The Bahá'í Faith and the Cosmos

 

Another new title has been added to the collection of ebooks on Kindle at the usual price of $0.99. The title is "The Bahá'í Faith and the Cosmos - A Short Introduction". 

The description is:

"This booklet briefly explains some Bahá'í teachings on space exploration, the universe, extraterrestrial life and the place of mankind in it all. Recent scientific findings are used provide background on exoplanets and extremophiles."

The booklet explores the statement made by Bahá’u’lláh:

“Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.”

By looking at recent scientific research we demonstrate that the first part has already become widely accepted as likely. 

The second part is not yet accepted but is increasingly considered plausible.

MOOCs update

I have been doing MOOCs regularly with Coursera, Futurelearn and Edx and mention a few below that I did recently.

But, please note, the platforms for these three leaders have important differences so if you have experience with one then don't assume the others are the same. Also then content differs with Edx have more academic courses and Futurelearn more for the casual learner. Coursera has some of both.

Edx
Modelling climate change
Currently doing a course called Religous Literacy

Futurelearn
Strategies for successful Aging
Monitoring climate from space
Exlporing our oceans

Coursera
Critical Thinking in Global Challenges
The Science of the Solar System
Planet Earth...and You!
Energy and the Earth

Some local IT news

Some quick items before year-end.

Wi-fi for schools
According to Demerara Waves:

"The eGovernment Unit  has begun rolling out Wi- Fi networks in schools, while Hinterland and remote areas are expected to benefit from internet access by the end of the first quarter of 2016..."

This will be a challenging project. The article indicates that there is currently a pilot project at one school. Access will be restricted using a whitelist.

Open source
This important issue got some coverage recently.
Hacking vs open source
Open source in public service

Samsung smart school pilot project
Samsung and Starr Computers along with the Ministry of Education worked to set this up. This system has been piloted in many countries but I could not quickly find an independent evaluation. Will be interesting to see what happens over the next year or so. May be I can follow this story.

Making use of MOOCs

It seems to me that the Caribbean needs to make more of a major new educational opportunity - MOOCs. MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Course. These courses are available free on the internet and cover a very wide range of subjects. A very interesting example of how new technology can give us new educational possibilities which are truly global. Most courses are designed for the average person and require little or no special knowledge. Some are university level but most are not.

Courses usually last 5-10 weeks with around 4-5 hours work online per week. Common elements include weekly videos, quizzes, forums and reading. Generally they are done by major universities and are of high quality.

So far I have done eight or more and noticed very little Caribbean participation. I have not seen another Guyanese participant just one or two from the Caribbean islands.

Teachers could to do some of these and then encourage students. There are in fact courses for teachers. There are also courses for business people, for students, for engineers, for software developers (many on IT) and for those in the medical field. Participants range from pre-teens (not many I admit) to retirees.

While courses are free you can usually get a certificate if you pay for it.

Personally I have found the experience very rewarding and worthwhile. Courses are popular with young people and with older people. If you have a busy life with little time for browsing then it may not be for you. But you may still find something very relevant to your work which will make it a priority.

Can we do our own MOOCs in the Caribbean? I am sure we will but first we need to make use of what is already there and learn from it. Creating a good MOOC is no small task even for the large universities of N America and Europe.

Coursera
Popular and well-designed. Good forums. Very wide range of courses. Quality of courses generally very good but depends on the institution providing the content. Takes a while to find your way around.
A few random examples:
Introduction to Finance
Cryptography
Smart Growth for Private Businesses
Women in Leadership
Introduction to Acoustics 
Social Psychology
The Evolving Universe

EdX
Very good courses, perhaps slightly more slanted towards academic subjects.
A few random examples:
English Grammar and Style
Introduction to Computer Science
Human Anatomy
Psychology of Criminal Justice
Exoplanets

Futurelearn
Also very good. More Europe and UK institutions represented. Different forums style. Fairly simple to get started, less complex.
A few random examples:
The Science of Nuclear Energy
Cooperation in the Contemporary World
Preparing for University
The Science of Medicines
Religion and Conflict
Exploring Our Oceans

World Bank climate change MOOC

This is called 'Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided' and is being hosted by Coursera. It is being well-presented by a selection of experts in the usual Coursera format.  It is not a difficult course especially if you are familiar with the topic. Plenty of discussion. Recommended.

I am still hoping to see more Caribbean participants - only a small handful so far.

Too much tech for children?

According to an opinion piece in the New York Times:

"More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it."

Is this too negative - may be. Be we really have to look at the research and not just accept the very effective and motivating promotional hype coming from big tech companies whose main priority is simply to sell their services and hardware.

Coursera

I am currently completing a course (social psychology) online at Coursera and am favourably impressed with the way the course has been done. I believe not all courses they offer at Coursera are as good as this - more on this later. The video lectures were short (10-25 mins) and engaging with the lecturer speaking as in he was in a small informal group and punctuating the lecture with pictures, questions, video clips etc. There were downloadable readings. There were weekly assignments which were diverse, imaginative and not too academic. There were very active forums - possible because of thousands of students all doing the course together. There was also a series of customised Google Hangout sessions with other students in groups of 4 or 5.

The topic being psychology made possible a style which would be more difficult with the hard sciences but it seems to be near the cutting edge of online learning. Recommended.

About lecturing

Firstly it seems that taking notes longhand helps us remember the subject while typing on a laptop is no help in that respect. So get out those pens...

From an article in The Atlantic:

"...this might be the key to their findings: Take notes by hand, and you have to process information as well as write it down. That initial selectivity leads to long-term comprehension."

Secondly getting the active participation of students is more effective than long lectures. No surprise really, the trick is how... the article does give some clues. One more thing - putting the lecture on a computer does not improve learning. From the article in Science :

"A new study finds that undergraduate students in classes with traditional stand-and-deliver lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that use more stimulating, so-called active learning methods."

Using tablets in school - pros and cons

There has been a move to use tablet computers in schools. Having been a tablet (android) user for the past year or so, for 5 plus hours a day,  I have given some serious thought as to the pros and cons of tablets. After some research I have yet to find a good evaluation of the tablet in schools. Anyway here are some thoughts on the subject. Note that this post applies also to the more capable smartphones.

Pros
Lower cost
Portable
Free or cheap apps
Wifi built-in
Good for browsing, multimedia
Good for reading ebooks and other content
Useful sensors (much potential here, see here)
Android OS also widely used in smart phones


Cons
Limited battery life and charging issues
Keyboard (pop up) inadequate for serious text entry
Copying and pasting not easy
Graphics creation limited
Designed for personal use by one user, not multiuser
Apps and environment not designed for group/corporate use
Repairs more difficult than for PC
Security issues

Some of the problems are due to hardware limitations such as battery life, pointing inaccuracies and limited processing power and will mostly resolve. Others are software issues and fixable. For example there could be special accounts at Google for android systems that are used by multiple users and belong to a school or business. May be these could use facial recognition or fingerprint to switch users and wipe user data. Apps could store work online in individual accounts.
The difficulty of composing text for reports or assignments is not easy to solve without resort to full size keyboards (e.g. using bluetooth). I do not think using voice to text is ready yet or appropriate for class use.

There is no doubt tablets/smartphones will be used in schools, it is a case of making the best use of them but I do not intend to get into that complex subject here. I would just add that the rate of technological change is high which makes it difficult for teachers to keep up and for institutions to get a return from the funds spent. Change has to be planned for.

Many of the articles and evaluations found on the net are already out-of-date. No doubt this post will be out-of-date soon too...

Guyanese author writes fantasy novel

The book: The Cripple and the Staff .

Author: M M Mancey available at Amazon (print and ebook).

Let me confess some bias here - the writer is my daughter. However it is a good read, better than many a fantasy book I have read over the years.
It does have some good reviews too. I only wrote one of them... An excellent first book. Needless to say there are very few Guyanese writers of fantasy or science fiction.

IT in university level education

Came across two interesting and relevant articles.

First from MIT Technology Review concerns MOOCs (massive open online courses) which are attracting attention but are really only getting started.

"As online education platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udacity burst onto the scene over the past year, backers have talked up their potential to democratize higher education in the countries that have had the least access"

But:

"One of the major challenges for MOOCs—which so far mostly come from U.S. universities—is to tailor the content of courses to a diverse worldwide audience with any number of combinations of language, educational, motivational, and cultural backgrounds."

Doing one of these well is a major effort and requires many skills (e.g. graphics) not just a lecturer with a bit of training. Hopefully these courses will endure and be refined and improved over many years. Sustaining motivation is problem and most students find standalone online courses difficult to complete unless they are short.

And secondly is a rather critical article from Information Week about the use of IT in the university classroom:

"Professors at top research universities are highly skeptical of the value of the instructional technologies being injected into their classrooms, which many see as making their job harder and doing little to improve teaching and learning."

Note that while this may be indicative this a not a proper survey.

Learning mathematics

According to an item in Scientific American improving in mathematics has more to do with internal motivation than intelligence.

"People who were driven by their own interest improved their math skills the most. IQ or external factors such as parental pressure or grades didn't create a lasting boost"

"...effective studying techniques and motivation, not IQ, predicted who had most improved their math skills by 10th grade."

Teaching reading in school

Since this is a topical issue here in Guyana this BBC article seems very relevant. It notes that phonics is effective but other techniques are needed too and one approach does not suit all children. Phonics has also become popular here in recent years.

" ...international evidence demonstrates that phonics is the most effective way of teaching early reading"

Online courses for education

There is significant interest locally in this mode of education. Recently there has been a surge of organisations offering free online courses in a number of academic areas especially IT and mathematics. The more interesting ones try to be interactive in various ways. Technology Review has done a valuable article comparing some of these courses and highlighting the pros and cons. It is early days for this kind of education and the results are mixed.

Teaching Computer Science in Schools

This topic is the subject of debate in England at present. There is a move away from focusing mainly on office skills (word processing, spreadsheets etc) and towards more on programming skills. The British Computer Society (BCS) has sent a package to schools outlining their proposal. While our programme is based on the CXC syllabus this package still contains much of interest to teachers and, may be, to CXC. Among those partnering with BCS in this are Google and Microsoft.
From the proposal:

"Although existing curricula for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are broad and allow scope for teachers to inspire pupils and help them develop interests in Computing, many pupils are not inspired by what they are taught and gain nothing beyond basic digital literacy skills such as how to use a word-processor or a database."

Wildlife survey

There was an interesting report on the BBC recently about a wildlife survey being done by asking ordinary commuters to make simple reports of sightings of wildlife. I recall also surveys being done through schools.
Given our limited human resources and our limited knowledge of local wildlife, could something similar be done here? May be a limited survey using school children? May be enough ordinary citizen would be interested. It could be limited to, say, birds or butterflies or garden insects or even plants. Enough young people have cell phones with cameras to be useful. At least it would increase awareness of local flora and fauna.

National Academies Press (USA) free downloads

The National Academies Press (which includes the National Academy of Sciences of the USA) now has many useful texts for free download as PDFs. Some seem to be very relevant to local needs especially in education and health. Note that not all their publications are free. Here are some random interesting titles in no particular order:
Condensed-Matter and Materials Physics: The Science of the World Around Us
Promoting Chemical Laboratory Safety and Security in Developing Countries
Strengthening High School Chemistry Education Through Teacher Outreach Programs
Health and Medicine:Challenges for the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Century
Observing Weather and Climate from the Ground Up
Surrounded by Science:Learning Science in Informal Environments
Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8
On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research
Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Prudent Practices in the Laboratory: Handling and Management of Chemical Hazards
Finding What Works in Health Care

Science education

Or may be I should say STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. I have blogged on this before so I noted two items emphasising the same concern in the UK and the US although the situation in Guyana is very different of course.

There was this article entitled "How should we save science education?" in on the New Scientist blog created for this very subject.

This had links to the UK Government STEM web site.

Then there was an article about President Obama launching a "massive science eduaction effort":

"This new effort, called Educate to Innovate, is "…designed to energize and excite America’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.""

Elements of this plan include partnering with the private sector and an annual science fair at the White House.

The US and UK feel the urgent need for such a program. Our need is even more urgent!