DancingSamurai.ca

I mentioned Wolfram Alpha back in June on my blog. Well, it’s come a little ways since then, and solves equations very neatly for you. Even shows you the steps!

Very, very cool…

(via BoingBoing)

Well, still cleaning up my hard drive… and found something else funny…

One of the my classmates back at medical school sent these out at the end of our pre-clerkship days… he’d been taking notes about all the funny things our crazy professors said during lectures. Ahh… brings back memories.

(more…)

I was cleaning up my hard drive and stumbled across this e-mail I had saved. I wrote it back when I was a student at Ottawa U and a member of the EDS (English Debating Society) there.

I seem to remember some argument or other that was happening on our e-mail list… and this was my interjection (I guess I was having an odd day).

Subject: Re: [englishdebatingsociety] none really…

Fellow bags of water,

I’d like to bring this case before you on the part of the tiny couriers that make these message exchanges possible… I implore you to side with me and cease this reckless waste of electrons! The poor things zip around all day at significant fractions of the speed of light, passing messages to photon couriers in the fiber optic cables, all for naught but sparing sips of Jolt (the ‘lectric juice, not the popular cola!). They do all this out of the kindness of their tiny lepton hearts; at least have the compassion and gratitude to relieve them of these sensless errands (Think of the electrons!).

Please, for all our sakes, lest you spark a giant sub-nuclear particle uprising (they’ve been our slaves for so long… but this kind of behaviour will surely anger them!), put them to more mindful work than sharing pet names and fantasies across the ether of the space that is not!

– [DancingSamurai]

(PS Don’t mind me I had a weird day)
(PPS Not responsible for misfirings of your neural net while attempting to decipher this message)
(PPPS – Somewhat on-topic, I wish everyone best of luck this weekend)

With the copyright consultations under way, a great article regarding copyright and its importance to education in the digital age:

In this increasingly complex media world, media literacy is the most effective tool we have to provide children and youth with the necessary critical thinking skills to maximize the benefits of media and new technologies and minimize the risks.

In short, media literacy is essential. Citizens who lack the ability to question, engage with and create media are at a disadvantage as consumers and citizens and are all too likely to be left behind in the knowledge economy. Canada has been a world leader in getting media education into the classroom, to the point where it is now an essential component of the core curricula of all provinces and territories.

(via Michael Geist)

So it seems the UK is enacting new legislation that anyone who has anything to do with kids even briefly needs a police check. (This may in fact be wrong, some commenters on the article seem to indicate only ppl with ‘regular’ or frequent contacts need it). While this certainly makes sense for teachers etc, Charlie Stross points out that it does not make sense for authors giving a talk at a school, for example. And there are dangers of false positives.

Perhaps more interesting is the discussion Cory’s BoingBoing post on the subject spawned. Buried in the comments is a link to an article, “The Catastrophe of Compliance” [Local cache: The Catastrophe of Compliance]:

I was asked to work with a group of young people who had been in substitute care and were now almost ready to “emancipate.” The youth were all close to 17 years of age.

[...]

At the end of treatment, this was the result of our work?! Our “protective” intervention?! Our treatment, our healing?!

They were afraid to ask for anything, even if it wasn’t for real. Those not afraid didn’t like the idea. Those willing to try weren’t sure exactly how to go about it. (They were about to be sent out on their own to ask for jobs, apartments, dates, respect, help.) They didn’t know how to say “no,” even if it wasn’t for real. (They couldn’t say “no” to their abusers, and now we were through with them and they couldn’t say “no” to anyone, even a peer with no power over them.) They couldn’t write, and they couldn’t speak, and they couldn’t look each other in the eye. And we were through with them.

Where does Lenore Skenazy find these distressing stories?

Paul Blunt, development manager at the East Beds School Sports Partnership, said the “ultimate fear” was that a child could be abducted.

“If we let parents into the school they would have been free to roam the grounds. All unsupervised adults must be kept away from children.

“An unsavoury character could have come in and we just can’t put the children in the event or the students at the host school at risk like that. The ultimate fear is that a child is hurt or abuducted, and we must take all measures possible to prevent that.”

I’ve ranted (or at least, linked to a rant) about the sad state of education in Canada these days. A new globe article by Margaret Wente has more… (Local Cache: we-pretend-to-teach-em-they-pretend-to-learn-globe)

It’s no wonder so many university students are floundering. The teacher’s job is no longer to educate them up to a certain standard but to “meet their needs.” They come from a background where no one has demanded much of them, where there are no consequences, and life is deadline-free. On top of that, no one has ever given them an accurate assessment of their skills.

[...]

If we had a motto for this vast charade, it might be this: “We pretend to teach them, and they pretend to learn.”

The trouble is that giving students a no-consequences education will have plenty of unpleasant consequences for us. A few years ago, our kids merely had to compete with one another. But now they’re growing up into a world where they’ll be competing with kids educated in India and China and South Korea, where the competition is ferocious.

I’ve met some of these kids. For them, life is Darwinian. They’re going to eat our lunch.

What’s the answer? I’m not sure, but I’m certainly searching for one, with a baby boy on the way. Ultimately I guess this is another situation where the parents will have to take more responsibility for their kids, by imposing the expectations and requirements that the teachers (hands tied by government or not) refuse to… gee, homeschooling is looking better and better, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, by the time most people figure out this is an issue, I fear North America will be the dirt end of nowhere, run by lazy, ignorant, under-achievers, and our culture, technology, and economy will be eclipsed by the fiercely competitive East.

Oh, my bad, we’re already there. Too late!

I heard ‘entitlement’ was a running theme among today’s students, but this is ridiculous:

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Although the overall tone of the above article is not supportive of this ‘A for effort’ attitude, it doesn’t dissuade it enough. Commentary here and here is much more like it:

Desire, drive, and effort are all necessary for success. But they are not sufficient. And that’s a distinction some students have difficulty grasping.

(via Sandwalk)