha, a white 16-year-old from Michigan, was asked specifically about whether or not rumors were bullying, she said: I don’t know, people at school, they don’t realize when they are bullying a lot of the time nowadays because it’s not so much physical anymore. It’s more like you think you’re joking around with someone in school but it’s really hurting them. Like you think it’s a funny inside joke between you two, but it’s really hurtful to them, and you can’t realize it anymore. Sasha, like many of the teens we interviewed, saw rumors as hurtful, but she was not sure if they were bullying. Some teens saw bullying as being about physical harm; others saw it as premeditated, intentionally malicious, and sustained in nature. While all acknowledged that it could take place online, the teens we interviewed thought that most bullying took place offline, even if they talked about how drama was happening online.
  • it did not matter whether it was online or offline; the result was still the same. In handling this, she did not get offline, but she did switch schools and friend groups.
  • Technology provides more channels through which youth can potentially bully one another. That said, most teens we interviewed who discussed being bullied did not focus on the use of technology and did not believe that technology is a significant factor in bullying.
  • They did, though, see rumors, drama, and gossip as pervasive. The distinction may be more connected with language and conception than with practice. Bianca, a white 16-year-old from Michigan, sees drama as being fueled by her peers’ desire to get attention and have something to talk about. She thinks the reason that people create drama is boredom. While drama can be hurtful, many teens see it simply as a part of everyday social life.
  • Although some drama may start out of boredom or entertainment, it is situated in a context where negotiating social relations and school hierarchies is part of everyday life. Teens are dealing daily with sociability and related tensions.
  • Tara thinks that it emerges because some teens do not know how to best negotiate their feelings and the feelings of others.
  • Teens can use the ability to publicly validate one another on social network sites to reaffirm a friendship.
  • So, while drama is common, teens actually spend much more time and effort trying to preserve harmony, reassure friends, and reaffirm relationships. This spirit of reciprocity is common across a wide range of peer-based learning environments we have observed.
  • From this perspective, commenting is not as much about being nice as it is about relying on reciprocity for self-gain
  • That makes them feel like they’re popular, that they’re getting comments all the time by different people, even people that they don’t know. So it makes them feel popular in a way (Rural and Urban Youth).
  • Gossip, drama, bullying, and posing are unavoidable side effects of teens’ everyday negotiations over friendship and peer status. What takes place in this realm resembles much of what took place even before the Internet, but certain features of social media alter the dynamics around these processes. The public, persistent, searchable, and spreadable nature of mediated information affects the way rumors flow and how dramas play out. The explicitness surrounding the display of relationships and online communication can heighten the social stakes and intensity of status negotiation. The scale of this varies, but those who experience mediated harassment are certainly scarred by the process. Further, the ethic of reciprocity embedded in networked publics supports the development of friendships and shared norms, but it also plays into pressures toward conformity and participation in local, school-based peer networks. While there is a dark side to what takes place, teens still relish the friendship opportunities that social media provide.
  • While social warfare and drama do exist, the value of social media rests in their ability to strengthen connections. Teens leverage social media for a variety of practices that are familiar elements of teen life: gossiping, flirting, joking around, and hanging out. Although the underlying practices are quite familiar, the networked, public nature of online communication does inflect these practices in new ways.
  • Adults’ efforts to regulate youth access to MySpace are the latest example of how adults are working to hold on to authority over teen socialization in the face of a gradual erosion of parental influence during the teen years.
  • learning how to manage the unique affordances of networked sociality can help teens navigate future collegiate and professional spheres where mediated interactions are assumed.
  • articulating those friendships online means that they become subject to public scrutiny in new ways;
  • This makes lessons about social life (both the failures and successes) more consequential and persistent
  • make these dynamics visible in a more persistent and accessible public arena.
  • co-constructing new sets of social norms together with their peers and the efforts of technology developers. The dynamics of social reciprocity and negotiations over popularity and status are all being supported by participation in publics of the networked variety as formative influences in teen life. While we see no indication that social media are changing the fundamental nature of these friendship practices, we do see differences in the intensity of engagement among peers, and conversely, in the relative alienation of parents and teachers from these social worlds.
  •  
    MacArthur Foundation Study - Friendship chapter
Ryan Collay

Physics - PhET Simulations - 19 views

    • David Garcia
       
      Kids really like this one
    • Thomas Glickman
       
      Our find it pretty challenging at the higher levels!
  • Projectile Motion
    • David Garcia
       
      I like this one as a teacher
  • ...1 more annotation...
    • Ty Bradley
       
      Another very good site for your presentation that also allows you to change parameters.
globalwrobel

Digital Natives: Do They Really THINK Differently? - 41 views

  •  
    by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.
  •  
    by Marc Prensky Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents. The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), over 500,000 commercials seen-all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book reading. These are today's ―Digital Native‖ students. 1 In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great many of today's educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives' brains are likely physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up. And I submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their ―native language.‖ Here I present evidence for why I think this is so. It comes from neurobiology, social psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning.
  •  
    Hi. I wrote a paper about digital natives as part of an anthropology assignment for a doctoral course. Researchers from around the world have empirically proven that Prensky's theories are false. Additionally, while neuroscience has shown that brains do change as a result of neuroplasticity, to argue that it is generational is also a false claim. Though cognitive theory shows that learners bring their prior experiences to the interpretation of new educational opportunities - impacting attention and interpretation - all generations have had this occur. There is merit to the point that we should take learner's prior experience into consideration when designing instruction; however, Prensky's digital native claims may have done more to create tension between students and teachers than to provide instructional support. If you would like any of the scholarly studies, I have a published reference list at http://brholland.com/reference-list. Beth
anonymous

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Football Stadium | text2cloud - 6 views

  •  
    A visual exploration of how the place of physical education at the university has changed over the past two hundred years. What does taking the bird's eye view allow us to see? Is anything to be gained by treating a football stadium as the subject of poetry?  Let me know what you think. (Tip of the hat to Wallace Stevens for the form.)
Nanette Blank

Global Warming for Non-science Majors - 13 views

  •  
    This 10-week course for non-science majors focuses on a single problem: assessing the risk of human-caused climate change. The story ranges from physics to chemistry, biology, geology, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics, to economics and social sciences. The class will consider evidence from the distant past and projections into the distant future, keeping the human time scale of the next several centuries as the bottom line. The lectures follow a textbook, "Global Warming, Understanding the Forecast," written for the course. For information about the textbook, interactive models, and more, visit: http://forecast.uchicago.edu/
Kenuvis Romero

Memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Encoding of working memory involves the spiking of individual neurons induced by sensory input, which persists even after the sensory input disappears (Jensen and Lisman 2005; Fransen et al. 2002). Encoding of episodic memory involves persistent changes in molecular structures that alter synaptic transmission between neurons. Examples of such structural changes include long-term potentiation (LTP) or spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). The persistent spiking in working memory can enhance the synaptic and cellular changes in the encoding of episodic memory (Jensen and Lisman 2005).
  • Recent functional imaging studies detected working memory signals in both medial temporal lobe (MTL), a brain area strongly associated with long-term memory, and prefrontal cortex (Ranganath et al. 2005), suggesting a strong relationship between working memory and long-term memory. However, the substantially more working memory signals seen in the prefrontal lobe suggest that this area play a more important role in working memory than MTL (Suzuki 2007).
  • Consolidation and reconsolidation. Short-term memory (STM) is temporary and subject to disruption, while long-term memory (LTM), once consolidated, is persistent and stable. Consolidation of STM into LTM at the molecular level presumably involves two processes: synaptic consolidation and system consolidation. The former involves a protein synthesis process in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), whereas the latter transforms the MTL-dependent memory into an MTL-independent memory over months to years (Ledoux 2007). In recent years, such traditional consolidation dogma has been re-evaluated as a result of the studies on reconsolidation. These studies showed that prevention after retrieval affects subsequent retrieval of the memory (Sara 2000). New studies have shown that post-retrieval treatment with protein synthesis inhibitors and many other compounds can lead to an amnestic state (Nadel et al. 2000b; Alberini 2005; Dudai 2006). These findings on reconsolidation fit with the behavioral evidence that retrieved memory is not a carbon copy of the initial experiences, and memories are updated during retrieval.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Physical exercise, particularly continuous aerobic exercises such as running, cycling and swimming, has many cognitive benefits and effects on the brain. Influences on the brain include increases in neurotransmitter levels, improved oxygen and nutrient delivery, and increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus. The effects of exercise on memory have important implications for improving children's academic performance, maintaining mental abilities in old age, and the prevention and potential cure of neurological diseases.
  • At the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University, researchers have found that memory accuracy of adults is hurt by the fact that they know more, and have more experience than children, and tend to apply all this knowledge when learning new information. The findings appeared in the August 2004 edition of the journal Psychological Science.
  • Interference can hamper memorization and retrieval. There is retroactive interference, when learning new information makes it harder to recall old information[59] and proactive interference, where prior learning disrupts recall of new information. Although interference can lead to forgetting, it is important to keep in mind that there are situations when old information can facilitate learning of new information. Knowing Latin, for instance, can help an individual learn a related language such as French – this phenomenon is known as positive transfer.[60]
  • Methods to optimize memorization[edit] Memorization is a method of learning that allows an individual to recall information verbatim. Rote learning is the method most often used. Methods of memorizing things have been the subject of much discussion over the years with some writers, such as Cosmos Rossellius using visual alphabets. The spacing effect shows that an individual is more likely to remember a list of items when rehearsal is spaced over an extended period of time. In contrast to this is cramming which is intensive memorization in a short period of time. Also relevant is the Zeigarnik effect which states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. The so-called Method of loci uses spatial memory to memorize non-spatial information.[72]
dawnprovost

How building design changed after 9/11 - 6 views

  • When exposed to the high temperatures created by burning airplane fuel, steel columns in both towers lost strength, putting too much load on other structural supports.
    • dawnprovost
       
      Proof for claim the the building's structure could not actually maintain its integrity.
  • When exposed to the high temperatures created by burning airplane fuel, steel columns in both towers lost strength, putting too much load on other structural supports.
  • Center towers lost strength rapidly when the fire reached 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Concrete heated to that temperature, though, doesn’t undergo significant physical or chemical changes; it maintains most of its mechanical properties. In other words, concrete is virtually fireproof.
    • dawnprovost
       
      Supports other article that explains the difference between temperature and heat.
  •  
    MLA Citation: In-text Citation: Summary: Evaluation: Reflection:
pjt111 taylor

When the Social, not the Medium, is the Message: On the spaces we make for vi... - 28 views

  •  
    "Periodically I find myself confused about my online presence and contributions. Am I using wikis, blogs, twitter, social networks, and email effectively? Effective by what criteria? Indeed, who am I trying to influence? My explorations of what others say about this recently has led me to a position-albeit a provisional one... The social, not the medium (or technology), should be the primary consideration. The criterion we need to apply in designing our online presence and contributions could be something like: "Am I welcoming and cultivating apprentices who are getting prepared to go on and cultivate the kinds of interaction in virtual and physical space that support their own work?" "
Ryan Trauman

Paige - Closing Argument - 0 views

  • Freeman wrote in the research article
    • Ryan Trauman
       
      Nice job coming back to Freeman. I would like to have seen more of this back-and-forth between the authors.
  • Mark Fenton expressed in the article “Battling America’s Epidemic of Physical Inactivity: Building More Walkable, Livable Communities” many different things we can do to help the obesity problem in America. Fenton states, “We must create environments in which physical activity becomes a routine part of the day for more Americans.” By creating a more pedestrian friendly atmosphere it will encourage people to walk or bicycle to their destination instead of always using their automobiles. I agree with what Fenton is trying to explain within in his research. Children learn by the examples that are being set around them. If they see everyone driving in their cars every where they go the only thing they have in their heads is, “I can’t wait until i can drive.” Instead of realizing they can go the same exact distance on their bike and be much more healthy than if they were driving a car. Fenton expresses, “We all must become role models by walking and cycling whenever possible and inviting others to do so with us.” People don’t like feeling abnormal; they want to do what other people are doing around them. Which is a very true assumption on Fentons part, we must become the role models for the youth around us. We set the standards of what is acceptable and what isn’t. We need to change the “norms” while it’s still possible and contribute to reversing the obesity problem
    • Ryan Trauman
       
      Great job here dealing with your source material. You quote, come-to-terms, reflect on the material you've introduced, and offer your own position. Then you come back to another quote by Fenton, and do much of the same. Excellent!
Matt Renwick

Designing a Classroom Where Ithaca Students Can Learn Better and Longer - Ithaca Times ... - 41 views

  • Nearly every surface in the model classroom is writeable, including the walls and the desks.
  • When the work on the wall is the kid’s thinking, they then become the teachers.
  • We weren’t built to sit all day.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Think blocks are a manipulative devise that allow kids to build ideas physically,” he said. “It allows students to think about their thinking
  • By changing the structure of the room we can change the behavior of the teachers and the behavior of the kids.
  • In terms of equipping the classroom, it’s not taking additional budget money because we have to periodically replace classroom furniture anyway; we’re just not replacing it with the traditional desks and chairs.
  • We heard deeper discussion about the texts they were working with
trisha_poole

The Sad Reality Of Education Technology | Edudemic - 100 views

  • This technological revolution is different; it has the potential to fundamentally change the way we teach and the way students learn.
  • The sad reality is that most schools still believe that they are “teaching with technology” because they have a computer lab where they teach students important skills like word processing and how to create Power Point presentations.
  • we need to teach them how to find information and more importantly what to do with the information that they find
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It’s no longer about who has the most information in their heads, it’s about who can find that information the fastest and who can do something with the information that they find.
  • The only way to do this is to make the fundamental change from teaching how to use technology to using technology to learn.
  • This model is fundamentally flawed because it teaches our students to be passive participants in the learning process.
  • With the advent of personal technology devices, we have the best opportunity of our careers to help students become more active participants in the learning process.
  •  
    I actually think this is way over-hyped. A textbook is a great source of information, the web is a great source of information. Unless you can comprehend what is being said the method of delivery of the information is not very important. As was mentioned above - being able to do something with the information has always been the important point. There are times when I am sure that we could do better with a piece of chalk at the blackboard - I learn a lot from making demos in Mathematica and using PHET active java apps for chemistry and physics - the students enjoy them, but how much do they learn? There is plenty of evidence that until you sit down and work out the problems in a course you haven't learned much. I suspect much of this is driven by the prospect of sales of electronics - there is nothing you can do on a tablet that you shouldn't be able to do on a laptop. Especially with Win 8 coming and laptops with touch screens....
D. S. Koelling

Embracing the Cloud: Caveat Professor - The Digital Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Ed... - 37 views

  • My work as chief privacy and security officer at a large public university has, however, given me pause to ask if our posture toward risk prevents us from fully embracing technology at a moment of profound change.
  • Consequently, faculty members are accepting major personal and institutional risk by using such third-party services without any institutional endorsement or support. How we provide those services requires a nuanced view of risk and goes to the heart of our willingness to trust our own faculty and staff members.
  • The technologically savvy among us recognize that hard physical, virtual, and legal boundaries actually demark this world of aggressively competitive commercial entities. Our students, faculty, and staff often do not.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But can we embrace the cloud? Can the faculty member who wears our institution's name in her title and e-mail address, to whom we've entrusted the academic and research mission of the institution, be trusted to reach into the cloud and pluck what she believes is the optimal tool to achieve her pedagogical aims and use it? Unfortunately, no. Many faculty and staff members simply use whatever service they choose, but they often do not have the knowledge or experience needed to evaluate those choices. And those who do try to work through the institution soon find themselves mired in bureaucracy.
  • First we review the company's terms of service. Of course, we also ask the company for any information it can provide on its internal data security and privacy practices. Our purchasing unit rewrites the agreement to include all of the state-required procurement language; we also add our standard contract language on data security. All of this information is fed into some sort of risk assessment of varying degrees of formality, depending on the situation, and, frankly, the urgency. That leads to yet another round of modifications to the agreement, negotiations with the company, and, finally, if successful, circulation for signatures. After which we usually exhume the corpse of the long-deceased faculty member and give him approval to use the service in his class. We go through this process not from misguided love of bureaucracy, but because our institutions know of no other way to manage risk. That is, we have failed to transform ourselves so we can thrive and compete in the 21st century.
  • But our faculty and staff are increasingly voting with their feet—they're more interested in the elegance, portability, and integration of commercial offerings, despite the inability to control how those programs change over time. By insisting on remaining with homegrown solutions, we are failing to fall in lockstep with those we support.
  • Data security? Of course there are plenty of fly-by-night operations with terrible security practices. However, as the infrastructure market has matured (one of the generally unrecognized benefits of cloud services), more and more small companies can provide assurances of data security that would shame many of us even at large research-intensive institutions.
  • If higher education is to break free of the ossified practices of the past, we must find ways to transfer risk acceptance into the faculty domain—that is, to enable faculty to accept risk. Such a transformation is beyond the ability of the IT department alone—it will require our campus officials, faculty senates, registrars, and research and compliance officers working together to deeply understand both the risks and the benefits
Maureen Greenbaum

How diplomas based on skill acquisition, not credits earned, could change education - T... - 15 views

  • a new teaching approach here called “proficiency-based education” that was inspired by a 2012 state law.
  • law requires that by 2021, students graduating from Maine high schools must show they have mastered specific skills to earn a high school diploma.
  • CompetencyWorks, a national organization t
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • By 2021, schools must offer diplomas based students reaching proficiency in the four core academic subject areas: English, math, science and social studies. By 2025, four additional subject areas will be included: a second language, the arts, health and physical education.
  • proficiency-based idea has also created headaches at some schools for teachers trying to monitor students’ individual progress.
  • Students have more flexibility to learn at their own pace and teachers get time to provide extra help for students who need it
  • It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Bowen said. “It was a systems design problem.”
  • offer students clarity about what they have to learn and how they are expected to demonstrate they’ve learned it.
  • at schools that have embraced the new system, teachers say they are finding that struggling students are seeing the biggest gains because teachers are given more time to re-teach skills and students better understand the parameters for earning a diploma.
  • Deciding to believe that all students are capable of learning all of the standards, she said, “was scary.”
  • Multiple-choice questions have virtually disappeared. Homework is checked, but not graded.
  • students get less than a proficient score, they must go back and study the skill they missed. They are then given a chance to retake the relevant portions of the test until they earn a satisfactory score.
  • We inherited a structure for schooling that was based on time and on philosophical beliefs that learning would be distributed across a bell curve,
  • get crystal clear about what we want students to know and be able to do and then how to measure it.”
Comrad Compadre

Why Men Fail - NYTimes.com - 42 views

  • This theory has less to do with innate traits and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They’re going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
    • Comrad Compadre
       
      Yes essentially, when women see the next Facebook, they will slowly start leaving it, then a few months after it is a dry ass place, dudes will follow, naturally, to where the women are.
  • But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
    • Comrad Compadre
       
      They adapt easier, including to different job types. Many females my current age are in PR and Marketing with small companies that don't pay them nearly as much as PR people used to make. It's a new lower earning PR job market and they are taking all those jobs.
  • Forty years ago, men and women adhered to certain ideologies, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, are more like clean slates, having abandoned both feminist and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still adhere to the masculinity rules, which limits their vision and their movement.
Clark Sarge

New Scientist TV: Animation reveals the worlds hidden equations - StumbleUpon - 9 views

    • Clark Sarge
       
      This is a cool website on the electromagnetic formulas that changed our world!
  •  
    electromagnetic equations animation
Sharin Tebo

A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days - a sobering lesson learne... - 56 views

  • But students move almost never. And never is exhausting.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      This was no different in my experience. There was not one class where I was asked to move to work with someone else. However, there was opportunity for engagement with others, where the teacher let the students do the talking and the working. 
  • sitting passively.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      Passive engagement is how I would describe most students to 'sat and got' while the teacher spoke. However, this was not the case in 100% of classes I shadowed/participated in.
  • build in a hands-on, move-around activity into every single class day. Yes, we would sacrifice some content to do this – that’s fine.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      We typically do this in a language learning class, so it was tiresome for me to not have the opportunity to move around and engage with others. 
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.
  • It was not just the sitting that was draining but that so much of the day was spent absorbing information but not often grappling with it.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      This was not true for all my classes today when I shadowed. The teacher in one class served as a model to annotate an article while we did the same. We were left to our own devices to write the main idea in 2-3 sentences, too. We also had to sum up our learning by analyzing topics in some pretty tough questions in Physics, and the final question was to put it all together and list a real-world example. I thought this was clever.
    • deniseahlquist
       
      Early in my career, I also was asked to shadow students (when we were choosing schools for a funded project) and it was definitely one of the most eye-opening experiences I've had. I could not believe how resentful and angry I felt at the end of the day and I think of myself as someone who just loves to learn, but I did so little of it in most of the classes. After the experience, I was no longer surprised that students struggle to stay focused, and I redoubled my efforts to help support teaching and learning experiences that actively engage learners in building understanding. Highly recommend this experience for any teacher, coach or administrator.
  • If I could go back and change my classes now, I would immediately: Offer brief, blitzkrieg-like mini-lessons with engaging, assessment-for-learning-type activities
  • set an egg timer every time I get up to talk and all eyes are on me. When the timer goes off, I am done.
  • Ask every class to start with students’ Essential Questions or just general questions born of confusion from the previous night’s reading or the previous class’s discussion.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      This was listed on the board in one class, but it was not discussed. 
  • Teachers work hard
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      Yes, they do work hard, but is it productive and best for student learning to be doing everything while students are passive? Why not make the kids do the heavy lifting so it is best for them?
Sharin Tebo

ISTE | Build student-centered learning the right way - 43 views

  • when you ask Tiarra Bell, a rising senior at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, what student-centered learning means to her, she doesn’t mention a word about tools and software. Instead, she embraces school because “the teachers are human and care about your life.”
  • Bell prefers projects over standardized tests “because those don’t show what I can do or who I am
  • Let the students own the classroom.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • she encourages her students to move desks, sit on the floor, change the physical environment every day if they like.
  • Lean on the kids to tell the community about their schools.
  • He’s not above using the substitute teacher budget to fill classrooms with instructors for a half day to give his full-time educational staff time for these discussions.
    • Sharin Tebo
       
      I think this approach has been used in our school district in some cases. Creative!
  • Understand you are asking for a paradigm shift.
  • In a student-centered learning classroom, the teacher doesn’t have to know everything. It’s OK for students to teach each other
  • The students themselves can be your most enthusiastic ambassadors showing how powerful learning is shaping their lives.
  • Ask technology to do the heavy lifting.
  •  
    Student-centered learning
1 - 20 of 26 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page