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.
For example, robot journalists in the Associated Press wrote thousands of stories last year, mostly about listed companies’ earnings and sports news. The automated technology has proved to be highly accurate in reporting on standardized topics, and was extremely fast. A report on a listed firm’s results could be churned out in a second. AP’s…
Make your documents look consistent in a click Source: Styles for Google Docs I have been a big fan of styles for awhile. In fact, it’s probably the most underused feature of word processing. Once you start using styles, you’ll create better looking, consistent, work, faster then you thought possible. This add-on gives you twelve…
Once a month, this column will examine the insights that science offers about the way people learn, and how such findings could influence schools. Most of us can remember a moment like this from our school years: the teacher poses a question – maybe it’s math, maybe history. You raise your hand, you give your…
In a paper entitled “Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It?”, researches shared five studies that examined the difference between people who subscribe to the fixed theory versus the growth theory of interest. They found that people who believe that interests are fixed are more likely to: Lose interest more quickly in areas…
“We dropped over $10,000 last year on a math product, but I’m not sure if it’s really helped our students learn.” Sound familiar? Source: How Do We Know When Technology Helps—or Hurts—the Classroom? Educators at ISTE Weigh In | EdSurge News Trying to gauge the effectiveness of any teaching strategy is difficult, so this question…
How is it even possible that Elon Musk could build four multibillion companies by his mid-40s — in four separate fields (software, energy, transportation, and aerospace)? To explain Musk’s success, others have pointed to his heroic work ethic (he regularly works 85-hour weeks), his ability to set reality-distorting visions for the future, and his incredible resilience. But all of…
