Archive for the ‘education’ Category

Symposium on Freedom of Expression

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An International Symposium on Freedom of Expression, sponsored by the Swedish National Commission, will be organized by UNESCO at its Headquarters on 26 January 2011.

Based on the premises that freedom of expression is a cornerstone of the human rights edifice, and that open and participatory communication is vital for successful development, the debates will focus on the status of press freedom worldwide, the safety of media professionals as well as the changes of the media landscape in the digital age.

This one-day event is aligned with UNESCO's mission to foster the free flow of ideas by word and image, and its promotion of the value of information and communication for "advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples". UNESCO has long highlighted the links between the free flow of ideas and the broader objective of preventing wars and constructing the defences of peace.

.:unesco.org->

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Posted: January 23rd, 2011
at 2:32pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: development,events,education

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Politics and the English Language

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Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

: Continue reading the article by George Orwell :

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Posted: January 7th, 2011
at 2:11pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: politricks,education,language

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Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange

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How much do cultural biases affect economic exchange? We answer this ques- Ation by using data on bilateral trust between European countries. We document Athat this trust is affected not only by the characteristics of the country being Atrusted, but also by cultural aspects of the match between trusting country and Atrusted country, such as their history of conicts and their religious, genetic, and Asomatic similarities. We then nd that lower bilateral trust leads to less trade be- Atween two countries, less portfolio investment, and less direct investment, even af- Ater controlling for the characteristics of the two countries. This effect is stronger for Agoods that are more trust intensive. Our results suggest that perceptions rooted in Aculture are important (and generally omitted) determinants of economic exchange.

.:mitpressjournals.org->

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Posted: January 3rd, 2011
at 12:52am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: business,education

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Advice to a Beginning PhD Student

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Posted: December 25th, 2010
at 8:24pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: education

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Enrollment in Online Courses Increases at the Highest Rate Ever

Despite predictions that the growth of online education would begin to level off, colleges reported the highest-ever annual increase in online enrollmentamore than 21 percentalast year, according to aAreport on an annual survey of 2,600 higher-education institutions from the Sloan Consortium and the Babson Survey Research Group.

In fall 2009, collegesaincluding public, nonprofit private, and for-profit private institutionsareported that one million more students were enrolled in at least one Web-based course, bringing the total number of online students to 5.6 million. That unexpected increaseawhich topped the previous year'sA17-percent riseamay have been helped by higher demand for education in a rocky economy and an uptick in the number of colleges adopting online courses.

Although the survey found sustained interest in online courses across all sectors, there was a spike in the number of for-profit institutionsaa 20-percent increase over last yearathat said online education is critical to their long-term strategies. However, more public colleges thanA private for-profitsa74.9 percent versus 60.5 percentasay it's part of their long-term plans.

.:chronicle.com->

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Posted: December 14th, 2010
at 10:10pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: internets,education

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Critical Thinking in Education

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This should be the age of reason but we are failing to foster the intellectual skills that could liberate student minds. Linda Elder argues that we should embed critical thinking at the heart of the curriculum and outlines steps to emancipate the minds of a new generation.

Studies show that the majority of academic faculty believe critical thinking to be of primary importance in instruction. Yet most of these same studies also show that few faculty can articulate a reasonable conception of critical thinking or show how they try to foster it in their teaching. And contrary to what many believe, there is no historical evidence to suggest that critical thinking has ever been at the heart of teaching and learning in any human society.

Almost 70 years after Edward Glaser conducted the first official study on critical thinking, we are still a long way from realising it in the typical university classroom. AGlaser argued for the importance of critical thinking in education.

Critical thinking, according to him, "calls for persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends".

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Posted: December 14th, 2010
at 12:33am by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: education

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The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone

The Singularity has happened; we call it "the industrial revolution" or "the long nineteenth century". It was over by theAclose of 1918.

Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even whenAattempted by geniuses)? Check.

Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity, extending to our ecology,Amentality and social organization?ACheck.

Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and time?ACheck.

Embrace of the fusion of humanity and machines?ACheck.

Creation of vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing,Acommunication andAcontrol, "the coldest of all cold monsters"? Check; we call themA"the self-regulating market system" andA"modern bureaucracies" (public orAprivate), and they treat men and women, even those whose minds and bodies instantiate them,Alike straw dogs.

An implacable drive on the part of those networks to expand, to entrain more and more of the world within their own sphere? Check. ("Drive" is the best I can do; words like "agenda" or "purpose" are too anthropomorphic, and fail to acknowledge the radical novely and strangeness of these assemblages, which areAnot even intelligent, as we experience intelligence, yet ceaselessly calculating.)

Why, then, since the Singularity is so plainly, even intrusively, visible in our past, does science fiction persist in placing a pale mirage of it in our future? Perhaps: the owl of Minerva flies at dusk; and we are in the late afternoon, fitfully dreaming of the half-glimpsed events of the day, waiting for the stars to come out.

.:cscs.umich.edu->

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Posted: November 28th, 2010
at 2:57pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: myninjaplease,life,weaponry,design,science,"ninja",development,internets,philosophy,education

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The Foolishness of "Natural Language Programming"

Since the early days of automatic computing we have had people that have felt it as a shortcoming that programming required the care and accuracy that is characteristic for the use of any formal symbolism. They blamed the mechanical slave for its strict obedience with which it carried out its given instructions, even if a moment’s thought would have revealed that those instructions contained an obvious mistake. "But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process." (A.E.Houseman). They eagerly hoped and waited for more sensible machinery that would refuse the embark on such nonsensical activities as a trivial clerical error evoked at the time.

Machine code, with its absence of almost any form of redundancy, was soon identified as a needlessly risky interface between man and machine. Partly in response to this recognition so-called "high-level programming languages" were developed, and, as time went by, we learned to a certain extent how to enhance the protection against silly mistakes. It was a significant improvement that now many a silly mistake did result in an error message instead of in an erroneous answer. (And even this improvement wasn’t universally appreciated: some people found error messages they couldn’t ignore more annoying than wrong results, and, when judging the relative merits of programming languages, some still seem to equate "the ease of programming" with the ease of making undetected mistakes.) The (abstract) machine corresponding to a programming language remained, however, a faithful slave, i.e. the nonsensible automaton perfectly capable of carrying out nonsensical instructions. Programming remained the use of a formal symbolism and, as such, continued to require the care and accuracy required before.

In order to make machines significantly easier to use, it has been proposed (to try) to design machines that we could instruct in our native tongues. this would, admittedly, make the machines much more complicated, but, it was argued, by letting the machine carry a larger share of the burden, life would become easier for us. It sounds sensible provided you blame the obligation to use a formal symbolism as the source of your difficulties. But is the argument valid? I doubt.

.:cs.utexas.edu->

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Posted: November 19th, 2010
at 5:02pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: myninjaplease,development,education,language

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Macros Matter: New Programming Languages

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Building new programming languages from whole cloth is a difficult proposition at best. Macro system provide an alternative; they support the construction of new programming languages from existing existing pieces, while still providing the flexibility to radically change the syntax and semantics of the programming language.

In this talk, Robby Findler, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, will give a high-level overview of the research area of macros, showing what can be accomplished with them and introducing some of the technical challenges they pose.

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Posted: November 17th, 2010
at 8:30pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: development,education

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