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100 Interesting Open Courseware Classes That Anyone Can Take

January 27, 2009 /

The web site actually says “weirdest” but they’re really aren’t that weird (of course, I may have an elevated standard of weirdness). Some of my favorites:

Magic, Witchcraft, and the Spirit World: You’ll learn all about the spiritual, magical, and “occult” aspects of human behavior in this course. [MIT]

Street-Fighting Mathematics: This course will teach you the art of guessing and solving problems without doing proofs or exact calculations. [MIT]

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil: This course examines the roots of depravity and cruelty. [MIT]

Democratizing Innovation: This resource examines the trend of user-centered innovation and what that means for the future. [MIT]

Full Story: Online Best Colleges

See also: Can Ivy League education be provided for $20 a month?

Can Ivy League education be provided for $20 a month?

January 13, 2009 /

John Robb writes about the potential for transformation of the educational system:

* Lectures. Videos of lecture series, plus associated materials, are available for many courses at some of the best Universities in the world (i.e. see MIT’s open courseware). Online videos are not only better than in-person lectures in many respects, they also allow you to get the best. There is no need to recreate the lecture with tens of thousands of less qualified/exceptional teachers.

*Application. As MIT is finding out, JIT (just-in-time information) in combination with simulated application of the concept to real scenarios is the best method for success. The advent of computer simulated virtual worlds for in the computer gaming industry have proven this combination (JIT info and immediate application) can train kids to adults in complicated and complex tasks in a fraction of the time other methods require.

* Collaboration. The business world is already shifting on online collaboration as a replacement for most in-person work (the economic crisis will only accelerate it). In my personal experience developing exceeding complex products, its possible to conduct the entire process from ideation to delivery online without any face to face contact (at great savings in time to direct expense). Unfortunately, this ability/skill/mindset isn’t central to the educational world, despite the fact that students are currently doing much of this already in their private lives with social software.

Full Story: Global Guerrillas

The Edge question of the year: what will change everything?

January 1, 2009 /

Stewart Brand, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Douglas Rushkoff, Garret Lisi and about a bazillion more weigh in on this year’s Edge question:

New tools equal new perceptions.

Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves. But until very recently in our history, no democratic populace, no legislative body, ever indicated by choice, by vote, how this process should play out.

Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for penicillin, antibiotics, the pill. Nobody ever voted for space travel, massively parallel computing, nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet, email, cell phones, the Web, Google, cloning, sequencing the entire human genome. We are moving towards the redefinition of life, to the edge of creating life itself. While science may or may not be the only news, it is the news that stays news.

And our politicians, our governments? Always years behind, the best they can do is play catch up.

Nobel laureate James Watson, who discovered the DNA double helix, and genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter, recently were awarded Double Helix Awards from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for being the founding fathers of human genome sequencing. They are the first two human beings to have their complete genetic information decoded.

Watson noted during his acceptance speech that he doesn’t want government involved in decisions concerning how people choose to handle information about their personal genomes.

Venter is on the brink of creating the first artificial life form on Earth. He has already announced transplanting the information from one genome into another. In other words, your dog becomes your cat. He has privately alluded to important scientific progress in his lab, the result of which, if and when realized, will change everything.
WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

Full Story: Edge

Very nice to start the year with advice from Taleb

Criminalizing science: chemistry student arrested for home lab

December 29, 2008 /

A Canadian college student majoring in chemistry built himself a home lab – and discovered that trying to do science in your own home quickly leads to accusations of drug-making and terrorism.

Lewis Casey, an 18-year-old in Saskatchewan, had built a small chemistry lab in his family’s garage near the university where he studies. Then two weeks ago, police arrived at his home with a search warrant and based on a quick survey of his lab determined that it was a meth lab. They pulled Casey out of the shower to interrogate him, and then arrested him.

A few days later, police admitted that Casey’s chemistry lab wasn’t a meth lab – but they kept him in jail, claiming that he had some of the materials necessary to produce explosives. Friends and neighbors wrote dozens of letters to the court, testifying that Casey was innocent and merely a student who is really enthusiastic about chemistry.

Full Story: io9

(Thanks Justin!)

How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance

December 4, 2008 /

What’s the solution to America’s crisis in science education? More comic books. In December comes The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, a remarkably thorough explanation of the science of genetics, from Mendel to Venter, with a strand of social urgency spliced in. “If there was ever a time that we needed a push to make science a priority, it’s now,” says Howard Zimmerman, the book’s editor and, not coincidentally, a former elementary-school science teacher. “Advances in treatments for disease cannot take place in a society that shuns science.” Zimmerman works with the New York literary publishing house Hill and Wang, which discovered Elie Weisel and has been creating a new niche for itself as one of the premiere producers of major graphic “nonfiction novels” like the war on terror primer After 9/11 and the bio-comic Ronald Reagan.

Stuff of Life is the first in a series dedicated to the hard sciences. The author is Mark Schultz, a DC Comics veteran and creator of the postapocalyptic classic Xenozoic Tales. The 160-page work, illustrated by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (improbably, no genetic relation), covers the regenerative processes of DNA, human migratory patterns, cloned apples, and stem cells. In a rapidly changing field, it’s as up-to-date and accurate as possible.

How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance – Wired

How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance

December 3, 2008 /

What’s the solution to America’s crisis in science education? More comic books. In December comes The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA, a remarkably thorough explanation of the science of genetics, from Mendel to Venter, with a strand of social urgency spliced in. “If there was ever a time that we needed a push to make science a priority, it’s now,” says Howard Zimmerman, the book’s editor and, not coincidentally, a former elementary-school science teacher. “Advances in treatments for disease cannot take place in a society that shuns science.” Zimmerman works with the New York literary publishing house Hill and Wang, which discovered Elie Weisel and has been creating a new niche for itself as one of the premiere producers of major graphic “nonfiction novels” like the war on terror primer After 9/11 and the bio-comic Ronald Reagan.

Stuff of Life is the first in a series dedicated to the hard sciences. The author is Mark Schultz, a DC Comics veteran and creator of the postapocalyptic classic Xenozoic Tales. The 160-page work, illustrated by Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (improbably, no genetic relation), covers the regenerative processes of DNA, human migratory patterns, cloned apples, and stem cells. In a rapidly changing field, it’s as up-to-date and accurate as possible.

How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance – Wired

Social skills predict future earnings better than cognitive skills, study says

October 16, 2008 /

Ten years after graduation, high-school students who had been rated as conscientious and cooperative by their teachers were earning more than classmates who had similar test scores but fewer social skills, said a new University of Illinois study.

The study’s findings challenge the idea that racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic gaps in educational attainment and earnings can be narrowed solely by emphasizing cognitive skills, said Christy Lleras, a University of Illinois assistant professor of human and community development.

“It’s important to note that good schools do more than teach reading, writing, and math. They socialize students and provide the kinds of learning opportunities that help them to become good citizens and to be successful in the labor market,” she said.

Full Story: Science Daily

(via OVO)

More awesome American skool awesumness

April 22, 2008 /

Arizona bill would permit confiscation of books opposed to American values like capitalism:—

Measure backs ‘American values’ in state schools

Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.

SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group.

The 9-6 vote by the Appropriations Committee sends the measure to the full House.

The legislation appears aimed largely at the Tucson Unified School District, whose "Raza Studies" program has annoyed some people. Tucson resident Laura Leighton read lawmakers sections of some books used in classrooms which she said promote hatred.

If the proposal becomes law, however, it would have a statewide reach. And that concerned even some lawmakers who voted for it, saying the language of what would and would not be prohibited is "vague."

Article continued via the East Valley Tribune

US school book: “Global warming will avoid high heating bills”

April 19, 2008 /

Friends of the Earth is calling via an email campaign on one of the US largest textbook publishers to correct a school book containing a discussion of global warming "so biased and misleading it would humble a tobacco industry PR man."

"American Government", 11th edition is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and approved for use in high school Advanced Placement courses in the United States. On page 559, the textbook’s authors write that "it is a foolish politician who today opposes environmentalism. And that creates a problem, because not all environmental issues are equally deserving of support. Take the case of global warming. (..) On the one hand, a warmer globe will cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal communities; on the other hand, greater warmth will make it easier and cheaper to grow crops and avoid high heating bills." (Full)

Whether or not global warming is a proven scientific fact (see this post), I can not imagine what a simplistic mind would even think of putting this in a student’s text book.

via The Road to the Horizon

Stupid humans, beep-boop-beep

February 19, 2008 /

I am too tired to get into anything too in-depth here. When work lets up I wanna write some more bla-bla. Anyhow, let’s get to the top three headlines of the weekend so I can close my browser window finally:

French paradox redux? US vs. French on being full
It’s the French paradox redux: Why don’t the French get as fat as Americans, considering all the baguettes, wine, cheese, pate and pastries they eat?

That is interesting, not because Americans are fat’tards, but cuz it implies a lack of subjective awareness. The implications of this research will be far-reaching over the next decade (if any educators or whoever decide to apply it somewhere useful).

Like ants, humans are easily led
When it comes to being misled, humans are no more sophisticated than ants or fish.

‘Nuff said. I’m just glad headlines like this are making it in larger metro centres like London. Next, I want this on the cover of North American papers. Mostly just so I don’t have to hear about Britney anymore.

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from ‘American Idol,’ appearing on the Fox game show ‘Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?’ during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: ‘Budapest is the capital of what European country?’

Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. ‘I thought Europe was a country,’ she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. ‘Hungry?’ she said, eyes widening in disbelief. ‘That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.’

Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of ‘The Age of American Unreason,’ up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.

Yup.

I love you all. I just wanna get that out there in case my current client drives me to hang myself. bbl

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