Cathedral Building

In case you do not get the reblog notice, please do not change the credit on the post about my daughter. Those are MY CHILD's photos, in a post I WROTE about her, and it's upsetting me terribly that someone is claiming otherwise.

Sat, 11 May 2013 20:03:00 -0400

I didn’t get that notice — posting this publicly now and deleting the reblog. I had checked the tumblr and thought the photos there were of your daughter, but I can see now at your blog that you have photos of the both of you.

I’m terribly sorry for this confusion, and will take the reblog I had down immediately.

Guys, if you reblogged the “correction,” please consider removing it.

froborr: watchtheskytonight: tamarma: bunnika: I seriously...

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:45:43 -0400

froborr:

watchtheskytonight:

tamarma:

bunnika:

I seriously just had to teach my mother some basics of parenting.

Both photos are of my daughter in October, the first in 2011, the second in 2012. I let her pick out her own clothes, shoes, haircuts, hair colors, anything superficial, really. She’s too young to understand the permanence of piercings, so she doesn’t have any. But hair grows, shoes get grown out of, clothes go threadbare. These things don’t really matter—shouldn’t really matter—but anyone raising a gender-variant child knows the world isn’t that kind.

My daughter recently requested a haircut like mine. A long flop on top, pixie-length fade on the back and sides. She’s been bugging me for weeks to color her hair again, I just haven’t had the time. But today she came to me with the same shyness she keeps developing when outside our home; she’s being pressured by peers and family to look “normal,” to grow her hair long and uncolored, to dress a certain way (she hates to match), to indulge in self-consciousness, and alter or not alter her appearance to gain the approval of others, and society at large.

THIS FUCKING INFURIATES ME.

I called my mother tonight, because my daughter had become shy again, and didn’t want to color her hair anymore, and she said it was because of what her Nana had said to her. My mother told me we should get that spray-on Halloween hair colors, so it wouldn’t be so “permanent” and my daughter could be “normal” again to avoid being bullied.

IT IS NOT THE JOB OF THE VICTIM TO STOP BEING BULLIED. IT IS THE BULLY’S JOB TO STOP BULLYING.

I know she gets teased sometimes, and we always talk about it. She stays strong and confident, so long as she has the support of those around her. But what that support falters, or pulls a 180, she’s left to crash.

She also gets teased for liking dinosaurs and not dolls. She gets teased for preferring roughhousing to playing house. She gets teased for liking Lightning McQueen and not Cinderella. Where do we draw the line?

My mother thinks this is a “minor” thing, that it’s better to just blend in. But it would plant the seed of doubt, it forms the foundation for queer kids staying in the closet, for disabled kids to feel worthless, for young girls accepting abusive partners. This is not “minor,” it is fucking MAJOR, because this is my daughter’s foundation, and it will shape her life.

Support your fucking kids. Let them be who they want to be, look how they want to look, and play how they want to play. And make sure they know that you will love them no matter what.

Will always beblog this.

This girl has a hundred thousand people behind her

Parenting: You’re doing it right.

I don’t know about you, but this is the kid I want to grow up to be.

Look! Something Shiny! How Some Textbook Visuals can Hurt Learning

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:04:36 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

Adding captivating visuals to a textbook lesson to attract children’s interest may sometimes make it harder for them to learn, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that 6- to 8-year-old children best learned how to read simple bar graphs when the graphs were plain and a single color.

Children who were taught using graphs with images (like shoes or flowers) on the bars didn’t learn the lesson as well and sometimes tried counting the images rather than relying on the height of the bars.

“Graphs with pictures may be more visually appealing and engaging to children than those without pictures. However, engagement in the task does not guarantee that children are focusing their attention on the information and procedures they need to learn. Instead, they may be focusing on superficial features,” said Jennifer Kaminski, co-author of the study and research scientist in psychology at The Ohio State University.

Kaminski conducted the study with Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology at Ohio State.

The problem of distracting visuals is not just an academic issue. In the study, the authors cite real-life examples of colorful, engaging – and possibly confusing - bar graphs in educational materials aimed at children, as well as in the popular media.

And when the authors asked 16 kindergarten and elementary school teachers whether they would use the visually appealing graphs featured in this study, all of them said they would. Intuitively, most of these teachers felt that the graphs with the pictures would be more effective for instruction than the graphs without, according to the researchers.

The findings apply beyond learning graphs and mathematics, the authors said.

“When designing instructional material, we need to consider children’s developing ability to focus their attention and make sure that the material helps them focus on the right things,” Kaminski said.

“Any unnecessary visual information may distract children from the very procedures we want them to learn.”

The study appears online in the Journal of Educational Psychology and will appear in a future print edition.

The main study involved 122 students in kindergarten, first and second grade. All were tested individually.

The experiment began with a training phase where a researcher showed each child a graph on a computer screen and taught him or her how to read it. The children were then tested on three graphs to see if they could accurately interpret them.

The graphs in the training phase involved how many shoes were in a lost and found for each of five weeks. Half the students were presented with graphs in which the bars were a solid color. The other students were shown graphs in which the bars contained pictures of shoes. The number of shoes in the bars was equal to the corresponding y-value on the graph. In other words, if there were five shoes in the lost and found, there were five shoes pictured in the bar.

After the training phase, the children were tested on new graphs in which the bars were either solid-colored or contained pictures of objects such as flowers. However, the number of objects pictured did not equal the correct y-value for the bar. In other words, the bar value could equal 14 flowers, but only seven flowers were pictured.

“This allowed us to clearly identify which students learned the correct way to read a bar graph from those who simply counted the number of objects in each bar,” Sloutsky said.

Sure enough, children who trained with the pictures on the graph were more likely than others to get the answers wrong by simply counting the objects in each bar.

All of the first- and second-graders and 75 percent of the kindergarten children who learned on the solid-bar graphs appropriately read the new graphs.

However, those who learned with the more visually appealing shoe graphs did not do nearly as well. In this case, 90 percent of kindergarteners and 72 percent of first-graders responded by counting the number of flowers pictured. Second-graders did better, but still about 30 percent responded by counting.

All the children were then tested again with graphs that featured patterned bars, with either stripes or polka dots within each bar.

Again, those who learned from the more visually appealing graphs did worse at interpreting these patterned graphs.

“To our surprise, some children tried to count all the tiny polka dots or stripes in the bars. They clearly didn’t learn the correct way to read the graphs,” Kaminski said.

The researchers conducted several other related experiments to confirm the results and make sure there weren’t other explanations for the findings. In one experiment, some children were trained on graphs with pictures of objects. But in this case, the number of objects pictured was not even close to the correct value of the bar, so the students could not use counting as a strategy.

Still, these children did not do as well on subsequent tests as did those who learned on the graphs with single-colored bars.

“When teaching children new math concepts, keeping material simple is very important,” Sloutsky said.

“Any extraneous information we provide, even with the best of intentions, to make the lesson more interesting may actually hurt learning because it may be misinterpreted,” he said.

The researchers said these results don’t mean that textbook authors or others can never use interesting visuals or other techniques to capture the interest of students.

“But they need to study how such material will affect students’ attention. You can’t assume that it is beneficial just because it is colorful; in can affect learning by distracting attention from what is relevant,” Sloutsky said.

Questions/curiosities/input/requests/suggestions wanted! (Thinking of transforming this into a Psych blog for Educators.)

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:03:00 -0400

I’m not in the classroom anymore, for now, and it seems like that’s something educators might benefit from. From what I’ve seen, the amount and tone of psych that ends up in teacher education programs is…well, there’s a lot of stuff out there that could be very valuable that doesn’t seem to make it in.

If that’s the case, I’ll need to make a vague posting schedule and a list of topics, on top of putting things together to respond to what’s going on around the tumblrsphere.

This was a question that’d been put out there before, so let me try it a different sort of way. Instead of specific psych topics, is there anything that you wonder about the reasoning behind? Are there things you do in the classroom that make you wonder why they do or don’t work? Are there things you’ve glanced in journals that you want to see more of or ideas mentioned in your education courses that you wish they’d gone into more in-depth?

What do you want to see?

Satisfactori: Are you a trans*, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary TEACHER?

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:48:06 -0400

Satisfactori: Are you a trans*, gender nonconforming, or nonbinary TEACHER?:

teamteachers:

satisfactori:

I recently decided to be a teacher, but I also identify as agender. I was wondering if you could help me out by answering a few questions. These include:

How do you identify yourself?

ex. genderqueer, femme, avid reader, left handed, tall, tough, sparkly, gender creative, gay, fun,…

Click through for the rest.

Boosting.

These are some great questions. If folks like me follow folks like me, go on and give it a click through. And if you aren’t in this category, click through and read anyway, to get an idea of all the extras we have to think about on the daily.

And in general…let’s be there for each other. Because for some people this might be a non-issue, while for others it might make the experience more difficult.

Come on in #Educaton-ers

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:15:39 -0400

Come on in #Educaton-ers:

girlwithalessonplan:

pencilblots:

I may not video chat, but I will be there.

there is MUSCI!

I’m in the tinychat and suddenly too shy to broadcast.

Preparing for the effects of the sequester: A Little Help from my Tumblr Friends?

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:08:58 -0400

Preparing for the effects of the sequester: A Little Help from my Tumblr Friends? :

jbizzle329:

novicephoenix:

You don’t need to ask me twice! Anything for my Tumblr friend! Please, donate to PPT. She is a fantastic teacher, and an amazing Tumblr support and resource. She’s the glue to this wonderful community, so help a lady out!

PS Briarpatch Goodnight Moon 123 Counting Game is coming your way.

positivelypersistentteach:

Hey everyone, as you may have heard the recent sequester will impact many government programs and their funding. My program is getting a cut, but it looks like no positions will be cut from instructional staff at this point. However, other parts of our staff may be.

Each year Pre-K teachers get a modest classroom supply fund. This is not much different than the grade level funds that are often used to purchase take home folders, construction paper, notebooks, etc. except that we each individually decide what to spend it on. This year, I spent mine on art supplies, stuff needed for science and math activities (not reusable), and some books. I am guessing that our classroom funds will be very small next year, as they have gotten smaller every year.

As you know, Pre-K kids play hard and at the beginning of the year are still learning a lot of social skills and rules. So books get ripped and toys break. And, I am sometimes able to replace them through classroom funds or my own, and sometimes I am not.

This year’s class has loved every minute, but there’s things from free choice centers that need to be replaced. Also, this year, I put a lot more focus into using rotating centers for all academic centers. While I do have a number of books that need to be replaced or that are still on my dream classroom wish list. I want to focus on stacking up on materials for literacy, science, math, and social studies.

If you have the funds this month or are a billionaire I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at my wish list (linked above). I partner with another teacher to plan a lot of things and we share materials so you would be helping out two classes.

I totally understand that money is tight for many, but all the reblogs in the world are appreciated.

Holla at my girl. She’s amazing. Got an extra dollar? Maybe pass it onto her.

I’ve been on some radio silence, but I’m popping back up because this is a chance to do something meaningful for someone awesome and all of their kidlets.

Photo

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:45 -0400

Teaching Kids Consent, Ages 1-21

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:50:47 -0400

Teaching Kids Consent, Ages 1-21:

littlebeans:

grrlyman:

This is so amazing and so necessary.

Excellent

thekidshouldseethis: DIY.org is a safe online community for...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:54:19 -0400

thekidshouldseethis:

DIY.org is a safe online community for kids who love to make and learn (and for parents or educators who want to stay in the loop). Young makers can do challenges, watch tutorials, share knowledge, and earn patches in all sorts of skills: beekeeper, baker, detective, fort builder, gardener, gamer, papercrafter, solar engineer, and so many more.

For more information, read an interview, watch the DIY Anthem, and visit the site…

Petition: Transgender teacher, subject to Daily Mail witch hunt, commits suicide.

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:43:05 -0400

Petition: Transgender teacher, subject to Daily Mail witch hunt, commits suicide.:

kicksandgiggles:

girlwithalessonplan:

stfuhypocrisy:

This week, after being mocked in the press with an attack piece by the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, schoolteacher Lucy Meadows committed suicide.

Lucy was raised male, but recently underwent a transition to live as female — which for Littlejohn was reason enough to attack her in his column. Leading with themocking headline “He’s not only in the wrong body… he’s in the wrong job”, Littlejohn belittled and harassed Meadows, referring to her decision as her “personal problems” and playing on the outdated scare tactic that LGBT people are a threat to children.

The vile article led to a witch hunt targeting Meadows. Newspapers offered to pay parents for a picture of her, and she complained of having to leave home by the back door and arrive early to school to avoid the packs of journalists.

Sign our petition to the Daily Mail: sack Richard Littlejohn, issue an apology, and institute an editorial review to ensure that this never happens again.

Richard Littlejohn has a long history of using his perch at the the Daily Mail to mock and harass others, from laughing at cerebral palsy to snide insinuation that ethnic minorities got their jobs through discrimination to incessant attacks on the LGBT community, Littlejohn has been a national disgrace.

Throughout the article, Littlejohn repeatedly referred to Lucy as “he”, and claimed that getting gender reassignment surgery showed that she didn’t care for the children she taught.

Littlejohn claimed that children don’t have the capacity to handle a gender transition — but kids are smart and don’t carry the bias that adults have absorbed over the years. Just take the experience our campaign manager Kaytee’s partner Max had when he came out to his little cousin as a transgender man. The cousin said “Oh, that makes sense. I always thought you were a boy. Now can we go play Legos?” Gender transition is only an issue for kids when the adults in their lives — many egged on by these sorts of offensive opinion pieces — make it out to be a problem.

The Daily Mail may thrive on controversy to sell its tabloid papers, but even it knows it went too far this time. In the wake of backlash, the Daily Mail removed the article from its website, but the damage has already been done.

Everyone has the right to say what they think, but mainstream publications like the Daily Mail shouldn’t support and promote this sort of hate. The Daily Mail needs to ensure that this never happens again — by not only yanking Littlejohn’s column and apologizing for the paper’s decision to run the hateful opinion piece, but alsoinstituting an editorial review policy that prevents discriminatory writing from ending up in its paper again.

Tell the Daily Mail that newspaper columns cannot be used for bullying and hate, and that Richard Littlejohn has no place in the papers.

This is sick.

Sometimes I just can’t people…

This is what the previous post was about. I was going to write something on it myself too, but I just…can’t. My heart can’t handle this one; I feel it way too much to try.

Reach Out Teachers Network

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:25:02 -0400

Reach Out Teachers Network:

hisnamewasbeanni:

misshasnotes:

Mental health and social justice resources for teachers.

There’s also an online professional development section; could be useful (and a way of getting up hours now that we’re not allowed to undertake PD in class time).

Well this is awesome.

"A lot of trans women have had their lives pawed over by the media when they transition, their..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:23:21 -0400

“

A lot of trans women have had their lives pawed over by the media when they transition, their privacy invaded at a time which is massively stressful anyway. I remember the first time I went out dressed in female clothes. The fear that I had was almost unbearable, I was convinced that every person I saw would know, and would hurl abuse at me or attack me. It was terrifying, and it continued to be terrifying for years afterwards, even though there were very few occasions where I was read as male.

I can only imagine what it’s like for that fear to become a reality, to be hounded in the press for just being yourself at a time when you’re having to deal with incredible mental and emotional pressures. The 5% of people who seem to still have such a problem with trans people that they’d give them abuse being given this information, where you live, where you work and having their prejudices backed up by a national newspaper. It’s just unbearable to think of.

I’m surprised something like this hasn’t happened before now. Lucy’s body was found at her home on Tuesday afternoon. Some are saying it’s suicide, there’s no suspicious circumstances.

I’d hoped that 13 years on and 13 miles away life would be better for someone who had the same realisation to come to that I did. Unfortunately it wasn’t, and it won’t be until people are educated enough to not think of being trans as something so unbelievably weird that it deserves national press coverage.

The tone of the Littlejohn piece was “won’t someone think of the children?” My brother’s children were primary school age when I came out, they saw every step of what I went through, and you know what? They’re kids. EVERYTHING’S NEW AND WEIRD TO THEM. They dealt with it. They dealt with it better than they dealt with finding out there’s no Santa Claus

”

- Comedian Bethany Black on the death or trans teacher Lucy Meadows who was bullied by The Daily Mail.

Read her whole response here.

(via englishteacheronline)

This is, if people use that word, a sin. This is something that never should have happened to this woman or to anyone else who makes changes in their life to be who they really are. I am saddened and disgusted, mortified and terrified, disappointed in the human race.

But I am hoping, hoping and passing the word and calling on people to get angry, hoping that this will never be able to happen again if we take notice, and call people out, and make it our resolution as a whole to never let this happen again.

Non-Profits, AmeriCorps, Funding, Education

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:17:23 -0400

I could talk about non-profit orgs and the way they function all day, but I forget that it’s something that’s useful to know in #education sometimes. It’s been awhile since I went sludging through grant databases and reposting opportunities. The behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty doesn’t exactly come up a lot.

So please don’t hesitate to ask when it comes to that sort of thing, and if I can’t answer off the top of my head I’ll find the answer from the resources I’m familiar with (and, if necessary, dig out some new ones).

If anyone sees any typos or blaring mistakes (i.e. a sentence lodged in the middle of another...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:14:03 -0400

If anyone sees any typos or blaring mistakes (i.e. a sentence lodged in the middle of another sentence) today, by all means poke me via message/fanmail. I’m working with a hyper-sensitive touch pad and am trying to type through painkillers.

Education For All: Positively Persistent Teach: Teach for America needs a time out from gambling youth education

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:12:44 -0400

Education For All: Positively Persistent Teach: Teach for America needs a time out from gambling youth education:

fornoesis:

adventuresinlearning:

reluctantmidwesterner:

positivelypersistentteach:

novelnovice:

positivelypersistentteach:

justteach:

ernestmedia:

It was my fifth grade year.

It was a lousy classroom. Kids throwing books across the desk. Paper on the floor, pencils broken. This became routine for the rest of the year and I hardly recall learning anything. What I did remember was a young, insecure teacher that…

I had considered TFA when I was considering my employment options. However, I read in their recruitment packages that they didn’t accept many education majors. I was quite shocked. How could a program that insists its goal is to help educate students of lower socio-economic classes, turn away individuals that have spent their entire college career learning about learning? I knew something was up.
I think the main reason many people go into TFA is for the loan forgiveness option they offer, NOT for the sake of the children.

I know a lot of people who went the TFA route. My college is one of the biggest TFA recruitment places in the country. For all that I can say about the program itself, I CAN tell you that each person I know that went into this program had a heart for kids. Most would tell you that they were fed misinformation which led to their application. All of them would tell you that they did not understand the factors in the achievement gap at the time or most major issues America faces in education today. As frustrated with TFA as I am, my frustrations are with the organization not the corps members who I believe don’t always have the correct information going in and just don’t know what questions to be asking.

I have seen the denying of Education majors many times though.

I was denied, even after having presented at international research conferences, winning awards for my research, and practically running a campus organization. My friend applied, and, she too, was turned down. She was the most philanthropic, service-oriented, 4.0 GPA person I knew. We both got turned down by TfA during our student teaching semesters.

Though I’m very thankful that I wasn’t offered the opportunity to be a corps member, I would love to have some of the perks my district offers, in addition to the ones the organization itself offers. One of the TfAs at my school took a leave of absence last semester in October, came back in January, and had is homerooom dissolved—-given to non-TfA teachers (me!)—because they were too high-maintenance for him.

We have A/B scheduling (kids take eight classes divided over two days) and one one of those days, he teaches two classes, has two planning periods (one more than every other teacher on campus) and no duty or homeroom. Recently, he has been buddying up to our department chair so he won’t have to teach freshman English next year, of which he has three sections this year, and two of senior Law Studies. He has no more than fifteen students in his class at any given period.

Teach for America sucks as an education organization because it is a government-funded anti-union union. Its members can’t join the teacher’s union and they receive, in my district at least, a higher salary than other beginning teachers. At my school, all of the TfAs who have completed their two years are leaving at the end of the semester, and will probably be replaced by more TfAs. I have friends who’ll finish student teaching May 3, and will have to enter a Battle Royale to find any position.

I also find it laughable that Teach for America can not produce an exact number, hell, I’ll take a percentage, of how many of its members remain teachers after their two years of service are up. They can also not give you an exact number of students whose teachers were corps members went on to complete high school and graduate from college. Those are two simple statistics to track, and that’s all I want TfA to show me in black and white. Then, I’ll accept its pillaging.

Just reblogging for the commentary.

I tried twice. They rejected me twice even though my degree was in education and I had experience in the school system. I have mixed feelings about the org overall, but it especially irks me that they only seem to really want people that they can easily mold into their idea of what a teacher should be.

Just so please know. TFA is not a government program and is a for-profit organization ruled and funded by Corporations and a corporate minded board. Don’t let the America full you! This is not the came as Americorp or Peace Corp. Michelle Rhee was a TFA member, enough said!

WHAT?! Now my head is spinning. Of course TFA is a non profit organization! Not only that, but it is actually an Americorps program and is structured almost exactly like the Peace Corps—Like, hello, this is EXACTLY what I am talking about. The misinformation about TFA is absurd. Not to say that non profits can’t be evil too, but let’s not be ridiculous.

Agreed to the second bolded piece, addressing the first. Tossing my hat in on this as an alum of two different AmeriCorps programs with a background on the way nonprofits work:

TfA is absolutely a non-profit organization. It has 501(c)3 status.
TfA is an AmeriCorps program in that it receives funding through the AmeriCorps National core program.
In order to receive grant funding from AmeriCorps State and National you are required to match that funding with cash and in-kind sources AND to demonstrate some level of financial sustainability outside of the AmeriCorps funding.
Many non-profit organizations form partnerships with corporations in order to maintain funding. That doesn’t mean that it makes them “corporate-minded” — a non-profit doesn’t function solely on good will, which requires money. In most cases, the funding even from corporations has NO effect on the operation of the organization beyond the parameters within which they received the funding to begin with — that the organization is committed to specific causes or carries out specific activities for which they request the funds they receive, and that they state publicly that they received the funds from the granting corporation.
AmeriCorps programs are part of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which, while it is a federal program, does have to think like a corporation in terms of making sure its products — that is, is programs and investments in other service organizations — return an investment — in this case, the improvements for communities and populations — that is worth the money and time they put into it. Programs and initiatives that receive funding and resources through the CNCS are all evaluated to assure that they’re effective. While it has a much better goal, it’s not exactly a far cry in terms of the strictest sort of thinking that also leads a food company to check the sales of a cereal in order to keep making it or pull it from the shelves. This is a reality for non-profit organizations if you want them to stick around and keep offering amazing services — don’t villainize those organizations for it.
THAT BEING SAID, Teach For America DOES receive a great amount of money from organizations or funding sources associated with corporations, and those funding sources happen to have agendas. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pumps huge amounts of money and resources into Teach For America — and has some seriously flawed ideas about how to fix education. Does TfA share some of those flawed ideas and thus receive support, or does it work on the basis of those ideas because those are the ideas that it’s receiving funding to continue functioning on? It’s a little bit of both.

Basically, as others have been saying, there may be plenty of reasons to dislike TfA — I for one dislike it intensely for misleading its corps members and specifically recruiting those it believes will further its own agendas in regard to educational policy later. But if you’re going to talk about TfA,

make sure you also listen to those who have gone through the program,
consider the source of everything you hear, including the bias of that source, whether it’s pro- or anti-TfA, and
do your RESEARCH, people, if someone is an educator or any way involved with the education system I feel like one ought to know better.

hisnamewasbeanni: humansofnewyork: He told me he was on his...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:45:23 -0400

hisnamewasbeanni:

humansofnewyork:

He told me he was on his way to a labor law class, so I asked him if he was studying to be a lawyer. He said:

“No, I’m an electrician, actually. I just want to have as much knowledge as possible so that I can give good advice to my family and community. I didn’t really have access to much good advice when I was growing up. People think that kids become drug dealers and gang members because of rap, or movies, or video games. But it’s actually because of bad advice. They see criminals with money and nice things, and those are their examples of success. So they look to them for advice.”

"You know how it goes: the pervasive media mythology tells us that the fight over the schoolhouse is..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:00:11 -0400

“

You know how it goes: the pervasive media mythology tells us that the fight over the schoolhouse is supposedly a battle between greedy self-interested teachers who don’t care about children and benevolent billionaire “reformers” whose political activism is solely focused on the welfare of kids. Epitomizing the media narrative, the Wall Street Journal casts the latter in sanitized terms, re-imagining the billionaires as philanthropic altruists “pushing for big changes they say will improve public schools.”

The first reason to scoff at this mythology should be obvious: it simply strains credulity to insist that pedagogues who get paid middling wages but nonetheless devote their lives to educating kids care less about those kids than do the Wall Street hedge funders and billionaire CEOs who finance the so-called “reform” movement.

”

- Getting rich off of schoolchildren - Salon.com (via rachelfershleiser)

Teaching English to a 3 1/2 year old. HELP!

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 14:09:03 -0400

hisnamewasbeanni:

student2teacher:

My new job is teaching a 3 1/2 spanish boy English. Well not really teach but just expose him to the language and help him pick up a few things. I got the job through a friend and the family recently moved to Australia from Spain about 3 months ago. The family has 5 children however all are at school except the youngest. He does attend day care but hates it because he cannot understand anyone.

Does anyone have any ideas for activities etc? So far I have done a get-to-know-you shift where we played and sorted blocks into colours etc. but he speaks spanish confidently and shakes his head at my attempts to get him to try and pronounce words in English and repeats them in Spanish. He is also easily distracted because hey-he is three! I am trying to teach myself a few spanish phrases to help but I need some more ideas.

Anyone?

Play. SING. Teach rhymes, songs, games etc. Play therapy is your friend - and with that in mind, so is google!

This is what I know, but there are people on here who have MUCH more in-depth knowledge and experience in these matters. PPT and Mona are the first to spring to mind, but I know there are others too!

So, guys? Give this Tumblr teacher a tip or two!

Super Simple Songs could be a good place to at least pique his interest. It’s made specifically for younger learners; its youtube channel and many of its games and other resources are free; and it’s a good gateway tool. When I first discovered it on Youtube it was gearing towards ELL teachers.

If he gets excited by the animations and the music and then recognizes words from those in your speaking, or the language is matched with dancing or hand movements that he enjoys, he may WANT to speak.

I would also try to see what others’ reactions to his English are or may have been before. We had a boy in the preschool class I was with that couldn’t pronounce his English well — he’s a native Spanish speaker — so other students couldn’t understand him and didn’t react. He didn’t want to speak at all. But when we figured out what phrases he was trying for we would say them, ask him to repeat them, and when he did, the students reacted appropriately even though he was initially difficult to comprehend. So then he was far more comfortable with experimenting with repetition of others. The positive reinforcement, whatever it may be, is important.

(Granted, this then led to the expectation that if he said ‘can I use please’ the other students would relinquish things immediately, but you cross that bridge when you get there.)

Mind-controlled exoskeleton to help disabled people walk again

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 21:04:32 -0500

neurosciencestuff:

Every year thousands of people in Europe are paralysed by a spinal cord injury. Many are young adults, facing the rest of their lives confined to a wheelchair. Although no medical cure currently exists, in the future they could be able to walk again thanks to a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton being developed by EU-funded researchers.

The system, based on innovative ‘Brain-neural-computer interface’ (BNCI) technology - combined with a light-weight exoskeleton attached to users’ legs and a virtual reality environment for training - could also find applications in the rehabilitation of stroke victims and in assisting astronauts rebuild muscle mass after prolonged periods in space.

In the United Kingdom, every eight hours someone suffers a spinal cord injury, often leading to partial or full lower-body paralysis. In the United States, more than 250.000 people are living with paralysis as a result of damage to their spinal cord, usually because of a traffic accident, fall or sporting injury. Many are under the age of 50, and with no known medical cure or way of repairing damaged spinal nerves they face the rest of their lives in a wheelchair.

But by bypassing the spinal cord entirely and routing brain signals to a robotic exoskeleton, they should be able to get back on their feet. That is the ultimate goal of researchers working in the ‘Mind-controlled orthosis and VR-training environment for walk empowering’ (Mindwalker) project, a three-year initiative supported by EUR 2.75 million in funding from the European Commission.

‘Mindwalker was proposed as a very ambitious project intended to investigate promising approaches to exploit brain signals for the purpose of controlling advanced orthosis, and to design and implement a prototype system demonstrating the potential of related technologies,’ explains Michel Ilzkovitz, the project coordinator at Space Applications Services in Belgium.

The team’s approach relies on an advanced BNCI system that converts electroencephalography (EEG) signals from the brain, or electromyography (EMG) signals from shoulder muscles, into electronic commands to control the exoskeleton.

The Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Movement Biomechanics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) focused on the exploitation of EEG and EMG signals treated by an artificial neural network, while the Foundation Santa Lucia in Italy developed techniques based on EMG signals modelled by the coupling of neural and biomechanical oscillators.

One approach for controlling the exoskeleton uses so-called ‘steady-state visually evoked potential’, a method that reads flickering visual stimuli produced at different frequencies to induce correlated EEG signals. Detection of these EEG signals is used to trigger commands such as ‘stand’, ‘walk’, ‘faster’ or ‘slower’.

A second approach is based on processing EMG signals generated by the user’s shoulders and exploits the natural arm-leg coordination in human walking: arm-swing patterns can be perceived in this way and converted into control signals commanding the exoskeleton’s legs.

A third approach, ‘ideation’, is also based on EEG-signal processing. It uses the identification and exploitation of EEG Theta cortical signals produced by the natural mental process associated with walking. The approach was investigated by the Mindwalker team but had to be dropped due to the difficulty, and time needed, in turning the results of early experiments into a fully exploitable system.

Regardless of which method is used, the BNCI signals have to be filtered and processed before they can be used to control the exoskeleton. To achieve this, the Mindwalker researchers fed the signals into a ‘Dynamic recurrent neural network’ (DRNN), a processing technique capable of learning and exploiting the dynamic character of the BNCI signals.

‘This is appealing for kinematic control and allows a much more natural and fluid way of controlling an exoskeleton,’ Mr Ilzkovitz says.

The team adopted a similarly practical approach for collecting EEG signals from the user’s scalp. Most BNCI systems are either invasive, requiring electrodes to be placed directly into brain tissue, or require users to wear a ‘wet’ capon their head, necessitating lengthy fitting procedures and the use of special gels to reduce the electrical resistance at the interface between the skin and the electrodes. While such systems deliver signals of very good quality and signal-to-noise ratio, they are impractical for everyday use.

The Mindwalker team therefore turned to a ‘dry’ technology developed by Berlin-based eemagine Medical Imaging Solutions: a cap covered in electrodes that the user can fit themselves, and which uses innovative electronic components to amplify and optimise signals before sending them to the neural network.

‘The dry EEG cap can be placed by the subject on their head by themselves in less than a minute, just like a swimming cap,’ Mr Ilzkovitz says.

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