To anyone who has ever said, "public education is free," I just wrote a $178 check so my son can take two exams.
Blog
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Is there a gender bias at the elementary school level?
I believe the perceived gender bias has less to do with maturity and more to do with active vs passive teaching. Boys tend to be active learners. As long as we continue to push this “test to learn” approach to education and rely upon worksheets, boys will have difficulty at the elementary level. Please do not get me wrong. Rocky Hill Elementary is a quality school. I have been an active parent there for 14 years and given numerous volunteer hours. I support our school.
Our society has an issue with men right now. It is unfortunate and wrong but sensationalism and fear has made it difficult for men to work with children. The harmful results can be seen in the faculty at Rocky Hill Elementary: http://rockyhilles.knoxschools.org/modules/tt/staffList/staffListSimplified.phtml
One regular ed male teacher to 32 fremale teachers. The ratio changes to 3m:38f if we include special areas. Jordan Haney is an exceptional teacher and highly sought after by the students. I can’t help but wonder how having more male teachers in the earlier grades would improve the boy students’ engagement to education. And ultimately we are not talking about maturity or bias but student engagement. An engaged student is a learning student. I recently saw someone’s story about being told their child should be on Ritalin. Their response to the teacher? “Have you tried being more interesting.” It’s a good point.
Ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius once said, “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; and involve me and I’ll understand.”
“Active vs Passive learning” http://www.units.miamioh.edu/celt/events/docs/CFLING/active%20vs%20passive.pdf
“the student/chaperone ratio is so high” If the school would return to inviting parent chaperons on the trip, this would be less of a problem.
“A study on gender disparities in elementary-school performance found that boys received lower grades than girls, even when their test scores were equal to or higher than the girls’” Read more: Do Teachers Really Discriminate Against Boys? | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/02/06/do-teachers-really-discriminate-against-boys/
(same study as above…different article with more info)
“New research from the University of Georgia and Columbia University published in the current issue of Journal of Human Resources suggests that it’s because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts.” Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-girls-school.html -
Seeking advice on using US phones in Europe
To my European friends and my more traveled friends, my son heads off to London (7 days) and Paris (2 days) this weekend. My next quandary is cell phone. My plan currently allows my son unlimited texting and sending of pictures over SMS internationally. However, it does not include data or voice. What I learned today was that if he received a phone call (and doesn’t even answer it), he incurs international roaming charges.
So, do I:
- make him leave his phone at home?
- let him take his phone but remove the sim card so he is forced to use wifi?
- Have him jump into an EE store and buy a 30 day prepaid phone? I presume the tour group isn’t going to stop to waste an hour in an EE store letting everyone buy prepaid phones. — does the airport have these in vending machines?
- Beg a friend or relative to drop a prepaid phone by his hotel?
Are there other options?
1st person to post a Liam Neeson meme gets 10 points.
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Rule 79
My family has broken rule 79 which clearly states, "Never run out of toilet paper!"
"Kids, gather by the spray nozzle in the kitchen. And someone bring a step ladder. Dad is going to teach your how to use a bidet."
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NASA Forgets How To Talk To ICE/ISEE-3 Spacecraft
Reading this makes me sad. It is terribly indicative of the problems surrounding my industry that I discuss almost daily…documentation, knowledge management, dependencies upon legacy systems.
Here we have history passing us by. Good scientific equipment that could be repurposed and all we can do is wave.
“Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? Unfortunately the answer to that question appears to be no. ‘The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999.’ ”
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/03/04/024207/nasa-forgets-how-to-talk-to-iceisee-3-spacecraft
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What’s the big deal with Netflix and Comcast?
Let’s use the Interstates as an analogy. Those Interstates are the backbones of our country. Metropolitan areas (say Memphis, Dallas, Atlanta, Knoxville, DC) are datacenters. The states are the ISPs since they provide the connections (the on ramps) to the backbones (the Interstates). We’ve all had relatively free access to those roads. Yes, there are so toll roads but let’s talk about those later to help facilitate the analogy (because the toll road fits the current Internet analog…the tolls are NOT the Netflix deal). The vehicles on the road are packets of information.
So, monitoring traffic, we noticed that UPS has increased its traffic from Dallas routing along I-40 in Tennessee to make deliveries to Atlanta. Now, we know that UPS has other alternatives. There are highways and more minor roads through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that will lead to Atlanta but UPS likes the speed of using our larger Interstate. So, should Tennessee start charging UPS a surcharge to use our Interstate? If UPS pays enough, can they monopolize that Interstate with so many trucks that there is no room for my car? And if so, will the state tell me that I don’t have access to the Interstate anymore because I can use Hwy 70 and Hwy 11 unless I want to pay the same price that UPS is paying?
That’s the problem. The small guy, the innovator, is going to lose access to the Interstate.
