Watch "The SOUND of Millions of Monarch Butterflies!" on YouTube
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Watch "The SOUND of Millions of Monarch Butterflies!" on YouTube
This is so cool. Maybe one day I can see.it myself
Today.
RIP Dad. Sorry you won't get to see the nice weather this week. I will try and enjoy it for you
How do the kids do online research
In my experience with my students (8-12 year olds), if given a question like, say, “list five famous Africans and what they are famous for”, they will type verbatim into google “list five famous Africans and what they are famous for”, click on the first youtube video, and if that doesn’t give them the exact answer they need, immediately give up.
This is also my experience with my 16-18 year old students. Though they will at least look at the first three articles google gives them…and then give up if they can’t find the exact information
I just wish they knew how to use keywords. Yes, search engines have become really good at interpreting full phrases and pulling keywords from conversational requests, but you can search so much more efficiently if you don’t make them do that.
This also speaks… badly… for the future of misinformation on the internet. No matter how many classes we run about reliable sources.
We literally just had a really great discussion in my class (library of information science degree) about information literacy and who is teaching it to the newer generations and how linked data fits in with it. The answer for some of it is the english teacher does for the most part but kids retain it better and use it faster when the teacher works with the school librarian. Also it depends on what device is being used. Because of the data that search engines keep a teacher and a student can search for the same exact phrase or terminology and they will have completely different results. With the teachers being more relevant because they use their device for work rather than play.
#the keywords confuse the shit out of me#I can’t keep them straight in my head and mix them all up#half the time when I use them it tells me there are no search results.#they only told me about them my junior year of collage so I was already fucked
If you wanted to yell your request for information to your friend on the other side of a loud, crowded party in, like, 3 words, what 3 words would you pick? Those are your search terms.
So in our example in the first post, you do NOT type the full question into your search engine. Making google parse things like ‘list’, ‘5′, and ‘explain’ is going to muddy your results, and this is especially true if you care enough about your data that you’re not using google. Your search terms (WITHOUT quotation marks) would be “famous Africans”, or “famous African people” or “prominent Africans” if you want to be more discerning about what kinds of answers you get.
If you do a lot of online research (as kids in school should do), you pretty quickly get a sense of what sorts of terms are best. For instance, “famous African people” is better than “famous Africans” because the latter is likely to be keywords in a lot of fluff journal article titles, whereas “famous African people” is more likely to bring up lists. “Prominent” will bring up more wealthy businessmen and political leaders, whereas “famous” will bring up more entertainers. But any of these will work. Just pretend the search engine is someone who can’t hear you very well and wants the clearest question in the smallest number of words.
(Although this specific example is bad because anyone with internet research experience answering this question would just go straight to wikipedia, who have lists of these kinds of things, and pick 5 names they like the sound of).
Also, if you wanna get fancy, print this out and stick it on your wall:
(link to higher resolution image)
It will make your life SO MUCH easier. (And, as you can see, this is why typing some questions into google verbatim is a bad idea, especially if you don’t use quotation marks. Not using the quotes and typing in anything with ‘and’ or ‘or’ in it can confuse the search engine.)
DOCTOR WHO “The End of Time - Part. 1”
imagine a giant monster following you around and picking you up and kissing you all the time. that’s what my cat lives with every day
Because treating people fairly often means treating them differently.
This is something that I teach my students during the first week of school and they understand it. Eight year olds can understand this and all it costs is a box of band-aids.
I have each students pretend they got hurt and need a band-aid. Children love band-aids. I ask the first one where they are hurt. If he says his finger, I put the band-aid on his finger. Then I ask the second one where they are hurt. No matter what that child says, I put the band-aid on their finger exactly like the first child. I keep doing that through the whole class. No matter where they say their pretend injury is, I do the same thing I did with the first one.
After they all have band-aids in the same spot, I ask if that actually helped any of them other than the first child. I say, “Well, I helped all of you the same! You all have one band-aid!” And they’ll try to get me to understand that they were hurt somewhere else. I act like I’m just now understanding it. Then I explain, “There might be moments this year where some of you get different things because you need them differently, just like you needed a band-aid in a different spot.”
If at any time any of my students ask why one student has a different assignment, or gets taken out of the class for a subject, or gets another teacher to come in and help them throughout the year, I remind my students of the band-aids they got at the start of the school year and they stop complaining. That’s why eight year olds can understand equity.
I remember reading somewhere once “we should be speaking of equity instead of equality” and that is a principle that applies here me thinks
I will reblog this every time it shows up on my dash, because, frankly, the world cannot get enough reminders.
O-h-i-o
Mental hygiene. Here are some tips to keep your mind cleand and positive.
Is 2020 the year the Browns needed?
No comment…
people should view reading as a developed skill in the same vein of artistic ability. i think most people on this website understand that artistic ability is cultivated - it’s largely a skill. a trait that is the consequence of effort and practice. not some mystical gift of innate talent bestowed by the gods upon certain gifted individuals, rigid and unmalleable.
attention span and reading comprehension are the same!! they are malleable. and you just have to consider, which way are you molding them? and are you doing so purposefully or inadvertently?
you are not unique in having an attention span destroyed by social media. you are not unique in having adhd. or many other extenuating circumstances. and this is good news! this means that you too can improve and develop your attention span, via deliberate practice. successive approximation and clear contingencies work for people, too.
try reading just one page a day. or just one article a day. or listening to an audiobook for ten minutes a day. or whatever! ANYTHING that helps strain the muscle of your attention span, anything that gets you consuming heftier chunks of information than a tweet or tumblr post. set a small and achievable goal, and create a strategy to get yourself to do it. and then incrementally increase the goal.
consider how you can arrange your environment and antecedents for success. you can have a specific spot where you sit solely to read. or you can relegate a delicious drink to when you read, or you can have a special scented candle you only burn when you read. read a page or an article while you are waiting for the kettle to heat up or the microwave to ding. schedule it for the same time each day. whatever specific iteration works for you - whatever encourages you and creates a clear contingency.
you know how dogs can learn, “this is my walking harness,” and “this is my pulling harness,” and so on? so that they know what to expect and will easily fall into the practiced ritual? WE ARE THE SAME… you just have to choose and condition yourself to a contingency (and the options are beautifully customizable), and over time it gets much much easier.
personally, i focus better when both my hands are occupied. specifically, when they are both grasping the book, or i’m clutching a pen for underlining. i don’t know why, i just know that this is so. it helps me when i am reading a book to have my phone in a completely different area. it helps me to sit outside (though Happy is not always helpful when she interrupts my concentration for a ball throw).
when i read ebooks, it helps me to sit in a hard chair and have my phone propped up in front of me (and thus create a dissimilar situation from when i scroll social media). or to pace as i read. i read an article on my phone when i am brushing my teeth and it is hard to scroll. i rotate among books. coffee drinking is relegated to reading for me. i like to save and share quotes from what i’m reading, and discuss it with friends. the social aspect creates a further layer of motivation for me.
those are just my specific contingencies! while my attention span isn’t where i wish it was, yet, i’ve gotten much better than i used to be. i used to struggle to stay focused for a page, and now, time permitting, i read a couple hours every day. it is WORK to develop your attention span - it is a muscle like any other. but by straining it regularly, your endurance and ability WILL increase.
if you are not consuming in-depth information, you can’t have in-depth understanding. when you get most of your information from bite sized chunks, it creates a real danger you are being told what to think! vs actually understanding and agreeing with concepts yourself - developing your own takes and opinions. not to mention, you are missing out on SO MUCH. the world is just BETTER when you are engaging with in-depth information.
i truly believe it is damaging to accept “oh i just have a shitty attention span” and use that to justify forgoing any deeper interaction with material. it is a disservice to yourself! you may have to set goals so small they seem silly. you may have to brainstorm and testrun concentration mechanisms that are odd. but the average person on tumblr and twitter can ABSOLUTELY raise their focus. i have faith in you.
WAKE. UP.
Never Again is right now! Wake up and fight back!
Okay. That was the one. That did it. Here come the tears.
This is the one that did me in:
“She was ours, she did her best, she stayed as long as she could.”
Register now to vote Trump out of office. It’s the least she deserves from us.
“I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg