The Global Syndicator - education

How to Deal With an Aging Brain?

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:29:31 +0000

An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure this is something all older Slashdotters are aware of: as I get older my once-sharp brain is, well, getting worse. In particular, I'm not able to remember things as well as I once did. As a geek my capacity in this area was always what defined me as a geek. Nowadays things seem to go in OK, but then leak out. A few weeks later I've mostly forgotten. So, I ask Slashdot: how do you cope with your mind getting older? What's your trick? Fish-oil? Brain Training on the DS? Exercise? Or just trying harder to remember things?"

Autocoaching

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:49:20 +0000

* Autocoaching definition: Coaching comes from the present participle of coach, to coach is to train and instruct. And auto- comes from ancient greek (αὐτός) meaning self or regarding oneself.

AutoCoaching is an interactive technique and one of the most efficient and effective ways to achieve goals in the business world. Autocoaching obtains results by capitalizing on one’s personal skills and resources.

Australian State May Give Students Linux Laptops

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:02:57 +0000

Whiteox writes "The Australian Prime Minister's plan to equip high schools with 'one laptop per child' may go open source. Kevin Rudd's $56 million digital revolution will include 'laptops [that will] run on an open source operating system with a suite of open source applications like those packaged under Edubuntu. This would include Open Office for productivity software, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox internet browser.' So far this has been considered for New South Wales and I think other states may follow."

How US Schools' Culture Stifles Math Achievement

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:18:04 +0000

Zarf writes "I'd like to file a bug report on the US educational system. The New York Times reports on a recent study that shows the US fails to encourage academic talent as a culture.'"There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn't really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics," said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.'s math department. "Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none."' While we've suspected that the US might be falling behind academically, this study shows that it is actually due to cultural factors that are devaluing the success of our students. I suspect there's a flaw in the US cultural system that prevents achievement on the academic front as valuable. Could anyone suggest a patch for this bug or is this cause for a rewrite?"

Mathematicians Deconstruct US News College Rankings

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:00:06 +0000

An anonymous reader writes "US News makes a mint off its college rankings every year, but do they really give meaningful information? A pair of mathematicians argues that the data the magazine uses is all likely to be at least somewhat relevant, but that the way the magazine weights the different statistics is pretty arbitrary. After all, different people may have different priorities. So they developed a method to compute the rankings based on any possible set of priorities. To do it, they had to reverse-engineer some of US News's data. What they found was that some colleges come out on top pretty much regardless of the prioritization, but others move around quite a lot. And the top-ranked university can vary tremendously. Penn State, which is #48 using US News's methodology, could be the best university in the country, by other standards."

Virginia Begins Open-Source Physics Textbook

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:46:10 +0000

eldavojohn writes "The Commonwealth of Virginia has issued a request for contributions to an open source physics textbook (or 'flexbook' they termed it). They are partnering with CK-12 to make this educational textbook under the Creative Commons by Attribution Share-Alike license."

Nonprofit Group Sends Filesharing Propaganda To Students

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:04:21 +0000

palegray.net writes "The National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit organization, has sent file-sharing propaganda to thousands of students. The supposedly 'educational' materials, presented in the form of a comic strip, are intended to frighten students with gross exaggerations of the legal consequences of sharing music online (lose your scholarship to college, go to jail for two years, and more). From the article: '"The Case of Internet Piracy," however, reads like the Recording Industry Association of America's public relations playbook: Download some songs, go to jail and lose your scholarship. Along the way, musicians will file onto the bread lines. "The purpose is basically to educate kids — middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television," said Lorri Montgomery, the center's communications director.' I'm not encouraging anyone to break any laws, but this is ridiculous. What's truly discouraging is the fact that several judges appear to be in full support of this sort of 'education.' The propaganda material is available in PDF form, and it lists the judges and others involved in its creation. Wired's post has a summary of the story (which is good, since the story is awful), and Techdirt notes a couple of the legal inaccuracies.

First Review of Intel's New Classmate PC

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:22:21 +0000

An anonymous reader writes "Intel gave the press a sneak preview of its 3rd generation Classmate PC at IDF. It looks like this guy managed to kidnap the only working sample for a while and write up a full report. It looks like a major departure from the original, with a rotating touch screen and Atom processor. There's no official word on pricing yet, but no doubt the OLPC guys will try to rain on Intel's parade."

Open-Source College Textbooks Gaining Mindshare

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:41:40 +0000

bcrowell writes "The LA Times has a front-page article about how open-source college textbooks are starting to gain traction. One author says, 'I couldn't continue assigning idiotic books that are starting to break $200,' and describes attempts by commercial publishers to bribe faculty to use their books. The Cal State system has started a Digital Marketplace to help faculty find out about their options for free and non-free digital textbooks, and the student group PIRG has collected 1200 faculty signatures on a statement of support for open textbooks."

Ivy League Computer Science Curricula Exposed

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:26:11 +0000

Doug Treadwell writes "Many people have wondered what the difference is between the Computer Science education given in the average public university versus one given in an Ivy League university (or a top level public university). There have also been discussions here on Slashdot about whether any Computer Science curriculum gives students the knowledge they need for the working world. As a computer science student both questions are very important to me, so I decided to answer them for myself and build a website to share what I found. I was able to find the required reading for hundreds of courses at Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley; along with some other institutions. This should also help answer some of those 'What should I read?' questions."

Online Colleges Could Spy On Students – By Law

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:15:15 +0000

skeazer writes "Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph — part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act — is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it."

UK Games Industry Over the Hill?

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:04:15 +0000

Tinkle writes "A games industry campaign group has warned the UK is falling behind on coding skills because university courses are not up to scratch. But this article includes an interview with an industry coding veteran who believes a lack of creative home computing hardware (think: Atari ST) is more likely to be at the root of the skills shortage, and explains why Britain's games coders are getting a bit long-in-the-tooth."

Telcos Compete For Education Broadcast Spectrum

Sun, 25 May 2008 16:15:56 +0000

palegray.net writes "A consortium of large telecommunications companies are competing to deliver high speed wireless Internet access over frequencies allocated for educational use. The schools who control the frequencies, long frustrated by difficulties in obtaining cost-effective net access, find the tables turned in their favor. From the LATimes: '... technological advances have made the airwaves easier to use — and much more lucrative to hold. For Cal State Los Angeles, Long Beach, Dominguez Hills, Fullerton and Pomona, as well as schools and religious institutions around the country, holding a license to the spectrum as the wireless industry expands has been like finding a winning lottery ticket in a dresser drawer. The agreements funnel thousands and even millions of dollars annually to schools at a time of budget cutbacks and economic slowdown.'

$100 Laptop Platform Moves On

Fri, 16 May 2008 22:15:53 +0000

The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar", the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."

Online Quiz As a Gateway to P2P

Thu, 15 May 2008 20:47:48 +0000

Andy Guess points out an interesting approach taken by a Missouri university to limiting (and limiting legal exposure because of) on-campus, on-line copyright violations, as described at Inside Higher Ed: "In order to download (or upload) files on any peer-to-peer network whatsoever, all on-campus users at Missouri S&T have to pass an online quiz on copyright infringement. But not just once. Passing the test — with a perfect score — enables peer-to-peer access for six hours on the user's on-campus registered machines."