Returning to the classroom will be a chance to rethink its purpose

by Prof. Sanjay Sharma, Green Executive: https://greenexecutive.com/front-page/blog-categories/education/returning-to-the-classroom-will-be-a-chance-to-rethink-its-purpose


Image source: 潜辉 韦 from Pixabay.

The pandemic has forced students around the world into distance learning. This has exposed the shortcomings of both online and classroom-based education. As we get back to normal, we have a chance to combine the best of both worlds into a more effective pedagogical model. Here's how.

COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on life across the planet, and few things are expected to return to the old normal anytime soon. For education, though, a new normal is urgently needed.

For much of the world, and at almost every level, education revolves around exams. Leaving aside the complex debate on the need and value of exams, an essential ingredient of learning inevitably takes a back seat: engagement. Deep, actionable learning requires debates, discussions, projects, coaching, criticism and feedback. But this is difficult to achieve and harder to scale, and consequently widely neglected.

COVID-19 has forced much of the world into distance learning. Many institutions found the transition to video-conferencing relatively straightforward – as long as students had the networking and computing resources to access the lectures. But that seamlessness exposes a deeper problem in residential education. And for that matter, what we are seeing with Zoom classes today isn't state-of-the-art online education either. Much of the world is caught between two worlds, exposing the failings of both: an educational system that was somewhat socially distanced to begin with, and a distance-learning solution that just isn't built on lessons from modern online learning.

Now is the time to rebuild, and there are three areas to consider: pedagogy, modalities, and structure. The science of learning, rapidly evolving technological capabilities, and the changing future of work all indicate which way to head.

1. Pedagogy

When nature yields proximity back to us, educators and students will inevitably ask, "now what?" The fact is, much of the in-person time in classrooms around the world is wasted in one-too-many lectures that might as well have been delivered on Zoom. Instead, we need massive adoption of the flipped classroom. The idea is to reserve the actual classroom for engaging two-way activities while using online and pre-reading to accomplish one-way transfer. This is not a new idea; many fields, such as the humanities, and many educational institutions – such as mine, MIT – understand that students need to marinate in the content. The science of learning tells us that learning is most effective when students are curious, and dopamine is released in the brain. And it tells us that students absorb material better when they struggle but receive timely coaching, and when they discover and apply concepts. This can be achieved in formal and informal discussions, in performances, and through projects: a robot, a dissection, a piece of software, an independent research study, a musical composition, or a community activity. But this is all often lost in the quest for utilitarian efficiency. A large number of small, private liberal art colleges will not survive the COVID-19 winter because of their much-debated economics. Ironically though, pedagogy is one thing they do get right, and their demise will be a tragedy.

2. Modality

Distance education is not online education. Properly designed online content involves short (5-10 minutes), well-produced, asynchronous videos that are more attuned to the ability of the human brain to focus. Online content can also include simulations, games and online group annotation of a document – which are more vivid than most in-person lectures. Students can pause, rewind or speed up content at their convenience. Brief, auto-graded quizzes after each video enable something known in cognitive science as the testing effect: immediate recall from content promotes long-term retention. Over time, online capabilities will become even more sophisticated with simulations, games and virtual reality. An online student moves to the next topic when she has mastered the previous one. This is called mastery learning and leads to more concrete progress in the learning journey. Online forums are surprisingly good at peer-to-peer and expert interaction. Zoom has its place too in this world: students can use videoconferencing to interact with peers, teaching assistants, professors and coaches. But when the lockdown ends, the online modality should be used primarily to make time for the most important aspect of education: in-person engagement. Online can never be a replacement for good in-person learning but it can strengthen it, improving grasp and nuance. But make no mistake: good online content will replace disengaged teaching rapidly and decisively. And online education certainly offers a better cost-benefit equation than a mediocre college.
 

3. Structure

The structure of education today is brittle. As the contours of the labour market become uncertain after COVID-19, education will need to become more malleable. Students will need more visibility of and more connections into the working world, and more bite-sized options so that they can customize their trajectories. Two and four-year degrees cannot be the only alternatives. High school students everywhere might want to do apprenticeships to get a taste of work, as they do in Switzerland today. Perhaps we need more vocational technical schools, so that students get more job-ready skills. While studying for an associate or bachelor's degree in accounting, a student might want to get a separate online certificate, like a MicroMasters in financial engineering. Microcredentials are in our future. They give students options to tailor their curricula. If COVID-19 has taught the workforce one thing, it is that working adults must be able to acquire new skills rapidly, and likely continuously. This points to the need for new options for continuous adult education. Much of it will be online from the edX and Courseras of the world. Some learning must necessarily be in person – to learn to operate equipment, for example – but it is hard to leave work for extended periods of time. Distilled in-person experiences over a week or distributed across weekends will become necessary. One way or another, the structure of our educational systems is monolithic, and it needs more granularity.

The need for reform

By impounding proximity from human society, COVID-19 has exposed some of the flaws of our education system. Many symptoms were pre-existing: $1.6 trillion in student debt, eroding confidence in educational institutions, colleges in trouble. And perhaps more starkly, the loss of nuance in public discourse, the black-and white positions when shades of grey are required, and the decline of compassion, critical thinking and sensible discussion. If the education system does not reform at all levels, the cold hard calculus of market economics will sweep much of it aside, taking with it the most precious and delicate aspect of education: engagement. We must reanimate engagement in education in 2021 and beyond as we slowly dust ourselves off after this brawl with nature.

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Originally published in weforum.org.

Author: Sanjay Sarma is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice President for Open learning at MIT. In addition to pioneering online education, Open Learning includes the Jameel World Education Lab, which works with universities around the world on the future of education. Sarma is the author of the upcoming book "Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn".
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Any opinions or views expressed in this blog post are those of the individual author, unless explicitly stated to be those of GreenExecutive.

Read These 5 Books to Understand Philosophy

(Image: hardcorezen.info)

by Reuben Westmaas, Curiosity: https://curiosity.com/topics/read-these-5-books-to-understand-philosophy-curiosity

If there's one thing that's harder to understand than science, it might just be philosophy. At least science can hang its hat on the real, physical world. Philosophy can seem so slippery, existing in a realm of ideas and arguments and cold, hard logic.

But philosophy's not really so bad, and as a matter of fact, it can really change the way that you look at some of the basic facts about your life. There's more to it than nebulous questions like "What if we're all dreaming?" and "What if the universe is in a jar on a shelf somewhere?" Here are five philosophical disciplines that you should know about — and the books that will get you there.

This article contains affiliate links, which means that if you use them to make a purchase, Curiosity will receive a portion of the sale. You'll help keep our lights on, and we appreciate it.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is probably the first thing you think of when you think of philosophy. It basically covers any question you have about the nature of Reality with a capital R. Do you think there are two types of reality? That's a metaphysics question. 

So are questions about the nature of change, the nature of causality, and the nature of identity — and questions about whether any of those concepts are actually real in the first place. The thing about metaphysics is that it intersects with actual physics in some unexpected ways, and the more that physicists uncover, the more that metaphysical questions become relevant.

One of the best examples is probably the nature of time. Maybe you feel like time is just a present moment that continually changes. Maybe you think it's like a tape measure creeping ever forward while leaving a trail of the past behind it. Or maybe you think the future and the past are all set in stone, and we just only experience one particular moment at a, well, time. Which of those are true (and it's probably a lot more complicated than any of those suggestions) could have major effects on the study of physics, and vice versa.

The book to read: Check out Adrian Bardon's "A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time" to find out how thinkers from the past perceived time — and how relativity, quantum physics, and other scientific theories changed those thoughts.

Ethics

There's one particular question in ethics that has been so thoroughly memed, you probably already know all about it: the trolley problem. It goes something like this. 

A runaway trolley is barreling down a track toward five people. The only way they could be saved is if the trolley switched tracks before hitting them — except that track has one person standing on it. You and only you have control of the lever that switches the tracks. When you see the trolley barreling down on the five people, is it your responsibility to pull the lever and make sure only one person is killed instead? If you do, would you have murdered that person? If you don't, would you have murdered the other five?

The book to read: If you're just beginning to study ethics, we recommend "Ethics: A Beginner's Guide" by Peter Cave. Cave covers the hypothetical and not-so-hypothetical moral questions of the ages, running all the way up to modern political thought.

Epistemology

Many major branches of philosophy have a single phrase associated with them that illustrates a central problem in a tongue-in-cheek manner (hey, philosophers have a sense of humor too!). For epistemology, that phrase is "turtles all the way down." Imagine you're an ancient scholar who believes that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle. But what does the turtle rest on, you ask? Easy: another turtle. And another below that, and another below that. It's turtles all the way down.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we know things, and the turtles illustrate one (perhaps shaky) way that human beings justify their beliefs. 

Say you believe something because you have proof, and you believe in that proof because you have more proof of that proof, and so on, and so on. You can't ever hold the entire chain of justification in your head, though — so, at some point, you must be waving your hand and saying there are more turtles down there.

The book to read: To know something, you must be certain of it — the challenge is to find an idea for which certainty has never eroded away. Pick up Chuck Klosterman's "But What If We're Wrong?"  (the cover is designed to make it look like you're reading upside down) and explore the right way to think about the wrong thoughts of the past and present.

Logic

Logic might be the most intimidating of all the philosophical disciplines, dense with mathematical symbols and cold, unerring calculations. But if you have a certain type of mind, it might be the only one that appeals to you. 

Logic is probably put to practical use more than any other philosophical tradition, and it can be seen in computer programming, mathematics, and even law. Unlike the other types of philosophy on this list, you won't find a lot of pontificating about different paradigms or worldviews. Instead, you'll just find out the right way to do it — and there's no other way.

The book to read: If you're feeling daunted, why not take your logical medicine with a spoonful of illustrated sugar? "Introducing Logic: A Graphic Guide" by Dan Cryan, Sharron Shatil, and Bill Mayblin explains the practice of logic clearly and with lots of pictures.

Bonus Book: Fiction

In a book that's meant for teens but is really appropriate for anybody, Jostein Gaarder takes the reader on an engaging and mind-bending journey through the history of philosophy in the one-and-only "Sophie's World." 

We aren't going to give away the ending, but the novel follows two teenage girls separated by more than just time and distance, yet inextricably linked in their growing understanding of the borders of reality. It's not science fiction and it's not magic — it really is just rooted in the life-changing power philosophy has to transform the way you see the world.

The Rise of Cognitive Enhancers is a Mass Social Experiment

Pranjal Mahna

by Emma A. Jane, UNSW Australia and Nicole A Vincent, Georgia State University, The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-cognitive-enhancers-is-a-mass-social-experiment-40072

Want to sign up for a massive human experiment? Too late. You’re already a lab rat. There was no ethics approval or informed consent. You weren’t asked, you never signed up, and now there’s no easy way to opt out.

We don’t want to be alarmist. We’re not suggesting you’re about to sprout wings, grow coarse hairs in surprising places and become a gruesome half-insect like the Brundlefly (the side effects of real life scientific experiments rarely impress like the special effects in David Cronenberg’s film The Fly).

But we do know not everyone wants to be a human lab rat. And yet we are all currently enrolled in a massive experiment involving cognitive enhancers.

Smart drugs and devices

“Cognitive enhancer” is a broad term for any of a number of different drugs and devices that - depending on which academic or gamer you listen to - will sharpen your mind. To get the gist, check out this preview of Neil Burger’s film Limitless:

But what drugs, what devices? Well, take this guy, for instance, pumping electricity through his brain with a homegrown transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) device that emits a current so small it can run off a nine-volt battery.

Or Elizabeth, the 20-something founder of a start-up who takes Adderall - a medication prescribed to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - except she doesn’t have ADHD.

Ritalin, modafinil, and donepezil are further examples of medications normally prescribed to people with disorders that do-it-yourself brain-hackers are trying to repurpose for cognitive enhancement.

And for the less adventurous - those who don’t want to nab their grandparent’s dementia pills - there’s a growing range of over-the-counter “nootropic” supplements, which enhance memory and other cognitive capacities, available at pharmacies and from online retailers.

A diverse range of people including video gamers, students, neuroscientists, entrepreneurs, classical musicians, and public servants use cognitive enhancers. We reckon there’s a good chance that you too, dear reader, are sampling the options. Or if not you, then perhaps your partner, neighbours, or work colleagues.

Why would anybody want to use cognitive enhancers? To supersize their mental capacities, of course. Depending on the precise method - and the creativity of the given product’s marketing department - touted benefits include superior memory, focus, reflexes, calmness, clarity of thought, problem-solving ability, mental stamina, and ability to function well with little sleep.

But here’s something to dampen your enthusiasm. In many circumstances, it may be illegal to buy or sell these medications. And some are controlled substances, which is why Elizabeth gets her Adderall - a cocktail of amphetamine salts - from shady dealers.

Health is also a consideration. Aside from isolated studies, buckets of hearsay, and tons of hype, scientists know little about which of these methods work, how they work, and their potential side effects. Experts are urging restraint, at least until more research is conducted and scientists can say which brain interventions are safe and effective.

But our concern is that by then it will already be too late to extract ourselves from this massive human experiment.

An en masse human experiment

It’s around this point that we often encounter scepticism. Unless everyone is actually using cognitive enhancers, how can everyone be part of the experiment?

Here’s our thinking: imagine that in time we develop cognitive enhancement methods that are given the tick of clinical approval by the requisite number of citizens in white lab coats. Presumably ordinary people would then start using them because they can. Suddenly it’s possible to pop a pill and blitz calculus. Or perk up while transplanting someone’s heart and lungs, or while flying people across the Atlantic.

But here’s the catch. While cognitive enhancement might feel like a free choice at the start, once everyone round town is doing it, an insidious form of social coercion sets in. Just as the use of beta blockers has become widespread in the classical music scene, so too cognitive enhancement threatens to become a new “normal”, a de facto standard that pressures everyone to bio-hack their brains to keep up.

Obviously we can’t divine the future. But predicting the social side effects that safe, effective, and inexpensive cognitive enhancers are likely to have in competitive societies like ours seems like a no-brainer. Our bet is that it will result in an even more work-obsessed culture, and even less time than we currently have for other pursuits that enhance human life.

Remember those predictions from the 1980s about how in the future we would all be working 15-hour weeks thanks to gains in efficiency afforded by technological advances? The reason that never happened is not because the technology failed to deliver those gains in efficiency. It’s because we chose to use that efficiency to do more work.

e c d o David/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Social side effects

Scientific and technological developments shape our lives - often imperceptibly - by gradually changing our values and the moral, legal, and social landscape in which we live. Lab tests, clinical trials, and epidemiological studies are great for identifying medical side effects - blurred vision, nausea, nasal blockage, and so on - but they completely overlook the social side effects that science and technology can also have.

This is one reason why you don’t actually have to use cognitive enhancers to be a subject in this massive human experiment. You just have to share a society with others who do. When they use cognitive enhancers, you get the social side effects.

Then there’s informed consent. Would you still want to take a smart drug if it increased the chances of you making not-so-smart decisions about how much you worked simply because you could suddenly work more? What if it changed how much your boss thought it was reasonable to expect you to work given what everyone else around the office was suddenly capable of doing?

Athletic doping is rejected not for safety reasons but because we want sport to be about inspiring achievements. Rikard Elofsson/Flickr, CC BY

Bioethics: convincing as well as cute

For perspective on what’s missing in how we talk about cognitive enhancement, consider the stark contrast between debates over enhancing physical and mental performance.

The doping of athletes is rejected not just for safety reasons but because we want sport to be about certain things, like those gloriously muscular humans and their inspiring achievements - not a technological and scientific arms race. When it comes to sport, we decide how we want things to be and set rules to ensure that’s how things become. Values shape how we conduct ourselves in sport.

And yet, despite the potential impact on the rest of our lives, values other than safety, effectiveness, and equality are marginalised in debates about mental performance enhancement. Enhancers are likened to caffeine, pain killers or doing the occasional online course to skill up. And people who express a distaste for the kind of society that cognitive enhancement could encourage are ridiculed by enthusiasts as being neo-Luddites.

Take this tweet from a genome researcher, for instance, to our work on the ethical and legal issues around cognitive enhancement:

"But in our view a cognitively enhanced society is neither inevitable nor unobjectionable. Our case is that we should engage in careful contemplation of the full suite of ramifications of any given emerging technology not because we think all technological change is bad and must (or can) be stopped, but because we owe it to our future selves. As a society we have a responsibility to do this".

To release new drugs and technologies into the world without regard for their potential social consequences is on a par with sending a new medicine into the market without clinical trials. Failure to do this is nothing less than a reckless form of social experimentation.

We would love to keep going with our “cute” bioethical persuasion, but it’s time for us to enhance. This will involve stopping work at a reasonable hour, hanging out with our favourite children, pets, and friends, doing the exercise and balanced meal thing, and then attempting (but failing) to get a decent night’s sleep.

Emma A. Jane is Senior Lecturer in Media, Journalism and Communication at UNSW Australia.
Nicole A Vincent is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Neuroscience at Georgia State University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Spritz and Other Speed Reading Apps: Prose and Cons

From a study of speed reading data (Photo: Wikipedia)

by Sally Andrews, University of Sydney

Most adults read about 200-250 words per minute (wpm), but Spritz, a new reading application that is attracting considerable social media attention, claims that most people can easily double or triple this speed without any special training.

Normally when we read, our eyes move along the lines of a text, landing (fixating) on words for a tenth to a quarter of a second, then making short jumps (saccades) to the next word.

The developers of Spritz claim that, in the traditional method of reading, only 20% of reading time is spent processing the content of a text and 80% is devoted to moving the eyes between words.

Their solution is to eliminate the need to make eye movements. Words are presented one at a time, beginning at the typical reading rate of 200 wpm, and the reader is encouraged to gradually increase it to rates of up to 1,000 wpm.

More about Spritz here.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? At that rate, you could read a novel in 90 minutes. But there are some aspects of reading that apps such as Spritz don’t quite nail.

The science of speed reading

The science underlying the Spritz technique relies on two well-established characteristics of eye movements during reading:

1. skilled readers’ perceptual span - the window of text we use during reading - is about 13 characters. This is the maximum length of word exposed in the Spritz “redicle”
2. we characteristically land our eyes at a predictable position in the word - between the beginning and middle of the word - that Spritz refers to as the optimal recognition point (ORP).

Example of a Spritz ‘redicle’, and red highlight, seen here on Samsung Gear 2. Spritz

Spritz’s major innovation is to centre the word in the redicle on the ORP and highlight it in red.

This is claimed to speed up reading by ensuring that the reader fixates at the optimal location to identify the word, while eliminating the time required for the reader to compute this location and move their eyes to it.

Spritz takes almost the opposite approach to increasing reading speed as the “standard” approaches to speed reading spruiked in hundreds of YouTube clips.

These methods assume that sequential word-by-word reading is the major barrier to rapid reading and advocate a variety of methods designed to break this habit and adopt non-sequential scanning strategies, such as moving the eyes down the centre of the page, that are claimed to facilitate unconscious processing of relevant information in the text.

Despite the very different ways in which they aim to achieve it, the methods do, though, have a common goal of reducing subvocalisation - saying the words in your head - during reading. In standard methods, eliminating subvocalisation is a major focus of training.

In Spritz, it is an automatic outcome of “spritzing” because the average rate of speech is less than 200 wpm, so subvocalisation cannot be maintained at rates higher than that.

Comprehension (or lack thereof)

On the surface, Spritz is better aligned with scientific evidence about the skilled reading process than standard speed reading methods.

Even skilled readers fixate on most of the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) in a text, although they often skip over short function words (such as “to”, “in”, “on”, “the”) and highly predictable words.

Skilled readers’ general strategy is, therefore, more similar to the sequential strategy forced by Spritz than the non-sequential scanning strategies advocated by many standard approaches to increasing reading speed.

A sequential reading strategy is also important for comprehension, particularly in English where the order of words is important for meaning.

But at a deeper level, Spritz ignores critical aspects of the scientific evidence about eye movements in reading. Most importantly, it ignores the time and cognitive effort required to integrate the words in a text for comprehension.

savvysmilinginlove/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Although there is some truth to the claim that the relatively slow pace of eye movements reflects physical constraints on eye movements, it is primarily due to the cognitive demands of word identification and comprehension.

The time we fixate on words depends on their familiarity, predictability and length - the factors that determine the time required to identify and integrate their meanings.

We also pause at clause and sentence boundaries to conduct “wrap up” processes that are important for effective comprehension. Removing readers’ control over which words they fixate and how long they look at them reduces comprehension.

Reading vs speech

Systematic research conducted in the 1970s investigating “rapid serial visual presentation” (RSVP) methods that present text one word at a time found that comprehension fell rapidly beyond rates of about 500 wpm, particularly for texts longer than single sentences.

The Spritz developers’ assertion that retention levels are at least as high as for traditional reading requires more detail to convincingly demonstrate that using the ORP overcomes these limits on comprehension.

Essentially, Spritz forces people to process written language like speech – one word at a time with no opportunity to go back to check any errors in word identification or interpretation, as we do quite frequently during normal reading.

Obviously, we are very effective at understanding speech, and can apply those same skills to spritzing. But speech contains a range of additional cues, such as intonation, pauses and gestures, which all contribute to comprehension.

Just Ard/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Speech is also usually simpler than written language and focused on well-defined topics, reducing the demands on working memory associated with its sequential presentation.

Most critically, the typical rate of speech is around 200 wpm. The convergence with the typical rate of reading may be accidental, but most cognitive scientists would attribute the similarity to the bottleneck caused by the attention and memory processes required for comprehension in both modalities.

These concerns about comprehension may be of little relevance for the social media applications that Spritz is designed for. Such content may be closer to spoken than written language in its complexity.

Spritzing may be an effective delivery mode for tweets of less than 140 characters and for small-screen devices where there is little opportunity for readers to scan text.

However, the need for users to stare even more fixedly at the middle of a screen may exacerbate the anti-social impact of such devices.

Where to for the written word?

Mohammed Nairooz/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Will spritzing yield transferable skills that benefit reading of standard text?

The claims about extraordinary increases in reading speed with training in standard approaches to speed reading have not survived scientific scrutiny, but the skimming strategies they teach are useful in many reading contexts.

Perhaps similar benefits will follow from Spritz users discovering that they can understand text without “saying the words in their head”.

This may encourage the use of more flexible strategies in “normal” reading contexts - but Spritz reinforces a sequential approach to reading that is incompatible with the flexible, meaning-guided scanning strategy needed for effective skimming.

Perhaps most frighteningly for a reading researcher - and reader - like me, the speech-like processing encouraged by Spritz might contribute to our evolution towards the world envisaged in Spike Jonze’s recent film Her, in which written text has become an anachronism.

Deprived of exposure to text, readers may gradually lose the sensitivity to the structure of written language that underlies our capacity to locate the ORP for words and capitalise on the multiple cues in written text that contribute to effective comprehension.

But maybe I am just revealing my age - or smartphone envy.


Sally Andrews receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

I'm a British Bangladeshi Muslim Academic: It's About Confidence

Aminul Hoque. Photograph: PR

by Aminul Hoque, The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/nov/05/muslim-academic-outreach-aminul-hoque

Aminul Hoque is a lecturer in educational studies at Goldsmiths, University of London - follow it on Twitter @GoldsmithsUoL

Having struggled himself, Aminul Hoque believes in personal support to build confidence in the disadvantaged young.

A combination of happy accidents, luck and hard work has led me into an academic career, along with encouragement from my peers, family and mentors, being determined to prove my A-level sociology tutor wrong and a scholarship to study for a PhD. 

Now I'm here, it feels like a calling. I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I was born in a mud hut in a small village in northeastern Bangladesh. My father had been living and working in Britain since the early 1960s so we all joined him in 1980.

I grew up in a predominantly Bangladeshi tight-knit neighbourhood in Tower Hamlets and my dominant memories were of extreme poverty, overcrowding, experiencing racism and playing football with my friends.

My father was determined to ensure that all his children succeeded and viewed education as essential. He didn't possess the literacy skills to help us with our homework, however his discipline, morals and hard work ethic were what inspired me and my five siblings.

Eventually I went to the University of Sussex and discovered I had a very analytical mind, with an aptitude for reading and learning.

I love what I do. I love the intellectual stimulation, but also the flexibility of the role and how supportive people are around me.

In particular I love discussing issues that are personal and important to me with colleagues and students: the cultural identity of young people, the sociological discussion of disadvantage, alienation, injustice and discrimination, the importance of class and race in society and the somewhat complex question of what it means to be a British Bangladeshi Muslim.

This beautiful marriage between the personal and the professional enables me to enjoy my work.

It is not just colleagues but also students who push you and give surprisingly honest responses. Students often candidly share their thoughts and opinions about their own cultural experiences of class, race and gender.

For me, the key aim of education must be to enable your students to be open, to critically analyse and develop the confidence to question. Education, for me, has to be a two-way process.

I have three young children under five and as a community activist, father and academic, I often wonder about the future of my children in Britain. How will they manage their conflicting identities of being Bangladeshi, British, Muslim and Londoners?

Like my father, I also feel that education will be key for them to carve out a position in society. It will also enable them to be open minded, intelligent and equip them to fight the discrimination that they will no doubt encounter as Bangladeshi Muslim females.

I recently took my eldest daughter for a campus tour of Goldsmiths. I wanted her to see daddy's working environment and to experience the vibrancy of higher education.

It obviously worked, as she has since said to me she wants to be a lecturer when she is older - though she's only four so still has a few years to wait.

Over the years, alongside academia, I have been able to work for charities and voluntarily on the streets with young people, which has been essential for keeping my work grounded.

Often, this would entails working anti-social hours with some of the most disadvantaged and hard to reach young people across London. Many were involved in gang-related behaviour and the majority had left school without qualifications.

Having struggled myself, I believe that getting more disadvantaged young people into higher education is about building confidence.

Many disengaged young people I've worked with have been among the most intelligent I've ever met, however they're not going anywhere because they don't have support.

Aged between 16 and 18, many young people can so easily become invisible and just dissolve into the system - their family, youth sub-cultures, unemployment, crime. It can be frustrating to be a young person in a technological, globalised world where identities have become fuzzy and complex.

Building up young people's confidence takes time and attention, but it really can work. Just look at my story.

While there are existing schemes run by universities to work with the disengaged, there need to be plenty more. Many disadvantaged groups still hold the attitude that British universities are stuck-up.

It is certainly not true of my university and I'm sure few academics and higher educational professionals would say it of theirs. So we all need to do more on the ground to change that perception and open up opportunities - in education and life.

My College Days and My Love for Math and Science

Virginia Tech's Main Eggleston Hall (Wikipedia)

by Emily D Iannielli

I remember as a student the day I first stepped on the Virginia Tech campus and became a part of the school and community in Blacksburg, Virginia.

It was one of the best times in my life.

We all want to learn and develop as individuals and when we attend college we hope we find the school that will help to challenge us and bring out our very best.

I remember deciding on many schools in the process before I made my selection and I also attended a two year college initially where I was closer to home and was able to take a similar curriculum that would be considered for transfer.

I studied my first two years at Nassau Community College where I majored in Engineering Science which was designed to represent the first two year's of studies towards an Engineering degree.

In the first two years I took the typical math, science and engineering requirements consisting of the following:

Math - Calculus I, Calculus II, Multivariable Calculus (III), Linear Algebra and Differential Equations
Physics - Phy 122 Waves, Fluids, Heat; Phy 222 Electricity & Magnetism
Chemistry - Inorganic Chemistry I, Inorganic Chemistry II
Engineering Science - Statics (I), Dynamics (II), Circuit Analysis (III)
Business - Accounting I, Accounting II
Liberal Arts - Economics, Composition I & II, French I & II, Gym

I was all excited upon completing the first two years' requirements and was now preparing for transfer to a 4 year college with a challenging engineering program.

I remember looking at several schools within NY and outside of NY. I attended school campuses at Stony Brook, NY-SUNY Stony Brook; Hempstead NY-Hofstra University; Potsdam, NY -Clarkson University; Buffalo, NY-SUNY Buffalo; Troy, NY-RPI.

I also attended campuses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia and I found the process of choosing one school difficult because I liked all the schools I visited and I was impressed by the faculty and the students at each campus.

I even had the opportunity of talking with some of the engineering students which was very helpful.

I knew I would receive a fine education at any of the schools I had to choose from and since I really fell in love with Virginia Tech and the Blacksburg community I decided on attending there.

I also had an uncle who studied Electrical Engineering there and worked for Grumman and IBM before going on to become an attorney. I remember the first time I visited the campus with my parents after the 8 hour drive how beautiful and huge it was.

I was very impressed with the school, the campus, the community, the students and the faculty. I knew I would be challenged and I would learn and obtain a fine education.

As an engineering student there are many options and areas of study to choose from and I was interested in learning and being challenged. I remember as a young student always wanting to understand how things worked and being able to physically experience it.

I learned a lot from my dad who was an ironworker and an artist. He loved his work as an ironworker so much that he would create small scale models out of cardboard, tooth picks, shoe boxes and balsa wood of what fascinated him.

He was so very talented and I found he really brought to life the things he saw each and every day on the job sites.

He built bridges, tower cranes, skyscrapers and airplanes all from images in his mind that he translated onto canvas as a drawing and then into 3 dimensional models all from simple things.

He was so very creative and talented and I just loved to sit with him and watch him work in recreating these items to such detail.

This was my early boyhood memories that sparked my interest in wanting to understand how things are constructed, how they work and how wonderful it is to take a concept, draw it and design it and see it come to life.

My dad was a big influence in sparking my interest in engineering and my mother was a big influence in sparking my interest in mathematics and numbers. I took a little bit of both from my mom and dad.

My parents were so proud when I chose to study Engineering and decided on Virginia Tech. I chose the Mechanical Engineering program and I knew I would learn all that I had hoped and would document things in a lab setting.

I realized I was now becoming a young man and I was learning from some of the top minds who were educated in prestigious institutions. I was so impressed with the faculty and the schools they attended. Most of them had masters degrees and PhD's and they were from many different countries.

In studying I realized I was at the library most every day and I was constantly studying as I expected. In my first year of studies I took the typical 3rd year courses expected of a mechanical engineering student. In Virginia Tech instead of semesters we had 3 quarters and summer school.

I remember my favorite courses were Thermodynamics and Heat transfer. I was strong in the applications of calculus and realized that all the engineering and physics classes I took all were based on the foundations of calculus.

As you learn the principles of engineering concepts you start to realize how great it is to actually understand how processes work and properly document them in the lab and in your reports.

As you start to advance to the next course you see how things build upon themselves and how you need to always retain what you learn in each class as the education is progressive.

Life at Virginia Tech was not all about studying. I also enjoyed the college experience there and the sporting events. Going to a recognized NCAA college you get to see and experience some exciting football games.

I remember seeing my first football game at Lane Stadium where Virginia Tech took on Wake Forest and it was a nationally televised event. It was exciting and the atmosphere was indescribable.

I remember seeing in the crowd the college colors of Maroon and Orange, of which I also was a part of with my Virginia Tech shirt.

I remember the shouts of Hokie pride and the enthusiasm of being caught up in the excitement. I also attended Virginia Tech basketball games at Cassel Coliseum which kept me at the edge of my seat.

It was always fun seeing our team win whether it was football, basketball, baseball or cross country running.

In experiencing college it is important to have all these types of experiences as they really help shape you and give you a complete picture of the school and its history.

I made some friends in school and welcomed the opportunity of studying together, eating together and attending sporting events together. We also had movie nights where we would see current release movies and also attended some rock concerts. I even had a chance to go skiing in the mountains of Virginia with some of my fellow engineering classmates.

It was a time I consider very special and as I look back I realize how fast it goes by. It seems we all hope to learn and grow and become a better person and we realize that education is very important in our lives.

I also have fond memories of looking on the professor's bulletin board for our posted grades before leaving to go home after a school quarter. I frequented the bulletin boards for many things such as apartment listings, employment opportunities on campus and rides home.

I was fortunate to always find a ride home as I did not yet have a car on campus. I always looked forward to the trips home to see my family during the holidays. I did miss my parents and family when I was away at school but I grew to get used to it.

I was well taken care of at Virginia Tech and I had made some really good friends there. I do remember on occasion having to go to the infirmary for a night or two upon feeling sick and the nurses were great in helping me get back to feeling better and to my classes once again.

It is very hard to miss a class and you really don't want to unless you are very sick. Luckily I only had two experiences of being that sick which was at most a day or two.

I also remember my favorite treat outside of the school dining program was going to a favorite hangout to get the best tasting chili dogs. I actually looked forward to those outings and it was a good break in between my engineering studies.

As I look back on my time at Virginia Tech I can honestly say it was a great experience for me and it prepared me for adulthood and I truly was challenged and I have fond memories of the school, the campus, the faculty and the experience.

The hardest thing I had to come to terms with at Virginia Tech which was way after my time there was learning of the campus shooting tragedy that occurred there on April 16, 2007. I would never in my life have ever expected something as tragic as this occurring at such a wonderful school.

I cried when I saw the reports and learned the facts. I don't understand why these things happen and I feel very sad for the families who lost a loved one.

It seemed like just an ordinary day but fate and history would tell a very different story. I pray for all those who perished that fateful day and for their families.

I believe Virginia Tech is one of the greatest and most dynamic schools in the country and it should be known for its impressive programs of study and not marred by the senseless tragedy.

If you are considering Engineering or a great school that offers many fine academic, engineering and agricultural programs then you should consider Virginia Tech.

The engineering department has been in the news many times for their fine accomplishments and recently for their program in designing a car that is made for the blind to drive. It is one of many great things that is happening at Virginia Tech.

To this day I still enjoy visiting at the campus, walking around there with my family and taking in a football game. The landscape is pretty much the same but there are some subtle changes.

Now the hangouts there that are popular with the college crowd are Starbuck's which were not there when I attended. The memorial is profound and very touching and out of respect for those who perished we also visited the campus memorial for the students and professors lost that fateful day.

I talk to my son about my experiences at Virginia Tech and I find no matter how many years go by I still remember them as if they happened only yesterday. I also enjoy watching the NCAA football games and watching the Hokies play and cheering them on with my son by my side!

Go Hokies! Go Virginia Tech!!

The most important time in our life is deciding what we want to do with our life and the days we spent in college. They are very special as they help shape us, teach us and help us to believe in ourselves.

The professors were all so brilliant and made me realize the need to study and work hard to achieve my success. It was not easy but it was a major accomplishment in my life graduating and starting my career which I would not be able to pursue without my college education.

Engineering is a very rewarding discipline and it takes dedication and commitment to do the best you can. You need discipline and a thorough knowledge of calculus and physics and a desire to succeed.

Virginia Tech was my life for almost 3 years and my start at Nassau Community as a Engineering Major was very special and memorable.

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Survey of the Day: Younger Americans Want Great Library Programs and Spaces More Than E-Books

by Sara Johnson, The Atlantic Cities: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/06/survey-day-younger-americans-want-great-library-programs-and-spaces-more-e-books/6019/

If there's one thing older generations like to complain about today's young people, it's their devotion to electronic devices.

What kind of world will we end up with if kids these days are all reading books on their smart phones?

Which leads to the question of the future of libraries, the public's brick-and-mortar meccas for the printed word, which despite increased usage post-recession are still struggling to keep their doors open.

A Pew Research Center report released today offers some insight into the minds of the very same younger Americans who will grow up to define what our libraries will become.

Among young people (which Pew here defines as 16-29 years old), 75 percent had read at least one print book in the last year, versus just 25 percent who had read at least one e-book.

And when it comes to libraries themselves, turns out Millennials are much more bullish on them than you might expect:

 The blue bars in the chart above represent the percentage of surveyed young people who say libraries "should definitely" implement a particular policy.

Over half favor increasing e-book choices, but are split on moving books out of public reach (23 percent say definitely yes, 29 percent say definitely no).

Notice that the four highest-ranked ideas have nothing to do with checking out books or electronic tools: they're about community programs and library spaces.

Sara Johnson is a fellow at The Atlantic Cities. All posts »

Why I Became a Science Teacher: I Want to Raise the Aspirations of My Students

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, M.D. (Wikipedia)

Schools Improvement Net: http://schoolsimprovement.net/why-i-became-a-science-teacher-i-want-to-raise-the-aspirations-of-my-students/

Teaching was going to be a stopgap for Kevin Onabiyi, but once in the classroom he found it impossible to leave and soon become head of teaching and learning in his school.

Here’s an extract of his story from the Guardian.

It wasn’t until I started my first placement, at Sarah Bonnell school in Stratford, that I got the teaching bug.

I got the first job I applied for, teaching science at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (EGA), a girls school in north London.

I’m the kind of person who likes to have a goal, so I decided to teach at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson for five years and then go for a job as head of year in another school, as I realised almost straight away that the pastoral side of the job was my particular interest.

So that was the plan, but just two years later I got the job as head of year. My teaching load was reduced to 42 periods every two weeks to give me time to do the pastoral side of the role with years 8 and 9.

Year 8 is a pivotal time at school and there can often be a dip in attitude after the novelty of year 7 has worn off and it’s time to work harder.

I worked to embed a motto in my students’ hearts - that there is no excuse for failure, and that is true in every area from punctuality, attendance, behaviour, attainment and involvement.

When a new headteacher came to EGA, she decided to reorganise our systems so one head would stay with the same year group of children take them all through the school up until year 11.

So then I realised then I needed to learn about pastoral care for key stage four, there was so much to learn and I found it so interesting that I wanted to stay at EGA.

Last year I became associate assistant head and in charge of teaching and learning for the whole school and the pastoral side of supporting other year heads in the school. This has been a wonderful challenge.

I also lead student voice and the seniors (EGA’s version of prefects). Throughout all this time I have been teaching science as well which I am passionate about.

So, my top tips for teachers just starting their careers is enjoy the kids you’re teaching. Sometimes they are so hard to get on with but if you love the people you serve, you put everything into it.

This is especially true in schools in inner London where sometimes the support and care from parents isn’t quite there and so what happens in school becomes so much more important.

Also be in love with your subject you are teaching. Teaching isn’t just a job, really you can’t just go to work and plod through the day - children’s lives are involved.

More at: Why I became a science teacher: I want to raise the aspirations of my students

Surviving the High School Years

Surviving High School (Photo: Wikipedia)

by Connie H Deutsch

High school was not a happy time for me. I was painfully shy and always felt as though I was on the outside looking in.

I knew that I would love college but I also knew that I just had to get through high school as quickly as I could.

Toward that end, I went to school every semester, summer, winter, spring, and fall, with no breaks in between.

It was during this time that I became aware of the Go-Getters, a service organization that seeks to promote school and community spirit in support of interschool competitive activities.

Theoretically, anyone could join. I say theoretically because the only ones who passed the interview process were the popular girls. I was not one of them.

The old saying, "birds of a feather flock together" was absolutely true during those years. I didn't have any close friends but I did have some study partners as well as three other girls who weren't popular and who didn't fit in.

Needless to say, if you weren't popular and you didn't fit in, you also didn't get invited to parties.
As a deep introvert, I didn't care about not being invited to parties but I did care about not getting into the Go-Getters because I wanted to make a difference. I wasn't aware that their purpose was to promote sporting events; I just thought that they were promoting our school and our community.

One day, I called my three friends, the other girls who were as unpopular as I was and told them my idea.

I decided that the four of us should form our own club, a secret club, and no one would be allowed to know that our total membership was four girls.

As a response to the Go-Getters, a club that rejected my membership, I decided that our club would be named the We-Gottems. The Go-Getters had black satin jackets with Go-Getters emblazoned on the back of their jackets and the member's name on the front of it and I decided that our We-Gottems would do the same with our jackets.

I remember taking one of my jackets and embroidering We-Gottems on the back of it and my name over the pocket in front. The other girls did the same with their jackets. And we wore our jackets to school and didn't answer questions about our club. When anyone asked, we said our membership was secret.

One day, I decided that we needed to do something a little more adventuresome so I told my friends that we should have a party and invite a few popular Go-Getters and a few popular boys and tell the boys the names of the popular girls who were going to be there and tell the girls the names of the popular boys who had accepted our invitation.

Surprisingly enough, it worked. My three friends and I were no more popular than before but at least we were no longer on the outside looking in. We were at this party with the popular people.

When anyone asked us where our other members were, we told them they had other commitments. No one asked us the hard questions about our club; they were just happy to be invited to a party where other popular students were invited.

I probably would have been ignored except that the party was being held at my house. We had a gramophone and I was kept busy winding the handle and changing the vinyl 78 rpm records for dancing, so at least I had something to do with my time.

After we saw how successful that party was, I asked my friends how they felt about having more parties, using the same strategy. They went along with my idea and every few weeks we would have another party.

We invited different Go-Getters to each party and different popular boys who hadn't been invited to the other parties. That way, no one could guess that these parties were being held by the same four girls and that we had no one else in our club. The girls and boys looked forward to being invited to our parties because popular students were always there.

I was always coming up with new ideas to make the We-Gottems visible without giving away our secret membership. The one thing I noticed was that no one cared as long as they were considered popular enough to be included.

That was a huge learning experience for me. Imagine that!! Popular students were concerned about other students thinking they were popular enough to be included. Whodathunkit?

I wasn't allowed to date until I was sixteen, my senior year, but the other boys and girls were all old enough to go out on dates so there were no longer enough students to invite to our parties. The club had served our purpose so we disbanded it and began to concentrate on our college entrance exams.

Unfortunately, the best lessons in life are often revealed to us many years after we experience them. So, too, with the lessons I learned from those high school years. It took a lot of years to realize that I was creative enough to make lemonade from lemons and that no matter what the circumstances, I would always find a way to survive. It's a lesson that has served me well.

Connie H. Deutsch is an internationally known business consultant and personal advisor who has a keen understanding of human nature and is a natural problem-solver. She is known throughout the world for helping clients find workable solutions to complex problems.

Connie has hosted her own weekly radio show, been a weekly guest on a morning radio show, done guest spots on radio shows around the country, and appeared as a guest on a cable television show.

Connie wrote a weekly newspaper Advice Column for sixteen years and has been invited to speak at local colleges and given lectures around the country. She also wrote the scripts for a weekly financial show on cable television.

Connie is the author of the books, "Whispers of the Soul," "A Slice of Life," and "The Counseling Effect" and she is the co-author of an eBook, "Getting Rich While the World Falls Apart" which is being offered as a free download on her website.

She has also written and produced two CDs on Meditation and Relationships and has done coaching on customer service and employee relationships. Her website: http://www.conniehdeutsch.com/ See more of her articles by clicking here ConnieHDeutsch Articles

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PARODY: How Children Construct Meaning in the Math Classroom

Students editing 3D models on the interactive whiteboards (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Jane Thursday

In my classroom, students construct their own learning. We as teachers should stop teaching, so that our students can learn.

I once taught school in a school that required me to use a pacing guide to ensure that the students are learning all of the required objectives. I'm glad those days are over!

When the kids decide what they are going to learn, there's no practical way to set a pace.

I often just don't feel like teaching.I go into the classroom, sit at my desk, and put my head down. On these days the students know that they are constructors of their own learning. This is also known as project-based learning.

Just last week my students used project time to launch sharpened pencils at the cork board. One kid got the idea to launch the pencils with rubber bands. It didn't work, and he actually ended up hurting himself. It was all in the spirit of constructing meaning though, so no harm no foul.

In an open classroom like mine, there are no boundaries. Well, I do tell the kids that the windows in the classroom are boundaries, especially since we had that unfortunate incident last year.

We've got a new principal. He's really smart. Unlike the last principal who was fired immediately for referring to instructional practices at the school as "touchy feely hippie do do." The new principal is so positive and so full of encouragement! He will tell you straight out, "I don't know your content."

He's into reflective listening, meaning that he listens to what he hears and then repeats it in a different way. All the time! It's awesome that anything I say - no matter what - he'll repeat it in different terms. Sometimes we speak like a pirate just to hear him retell pirate-speak in his own words.

The most important thing about teaching math is to never, ever tell kids the correct answer. They need to arrive at the correct answers themselves. This is especially true in the area of multiplication.

I'm proud to say that every child at my school goes home with a blue ribbon in our annual multiplication table contest. That's because no answer is considered more correct than another answer. I mean you don't see nuclear chemists get all upset about correct proportions, now do you?

We don't give grades either. Grades might make some children feel more successful than others, thus setting them up for failure. Instead we give students sticky notes in different colors. We don't tell the kids what the colors mean. We just let them guess.

It's great to read the kids' journal entries on their progress in my class. They are so full of questions! "What are we supposed to be doing in here?" "When are we going to use numbers?" "Is this really a math class?" It is through questions like these that kids begin to apply what they get from my class to the real world. I often tell the kids that in real life there may not be actual numbers!

My students take the state's standardized test at the end of each year. Last year, I spent a lot of time preparing them to take the test. Gotta get those test scores up! In order to really make our constructivist instructional methods pay off, I allowed the kids to color the bubbles in on the multiple choice questions with crayons and markers. The girls especially wanted to use glitter, and the boys gravitated toward the scissors.

That just goes to show you that every child is unique. Besides, far be it from me to interfere with the natural learning processes of the young mind, right? We don't have the test results back yet from the state, but they must have been pretty good because the state's Department of Education sent an officer down from the State Bureau of Investigation.

It was weird at first, but I know he was impressed because he was feverishly taking notes while observing my class. I'm just glad my excellent teaching practices are finally getting the recognition they deserve!

About the author

Jane Thursday is a freelance writer, a mother of two young children, and an elementary school principal. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership, a master's degree in school administration, and 6-12 English Language Arts teaching licensure. She has studied public education in the United States, South Africa, the Philippines, and England.

Read more articles like this one at http://www.janethursday.com

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