Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Some OpenEducation Resources on the Web

Open Education Resources, K-12

Postsecondary OER
Anytime Learning
  • Coursera: the world’s best courses for free *
  • General Assembly: learn from experts on business, tech & design *
  • Udemy: online courses from expert teachers *
  • LearnZillion: great instructional resources for teachers *
  • edX: non-profit created by Harvard and MIT
  • Udacity: IT and coding nanodegrees
  • Canvas: open online courses #
  • MentorMob: education search engine
  • TED-Ed: create customized lessons around TED videos
Some High Caliber resources


Anki -- Great Program for Students

About Anki

Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it's a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn.
Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless.
For example:
  • Learning a language
  • Studying for medical and law exams
  • Memorizing people's names and faces
  • Brushing up on geography
  • Mastering long poems
  • Even practicing guitar chords!

Features

Synchronization
Use the free AnkiWeb synchronization service to keep your cards in sync across multiple devices.
Flexibility
From card layout to review timing, Anki has a wealth of options for you to customize.
Media-Rich
Embed audio clips, images, videos and scientific markup on your cards, with precise control over how it's shown.


Optimized
Anki will handle decks of 100,000+ cards with no problems.
Fully Extensible
There are a large number of add-ons available.
Open Source
Because the code and storage format is open, your important data is safe.





















Catch Glenn on Twitter Noir Writer

And Check out the new site for Noir Stories -- Noir Street -- Tales of Shadow and Lust

Role of the Federal Government in Public Education

I was asked some questions about the Federal Involvement with local schools. through the form I have. This was a few days ago, but there was a lot of ground to cover. First off, after checking through pile after pile of data, the Common Core has absolutely no effect on the Federal involvement with the schools except to give them "less" reason for interacting. This report about Oklahoma (a news report) gave the indication that since they dropped CCSS, the Federal Government had more reason to be involved. I have a letter to a few to state school board members asking for a clarification on that statement, and I'll post that here as soon as I get an answer.



That's a messed up story. Everyone wanted the CCSS after experiencing it, and the state law makers took it anyway. Now they have no standards, the state is out a huge amount of money, plus the money they have to expend to create their own standards. And are any of those people who talked the state gov in to giving them up around to help out Nope. What a pointless waist of money and opportunity.

I did find plenty involvement from Federal with the states and the school systems however, and it is likely that what OK was talking about in that vid is within these laws, but as I explained in the email, I'm not sure I found all of them.

Aggressive Persuasion
Time Distortion. Technique

Name: Time Distortion. / Engage the Future

Type:  Perception Alteration
Medium: In Person or Voice Call - Text is possible but challenging
Chance of Encounter: Med/Low
Typical Target: One-to-One though Mass Media is Possible -- Challenging though
Setup, Conditions, or Environment: Framing highly suggested prior to engagement. 
If campaign requires text, framing requirement becomes even more advised. 
Description of Handling: The handling means an act of influencing public opinion through specific action so manipulated people will have the impression that they are acting according to their own ideas and interests. In fact, they take an idea, or an opinion that does not belong to them, but has been induced by various means. .One of the simplest is the technique of Time Distortion. Researchers today, call this False Memory or Memory Distortion. This technique refers to a decision that the client is trying to take. Speaking (Communicating) to them as if the decision is already made and that it was a pleasant experience and now everything is going to work out, adds to the experience. Also combining the session with pleasing images made with the use of "past tense" makes the new belief seat into memory with less disturbance, and begin to inscribe into the long term memory.  

I've also heard this one referred to as, "It's Just Tense, that's All"
But that was described as more of a Trope than an engagement.
I remember when it happened. I remember when we got the news. The news that 913 people killed themselves in Jonestown. It was so stunning. The anchor man said it deadpan. Nine hundred men, and women, with their children, in a mass suicide during a church service. It really didn't hit. I don't think anyone who heard it that day, got the message. I don't believe we process after a certain degree of atrocity. It's not a shock, really. It's a dumbing. What you hear -- it just doesn't make any sense to you. The words, individually, as each was said, were recognized as words, sure, but they weren't recognizable in that order. I guess, when that sort of limitation is breached, you focus on the banal. So, yeah, this guy who is condemning the jokes about the Kool-aid, this college kid. Sure, I understand the rebuke, but i don't accept it. Even now, it is difficult to grasp - -and there are so many living people who are crushed by tragedy to focus on. I do not accept the reproach of the dead while the living cry out.
Was there something that could have been done about Jonestown?

a Touch of Aristotle - You Tweet - I Tweet

Do I know more than You? Maybe. Probably not. I'm so focused into narrow areas of attention that I might know more about a narrow segment of a topic than you do, but current events? Like, what is happening on my front lawn? Eh... not so much. Perfect example is that I ordered speakers for my laptop two weeks ago. Just this morning I realized that they didn't arrive. So I got on to the website to check it out. They were delivered ten days ago to the address I lived at 15 years ago.

However, there are a few places I probably have more fun. Well. My kind of fun. For example, this is probably close to how you Tweet.
The Twitter of Every Day Use



And this is more my style (see how they are all running around in a circle chasing tweets that upset them?... ah.. the teas are fun).
This image is created using NodeXL
Which is a plugin for Excel which connects to
Twitter, and then allows you to create functionality


The Water Army

We initiate a systematic study to help distinguish a special group of online users, called hidden paid posters, or termed "Internet water army" in China, from the legitimate ones. On the Internet, the paid posters represent a new type of online job opportunities. They get paid for posting comments or articles on different online communities and websites for hidden purposes, e.g., to influence the opinion of other people towards certain social events or business markets. While being an interesting strategy in business marketing, paid posters may create a significant negative effect on the online communities, since the information from paid posters is usually not trustworthy. When two competitive companies hire paid posters to post fake news or negative comments about each other, normal netizens may feel overwhelmed and find it difficult to put any trust in the information they acquire from the Internet. In this paper, we thoroughly investigate the behavioral pattern of online paid posters based on real-world trace data. We design and validate a new detection mechanism, using both non-semantic analysis and semantic analysis, to identify potential online paid posters. Our test results with real-world datasets show a very promising performance.

Cheng Chen, Kui Wu, Venkatesh Srinivasan, and Xudong Zhang. 2013. Battling the internet water army: detection of hidden paid posters. In Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 116-120. DOI=10.1145/2492517.2492637 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2492517.2492637


If you don't believe that Corporations in the United States are not actively using this same technique and that most of the comments you read on News articles aren't basically paid-for-ads then you seriously need to consider upgrading you're reality to the dawn of a new age.





Who the Hell are All of these Experts?

I was just reading over a story on Democracy Now! about the sudden flood of Terrorist Experts hitting the Media after the attack in Paris.

How to Be a Terror "Expert": Ignore Facts, Blame Muslims, Trumpet U.S. Propaganda

Who are the so-called terrorism experts? In the wake of the Paris attacks, the corporate media has once again flooded its news programs with pundits claiming authority on terrorism, foreign policy and world events. (read the story if interested)

I reflected that this was much the same situation we have with US Education, Common Core, Teachers and what Data should be collected, and why. To be an Education Expert, apparently all that is required is to stand up and start proclaiming you are one. No credentials, experience level, or history of success in the field is required. Also, no references are needed either.
  • Dr. Sandra Stotsky: No educational experience of any merit. No degree in education, zero history of success, no peer references.
  • Dr. James Milgram:  No educational experience of any merit. No degree in education, zero history of success, no peer references (in fact most professors who have worked with him give negative reviews in the are of professionalism)
  • Jane Robbins:  An attorney employed by APP (a propaganda machine) with vague ties to the EPA -- surface background check suggests her name at one time could have been Jane Scott-Smith, but in fact doesn't show an Internet footprint at all before 2009. This is a very unlikely result, even from a surface scan, which suggests that Jane Robbins is a character played by someone else -- as in having even less credentials to discuss the validity or effectiveness of a an educational proposal. 
I would gladly put my name up on this list, since I'm basically as qualified as these three are -- and I'm a real person. But I've yet to introduce myself as someone qualified  to make statements on the validity of particular methods or standards for education. All I do, and all I'll ever do, is to check the claims given, point out the tactics of propaganda being used, if any, and background check the claims of those giving these judgements on Common Core.

And in those areas I am highly qualified and if you have questions about the core you would like to receive information on, just ask.

An open response to Hank Green, and his insightful Response to Cable News

Written in response to Hank Green's

Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President


Yes, but there’s a little more to it…

Like most things in life, if you scratch the surface of understanding, you are frequently engulfed in the complexity of even the simplest of issues.

Your points are valid and easily verified. Your concerns are as well. News content has a powerful impact on politics, with ideologically diverse content producing socially desirable outcomes. According to the U.S. Supreme Court (1945),

International Core's - Fool Your Friends! Benchmark At Home!



Finland Core 

Singapore Core

This is really exactly what it looks like. Instead of taking the time to make this more attractive and a more stable, maintainable feature, I've taken the lazy way out and slapped them into a post.

The Letter Requesting James Milgram to be Removed from Stanford Professorship 2002

This letter was signed and supported by 1007 academic supporters in 2002 as a protest against James Milgram, his lack of professionalism, his intimidation methods and the outright assault on Professor Jo Boaler of Stanford University


Dear President Hennessy and Provost Etchemendy:

On November 1, 2012, Professor Jo Boaler of Stanford University gave a keynote address at the meeting of the North American chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA). In her address, Professor Boaler discussed the importance of communicating research with broader audiences and recognizing and facing the challenging political climates in which we work. Professor Boaler made public the troubling attacks to which she has been subjected from a member of your mathematics faculty, Professor James Milgram. She has also posted a detailed account (http://www.stanford.edu/~joboaler/) of these attacks. The response, from the research community around the world, has been immediate and virulent. Shocked reactions are spreading rapidly.

Professor Boaler’s report describes some serious breaches of academic integrity (protecting the confidentiality of human subjects) and of ethical behavior (harassment and personal attacks). We view the behavior that has been reported as a threat to Professor Boaler’s academic freedom, that is, her freedom to conduct research without harassment. Professor Boaler is a valued and respected member of our community, and we cannot stand by and see such activity without lodging a protest. Furthermore, we see the attacks on the work of Professor Boaler, and Stanford’s inaction in response, as threatening to the work of the mathematics education research community.

We the undersigned believe, on the basis of the evidence that has been made publicly available, that Professor Jo Boaler has been the object of a campaign of harassment conducted by Stanford University Professor James Milgram and others that far exceeds the boundaries of scholarly discourse and academic freedom, that these actions have harmed Professor Boaler, and that these actions, if unaddressed by Stanford, will continue to damage Professor Boaler and may well damage the university itself. We ask you to open an official inquiry into the actions taken against Professor Boaler, and to make public the results of that inquiry and the actions that follow from it.

HankGreen and Edu Tool Kits

Hank Green from Vlog Brothers (a damn cool show) talks briefly about two problems he feels we have with our Education system



And then he gets to interview the President of the United States


The Education Wars
The Achievements of James Milgram

100%/x%=800/26
(100/x)*x=(800/26)*x      
100=30.769230769231 * x   (30.769230769231) to get x
100/30.769230769231=x 
3.25=x 
x=3.25
26 is 3.25% of 800
Just trying to get into the Spirit of things. And actually, that's the most math I've done for a whole year. I might have counted a couple of times how many slices of pizza were left, and made an estimation of probability on the chances of me finishing the slice I already had, before my son snaked the last one -- but that is really all I use math for estimations and probability.

I do love data though. I consume a great deal of data.

Milgram -- Inciter of
the Math Wars



Do you recall the Math Wars?

I think anyone who was a researcher or near the academic world at least heard about them. Prof James Milgram is probably one of the last soldiers standing -- which seems appropriate since from many accounts, he started them. They began, in true form, the declaration being called, in 1994, though there are some references to 1987, which I'm not sure count -- signs of where things were leading? ... Definitely.

Education, public education, especially in the areas of Math and ELS are terrible. I believe... I haven't checked this though I'll probably confirm some time soon ... that they are worse than they were in the 50s.

Questions and Research on Common Core
Real Research, Qualified Answers


I Don't Charge, but a Tip would be nice


Other than the guidelines below I invite any questions you have. Need to know where to find some resources for Homeschooling? Want to know how CCSS is being accepted by schools, teachers? (no students, that is not legal). Where to find Education Scores? Do other countries use Common Core? How many people Really helped with writing CCSS?  Who is this Robbins person and Why should I believe her?



Malala Yousafzai - Jon Stewart Interview


For those who might be confused, This is a News interview -- though this is a Comedian performing it -- which is somewhat Ironic since Fox News are Experts and Reporters performing Comedy.


Education is a Beast
Failed, Whipped and Brutalized

Do  you know the average education level of the teachers in your district? Any idea what the qualifications are for being on the your local district school board? These are two facts you should know, because they will undoubtedly alter your perspective instantly.

My first real look at the animal known as Local Education was Colorado in Sept of last year. The StandUp Kids. I was hunting Larry Krieger --

Evidence Based Claims

New Resource, or at lease new to me.

A comprehensive lesson set on Evidence-Based Claims.

http://odelleducation.com/making-ebc-lesson

Be sure to look around the site while you are there. They have some very cool stuff going on. A good place for the Homeschooler to be checking once in a while.

The Standard Stotsky Built

What You Really Need To Know

I could tell it was there, just couldn't put my finger on it. Sandra Stotsky begins her bio on her Univeristy of Arkansas Professor page with this:
Sandra Stotsky is credited with developing one of the country’s strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students as well as the strongest academic standards and licensure tests for prospective teachers while serving as Senior Associate Commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999-2003. 
Both the current and the archived frameworks show this isn't the case. The archive was created in 1997, two years before she arrives. The present is a hybrid with Common Core. No mention of her helping with either of the projects she claims is anywhere on the Edu websites. Emails requesting clarification are not responded to. 

More and More Benchmarking

It is not possible! It is Not Possible! It is Madness! It's Gates! It's Gates I tell you! He's The Devil!


Um... we'll get back to the raving maniac in a bit... just try to ... just don't make eye-contact.

I keep finding more documented benchmarking. It is getting to be a little tiresome actually. I'm wondering if we left anyone out? I'm sure we did. Why benchmark against countries whose idea of rapid math is counting the flies on a dead yak?

This one is kind of a cool find though. It is sort of a closer between Australia and the US. Recall from an earlier post that Micheal Watt pulled up a chair between 2007 and 2009, to watch two countries plan, develop, innovate and benchmark their way through creating Core Standards. He noted in detail the marked similarities and differences between the two teams, and how they proceeded from step to step. He did this across the Internet, as each team would announce their next goal, then publish methods, then publish International Benchmark information that was relevant, and then publish innovations to adapt and utilize, followed by publishing testing, then outcome.

Stotsky's Thoughts
on Stotsky's Criteria

Professor Sandra Stotsky loves to play the tune that the Common Core State Standards were not Benchmarked against International Standards.

As shown several times on many posts, this isn't true -- and not even close to being true for that matter, as the Common Core was Benchmarked against International Standards a recorded four separate times by over 100 people, and then the Validation team (29 individuals) benchmarked them again during that process over the period of six months. Since Stotsky really didn't participate in that process I guess she couldn't have known the extent of effort which went into it -- which brings up a few interesting questions:

  • Does Stotsky reference and utilize International Standards when she is evaluating or researching Standards? 
  • Does she even ask for the opinion or advice of others in the field? 
  • Does Stotsky see anyone else's advice or opinion more valuable than her own? 
  • Does Stotsky see anyone else's advice or opinion as equal to her own?
I have discovered a document that I personally feel, will give insight into the answers to these questions. I base this on the expansiveness and wide-range of investigation the project demands. The project is  covering many different beliefs and educational methods.  Being unfamiliar with that system and the method beliefs behind it, simply coming in cold and judging it -- disregarding the methods behind it completely -- would be highly unprofessional. If you were so crass as to do that, you would, of course,  be very careful to cite sources to qualify your disagreement with their methods. So one person tasked with such a project would, without question, start calling people to help out, and begin building a team of experts -- probably with a bit of panic in their voice as well.

Performing a review of the different standards of 50 States would seem to be such a project. Obviously your first task would be to gather a team of collaboration. As a point of reference to give an idea of the kind of task you are looking at here: evaluating the Common Core was assigned to a team of 29 highly skilled people, and took over six months to complete. That is the evaluation of ONE standard. Surely no single person could be such a megalomaniac as to feel that their experience could possibly cover such a wide range of belief systems and educational viewpoints.

Stotsky, Sandra. "The State of State English Standards, 2005." Thomas B Fordham Foundation and Institute (2005).
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED485523.pdf

"In 1996, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation asked me to do a detailed review of the state standards that existed at the time. Developing a review form with 34 criteria organized in five major sections, I reviewed almost all of the available state E/LA/R standards documents. The standards in 21 of the 28 states I reviewed had been tentatively judged by the AFT to be clear and specific enough to meet its “common core” criterion. My own review, however,published by Fordham in 1997, found few of these state standards capable of serving the intended purposes.

"Two years later, the number of states with approved E/LA/R standards had jumped to 49 (including the District of Columbia). At Fordham’s invitation, I under took a second round of reviews in 1999, using the same criteria. Published in January 2000, the completed report highlighted areas of strength and weakness in these 49 sets of standards and compared the changes since 1997 on 11 criteria. To my knowledge, there has been no detailed review of state standards for English language arts and reading since then."
*please to ignore the misspelling of the great and powerful English god - mine you may point out and ridicule at your pleasure, but not to make pointed humor at the Stotsky

This document covering all 50 states is written solely by Sandra Stotsky with no mention of anyone else helping in any fashion at all. There are zero citations. There are zero references. There are no validations of criteria. Her methods are not cited as being based on any other method at all, by anyone else. They are totally original work. It is enough, Stotsky believes, that Stotsky wrote the criteria, and the methods, therefore, are all unquestionably correct.

What she does have are Footnotes... which are publications she refers to in her "asides", little areas she is giving thoughts about. Of these seven Footnotes, (yes, only seven of her aside-commentary refer to other publications) she references herself twice, her company twice and the three that are left do not have anything to do with the development of standards, or the evaluation of standards.

AND -- I would laugh at this point but I'm too shaken up by the pure audacity of what I'm reading, which I would describe as bordering on psychosis except that she laughed and waved as the border flew by --

These footnotes and asides are not, in anyway, part of the massive study - they are part of a section she puts in at the end as sort of a hint that another study should be done on the Criteria for Hiring New Teachers for each State -- which, of course, Only Stotsky is capable or qualified to do. So, not only is she qualified to judge the Methodology and Educational Values of Every state in the Union, she understands the needs of every state so clearly, that she can evaluate their teachers as well.

So, Answer? -- No. (This answer covers all questions proposed) In fact, Stotsky deems no person or institution up to par except herself. The only time she brings up the standards created by others, is to ridicule them and demonstrate how they do not measure up to... Stotsky. Only Stotsky knows how to teach English. Only Stotsky can review with any accuracy at all, the Standards for teaching English.

All Hail Stotsky! 

Stotsky doesn't object to a National Common Core of Education Standards -- What she objects to is the fact that you didn't hire Stotsky to create it -- which she could have done over the weekend, and shown you how far advanced they were on Monday morning that the idea of benchmarking them against international losers was ridiculous.

Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...