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Don Doehla

SmartBlog on Education - Small changes are not small change - SmartBrief, Inc. SmartBlo... - 25 views

smartblogs.com/...l-changes-are-not-small-change

education change resources review tools

shared by Don Doehla on 21 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Don Doehla on 21 Aug 13
     
    Is change hard? Is change easy? The answer to both of those questions is "yes." If you reflect upon all that is done to "change" schools, you would probably think that policymakers think change is hard - very hard. Think of all the initiatives that are launched every day to change schools: new tests, new curriculum, new evaluation systems, new laws, policies and regulations. When all of these, however, fail to change schools, the people who develop these change initiatives end up thinking that the change initiatives just have to be bigger, stronger and more tightly managed.
  • Don Doehla on 21 Aug 13
     
    Is change hard? Is change easy? The answer to both of those questions is "yes." If you reflect upon all that is done to "change" schools, you would probably think that policymakers think change is hard - very hard. Think of all the initiatives that are launched every day to change schools: new tests, new curriculum, new evaluation systems, new laws, policies and regulations. When all of these, however, fail to change schools, the people who develop these change initiatives end up thinking that the change initiatives just have to be bigger, stronger and more tightly managed.
pjt111 taylor

Taking Yourself Seriously: Processes of Research and Engagement has been publ... - 3 views

thepumpingstation.org/...-engagement-has-been-published

processes research engagement

shared by pjt111 taylor on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • pjt111 taylor on 03 Mar 12
     
    This is a "field-book of tools and processes to help readers in all fields develop as researchers, writers, and agents of change." For more details and how to purchase: http://bit.ly/TYS2012. (Printing and distribution in Australia and Europe begins end of March.) Comments on the influence of this book's approach "I was able to get engaged in a project that I was able to actually use in work, which was extremely satisfying. The whole process encouraged me, and I felt very empowered as a change agent, which could be an exhilarating feeling." a healthcare professional and story-teller "I really had not been used to thinking about my own thinking, so learning to do that also helped me to slow down and start to look away from the career path that I had been taking for granted." a biologist-turned-web designer "I found that the experience helped me to accept feedback from other professionals. I am more comfortable with listening to why my own ideas might not work or need further evaluation. This even happens to the point where I find reasons now to seek out this kind of feedback." a teacher "I had viewed research as a process of collecting information into a sort of database and reviewing it effectively. I have now revised my notions to include a more broad understanding of interconnectedness between people and ideas. An important part of research is to keep relationships going." an adult educator "One of the most useful ideas was the use of dialogue, which helps to slow down the procedures used by the company. There's a tension between management's need to make quick decisions and desire to have real dialogue around proposed changes-changes to the internal company operational procedures as well as to evaluating the quality of what the company is doing with its publications." a teacher, currently working in publishing "I was asked to pay attention to what I actually could do instead of what I could not. This enabled me to (1) step back and let go of a huge technic
Martin Burrett

Book: How to be an Outstanding Primary Middle Leader by @ZoeParamour via @BloomsburyEd ... - 1 views

ukedchat.com/...standing-primary-middle-leader

book review book Primary leader

shared by Martin Burrett on 03 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 03 Jan 19
     
    "When Zoë's book came up for review I put my hand up to read it straight away. I currently work as a Primary Middle Leader (Literacy Lead and EYFSCoordinator) in a larger than average primary school in the North of England. In the last two years, we have undergone a lot of changes, both internal due to staffing and curriculum and changes and external as we have become part of the largest MAT in the city. This has meant an increase in responsibility and accountability, not only for myself but other middle leaders who I have had the chance to meet with."
meghankelly492

(PDF) A Systematic Review of Treatments for Music Performance Anxiety - 2 views

www.researchgate.net/..._for_Music_Performance_Anxiety

world Music

shared by meghankelly492 on 15 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • Four other studies (three of which are dissertations) assessed behavioral treatments forMPA on music students. Grishman (1989) and Mansberger (1988) used standard musclerelaxation techniques, Wardle (1969) compared insight/relaxation and systematic desensi-tisation techniques, and Deen (1999) used awareness and breathing techniques
  • A systematic review of all available treatment studies for music performance anxiety was undertaken.
  • reported that 24% of musicians frequently suffered stage fright, defined in this study as themost severe form of MPA, 13% experienced acute anxiety and 17% experienceddepression.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • 59% of musicians in symphony orchestras reported performance anxiety severe enough toimpair their professional and/or personal functioning.
  • A recent study indicated that MPA is not limited to orchestralmusicians, showing that opera chorus artists are also prone to high levels of performanceanxiety
  • However, since not allperformers suffer the same degree of MPA, or indeed report the same levels of occupationalstress, individual differences in a range of psychological characteristics are likely to accountfor variations in the degree to which musicians experience symptoms
  • A large number of treatment modalities (e.g., behavioral, cognitive, pharmacological andcomplementary) has been developed for music performance anxiety (MPA)
  • However, areview of this literature indicates that the field is still in its infancy with respect to theconceptual and theoretical formulations of the nature of MPA and its empiricalinvestigation.
  • Anxiety may be triggered by conscious,rational concerns or by cues that trigger, unconsciously, earlier anxiety producingexperiences or somatic sensations.
  • These findings suggest that multi-modal interventions are needed toaddress the multiple difficulties experienced by test anxious individuals.
  • with some focusing on behavioral change, some on cognitivechange, others on reduction of physiological symptoms through the use of pharmacotherapy,and some on idiosyncratic formulations
  • For drug studies, the keywords were beta-blocker [Beta blockers block the effect ofadrenaline (the hormone norepinephrine) on the body’s beta receptors. This slows downthe nerve impulses that travel through the heart. As a result, the resting heart rate is lower,the heart does not have to work as hard and requires less blood and oxygen
  • Brodsky (1996) and Nube´(1991) were most useful.
  • The interventionsassessed included systematic desensitization, progressive muscle relaxation, awareness andbreathing and behavioural rehearsal
  • In summary, behavioral treatments do appear to be at least minimally effective in thetreatment of MPA, although the heterogeneity of the treatment approaches employedmakes it difficult to isolate consistent evidence for the superiority of any one type ofbehavioral intervention
  • Two studies (see Tables II and IV) assessed the therapeutic effect of cognitive techniquesalone on MPA.
  • A dissertation by Patston (1996) reported a comparison of cognitive (e.g.positive self-talk, etc.) and physiological strategies in the treatment of MPA. No significantimprovements on vocal and visual manifestations of performance anxiety were found foreither treatment or control groups. However, the sample consisted of only 17 operastudents who were not specifically selected on the basis of their MPA severity, and theintervention was conducted by the author, a singer and teacher, who had no training inpsychology.
  • Three studies (see Table III) assessed the therapeutic effect of cognitive-behavioralstrategies on MPA. Harris (1987), Roland (1993), and Kendrick et al. (1982) all reportedthat standard CBT techniques were effective in the treatment of MPA in studentsspecifically selected for study because of the severity of their MPA.
  • Harris (1987) and Roland(1993) reported that CBT led to reductions in state anxiety as measured by the STAI,although Kendrick et al. (1982) failed to find a significant difference between treatment andcontrol groups on this measure.
  • The evidence for improvements in MPA following CBT is quite consistent, althoughfurther studies with larger samples are needed to confirm this evidence.
  • Beta-blockers have become increasingly popular among performers in recent years. Forexample, Lockwood (1989), in a survey of 2,122 orchestral musicians, found that 27% usedpropranolol to manage their anxiety prior to a performance; 19% of this group used thedrug on a daily basis.
  • Nube´ (1991) identified nine studies examining the effects of various beta-blockers(Atenolol, Metopolol, Nadolol, Oxprenolol, Propranolol, Pindolol) on MPA.
  • The findings regarding the effects of beta blockers on otheroutcome measures were less conclusive.
  • A rigorous definition of MPA is needed to advance treatment. However, defining MPA as asocial anxiety (social phobia) using criteria set out in DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000) as theinclusion criteria may be too restrictive, particularly if the musician presenting for treatmentexperiences MPA as a focal anxiety (ie does not meet other criteria for social anxiety).
  • Few ofthe intervention studies reviewed acknowledged that performers need a certain amount ofarousal or anxiety to maximise their performance.
  • None of the studies could be pooled in a meta-analysis primarily because too fewprovided sufficient data to calculate effect sizes, use of diverse subject groups andtreatments, duration and intensity of treatment, and use of disparate outcome measures
  • In conclusion, the literature on treatment approaches for MPA is fragmented, incon-sistent, and methodologically weak. These limitations make it difficult to reach any firmconclusions about the effectiveness of the various treatment approaches reviewed. Forsignificant progress to be made, future research will require a clear definition of MPA,consistency and strength in methodology, and the development of robust and appropriateoutcome measures.
Martin Burrett

Managerialism in UK schools erodes teachers' mental health and well-being - 9 views

ukedchat.com/...managerialism-uk-schools

manager mental health wellbeing well-being

shared by Martin Burrett on 18 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 18 Jan 19
     
    "Performance targets, increased workload, curriculum changes and other bureaucratic changes are eroding teachers' professional identity and harming their mental health, a new study in Educational Review finds. The study's authors interviewed 39 teachers across England and Wales who had experienced long term absence from work due to mental health problems, and six head, deputy and assistant head teachers who had dealt with mental health problems among staff."
Randolph Hollingsworth

Digital History Project hub site for historians - 28 views

digitalhistory.unl.edu/syllabi.php

shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 08 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Randolph Hollingsworth on 08 Jan 12
     
    Digital history is an emerging and rapidly changing academic field. The purpose of the Digital History Project is to educate scholars and the public about the state of the discipline by providing access to: interviews with scholars about topics related to digital history; presentations and essays about the field by noted scholars; syllabi and student projects from courses in digital history; reviews of major online projects and of tools which may be of use to digital historians; indices of peer-reviewed scholarship and digital projects; a directory of historians practicing digital history; and a clearinghouse of current events and news items of interest. Partners The site is made available through the generous support of the John and Catherine Angle Fund. It received production assistance from the New Media Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This site is maintained by Douglas Seefeldt, Assistant Professor of History & Faculty Fellow, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, and William G. Thomas, III, John and Catherine Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History, both of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Daryl Bambic

Be the Change. Listen. Follow-up » Edurati Review - 42 views

eduratireview.com/...be-the-change-listen-follow-up

professional_development

shared by Daryl Bambic on 09 Jun 10 - Cached
  • 1. Be the change. Leaders of professional development seem to forget that they’re actually teaching, and that part of teaching is modeling the activity you hope to see adopted. A session devoted to equipping teachers to implement more collaborative learning that is presented via “death by PowerPoint” is an oxymoron, a term originating from a Greek word appropriately meaning “pointedly foolish.” As one teacher recently expressed it, “Why does the worst teaching often happen in sessions on how to improve teaching?” Why, indeed? Modeling is a powerful teaching technique. In addition to communicating that the suggested new approach promotes learning, demonstration taps into some of the brain’s natural learning systems: This may be because demonstration actually encourages the brain to engage. Specialized neurons known as mirror neurons make practicing “in the head” possible…When a teacher repeatedly performs a sequence of steps, her students’ mirror neurons may enable their own preliminary practice of the same steps. In other words, as a teacher demonstrates a skill, students mentally rehearse it.1
  • Though we’ve been invited to lead professional development, we do not have all the answers. Professional development involves merging new research findings with current personnel—i.e., bringing ideas and people together. One way I’ve tried to do more of this recently is to ask teachers if any of them have tried something similar to a new approach I’ve explained. If any have, I invite them to share their experience. This invites elaboration, a critical cognitive process for constructing understanding. If the teacher’s experience was positive, we discuss why the approach was successful. If the teacher’s experience was frustrating, we often find together the reason for it and develop a plan for structuring it better the next time. This give-and-take values everyone, respects the experience present in the session, and allows the leader to be a colleague rather than an aloof expert.
  • 2. Listen. I have a tendency to get preoccupied with my preparation and forget that I’ll actually have people in the professional development session. Not just people but colleagues!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 3. Follow up. I’ve written previously about the importance of coaching and the characteristics of an effective coach. A one-time information flood is ineffective, no matter how engaging the session’s leader may be. Teachers need support as they begin to implement new ideas, methods, and approaches. Note that support, not judgement, is needed. Showing up with an evaluation form is a certain way to kill any benefit professional development might yield. Teachers are learners, and we need the time and space to try, to reflect, to try again, to get helpful feedback, and to truly master implementation. We need the opportunity to learn. Coaching provides this opportunity, along with the encouragement and feedback necessary for success.
paul lowe

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 3 views

connect.educause.edu/...47444

educause web2.0 webtools storytelling stories microcontent social_media social_networks

shared by paul lowe on 01 Nov 08 - Cached
  • A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid—perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that’s what a story used to be, and that’s how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.
  • paul lowe on 01 Nov 08
     
    A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid-perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that's what a story used to be, and that's how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.
Martin Burrett

Book review- When the adults change, everything changes by @pivotalpaul - 9 views

ukedchat.com/...when-adults-change

book review behaviour

shared by Martin Burrett on 12 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 12 Nov 17
     
    "Even with 'expert' advice from consultants, self-proclaimed gurus, or politicians, managing behaviour in secondary schools is an art within itself. Different personalities, socio-economic conditions and expectations are all unique to each individual setting so no one slant on how to manage behaviour will suit all schools. Yet the role of pastoral care in many schools has evidently been diminished with the focus turning towards academic achievement in high stakes exam results, with pupils being reduced to 'units of progress'. This is not only a UK shift in focus, with many jurisdictions around the world following a similar pattern."
carmelladoty

The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now - 130 views

mashable.com/...artbleed-bug-websites-affected

Heartbleed security passwords mashable

shared by carmelladoty on 12 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • carmelladoty on 12 Apr 14
     
    Don't miss reviewing this article. It reviews websites including banks, that may have been affected by Heartbleed.
Tracy Tuten

Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context - NYTimes.com - 28 views

www.nytimes.com/...21mash.html

sme NYTimes technology Web 2.0 critic mashup

shared by Tracy Tuten on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.”
  • Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.”
  • It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mr. Lanier’s book, which makes an impassioned case for “a digital humanism,” is only one of many recent volumes to take a hard but judicious look at some of the consequences of new technology and Web 2.0. Among them are several prescient books by Cass Sunstein, 55, which explore the effects of the Internet on public discourse; Farhad Manjoo’s “True Enough,” which examines how new technologies are promoting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact; “The Cult of the Amateur,” by Andrew Keen, which argues that Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise; and Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” (coming in June), which suggests that increased Internet use is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to think deeply and creatively even as it improves our ability to multitask.
  • Steven Johnson, a founder of the online magazine Feed, for instance, wrote in an article in The Wall Street Journal last year that with the development of software for Amazon.com’s Kindle and other e-book readers that enable users to jump back and forth from other applications, he fears “one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised.” He continued, “We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.”
  • Tracy Tuten on 08 Apr 10
     
    Highly insightful and developed argument for how Web 2.0 is changing how we process information, learn, and develop opinions. 
Eric G. Young

Find It Friday - ABA's New Search Engine; Westlaw Poised To Release 'Cobalt' ... - 27 views

cyberesq.wordpress.com/...stlaw-poised-to-release-cobalt

legal research Westlaw American Bar Association search engines Cobalt

shared by Eric G. Young on 08 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Eric G. Young on 08 Jan 10
     
    2010 is already proving to be the year of big changes on the legal research front. The first significant development of 2010 is the ABA's new search engine for law reviews and journals. The second is Thomson Reuters Westlaw's anticipated release of an entirely new research platform dubbed "Cobalt."
Mariusz Leś

EBSCOhost: Lista wyników: cloud and computing - 33 views

web.ebscohost.com/...resultsadvanced

cloud computing EBSCOhost

shared by Mariusz Leś on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Mariusz Leś on 13 Jun 11
     
    On the Clouds: A New Way of Computing. By: Yan Han. Information Technology & Libraries, Jun2010, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p87-92, 6p, 1 Black and White Photograph, 1 Diagram; Abstract: This article introduces cloud computing and discusses the author's experience "on the clouds." The author reviews cloud computing services and providers, then presents his experience of running multiple systems (e.g., integrated library systems, content management systems, and repository software). He evaluates costs, discusses advantages, and addresses some issues about cloud computing. Cloud computing fundamentally changes the ways institutions and companies manage their computing needs. Libraries can take advantage of cloud computing to start an IT project with low cost, to manage computing resources cost-effectively, and to explore new computing possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; (AN 50741403) Tematy: CLOUD computing; COMMUNICATION in learning & scholarship; INTEGRATED library systems (Computer systems); INSTITUTIONAL repositories; LIBRARIES -- Automation; ACADEMIC libraries; INFORMATION technology; EFFECT of technological innovations on Baza danych: Academic Search Complete
James Shockley

Web 2.0 Smack Down - 149 views

www.techlearning.com/38258

tools tech learning resources Web2.0

shared by James Shockley on 14 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • James Shockley on 14 Apr 11
     
    Digital Edition mag Top Stories Benjamin Franklin: An Extraordinary United States Global Change Research National World War II Museum Mayan Math Activity Product Review: StudySync FORUMS How did you choose an SIS? Are schools ready for open source? Can you Google-proof a question using Bloom's Taxonomy? Does online training work? top tech resources LCD or DLP? More.. Subscribe| Customer Service|Contact Us|About Us|eNewsletters|Advertising New Articles From the Classroom Leadership Professional Development Tech/Media Coordinators Tech Talk Studies in Ed Tech Ideas and Opinions How To EdTech Ticker TL Advisor Blog Leader of the Year Awards of Excellence Portraits of Learning Other Contests Upcoming Webinars Data Management Security eLearning Copyright Funding Mobile & Wireless Assessment & Testing Curriculum News & Trends Products Features Editor's Desk Issues Current Issue Newsletters eBooks White Papers Grants Columns Podcasts Web Tours Buyers Guide News Site of the Day QuickFlicks IT Guy Interactive Whiteboards Student Information Systems
Gareth Jones

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

www.edge.org/...er-looking-in-the-wrong-places

NaturalScience senseperception paradigm

shared by Gareth Jones on 19 May 18 - No Cached
  • 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.
Caroline Dutton

Health - 0 views

www.cleancookstoves.org/...health-impacts.html

clean cookstoves health research project 2013

shared by Caroline Dutton on 12 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that exposure to smoke from the simple act of cooking is the fifth worst risk factor for disease in developing countries, and causes almost two million premature deaths per year – exceeding deaths attributable to malaria or tuberculosis.
  • Women in developing countries are also at risk of head and spinal injuries, pregnancy complications, and maternal mortality from the strenuous task of carrying heavy loads of firewood or other fuels. Frequent exposure to cookstove smoke can also cause disabling health impacts like cataracts, which affect women more than men, and is the leading cause of blindness in developing countries.
  • Rudimentary wood-fired cookstoves and open fires emit fine particles, carbon monoxide, and other pollutants at levels up to 100 times higher than the recommended limits set by WHO
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • A randomized-control study in Guatemala led by the University of California, Berkeley, found that halving exposure to indoor air pollution with a chimney stove brought about a reduction in severe pneumonia, and that larger reductions in exposure had more pronounced effects. A systematic review of all available studies on the link between solid fuel use and child pneumonia has found an almost doubling of risk for those exposed.
  • Burns from open fires and unsafe cookstoves are another insidious risk faced by poor households dependent on kerosene, open fires, and unstable metal or clay cookstoves, contributing to a substantial percentage of the estimated 300,000 burn deaths that occur annually
  • While the link between exposure to cookstove smoke and a wide range of health problems such as pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer is well established, the current body of evidence linking cookstoves with other potentially important health effects is compelling but less documented
  • Nearly all of the existing evidence is based on observational studies that compare groups using open fires and traditional cookstoves with those using cleaner fuels, with very little being directly obtained from studies that directly measure the effects of interventions.
  • More evidence is needed to demonstrate that the levels of exposure reduction delivered by clean cookstove and fuels will result in declines in related illnesses and deaths.
  • Caroline Dutton on 12 Feb 13
     
    This is the Global alliance for Clean Cookstoves website. They offer much information about the issues surrounding the topic and their action plan for affecting change!
anonymous

The Coach in the Operating Room - The New Yorker - 37 views

www.newyorker.com/...personal-best

coaching teaching professional development

shared by anonymous on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
Xiaojing Kou liked it
  • I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      this is one of the most important reasons for data and using the data to help guide instruction
  • the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Why wouldn't we want a coach? Our supervisor or administrator often serves as an evaluator but might not have the time due to time constraints to serve as an effective and dedicated coach. Yet, a coach doesn't have to be an expert. Couldn't the coach just be a colleague with a different skill set?
  • They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      PROFOUND!!!
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • always evolving
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Please tell me what profession isn't always evolving? It something isn't evolving, it is dying! So, why doesn't everyone on the face of the earth - regardless of his/her profession or station in life - need coaching periodically to help them continue to grow and evolve?
  • We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.
  • no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.
  • outside ears, and eyes, are important
  • For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      So, instead of having students take test after test after test, why don't we just have coaches who observe and sit and discuss and offer suggestions and divide the number of tests we give students in half and do away with half? Are we concerned about student knowledge? student performance? student ability? student growth or capacity for growth? What we really need to identify is what we value!
  • California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Of course they are more effective! They have a trusted individual to guide them, mentor them, help sustain them. The coach can cheer and affirm what the teacher is already doing well and offer suggestions that are desired and sought in order to improve their 'game' and become more effective.
  • they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Knowledge of the content is one thing and expertise is yet another. Sometimes what makes us better teachers is simply strategies and techniques - not expertise in the content. Sometimes what makes us better teachers could simply be using a different tool or offering options for students to choose.
  • The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      The conversation with the coach and the coach listening and learning what the teacher would like to expand, improve, and grow is probably the most vital part! If the teacher doesn't have a clue, the coach could start anywhere and that might not be what the teacher adopts and owns. So, the teacher must have ownership and direction.
  • teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This could provide specific categories to offer teachers a choice in what direction they want to go toward improving - especially important for those who want broad improvement or are clueless at where to start.
  • must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.
  • most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Progression
  • The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      The coach also makes you aware of where you are excelling!
  • So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
  • “What worked?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Great way to open any coaching conversation!
  • “How could you help her?”
  • “What else did you notice?”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      These questions are quite similar to what we ask little children when they are learning something new. How did that go? What else could you do? What could you do differently? What more is needed? What would help?
  • something to try.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Suggestions of something to try! Any colleague can offer this - so why don't we ask colleagues for ideas of something to try more often?
  • three colleagues on a lunch break
  • Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I probably need this printed out and stuck to the monitor of my computer or tattooed on my hand!
  • “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      patient, engaged listening
  • coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is
  • trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      Encouraging people to think - it is important to teach and encourage thinking rather than teaching them WHAT to think!
  • a whole list of observations like this.
  • one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.
  • watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      This is one of the greatest strategies to promote growth - ever!
  • routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      I always hate seeing a video of me teaching but I did learn so much about myself, my teaching, and my students that I could not learn in any other way!
  • I know that I’m learning again.
  • It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Dec 16
       
      But it still works and is effective at nudging even those who are fabulous to be even better!
  • modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things
  • coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.
  • We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.
  • anonymous on 14 Dec 16
     
    Valuable points about coaching - makes me want my own coach!
Bob Rowan

Cloth Addiction: the microfiber cloth that has changed my life | ZDNet - 65 views

www.zdnet.com/...4570

iPad reviews cleaning tablet

shared by Bob Rowan on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • Bob Rowan on 09 May 12
     
    suggested as good cleaning cloth for ipads or other electronic devices
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