Superheroes

1.  Me bagong libro akong nakita:

Tentenenen!  San ka pa nakakita ng Quantum mechanics na Math-free?  Science Fiction?  Go tayo dyan!

Sana may ganito din tungkol sa biotechnology saka sa human genome project saka sa analytical chemistry saka sa...


ahehe.  available in book and audio book form.  Reviews and stuff:

clickety-click 1, 2, and 3!


Book Information
The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics: A math-free exploration of the science that made our world
by James Kakalios
Duckworth/Gotham
£12/$26

2.  Me pelikula akong napanood kagabi:  Brazil. (Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Kakatuwa kasi superhero nila don ay isang maintenance man na walang red tape!  Kung kaya't hinahabol sya ngayon ng Gobyerno.  Ahehe.

Yung mga makina (i.e., airconditioning, tube sucky-thingy) parang me sariling buhay.  At and ultimate emancipation ay mga nagliliparang papel.

At sabi sa IMDB:

Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle, Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and both Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger. Written by Philip Brubaker   

Study tips and links

eto na naman tayo!

Nakapag-kolekta ako ng links galing sa Questia mga tips tungkol sa mabisang pag-aaral.

BTW, balak ko talaga mag-subscribe sa Questia :)  Di bale, pagdating ng aking bonuseses...

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Bagong labas: Building Community Disaster Resistance

Panahon na naman ng Bagyo, kung kaya't kaliwa't kanan ang mga volunteer organizations sa paghikayat ng mga volunteers na tumulong sa pagbibigay ng tulong sa iba :) ehehe ano ba namang entry ito?

Heniways, me bagong libro a ng NAS tungkol sa pagbubuo ng disaster resistance within communities, at ito ay produkto ng private-public cooperation. Sa mga lugar na walng malakas na private sector (i.e., class 3 or 4 na komunidad), tatantyahing mahina rin ang ito, kung kaya't importante talaga makapag-buo ng malakas na private sector para hindi lamang gobyerno ang nagbibigay ng serbisyo sa mamamayan.

eto yung libro, libre sya i-download sa Pilipinas. Mula sa kanyang description:

Natural disasters--including hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods--caused over 220,000 deaths worldwide in the first half of 2010 and wreaked havoc on homes, buildings, and the environment. To withstand and recover from natural and human-caused disasters, it is essential that citizens and communities work together to anticipate threats, limit their effects, and rapidly restore functionality after a crisis.

Increasing evidence indicates that collaboration between the private and public sectors could improve the ability of a community to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Several previous National Research Council reports have identified specific examples of the private and public sectors working cooperatively to reduce the effects of a disaster by implementing building codes, retrofitting buildings, improving community education, or issuing extreme-weather warnings. State and federal governments have acknowledged the importance of collaboration between private and public organizations to develop planning for disaster preparedness and response. Despite growing ad hoc experience across the country, there is currently no comprehensive framework to guide private-public collaboration focused on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.

Building Community Disaster Resilience through Private-Public Collaboration assesses the current state of private-public sector collaboration dedicated to strengthening community resilience, identifies gaps in knowledge and practice, and recommends research that could be targeted for investment. Specifically, the book finds that local-level private-public collaboration is essential to the development of community resilience. Sustainable and effective resilience-focused private-public collaboration is dependent on several basic principles that increase communication among all sectors of the community, incorporate flexibility into collaborative networks, and encourage regular reassessment of collaborative missions, goals, and practices.

Practice tests, cheating, teamwork and odds and ends

A word to the wise: I may not make sense.

Hindi ko pa alam kung pano ko pagtatagmitagmiin itong mga articles na ito, tungkol kasi sila sa pag-aaral at sa pagtatasa, mga bagay na hindi ko pa talaga napapag-tagmitagmi. baka naman kasi masyado silang magkakalayo para ipagdikitdikit, o kaya masyadong malayo sa aking mga iniisip ngayon kung kayat hindi ko pa sila napapag-limian ng maigi. Ganumpaman, susubukan ko pa rin, baka naman me makuha tayong may saysay sa kaka-blahblah ko sa blog na ito.

yung una ay tungkol sa self-testing, o sa pagtatasa ng sarili, tulad ng paggamit ng flashcards habang nag-aaral. Ang siste, hindi na inaaral ng studyante ang isang flashcard kung sa tingin nya ay nakabisa na nya ito. yung pag-aaral nila ay nagsasabi na me ilusyon ang mga studyante tungkol sa mga bagay na kanilang nakakabisa, pero sa bandang huli ay hindi naman pala, dahil nakakalimutan din nila ito muli. sa madaling salita, hwag bibitawan ang mga flashcard kahit na pakiwari nila ay kabisado na nila, bagwis ipagpatuloy ang pagbabalik-diwa (retrieval, ano ba ito?) ng mga nalalaman upang tuluyang ma-encode ito sa long-term memory. Isang epektibong apraan ay ang paggamit ng keywords:

"A more effective strategy is to develop a keyword that connects the foreign language word with the English word. 'Wingu' sounds like 'wing,' birds have wings and fly in the 'clouds.' Of course, this works only as well as the keyword you come up with. For a keyword to be any good, you have to be able to remember your keyword when you're given the foreign word later. Also, for a keyword to be good, you have to be able to remember the English word once you remember the keyword."

yung pangalawa naman ay tungkol sa pandaraya ng mga estudyante. marami raw studyante ang nandaraya, kahit na lam nilang mali iyon. ang isang factor na tinignan nila ay ang teacher talk, kung saan pagdating sa middle school, ang guro ay nagiiba na ng perspektiba sa pag-aaral. Hindi na enjoy ang pag-aaral kundi seryosong bagay na, at kailangan nang pagbutihin ang grado. Kung ang tunguhin ng pag-aaral ay para makakuha ng mataas na grado, mas madami ang mandaraya. kung naman ang tunguhin ng klase ay para makabisa (mastery) ang leksyon, mas konti ang nandaraya. tingin ko importanteng mapaabot ito sa mga guro, dahil maaring mas mababa ang stress nila sa pagtuturo kung malaman nila ang tungkol sa pag-aaral na ito.

Ang pangatlo naman ay tungkol sa mabisang (efficient) pag-aaral, at ang mga kakayanan (skills) ng mga estudyante para magampanan ito. Sabi ng pananliksik, kinakailangan ng estudyanteng aralin ay marami at iba-iba (diverse), kailangan nya ng mabisang pamamaraan ng pag-aaral. ngunit ang kaso ay may ilusyon ang estudyante tungkol sa pagtatasa sa kanyang pag-aaral, akala nya ay mabisa ito ngunit ito ay kulang pa. Ang usapin ay nababalot sa terminong metacomprehension, o pag-tatasa ng sariling pag-alam o kaalaman. sabi nga,

improving metacomprehension can, in turn, improve students’ self-regulated learning.

Ang huli ay tungkol sa teamwork (pero mas mukhang authentic assessments ang pinaguusapan don) na mas epektibo kesa lectures sa pagpa-praktis ng HOTS. di ba alam na natin yun? anyway, heto ang link.

Research tidbit: STEM needs better Intro Courses

... to decrease attrition.

Here's the link: Science, OCtober 15

Full service schooling

Schools can level up.

We find elementary schools in almost every corner of the country. And these schools have facilities that can be used for other community activities and services. This is the idea behind the Full service schooling concept, to wit:

A full-service school integrates education, medical, social and/or human services that are beneficial to meeting the needs of children and youth and their families on school grounds or in locations which are easily accessible.

Activities such as health and reproductive health education, nutrition, recreation, mentoring, counseling, parent education, child care, and so on can be held in the community school. Having parents and out-of-school siblings get their services at schools may make them more amenable to the school system, as it allows for greater transparency of school activities and greater interaction between schools and community. It may even convince them to reenter the school system.

I actually heard about this first from the TED talk given by Thailand's Mr. Condom, at the last part where he talks about the one-stop-shop school vision that they are about to implement. Schools usually have access to the internet, and this can be the focal area for lifelong learning activities.

Is this a good idea?

It's already happening in our country where schools is the venue for elections, census, and other extracurriculars, but shifting to a full-service school might increase teachers' responsibilities on top of their already full plate. The addition of providing for services within the premises might detract them from their primary focus in education (specially in educational reform).

With the celebration of all sorts of This week or That month or International Year for Something-or-other, the full service school may be forced to trend with the occasion and end up with a conceptually disjointed curriculum.

Another thing is that so many agencies are in charge of these services that it may be difficult for full service schools to coordinate well with these agencies.

Is the effort worth it?

I think the best answer for this lies in assessing the schools using a different report card, as the school community has grown, so must the assessment of effectivity be more expansive. What are its outputs? More importantly, what are its outcomes?

I feel that this issue is too big for me to figure out on my own, and I have no research in the PHilippines whatsoever to back me up. Suffice to say I'm really interested in this idea, as it interfaces environment, community, and education.

Can Community Learning improve school learning?

I was surfing along looking for a PhD research problem (I had, you see, decided to work on education and not pure chemistry) when I chanced upon the term Community Learning.

Hm.

As it happens I am thinking up an ecological schooling paradigm, where community and environment directly affect schoolwork and so on...

If it takes a community to raise a child, then it follows that a learning community will raise school effectiveness.

What does it take to turn communities into communities of learning? What do communities need to learn?

I think by focusing on Basic Education we are trying to modify the fruit. Mayhap we can actually influence fruiting by focusing on the tree, the community.

Revisiting, revisioning...

The problem with reading so much is that all that information gets messed up in my brain.

I thought of making a new blog for the education stuff that I come across, in the hope of having somewhere to make sense of them in.

Then I realized that I do have a blog, an old one at that :), where I was supposed to put up my ideas and thoughts...

So now I am revisioning this blog as my "educ" blog so that it will not get mixed up with my course blogs, my gender blog, and my halal blog (yes, that's how mixed up everything is!)

So, here goes!