We are Family

[curt]

We don't need another / a new discussion to prove it.

It is as it is.

Let this "fred" (discussion thread) live under the theme .......

long live this family

brothers, sisters, brethern, dogs, cats and birds, ants and flees, water and air and gas and Clare and Jim and him and the window Simm (??) and you and me and he and she and we and them and us and puss (???) and fish and the dish (it's on) and paper and pen.

Yip.

[pan]

Haven't figured that out - in order to be rewarded one must shine, yet, in these bizarre employment situations one mustn't outshine the others.

[BO]

In case y'all ever wondered what being really 'unlucky' actually looks like. LOL for this poor sap.

[waldopaper]

"Gee Dad!  It's a Flexible Flyer!" 

[waldo mobile]

Sure there 10s. Like Mozart and them.  Most of us don't have to worry about that.
As you approach the five level (average) of competence, you start looking for the scene.   How else are you gong to learn what others are doing?   Most of us are born to a small scene, and we become the best ___ in the family. Or the worst. Whatever.

[Cal]

You put that very helpfully Waldo ... the 'scene' isn't quite what I had preconceived as 'the scene'.

These Coursera type internet courses are the best thing since sliced bread.  Having access to that quality of tuition so inexpensively with an internationally enthusiastic massive class of students (while I sit in bed in my pyjamas) ... feels like I stepped into my own version of Lord of the Rings.

Was wondering if you've come up against the MOOC's .... I'm hearing people talk disparagingly about them (like the academics here used to talk about Google ... it was high-brow fashion to belittle that which the common man had access to).

If anything even remotely has a chance of saving this continent it' that kind of education availability.  I went to a government department to collect documents last week.  Tore myself away from my electronic book & put phone in pocket.  I didn't want to look conspicuous as a whitey in the long queue with my whitey technology.

What a surprise!  I was virtually the only person in line who was not 'eyes glued' to some device or another.

You cannot begin to know what wireless technology like this means in the lives of 3rd world losers.

That has given me a hint .... a glimpse ... of a very good idea .... Going off to make tea & allow it to take shape.

[pan]

MOOC - thought I knew what you meant, had to look up the initialism just to be sure.

I've taught several online courses, not massive offerings, but basically the same idea.  As a teacher I pretty much hate them because the thrill of teaching is the immediate feedback.  I can't read the students online like I can in person.  And the classroom discussion is very different.   But, I have utilized some aspects of web-based teaching in most of my classes for quite some time.  There are some pretty nifty things we can do virtually.  I think there are some things where online works really well, like providing a background in a discipline, but it is more difficult with teaching critical thinking/critical writing.  I have found I like providing comments on writing assignments submitted via Google Drive, not quite as much as writing on an actual piece of paper, but more than working in Word.

The failure rate for students in online courses is abysmal.  This is the dirty little secret of MOOCs.  Most people are just not self-motivated to succeed in an online learning situation.....or, perhaps most courses haven't been designed well enough to truly reach a large portion of their students.  I tend to have a lot of A's and a lot of F's in my online courses - and the F's come from students who just don't even try to do the work.

I have heard that there is a guy who is pushing MOOCs totally out of charity - if so, great.  Unfortunately, the "business model" of education is king so it is likely that most will be out for the buck.

[Cal]

Yes - I can see that it would be not so effective for the humanities, critical thinking & the like. Didn't think of that.   

Analysis of Global Trends course is something you can scrape good grades for by without any subject depth. I'm afraid I'm doing that because I shouldn't have registered for 2 courses at once as if I was a member of Mensa.

Where it's working really well is the Data Science stuff - programming, using new tools.  You can't fluff your way through writing code that actually works. You get the exposure to the technology - then like any university how much real value you extract is proportional to the extra effort you put into applying the stuff to your daily work.  There is some innovative interactive online tutorial stuff.

And yes, after I get over my idealistic excitement .... you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.  I guess it's mostly a miracle for people like me who are so thirsty there's no stopping me drinking.

[pan]

I love students who come with rich life experiences, who are there because they want to learn.  Unfortunately the vast majority at the underachieving Uni I'm at have had any love of learning trained out of them by the factory school model  (Foucault "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals.....").

At my Uni some smart person(s) in the math department decided that, since so many incoming freshmen have to take the remedial course for the math phobic and no professor wants to teach such basic stuff for dummies, it would be a great idea to only offer it as an online course.  The one course in math that needs, more than anything, individualized approaches to teaching, is offered in a one-size-fits-all mass offering.  And the failure rate is over 65%.  But that isn't a problem because the students have to pay an extra fee over and above their regular tuition to take a web-based offering (even though it costs the Uni much less to offer web classes).  My neighbor's kid who, granted, isn't the brightest, dropped out of college rather than face that class.

Again - web based approaches are fantastic....for people like you.

[Cal]

Did I hear the words 'math phobic' .... arghhhhh

made it by a margin of 0.5%. I just did not, could not, would never 'get it'.  Life happened & I turned out to be a gifted programmer, science trained doing biological growth predictions & data analysis ... all those years I would run from anything more Greek looking than "=" in the code.  Like playing basketball in a wheelchair.

SO ...That is the 'who-in-the-world-knows-why' challenge to myself.  Build an enormous 1000 year flood type of bridge & get over it.  Socratic logic.

- I am good at languages

- maths & stats are languages

- Therefore I am good at maths & stats .... not.

Cruising along like a genius (>95% scores in quizzes & assignments) until yesterday. Wipe Out.  Missed the deadline with only 3 out of 10 questions solved - which means I flunk the course.  I wept (  first defence), then remembered I don't work by a corporate clock anymore. ( f*** deadlines).  Wrote to them asking if I could repeat the course with the next class .... without paying course .... and started from lecture 1 again to see what it was that I missed.

[waldopaper]

Got one like the water, dude, zoom in on the photograph and see there be ghosts.  Apologize to the blind butt now eye see blurry exposure slow closure shudder on honor...woe be goner got a cup and consecrate our hosts...ghosts.

.   

[Mouse]

an English cross, Tudor, after the Reformation
small and bronze

[waldopaper]

Just spent the past 2 days at the Library.  It is supposed to have one of the best one of the best genealogy sections  in the US... rivaling SLC so they say.  Nothing so far.  Nada zilch zip.  I did find that Elizabeth's parents spoke no English (in 1863)... but... nothing about Rosa's life..or death.  The 1870 census lists her as a resident of the gatehouse... age 6, supposedly attending school (with her brothers).  

The local papers, which were really chatty and gossipy and rarely missed any local "news" are quite mum about Rosa's life.  Nothing so far looking at Church records (St. James Lutheran-- of which the Thorn family were members... and recorded Rosa's baptism (in 1863).  Curious thing- an obit for Rosa appears in 1928... 50 years after her actual death- stats are the same- showing that Rosa was 14 (she would have been 64)... and both Elizabeth and Peter died in 1907.   .

Quite a few quirks in this story.  Back it again today.