Category: education

going to College a BAD investment?

On By Rick McIn economics, education, things getting worseLeave a comment

I talked to a gymnasts’ father this morning at Starbucks. His son has decided on a trade — electrician. No University.

Good call in Canada 2012, in my opinion.

… the spiraling cost of higher education continues to saddle millions of young Americans with a crippling financial burden well before they enter the workforce. …

Click PLAY or watch a FUNNY commentary on YouTube.

Many young people today are best with a trade. Then should use that income to finance their own small business.

Being a full-time Gymnastics Coach has never looked so good as today. Reasonable salary. And plenty of job security.

Salman Khan Academy – online

On By Rick McIn education, product endorsements, things getting betterLeave a comment

Warren had myself and his parents watch an excellent TED talk on a super successful distance learning model. All free and open source.

Salman Amin ‘Sal’ Khan, born October 11, 1976, is a Bangladeshi American educator and the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and nonprofit organization. From a small office in his home, Khan has produced over 3000 videos elucidating a wide spectrum of academic subjects, mainly focusing on mathematics and the sciences.

As of September 2012, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has attracted nearly 400,000 subscribers.

… In 2010, Google provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate its core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages. …

In March 2011, Salman Khan was invited to speak at TED by Bill Gates who says he uses the Khan Academy Exercise Software to teach his own children. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

khanacademy.org

on child brides …

On By Rick McIn education, ethics, governmentLeave a comment

Gandhi and his wife, from affluent families in India, were married at age-12. That was the tradition in the 1800s.

People died young in that era. They wanted to have children as quickly as possible.

In his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth (Kindle $.99), Gandhi is eloquent on what a mistake that was for him and his wife.

Of many problems in the developing world, the FIRST solution is education of girls & women.

Girls should be in school, not becoming brides & mothers too soon.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

about time – electronic textbook rentals

On By Rick McIn economics, education, good newsLeave a comment

… 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

On By Rick McIn educationLeave a comment

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.” …

CBS News

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Thanks Brian.

education in America – Waiting for Superman

On By Rick McIn education, movies, product endorsements4 Comments

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.

waitingforsuperman.com

Bill Gates opinion of the film.

Thanks Lauraleigh.

Chess World #1 – age 19

On By Rick McIn educationLeave a comment

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.

Wikipedia

Adventure Story of the Decade – Greg Mortenson

On By Rick McIn books, education, product endorsementsLeave a comment

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. …

About Greg Mortenson

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.

The Top 10 Adventure Stories of the Decade

Geoffrey Canada is my hero

On By Rick McIn education, government, product endorsementsLeave a comment

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?

On By Rick McIn education, internetLeave a comment

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?

upx_logo_print

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 …