Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.
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shared by Adrienne Michetti on 12 Oct 09
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Global Learning Across Borders - 10 views
www.global-lab.org
global international 21st century learning InternationalSchool interaction curriculum
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Global Learning Across Borders exists to educate and inspire new generations of people to become responsible and committed global citizens in their local communities and beyond. We do this through international cultural immersion and community service programs for young adults; global studies professional development programs for educators; and by partnering with schools and universities to help design and implement experiential global curricula and service programs. We believe that international experience is a fundamental component of global education and citizenship in the 21st Century and should be available to all, regardless of financial need.
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Don't show, don't tell? - MIT News Office - 11 views
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Don’t show, don’t tell? Cognitive scientists find that when teaching young children, there is a trade-off between direct instruction and independent exploration. Emily Finn, MIT News Office
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It turns out that there is a “double-edged sword” to pedagogy: Explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery.
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The danger is leading children to believe that they’ve learned all there is to know, thereby discouraging independent discovery.
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they recruited 85 preschool-age children to interact with the toy under one of four conditions: pedagogical, interrupted, naïve and baseline.
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In the pedagogical condition, the experimenter said, “Look at my toy! This is how my toy works,” and demonstrated the squeak function twice (but made no mention of the other functions).
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Many children in the pedagogical condition failed to discover even one function in addition to the squeak, while children in the other three conditions found, on average, one or two functions they had not been taught. What’s more, children in the pedagogical condition spent less time playing with the toy — less than two minutes, on average — than children in the other conditions, whose times ranged from slightly more than two minutes in the naïve condition to longer than three minutes in the baseline condition.
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“The whole double-edged sword concept is really interesting,” says Susan Gelman, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “In almost any domain and across different cultures, we engage in spontaneous teaching. It doesn’t have to be in the classroom, we just naturally do this with young children — we show them how things are done, point out what’s important. This study shows how sensitive children are to the kind of cues that signal teaching.” Further experiments may want to examine differences in children’s behavior across cultures, she adds.
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the study underscores the real-world trade-offs between education and exploration, and the importance of acknowledging what is unknown even while imparting what is known. Teachers should, where possible, offer the caveat that there may be more to learn.
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shared by Deron Durflinger on 03 Nov 11
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Niall Ferguson: How American Civilization Can Avoid Collapse - The Daily Beast - 4 views
www.thedailybeast.com/...zation-can-avoid-collapse.html
History collapse ferguson america US education skills pay vanmeter van meter
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these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia
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20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.
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But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the
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Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans
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Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.
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On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection
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The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.
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Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too
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the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.
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Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.
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Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.
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What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic
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If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle
Scientist at Work - Francisco J. Ayala - Francisco J. Ayala - Evolution - Scientists Wh... - 5 views
www.nytimes.com/...29prof.html
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Teachers to be judged by pupils times tables tests - UKEdChat.com - 5 views
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Every pupil in England will be expected to have memorised their times tables before leaving primary school, under new government plans, reports the BBC. These will also see new tests of multiplication skills at the age of 11. The checks will be pi…
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1) Peter Drucker believed "Students Should Have Studied What They Do Well" "Delivering literacy--even on the high level appropriate to a knowledge society--will be an easier task than giving students the capacity and the knowledge to keep on learning, and the desire to do it."... "All it requires is to make learners achieve. All it requires is to focus on the strengths and talents of learners so that they excel in whatever it is they do well." But schools do not do it. They focus instead on a learner's weaknesses." The New Realities pages 236 and 237. Peter thinks that student who do poorly with math should not be let anywhere near algebra. This should make students happier but remember algebra teachers need jobs.
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shared by Ed Webb on 05 Dec 22
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The crisis of student mental health is much vaster than we realize - The Washington Post - 1 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...is-much-vaster-than-we-realize
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the CDC found nearly 45 percent of high school students were so persistently sad or hopeless in 2021 they were unable to engage in regular activities. Almost 1 in 5 seriously considered suicide, and 9 percent of the teenagers surveyed by the CDC tried to take their lives during the previous 12 months. A substantially larger percentage of gay, lesbian, bisexual, other and questioning students reported a suicide attempt
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More than 230,000 U.S. students under 18 are believed to be mourning the ultimate loss: the death of a parent or primary caregiver in a pandemic-related loss, according to research by the CDC, Imperial College London, Harvard University, Oxford University and the University of Cape Town. In the United States, children of color were hit the hardest, another study found. It estimated that the loss for Black and Hispanic children was nearly twice the rate of White children.
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Professional organizations recommend one school psychologist per 500 students, but the national average is one per 1,160 students, with some states approaching one per 5,000. Similarly, the recommended ratio of one school counselor per 250 students is not widespread. The national average: one per 415 students.
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Seattle teachers who went on strike in September included a call for more mental health supports for students as one of their bargaining points. The strike settlement included part-time social workers at most schools
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“We’ve seen increases in anxiety, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, OCD and many other mental health challenges,”
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Last school year, nearly 40 percent of schools nationally reported increases in physical attacks or fights, and roughly 60 percent reported more disruptions in class because of student misconduct, according to federal data.
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“School-based health centers fill a void, particularly in low-income communities,” said Robert Boyd, chief executive at the nonprofit School-Based Health Alliance. “In rural communities, sometimes it’s the only provider around.”
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school systems are expanding social-emotional learning intended to help students understand and regulate their emotions, develop positive relationships and face challenges. These lessons may be embedded in classes (say, a discussion of empathy related to characters in a novel) or they may come directly through an activity about, for instance, decision-making. In some parts of the country, social-emotional teachings are tangled up in the culture wars, particularly when material deals with gender and racial equity.
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Critics see the excused days off as counterproductive for students who have already missed too much school, but supporters say the laws recognize the stressful reality of many students’ lives and elevate the stature of mental health so that it is comparable to physical health.