Jennifer Golbeck: The curly fry conundrum: Why social media “likes” say more than you might think


Do you like curly fries? Have you Liked them on Facebook? Watch this talk to find out the surprising things Facebook (and others) can guess about you from your random Likes and Shares. Computer scientist Jennifer Golbeck explains how this came about, how some applications of the technology are not so cute — and why she thinks we should return the control of information to its rightful owners.

http://mashable.com/2014/04/03/sesame-street-microsocope/

Article - 5 Ways To Do EdTech On A Shoestring Budget


If teachers ran the government, we wouldn't have a national debt. Teachers are frugal. Very frugal. I’m not saying I reuse dental floss or anything, but the lengths I’ve gone to save money are amazing.  This is because the money I’m saving is often…mine. Still, sometimes a teacher has to spend. I buy tons of pencils, papers, documentaries, resources, and other things each year. What I really want is unlimited access to the types of technologies my students find most engaging. Sometimes I feel this is way outside of my budget.


The five ways to do tech on a budget are 1. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). 2. Purchase Carefully (Will students use this? Will they look forward to using this or will it be a burden? Does it fill some need or make life easier?). 3. Stream (Amazon Prime and Netflix). 4. Bring Tech to the Students (Labs are expensive. Bring the tech TO the students). 5. Go Paperless

Article - Time is of the essence, so you better track it well


My story of how I learned to embrace time tracking software has very little to do with efficiency and creativity more of an appreciation and awareness of my working hours. Who gets your time? By tracking, I was shown an ugly truth – that precious minutes of my day were being spent unwisely on financially and spiritually unrewarding endeavors.


At these moments, I would go on Facebook to see friends’ familiar faces and have a Gchat with old colleagues from my journalism days. These crutches weren’t doing me any favors in terms of getting me acclimated to my new job.

Once I tracked them, I realized that I was spending time avoiding tasks because I was nervous about taking them on and failing.


If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll get a true audit of your day. If you can’t face all the time you spend on social media or watching YouTube videos to avoid your work day, then you probably need more than just time tracking software.

Article - Why the best entrepreneurs and creators are humble



In an age where social media runs rampant with humblebrags and constant barking, humility grows scarcer every day. While this trend may not appear to have any face value, it holds significant implications for your personal achievements, your team building and relationships, and a more realistic projection of the future.


Embracing humility, and being humble, doesn’t mean never talking about your achievements and accomplishments. As 19th century author and preacher Charles Spurgeon eloquently explains it:

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that.


It’s futile to brag about things that haven’t happened yet. Instead, remind yourself that these future events aren’t set in stone — and success isn’t the only possible outcome. Be grateful that you have someone to listen to this and keep you accountable. Whether it’s between friends, or collaborators and colleagues studies show humility to be a trait we value in others.


Humility pushes you to achieve more, Humility builds better teams, and Humility will be the downfall of arrogance.

Article - 5 Common Objects That Look 300x Cooler Under a Microscope


A microscope can reveal the fascinating world hiding in everyday objects.

If you paid any attention in science class, you know that tiny cells and molecules form the building blocks of most things. Everyday things can look completely different — even otherworldly — when magnified.


SEE ALSO: 5 Fun Science Experiments for Kids


Sesame Street's triangle-loving monster Telly stopped by Mashable's #5facts to discover the mysterious unseen intricacies of ordinary objects.

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/04/06/best-entrepreneurs-creators-humble/#comments

Dr. Amy B. Hollingsworth is an instructor at The University of Akron, who works closely with dual enrollment students in her biology course. "One of the known issues with dual enrollment (DE) is that students don't feel like they belong in either high school or college," Dr. Hollingsworth says. "A student who is 16, and in a college course, may have trouble relating to the other students in the class, which can make them feel isolated. In my lab course, where my students work in groups, I have seen 16-year-olds feel very uncomfortable when the others are talking about drinking or going to fraternity parties," she adds. These students may not feel that they belong in high school, either. "While I feel it is an advantage curriculum-wise, I don't think students are truly emotionally prepared for college at 15 or 16. Unless they are in a distance-learning situation (where the college course is broadcast to their high school via the web or on a screen in a lecture hall) or have excellent counseling, first generation students may feel isolated," she shares. "The word we use for it is 'liminality.' This is where they are at a crossroads between being a teenager and being made to skip the crucial years of understanding oneself, and going straight into college without the emotional maturity," Dr. Hollingsworth adds.

In 1993, Bill and Melinda Gates took a walk on the beach and made a big decision: to give their Microsoft wealth back to society. In conversation with Chris Anderson, the couple talks about their work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as their marriage, their children, their failures and the satisfaction of giving most of their money away.

The Gates parents’ attitude toward their kids and money — call it the anti-Paris Hilton approach — resonates with an attitude toward wealth that runs as a subtext through TED itself. As an event, TED manages to gather some of the world’s richest people into one room. Once there, they’re bombarded with the message that money is not for having but for doing. As the world’s richest people, the Gates family could spend lifetimes doing nothing at all. But for the TED set, at least, the only points you get are for making something happen.

The proliferation of mobile devices and the surge in popularity of the flipped classroom mean that video is at the head of the class in today's schools.
Today’s generation of students, from kindergarten to university, were raised with video online. For them it’s a natural tool for learning, whether or not video is actually used in their schools. This is something that many forward-looking educators and video professionals have been predicting would happen.

“I think schools are really going to have to adapt soon,” says James Foley, manager of digital media development at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RTI). “The bar is getting set high, but not in the way we think.” That’s because students are coming to college with their expectations already set by watching YouTube or instructional video sites such as Khan Academy.

In her Grade 2 classroom in Wolf Creek, teacher Kendall Johnson says, “Video is used a lot more to motivate kids.” During a physical education lesson last year, she used her smartphone to record students practicing the long jump. Afterward, Johnson reviewed the footage with them in the classroom, providing constructive feedback on their technique.

Smart classrooms and large-format displays are particularly important so that students may view videos one-on-one with teachers, in small groups, or all together. Additionally, it is not practical to give the youngest students video homework assignments, in part because they are more likely to have limited internet access outside of school.

“By the students viewing it on the larger screen,” Serviss says, “it has a true impact on their self-esteem. Ten years from now they’ll still have that video footage. We’ll look back and show our classes 10 years from now, ‘Here’s your parents, talking about your heritage.’”

New Push to Boost Numbers of Minority STEM Ph.D.s

California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles jointly announced a new effort Thursday to increase the number of minority Ph.D.s in science, mathematics and technology fields. The four universities will create "a unique, cross-institutional community of underrepresented minority Ph.D. students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty members in the targeted fields; developing faculty training to better recognize and help these students thrive and advance; and conducting research that includes annual surveys of Ph.D. students about what factors impact their attitudes, experiences and preparation for the future," the announcement said.

Debt, Race and Ph.D.s

Colleges and universities -- not to mention many businesses -- have been pushing for gains in the numbers of black and Latino students who earn doctorates, especially in STEM or social science fields.

A new study may point to one hindrance in making progress toward this goal. Black and Latino graduate students are more likely to borrow and more likely to borrow larger sums to earn a Ph.D. than are white or Asian graduate students. The figures are particularly striking for African Americans and for STEM fields.

The median respondent salary was $22,041, below the federal poverty line for a family of four ($23,550), although the typical course load was difficult to ascertain from the online forum (with adjuncts reporting as many as 10 courses per semester). Some 89 percent of respondents teach at two or more institutions, and most can’t depend on assignments from semester to semester. Many also said they relied on help from family members and government assistance to survive, despite having advanced degrees. More than 50 percent of respondents had Ph.D.s and 30 percent held master’s degrees.

Respondents also reported low prospects for advancement to tenure-line or full-time jobs, and 89 percent said they received no professional support for teaching or research from their institutions. The average length of time respondents said they’d worked as an adjunct was 10 years. The median length of time was four years.


“Growing up in a poor neighborhood … I believed earning several college degrees would be my path out of poverty, but that is no longer the case,” one adjunct said.

Since the UCLA College of Letters and Science reinstated a college-wide commencement in 2002, the crop of commencement speakers has lacked the diversity that UCLA administration touts as one of the university’s top priorities.

Only four out of 13 were people of color. Seven of the past 13 speakers were white males. Only two were women and neither of those women were people of color.

While the College has picked successful and compelling speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and fields of expertise over the course of its history, the College’s recent choices point to a lack of critical thinking.

It is just as important to give students relatable and diverse role models as it is to give them speakers with impressive academic, professional and personal accomplishments.

Providing speakers with a myriad of different personal experiences – shaped by a number of factors, among them gender, race, personal history as well as field of expertise and academic accomplishment – will enable students from all walks of life to see themselves in their commencement speakers.

The committee within the College in charge of picking the commencement speaker would do well to remember this come next year.

In an email statement to The Bruin, the deans of the College said that they are “proud that half of (the) speakers come from underrepresented backgrounds and have broken barriers to reach the pinnacle of their careers.”

The deans are counting the two women who spoke at the 2012 and 2013 commencements, respectively, as a part of the “half.”

It should be noted that until two years ago, there was not a single woman featured on the list of commencement speakers at all. And even now, there is not one woman of color to be found on the list.

These numbers speak to a need for the College to more carefully examine its choices and to think more deeply about what it means to look back on a list of speakers that reflect the diversity of the student body.

I am a 61-year-old white man, the sort that is often considered irrelevant and accused of being angered by the loss of privilege following social incursions of one or another previously oppressed groups. To allay any such considerations, I state for the record I have enough privilege to suit me, and no lack of money. I say what I say out of concern for our educational and other institutions.

I am old enough to remember when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stated that one day he hoped we would be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Our obsession with diversity has created a society in which the reverse of the reverend’s hopes have been achieved. We care less about an individual’s achievements, the new criteria being whether they are African American, Hispanic, LGBT, female, American Indian or some other protected group.

I believe this obsession with diversity is actually subtly racist. It suggests that without special treatment by the great white father, no member of the protected classes could succeed. I don’t know about others, but I would feel greatly insulted. There’s two cents’ worth from an old white male.

Dr. Andrew Kindler
UC Berkeley alumnus

When will people realize that diversity of opinions is far more important than skin pigmentation or sexual organs? Life is more than just a checkbox or making sure you have a perfect "diversity zoo", if you will, with the exact mix of races and genders in the right proportions?

Why does the Daily Bruin Editorial Board insult students' intelligence by assuming that people can only relate to others of their own pigmentation? Key exhibit from the piece below:

"Providing speakers with a myriad of different personal experiences – shaped by a number of factors, among them gender, race, personal history as well as field of expertise and academic accomplishment – will enable students from all walks of life to see themselves in their commencement speakers."

So caucasian students can't "see themselves" in African-American speakers and vice-versa? How unbelievably insulting to the intelligence of UCLA students. A logical conclusion is that the Daily Bruin editorial board would be in support of (voluntarily) segregated graduations, each with a speaker of their own race they can "see themselves in."

This PC multiculturalism has gone way too far and this editorial is a perfect example and wake-up call.

Why are we so focused on skin color and sex. What the speakers have to say is much more important.