Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.
Watch it, people. Just because information is second only in volume to pollution on this planet, it does not mean all info is available for you to use and then slap your name on to it like you wrote it or something. Plagiarism, for those of you who missed that day in class, is when you take someone else’s work and falsely claim it as your own. It’s very bad, and it makes you look like an ass@$%*.
The NY Times has an article up about plagiarism and the tech-savvy information generation. The lines are blurry for Gen-Y, apparently.
If you’d like to avoid being an uninformed cheating ass@#$%, the following links are helpful.
I must go. The line above regarding information and the volume of it is freaking me out. Can digital information have volume at all? And is it possible to measure the volume of every printed word on the planet? What about all the still-intact newspapers in old landfills? Do those count as existing information? Crap!
It’s cringe-y and funny and it just upset me and made me laugh until I snurfed green tea out my nose. I think you should read it too. Chag Holland is Cynical Dad and he is capable of making your day better.
I help out in my daughter’s class. I used to just do simple things like copy papers and cut out shapes and crap, but somewhere along the line, someone got the dumb idea that I could actually work with the kids and teach them things. Big mistake. Last week, I was working with a table of kids and teaching them how to carry ones. One of the little boys at the table spoke up.
Boy #1: I’m the best in the class at math.
Internal Chag: Um, no, or you wouldn’t be sitting here with me.
Girl #1: No you’re not! Hamid is!
Boy #1: That doesn’t count. Of course he’s the best at math.
External Chag: Why is he the best at math?
Boy #1: He’s from another country. All they do is math.
Watching this helps one to gain some perspective. And by perspective I mean finally understanding just how much money this country requires to survive, and how little Obama has actually removed. Obama’s killing himself and pissing everyone off in order to save the most pathetic sliver of money. And the fallout from the various federal programs losing their funding is fully, mind-blowingly noticeable. If there’s not a huge line at the border crossing today, I could be in Canada in less than three hours.
Researchers analyzed 30,000 teens and the relationship between screen time (tv, video games, surfing the net, etc.) and the teens’ tendency toward experiencing routine backache and headaches. The study was just released, and the findings boil down to this: cumulative screen time, even in young, healthy bodies, causes headaches and back pain.
I’m pretty sure this can easily be applied to college students and full-fledged adults as well. Ergonomics, massage therapy, and a reduction in screen time: Know it. Live it. Love it.
Ever wondered why there are more girls into studying the STEM subjects (Science Technology Engineering Math) than there are women who actually pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math? The girls and young women who become interested can stay focused enough on their STEM career dreams all the way through majoring in STEM subjects in college. Then things start veering off the tracks.
Somewhere during the earning of the BS degree, minds are changed and the women veer away from what had been their dream careers. Some don’t even complete their intended degree and switch to something less STEM-oriented. What the heck happens?
In an era when women are increasingly prominent in medicine, law and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? A new research report by AAUW presents compelling evidence that can help to explain this puzzle. Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics presents in-depth yet accessible profiles of eight key research findings that point to environmental and social barriers – including stereotypes, gender bias and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities – that continue to block women’s participation and progress in science, technology, engineering, and math. The report also includes up to date statistics on girls’ and women’s achievement and participation in these areas and offers new ideas for what each of us can do to more fully open scientific and engineering fields to girls and women.
Because everyone deserves to explain themselves, especially after a few high-profile articles come out telling the general public you’ve recanted your strongly held beliefs in your new book, below are some excerpts from Diane Ravitch’s Education Week blog, Bridging Differences. In the post, she explains what in the hell is actually going on, what she believes, and why she thinks her book is doing so well amongst the education community despite everyone else’s crankiness.
I have not changed my fundamental belief that all children should have a great education that includes not just basic skills, but history, literature, geography, civics, the arts, science, foreign languages, and physical education. I have never changed my wish that all children should have well-educated teachers who love their subjects and are well prepared to teach them to their students. I have never changed my skepticism about fads, miracles, and silver bullets, which come and go with great frequency in U.S. education. I have never abandoned my respect for the men and women who teach children and do the daily work that others (including me) talk and write about. I am not opposed to testing, but to the misuse of testing to punish people and close schools.
What did I abandon? The hope that choice and accountability could magically achieve the ends that I believe in. I am not opposed to choice—everyone should be free to choose another school if the school their child attends is not right for the child. And I do not oppose accountability, so long as it is used to help teachers, principals, and schools do a better job, not to punish them.
All of this is to set the record straight. On the whole, I am staggered, astonished really, by the response to the book. I am especially gratified by the warm reception it has received from teachers. Nothing good can come of any reform that teachers do not embrace: That is one of the lessons of my book. More…
I respect Ms. Ravitch immensely, and have been impressed always by her intellectual and logical take on education. I therefore find it hard to believe that she would suddenly do an about-face with no cause or forethought. She has nothing to gain by doing that, and she has her credibility to lose. The only humans that can claim open-mindedness are the ones that take in all available information, ponder the hell out of it, and then decide what their opinion is.
Included in a person’s claim to being open-minded is the ability and responsibility to continue absorbing information as the situation changes. How stupid would some jackass on the Titanic have been if he’d stood his ground and been sucked into the cold, dark sea screaming, “It’s unsinkable, I tell you! Unsinkable! You’re all idiots! Stay on board! It’s unsinkable!” Things change. Situations change. The world changes. Good thing we higher-thinking humans have the capacity to change our thinking.
The folks at Grammarlogues have a guest post up in the NY Times’ Learning Blog: 5 Easy Ways to Learn Grammar With The New York Times. I totally do this! I’ve done this for years, actually. My own version involves not so much practicing, as it does utilizing the NY Times when I’m in a must-know-now situation.
While I seem to be able to teach myself any subject an institution of higher learning can throw at me (including calculus, which I’m sure will come in handy when the apocalypse comes), I have never found a grammar how-to manual that explains the concept and then shows you several examples so you can understand how it works in actual situations. I need to see the example if the concept is hazy or has too many variables.
What I really require is a university English department to have a 24-hour help desk so I can hand over my sentence and have a professional help me to understand why the correct form is right, and why my version is the equivalent of a six-year-old making “soup” by dumping every spice in the kitchen cabinet into the bathtub.
When the manuals and the online grammar help sites fail me, I turn to the NY Times. I Google “NY Times” and the pertinent portion of the sentence that’s stumping me. The NY Times is the well-edited-newspaper version of an infinite number of monkeys whanging away at typewriters: eventually one of those monkeys is going to hammer out Shakespeare, word for word. Somewhere in the NY Times’ archives there’s a sentence chunk exactly like mine (only with correct grammar and punctuation).
Author’s note: this post was reprinted in the Education section of the NY Times Online.
I’ve told you people this over and over: kids need to run around during the school day. It’s good for their bodies, it’s good for their brains. Exercise gets their energy out so they can sit still long enough to learn. They learn better when their bodies are less amped. Do you all overstand yet? Stop decreasing recess and budget-cutting PE and athletic programs.
More scientific research to back me up on that comes from the British Medical Journal. A recent study shows that kids are miraculously more fit and trim when they are allowed to exercise during the school day. So. Dang. Weird.
One in three to five children in the Western world is overweight or obese. This epidemic is rapidly and constantly growing and affects all socioeconomic levels and ethnicities. Excessive weight is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, orthopaedic problems, and psychosocial constraints even before adulthood is reached. Life expectancy may be reduced by several years, as is work productivity, while costs are increasing enormously. A focus on early prevention is thus urgently needed.
The increase in physical inactivity over the past decades is one of the main causes of the increase in obesity. In adults, physical inactivity and low aerobic fitness are associated with higher mortality and a higher prevalence of chronic disease. In children, physical inactivity and lack of fitness are associated with increasing prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, even independent of body weight.
