Archive for April, 2007
Michigan’s in debt but they want to buy iPods
April 11th, 2007 • 1 comment education
This op ed is nearly a week old but I’ve had it on the back burner. Michigan’s idea is spot on except for the fact that they’re far too in debt to really accomplish this without making some serious cuts elsewhere. But this isn’t about debt or taxes, it’s about the possible future of this endeavour.
Many schools, especially post-secondary, are struggling to find ways to deliver their content to their students. Kids these days are becoming more and more distant in class while at the same time becoming less extroverted with their peers. This means children are doing less physical socializing and more digital socializing. With digital audio players such as iPods getting cheaper by the week, children are engrossing themselves with them more and more in order to stay within their own personal space. So what does this have to do with school? Well, since schools are struggling to get children actually interested in learning, many are starting to produce podcast lectures and put their work into other portable media formats for students who want their information on-the-go and in any format they so choose. This now enables students who prefer their white earbuds to white lined paper can now keep up with the rest of the class all the while staying within their own private circle of solitude, hooked into their own digital medium.
At my last job, one of my coworkers worked for nearly a year to get this set up for our students. Once fully implemented, the students actually started improving their grades and understanding of subjects once we got the video lectures posted to their Blackboards and the MP3s of their lectures uploaded. Since they were able to immediately subscribe to their class’s podcasts and grab the media enclosures, they soon sent them to their iPods and went on their way and amazingly started to learn. Now the school’s budget for this small project went from a little over $100,000 to nearly $1M USD in a year’s time because of the sheer increase in student achievement. Instead of just a few classrooms outfitted with the proper equipment and facilities to produce digital classes, they’ve increased the number to over 30 I believe. And we weren’t the first school to try this, we certainly were one of the only ones to do it on such a grand scale in such a small amount of time.
Now, what does all of this have to do with Michigan? They’re trying to learn from their contemporaries and give students their lectures in a portable format and give the students the means to make these formats portable for them without any cost for the student or the parents, directly. Instead of less fortunate students admiring a classmate’s shiny new iPod, they all get iPods so there’s no “me too” syndrome to be had. With this, they’re enabling their students to learn how and when they want to and there’s little to no worry about envy or jealousy from students about who has what since they’re all on a level playing field. Unfortunately for Michigan, this will mean a hike in taxes in order to support this and with their current debt, many people are outraged. Instead, they’re seeing this from the short-term effects instead of the long-term effects it could mean for their children and future students and their education. If children are the future and education is key, why cut off such an enabling endeavour from the outset?
I know from previous experience that the upfront costs are high but once you’re over that initial hump, most of the cost is a one-time cost. Michigan can buy a few million iPods in bulk, at what will most likely be a very deep discount through Apple Education or PowerSchool, and from there on, they get to outfit a few million students with a new learining tool that can really enable them to learn. From that, depending on success rate, they could continue to purchase iPods and in lower numbers since you do not have to give out new iPods to each student each year, your monetary output diminishes each year. And once the students leave high school, they’ll just take their iPods with them and hopefully use the same techniques in college to further their education.
While I can see why people are lambasting this idea from the get go, they need to look further into this and see how other schools and other school districts are succeeding with similar — if not identical — educational endeavours.
What a busy week!
April 7th, 2007 • 1 comment chatter
I’ve been extremely busy so I really don’t know what’s been happening in the world. I have spent most of the week looking for a new job as a Linux Systems Administrator due to current ethical issues at my current employer. If any of you run web hosting companies or know people that do and they’re looking for admins, feel free to share my info, I need something new fast.
Most of the week has also been spent winding down from work by playing Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360. I’ve been waiting to buy this game ever since I heard that Dethklok’s Thunderhorse was an included bonus track. Now that I’ve unlocked that song, I spend more time playing it than any other songs because it’s that awesome. Dethklok’s full length debut is due to be released from the Williams Street Records imprint in mere months now. Also, the rest of the game rocks, no pun intended.
Tonight, along with my girlfriend and my best friend Matt, we all watched Grindhouse. I’ve been drawn to this movie since I first heard that Rodriguez and Tarantino were making grindhouse films which I pretty much grew up on. If you don’t know what grindhouse is, it’s nothing you can go to Blockbuster and pick up, it’s old school. Grindhouse movies were typified by sexploitation films and brutally violent, even for the 70s, horror/terror movies. All of the movies were campy, usually poorly directed, and typically contains lots of nudity and blood splatters. 80s horror and slasher films were solely inspired by grindhouse because without grindhouse, there would have never been the same level of outright gore nor the obligatory topless scene seen in so many 80s horror films. Almost all of the over-the-top humour and camp demonstrated in any horror movie since 1980 can pretty much tip its hat to grindhouse movies for making gory camp fun and accepted.
Grindhouse stereotypes everything viewers do not want to see but will watch out of morbid curiousity. And this is where Grindhouse takes its cue. Rodgriguez’s film is chock full of never-ending ammunition, pretty ladies, and metric tonnes of blood (and zombies!). It’s a direct take on many grindhouse movies and for that matter, a number of early horror flicks. If you grew up on horror like I did, you’ll love it. Tarantino’s film is a classic stalker/terror film with a strong Mad Max feel to it due to the fact it’s about a guy who stalks girls in his insanely built out “death proof” cars. In the end, the girls have their cake and eat it too. Many of the women from TXRD (Texas Roller Derby) make cameos in Death Proof and the chili bar most of them work at is a mainstay in the first half of the film.
It’s only Friday and this weekend’s shaping up to be pretty awesome. What’s in store for tomorrow? Car washes and vacuuming! Doesn’t that sound like fun?!
Let’s teach English like we teach Mathematics
April 3rd, 2007 • 2 comments education
Scrolling through my feed reader tonight after a wild round of Guitar Hero II, I found a little tidbit from science.reddit.com that wasn’t complete and utter crap: If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics…. Beware foreign readers it’s completely America-centric.
This is incredibly well written and well thought out. It goes on to question what if we were given the very basic skills in English, as we are in math until post-secondary school, and are thrust out into the world with them; how would we survive? Pretty horribly I’d say. The article states that children in America are taught from an early age that math sucks and you should hate it, vehemently hate it. Even until our last year of high school, we’re clubbed into thinking it’s pretty much useless because we’re not given any good reason to apply any maths outside of the classroom. American schools want us to add, subtract, multiply, divide and sometimes deal with fractions and percents. Other than that, we’re taught (and sometimes told) that anything we learn aside from that is disposable will never be used in the real world. If that was really true, why would anyone want to become a math teacher? Or an accountant (why would you want to at all anyway)? Or a mathematical scientist or any type of scientist? No one would want to and we’d all live in a simple country based on the basic building blocks of math nearly devoid of any types of technology or luxuries we currently enjoy.
So, apply this to English. What if we’re given the basic ability to write, read, spell, comprehend, and so on in respects to any written or verbal communication we would ever encounter in our entire lives. Sadly, I know it’s already going this way. Pick any teen off the street and ask them to spell something like extradite or ask them to tell you whether irregardless is a real word. Ask them to name any play by Shakespeare other than Romeo and Juliet or see if they can tell you what Animal Farm is really about. Kids these days are barely being taught how to physically write let alone how to properly write. Since I’ve lived in Florida, I’ve noticed every person I’ve known under the age of roughly 20 is language retarded. Yes, exceptions exist but they exist for everything. If you start talking about something other than whatever’s on MTV or MySpace, they glaze over. Ask them what defensetrate means and they tell you it has to do with Iraq or the Administration. Anyway, off on a tangent.
Back to the topic at hand. What if children today were taught basic English and were shoved off into the real world with no applicable knowledge or understanding of it? What if they were actually reading is pointless and proper grammar was useless? This is exactly how kids are taught Math in schools these days. You’re taught to learn the basics in the driest manner possible without any examples of real world application. We’re given the least knowledge possible about the broad concept and beauty of math and are simply told “You’ll love it or hate it but you have to deal with that. I’m paid to teach it either way.” Why are children being thrust out into the world with a paltry knowledge of maths? Is math less important than anything else they’re taught? I hardly think so. I hate math with a passion but not because I was given little knowledge of it, I just hate it because my brain simply doesn’t function in that way. But that’s not the point. If all we’re given for knowledge of English is how to simply write a sentence, grammar and spelling not withstanding, we’re not going to go very far in life. That’s exactly what’s happening with math these days in American schools (and to English as well).
Last year I finished up a nearly three year stay at a local University and I met thousands of students in my job there. I came across so many students that couldn’t get by on anything mathematical without the use of a calculator. About 97% of them managed to pass remedial math classes and only took what was required of them. No one wanted to take abstract maths or number theory because they saw no application in it. I’m glad those kids will never become programmers or accountants. The other 3% were students who were taught at an early age that math can be fun and have worthwhile meaning if you bother learning anything past 2+2=4.
This trend will not only continue but worsen as the years pass. Primary and secondary school math teachers usually never have advanced degrees in any maths so they’re truly limited in how they can teach a class. These people don’t eath, breathe, and live numbers, they just teach them. Until you get to college, you’re met with teachers whose mathematical prowess can usually be match or surpasses by a number of students they teach.
As America gets older, its population gets less intelligent and this will not change until parents make a stand about the poor state of the education system.
Pop parodies pop, begets laughs
April 3rd, 2007 • parody, pop music
So my only exposure to pop music these days is letting my girlfriend choose the radio station or play a CD otherwise it’s blistering death metal or dreary doom metal. But apparently, all those popsters are a bunch of fun loving folks and like to poke fun at each other. Alanis Morissette made a parody video of My Humps and it made it to BuzzFeed.
I didn’t watch the video yet but apparently it made a lot of buzz since every feed I read yesterday in my reader mentioned this more than once. I don’t particularly like Alanis nor BEP but maybe I’ll watch this just to laugh.
Carnival of the Infosciences #68
April 3rd, 2007 • blog, carnival, web
Seems I was also included in the 68th edition of the Carnival of the Infosciences carnival. That’s three of the 4 I sent articles to although, I had no idea I got included on this one, I found it through a referer!
So what got me in? My article on Semantic Web and education which was an obvious submission.
Carnival of the Godless #63
April 2nd, 2007 • atheism, blog, carnival
It’s finally up! I didn’t get in this time but hopefully, soon I will. Go have a good read of the delightful new CotG at Abstract Nonsense.
It’s a great read for this week as well.
Anti-plagiarism site sued for copyright infringement
April 2nd, 2007 • 1 comment copyright, education, web
Late last week, TechDirt chronicled an interesting article about Turnitin being sued for copyright infringement. I find this amazing. At my last job, I actually helped implement Turnitin campus-wide and it was a great success with the faculty but of course, hit a sour note with the less-than-original plagiarising students.
Apparently, these kids blatantly set up Turnitin to get sued. They registered their copyrighted papers before turning them into their teachers who then turned them into Turnitin. Now, they’ve turned around and sued for nearly $1MUSD in “damages” for these straight A students’ papers, that’s $150,000 a piece for each of the 6 papers turned in. Then one of the student’s fathers says this isn’t about money. If not, why are you suing a valuable educational resource for $150,000 for your child’s essay? I doubt they’re a literary genius and get paid handsomely for each of the essays they write in or outside of school. If it wasn’t about money, they’d be suing for Turnitin to change its entire business model and data warehousing techniques, not for $150,000 in “damages”.
I’m utterly flabbergasted not only by this obviously fake statement from a parent but by sheer insanity of the entire act. Would the students be far more at ease turning their papers in and then finding them for sale weeks later on the Internet? I don’t think so. Turnitin doesn’t do any commercial business off their database, they’re not selling the works whatsoever they’re simply selling access to it. They provide a service, not an end product. These students apparently think that Turnitin is archiving all of their data and selling it on some highly secretive literary black market for insane profits.
America is the land of a quick buck and it seems parents are startin’em early!
Woo, the weekend!
April 2nd, 2007 • 1 comment chatter, weekends
This weekend was excellent. We went to our first concert of the year: Gojira. That’s why there are three different crappy pictures from Sunday of some dudes on a stage. Since we’re not allowed to take cameras in without a press pass, my subpar cameraphone has to work as a substitute. Luckily Gojira was first so we didn’t have to waste time with the other bands on the bill (Machine Head, Trivium, Lamb of God in that order if you’re interested). In a few weeks, it’s time for mc chris at Ray’s Downtown Blues in West Palm.
We also cleaned up the apartment this weekend, mainly because I was going crazy not doing it. However, with the combination of Jess’s long hair and mine, we’re clogging up the vacuum cleaner more often and it’s difficult to vacuum weekly because of it although I need to because of allergies. Now the whole place is clean and smells amazing! Although, I learned it’s very hard to dust without any paper towels and even harder when all you have is bleach wipes 
.
I also finally solved my quandary with getting Google Calendar to sync with my T-Mobile Dash. I demo’d GooSync and it’s the best one I found. It’s also got the nicest UI of all 4 or 5 that I tried because after set up, it’s an easy one-handed operation to sync. I also mention this because I noticed a few Google hits coming in over the weekend about this very topic.
