It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness.
According to research from Office Team, 63% of senior managers said their company is “very supportive of their staff’s efforts to achieve work-life balance.” However, only 34% of employees agreed with this statement. This is a significant change from a similar work-life survey conducted 10 years ago in which 45% of senior managers characterized their…
In a paper entitled Internet Filtering and Adolescent Exposure to Online Sexual Material, Oxford Internet Institute researchers Victoria Nash and Andrew Przybylski found that Internet filters rarely work to keep adolescents away from online porn. “It’s important to consider the efficacy of Internet filtering,” said Dr, Nash. “Internet filtering tools are expensive to develop and…
There are two pretty basic problems with this line of thinking. First, the idea that you cannot create on a smartphone or tablet assumes both that the software on the new device doesn’t change and that the nature of the work won’t change. Neither are good assumptions. You begin by making the new tool fit the…
The world feels more dangerous. Our streets seem less safe. The assault on our values is constant. The threats feel real. The enemy is out there — just check your feed. Source: This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit This would be a great article to discuss with students on…
Cognitive biases are systematic ways in which people deviate from rationality in making judgements. Wikipedia maintains a list such biases and one example is survivorship bias, the tendency to focus on those things or people which succeed in an endeavor and discount the experiences of those which did not. Source: A cognitive bias cheat sheet It’s all too…
In general, the time I’ve spent on professional development during the summer and other breaks has been more than made up for by the energy it’s injected into my classroom every day. Spending a few hours on professional development during the summer and other breaks is more than worth it. Source: Teaching why, not how: My…
