Archive for the ‘education’ Category
about time – electronic textbook rentals
… Students can already save a few bucks by opting for a digital version of a textbook over a hardcover, and they can now save even more courtesy of Amazon if they aren’t too intent on hanging onto the book after they’re done with it. The company has just announced textbook rentals for Kindle, which promises to let students save “up to 80 percent” off the list price of those often pricey textbooks. That discount varies depending on the rental period — which can be anywhere from 30 to 360 days –
… The National Association of College Stores estimates that U.S. college stores posted $10.25 billion in sales for the 2009-2010 fiscal year with each student spending $745 on average.
read more on Mashable
This is only the beginning of the end for the many ripoffs associated with the textbook industry, but at least it is a start.
Words are worse than Sticks and Stones
A 13-year old Connecticut girl is bringing the serious issue of bullying to the forefront once again through a stark video she put on the Internet two weeks ago that’s quickly gaining attention.
Her name is Alye Pollack. …
… Without ever speaking, Alye describes her pain and the insults she says she endures every day.
CBS News Correspondent Elaine Quijano reported the video has struck a chord. It has thousands of hits, and an outpouring of sympathetic comments. “Be strong, Alye,” reads one message, and, “Always know how special you are.” …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Thanks Brian.
education in America – Waiting for Superman
Brian starts teaching Math at a High School in Canada today. Good luck.
He works in a socialist system, far from perfect.
A documentary on the even worse American school system won the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award. I really want to see this.
The film analyzes the failures of American public education by following several students through the educational system.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
It features Geoffrey Canada, one of my heros.
Bill Gates opinion of the film.
Thanks Lauraleigh.
Chess World #1 – age 19
Have you heard about this kid?
Magnus Carlsen (born Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen on 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess Grandmaster and chess prodigy currently ranked number one in the world.
Adventure Story of the Decade – Greg Mortenson
Outside Adventure Blog named Greg Mortenson the Adventure Story of the Decade.
Kudos to Outside. That’s a gutsy and correct call. What Greg has done was the most inspirational story I’ve heard in recent years.
… Who is Greg Mortenson?
Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute www.ikat.org , founder of Pennies For Peace www.penniesforpeace.org , and co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea www.threecupsoftea.com , and author of the bestsellerStones into Schools www.stonesintoschools.com.
In 2009, Mortenson received Pakistan’s highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan (“Star of Pakistan”) for his dedicated and humanitarian effort to promote education and literacy in rural areas for fifteen years. …
This guy has done more by himself to help Pakistan than all the hundreds of millions spent by the U.S. government. I love the title of this article: He Fights Terror With Books
I highly recommend his first book. Greg Mortenson is my hero.
click for details on the book
Never has the failure to climb a mountain led to such success. After Greg Mortenson failed to climb K2 in 1993 to honor his dead sister, he picked a new mountain. He raised enough money so a small village in Pakistan could build their own school.
In 2006 he published Three Cups of Tea, a book chronicling his journey. By 2009 he had supported more than 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. At a time when U.S. foreign policy is governed by military might that includes Shock and Awe and a flock of high-altitude drones, Greg Mortenson took a simpler, gentler approach. He traveled on rugged roads to small villages—in the same remote regions where the United States dropped bombs from unseen and unheard planes high in the sky—to deliver cash so locals could build schools from stones and have basic learning supplies for their children. He took the war against violence out of the sky and put it in the hands of young girls on the ground.
Geoffrey Canada is my hero
Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone is one of the few success stories I’ve heard in American education.
The USA made the mistake of not offering children an equal chance of success by inventing a system where some schools are good. Some are bad.
No wonder the USA has the world’s highest percentage of prison inmates. China ranks second with only about 18% of the US incarceration rate.
… Is that too big a leap? … Bad schools mean more kids will fall into crime?
Geoffrey Canada it trying a radical approach. He has 1200 inner city students and guarantees ALL of them they will go to College. Though it costs $5000/yr/student, his school is free to the kids.
Is that expensive?
Prison costs $60,000/yr. Reform school $100,000/yr.
Watch The Harlem Children’s Zone from the December 6, 2009 edition of 60 Minutes. Canada is a man who simply will not be denied.
60 Minutes also posts a text version online. It’s titled Harlem’s Education Experiment Gone Right.
Will the Internet Replace Universities?
Newspapers are dropping like flies.
Are Universities next?
… Universities were also subject to a lot of fevered speculation back then. In 1997 the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics…. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable.” Twelve years later, universities are bursting with customers, bigger, and (until recently) richer than ever before.
Was Drucker wrong?
My own guess is that the existing Universities will continue to evolve into the future. In one form or another.
But that the cost of tuition will force future students into less expensive online Universities.
… Quick, name the largest private university in the U.S. The answer is the University of Phoenix, founded in 1976, where 95% of faculty are part-time and the large majority of teaching happens completely online.
It could happen that more education-providing corporations (one hesitates to call them “universities”) could develop better ways to provide online classroom educations to a large number of students who are interested in the first purpose listed above but are unwilling to pay for the second. If that model catches on, it will cause dramatic upheaval in the economy of traditional universities. …
Blogs / Cosmic Variance – Will the Internet Replace Universities?
The University of Phoenix (UPX) is a for-profit educational institution that specializes in adult education. The largest private university in North America, it has an enrollment of more than 345,300 students …
what’s best for poor people
White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day.
They feel guilty and sad that poor people shop at Wal*Mart instead of Whole Foods, that they vote Republican instead of Democratic, that they go to Community College/get a job instead of studying art at a University. …
original – flickr
… It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.
Stuff White People Like – #62 Knowing what’s best for poor people
things I care about MORE than global warming
• nuclear war
• civil wars worldwide
• potential pandemics
• child hunger
• overweight and obesity
• increasing gap between richest and poorest
I would spend time and money NOT on solving global warming, but rather:
• education of girls and women
• population control in those parts of the world that need it
• making available safe water to those who need it
• youth work experiences in the developing countries
• anti-smoking measures (those proven to work)
• protecting wilderness
• promoting “voluntary simplicity” and “reduced consumption”
• improving migration of workers to parts of the world that need workers
My main motivation in writing this post is:
“the hypocrisy of western concerns over future global warming disasters, while ignoring the extreme misery and suffering being endured right now in developing countries.”
This guy agrees: Priorities – Can you worry about global warming while your children are dying? » Celsias
Global warming may or may not exist. May or may not have been caused by industrialization. May or may not be changed by future technology.
Don’t talk to me about it until these greater, more urgent global needs are getting more attention.
I’m especially ticked off with those making MONEY by being global warming alarmists.
Those are just a few of the issues more important than global warming to me. Leave a comment if you want to add to the list. Or refute me with hard, reputable scientific evidence that I am wrong. (Don’t mention Dr. Suzuki, please.)
Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre
I lucked into a tour of the fantastic Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.
It’s a world-class, award winning educational facility owned by 5 universities.
Bamfield is a great, remote location for researchers.
Many of their buildings were originally part of an undersea cable system connecting the British Empire.
In 1902, the Bamfield Cable station was constructed as the western terminus of a worldwide undersea cable called by some the All Red Line as it passed only through countries and territories controlled by the British Empire.
The cable initially went to Fanning Island, a tiny coral atoll in the mid-Pacific, and from there continued to Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. …
In 1953 the cables were extended up the Alberni Inlet to Port Alberni and station closed on June 20, 1959.
Bamfield – Wikipedia
old cable used in monument
The highlight of the tour for me, however, was the processed wood used in construction of the newest building. Huge beams had been pressed in an eco-friendly process. Gorgeous material.
