education & tech

This is in defense of what happened in Newark at the beginning of August with these poor defenceless students, the sad history of Anthony Soltero and all that stuff that incongruous school's contents are generating in the internet era.

How can these youngsters enjoy learning if we the teachers generate fake learning, some knowledge that kids and teens don't really need it right away. First, let me say that I agree with many of you that our schools are married with far too much fake learning. I love your litmus test of whether or not something is real learning. When I read it, my mouth practically dropped thinking of all the things that I teach that I would not want to be a part of … I am embarrassed to say that some of the things I teach are not even engaging to teach, let alone engaging to learn. It is, of course, a constant journey, looking for ways to improve my teaching and move towards more 'real' learning experiences.

My friction with this is, is there a realistic balance between 'real' and 'fake' learning? Can we turn everything into something so engaging that we would want to participate in, or are there some things that, at least for some students, are not going to be engaging but are important enough to learn.

I am thinking a lot about math lately, and many math activities might fit what you call 'fake' learning. I know that fourth graders need to learn their multiplication facts. Even with all this technology around us, multiplication facts are something that, I believe, people still need to know. Now, some student may be engaged by the way that you teach and practice those facts, but for some, it just isn’t engaging. Does the benefit of learning sometimes outweigh the need to engage students? Do we just need to work harder to find a way to engage the students, or does the cost of doing so outweigh the marginal benefit?

Perhaps this is where games or competition might come into play. A video game might easily turn something rote like fact learning into something more fun and engaging.

The text above was a comment left at Speed of Creativity by Matt. I would like to follow him up in his blog but I couldn't find a rational way, but certainly he has a point about this fake learning we are immerse everyday!

I am reading frecuently the Jenny's blog who proclaims to be called very soon Dr. Jenny!! She's being observing a class of rising 5th graders in a two-week math lab class in a district that struggles in terms of student achievement. The class is made of 27 fifth graders and her dean is working with them as a laboratory for learning about teaching and learning.

One of the problems to get solved is: 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8. Where the goal is to get students to learn this in a way that lets them think flexibly about any base they work in, rather than just learning base 8. Want to try? Remember this is 5th, graders stuff.

In other period she was confronted with a number arrangements in order to arrive to concept of fractions. After 30 minutes on the train problem, students spent an hour on fractions.

Jenny points out the problem of conceptualization about what it means to be teaching, she says:

...Teaching is an active practice involving everthing from the teacher's words and physical movement in the room, to the quality of the notation on the board, to the type of homework (completed every night by math lab students)...

And this candidate finishes her report about Math Lab saying that she felt constantly amazed at the level of work it takes to be a great teacher. "For math here, it takes deep content knowledge of mathematics, as well as the knowledge of how to prompt learning, how to present new problems and encourage students to use knowledge they have to begin to solve new problems. This isn't easy."

Dear reader, do you think is an easy procedure try to explain a kid nine years old the propieties about adition or substraction?

I happened to visit ebiquity and found a post from Tim Finin, where he says the American Government if funding the Rutgers Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science in order to keep an eye over all online social networks, looking for potential terrorist activity.

Among the initial projects are two involving social media. One will study the problem of analyzing large, dynamic multigraphs that arise from blogs. Another will develop algorithms for identifying hidden social structures in virtual communities with a goal of finding hidden groups, coalitions and leaders by non-semantic analysis of large communication networks.

American Senator Murphy (Illinois) has a blog as everybody else but what brings our attention is the projects he's working on, especially the SJRCA18 that has to be with the safety of our kids, protecting them against online predators at public libraries and schools. Yesterday, after I watched Lockup I've started rethinking about our own safety not from outsiders but those detainees all around US.

This has nothing to do with current politics but beliefs. I am a catholic and hope not offend nobody of my readers being a roman catholic confessed but what TIME magazine holds is critical for all those millions of catholics worldwide. If Jesus and his family have been founded dead in their graves in Israel then, Christianity become an empty vessel! Why? Because there is not Resurrection, the myth of all Christians.

Please allow me to go back to my home country, how come a company can make money with such a high pay in OT to the management only and not to the people who really do the Service? Alt1040 put his finger on Pacifictel and says $ 3.71 millions were paid as over time! My God! Besides, between the 2003 and 2007 the Ecuadorean telecommunication's company (Pacifictel) had eight CEO's and that during such a period those directives rose their salary 977 times! Want to invest in Ecuador? You're just in time. God Bless President Correa.

The following is an extract of an article written by  Sean Cavanagh  in Education Week. It has to be with the anxiety all students are confronted while they try to learn Mathematics. The results of such research  were  presented in the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science  by Mark H. Ashcraft, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Nevada. Here the the most important topics of interest not only for teachers but parents as well:

A number of researchers, including Mr. Ashcraft, say there is evidence that anxiety disrupts student performance in math by wreaking havoc with “working memory.” Such capacity is a type of short-term memory individuals use to retain a limited amount of information while working on a task—and block out distractions and irrelevant information. Anxiety can sap students’ working memory during tests, but in other problem-solving situations, too.

Once students realize they do not grasp a math concept, the internal pressure grows.

“Math entails certain conceptual barriers that lead people to read the same passage over and over again and not understand it,” Mr. Siegler, another participant declared.

Individuals with high levels of math anxiety tend to rush through problems, making them prone to errors, the UNLV researcher has concluded. Those math-anxious students also have far more difficulty on problems that require processes such as “carrying” numbers than on questions where such steps are not necessary.

One strategy simply involves practice with math problems, which can make it easier to retrieve answers from memory. Another is to train students to become more accustomed to working under pressure by having them take timed practice tests, for example. Although there has been little definitive research on what makes math anxiety worse, some scholars have suggested that math teachers or parents can ratchet up the anxiety of students by placing unrealistically high demands on them, or by showing annoyance when concepts aren’t quickly mastered, while providing little academic support.

Para calmar la atención que despertaron a partir de su lanzamiento Beta que no fue otra cosa que una nueva plataforma, la gente de Blogger dice que terminaron con la fase Beta y que todo está a pedir de boca. No tan rápido. Existen algunas observaciones que debemos hacer y en tres entregas Bloggeratto nos deja saber sus razones. Pero no es solo Avatar, sino que Nick Denton tambien se hace eco y dice Let Blogger Free. Lo que si es cierto es que estamos perdiendo una cantidad en términos de integración!

Y solo por si acaso, no se meta en problemas mientras se declara ser bloggero. Existen cosas, datos e informaciones que hay que tener cuidado al manejarlas pues de lo contrario podríamos pasar a engrosar la lista de demandas legales en contra de amigos bloggeros.

Y ésto ya n o es nuevo para nosotros pero vale la pena hacerle un seguimiento, too little math in math.

En parte eso es lo importante de la competencia, al parecer Google está haciendo que tanto Microsoft como Yahoo están poniéndole cuidado al repunte de su competidor. Mas dinero para investigación por parte del Sr. Balmer y Yahoo cree tener mas trabajo que hacer el socialmedia. El reporte está en Techcrunch.

Otro gigante que busca entrar en el mercado de la competencia es AOL que para captar la atención de sus usuarios y atraer nuevos a lanzado conforme lo reportábamos anteriormente Searchvideo y últimamente nos ofrece un nuevo browser, Open Ride y que a criterio de los entendidos es realmente interesante.

Icerocket tambien le entra al negocio de la búsqueda de videos. Parece ser que esa es la tendencia. Google compra YouTube, Yahoo desarrolla mejores algoritmos para la misma búsqueda. Microsoft lanza On10, etc.

La felicidad no es todo cuando se trata de aprender las matemáticas, ese es el reporte de hoy aparecido en Joanne Jacobs. Pero hay que ir un poco mas lejos, influir en la capacidad de búsqueda para literatura infantil como lo pretende Simple Search. Su hijo es de las personitas que no les gusta leer? Bueno, ya sabe por dónde empezar!

Hay una seria observación con la memoria que ocupa en tu computadora la versión última de Firefox, Eduardo Arcos propone una forma de corregirlo al menos parcialmente. Y si usted le agrada la música vea ademáa lo que puede hacer con Google+Firefox=Free MusicDownloads.

Posiblemente usted amigo lector sea aficionado a los hacks en Blogger Beta, si es así, por vea la segunda recopilación que acaba de hacer al respecto BlogFresh. Hey! Have a wonderful day!

En una interesante entrevista, Hector Garcia nos presenta a una espaniola como él que reside en el Japón y nos deja tambien conocer la tierra del sol naciente, ella es la directora de Emigrante sin Destino y le gusta dejarse llamar Trici.

Hay ocasiones en los que usted quisiera que su blog se importante y una de las formas para conseguirlo es hacer que los robots de búsqueda lo endorsen. Biz Blogs escribe un post para mostrarnos como anunciar a los buscadores que usted tiene un post nuevo.

Que interesante es poder tener el Feed Reader de Google pegado a Gmail. Pues precisamente hoy eso es posible de acuerdo con Lifehacker y éste Greasemonkey.

En educación, bueno alguien al menos se ha hecho eco del problema de eneniar mal las matematicas, o del cómo no enseniar a pensar a los estudiantes!. Gracias a Joanne Jacobs.