Learning

Imagine a conversation with a student.

Adult: “How do you know if your answer to a math problem is correct?”

Student: “The teacher checks the ones that are wrong and I have to do them again.”

Alternative answer:

Student:  “After I get the answer to a division problem then I multiply my answer times the divisor to see if I get the same number as the problem.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Teaching a student at any age how to detect and correct their own errors in any subject has more leverage than when the teacher has all the answers.

Typing Words

In typical 19^th Century fashion, I am using typed words to communicate. I’m using a method that was invented in the late 1860’s.  The first typewriter was manufactured in 1873.  Now, instead of carbon paper we use electrons to send copies.

                                 

As I type these words, I make assumptions without stating them; I state conclusions without revealing the steps I took; I use words as objects instead of visual tools showing relationships.

In 1970, Jean Piaget published “The Science of Education”. His Learning Cycle model helped to popularize discovery-based teaching approaches, particularly in the sciences. High-stakes testing was first implemented by Massachusetts in 1993. 

Each of us can think of goals for education and methods to achieve them, and people have been doing that for decades.  Those involved in education - students, parents, teachers, unions, administrators, governments, taxpayers, businesses and other constituents – also have their own goals and preferred methods to achieve them.

If we want to promote creativity and innovation as a goal of education, how are we going to get the education system to implement those goals and what method are we going to use?  Why don’t we use dynamic modeling, mind mapping and other visual tools to promote our goals?

Why are we typing words?

Creativity, Innovation and Invention

Program in Australia has three rules:

1.  Any idea is worth exploring but you must define and act within your parameters;

2.  Time is the enemy so get going

3.  You can’t give up.

Here’s the web site that gives a bit more info. Regional Breakthroughs

Creativity and Learning

Creativity, innovation, intuition and discovery might be appropriate for specific topics at different developmental stages.

For example:

1.  What is the appropriate age (brain development) for students to use addition to detect and correct subtraction errors (and the reverse)?

2.  What is the appropriate age (brain development) for students to use multiplication to detect and correct division errors (and the reverse)?

From my limited experience, using addition with subtraction or multiplication with division to detect and correct errors does not appear to be integrated into the elementary school math curriculum.  The student is dependent on the teacher to detect and correct math errors in grades four and five.

When using the appropriate process to build a dynamic model of a system, there are steps to test, verify and validate the model.  As a result, detecting and correcting errors is integrated with the process of building the model.  Thus the student modeler has the responsibility for detecting and correcting errors.  This is what leads to someone developing creativity, innovation, intuition and discovery.

There are many quantitative and qualitative methods of detecting and correcting errors in different subjects.  A teacher-centered classroom is where the teacher is the focal point of detecting and correcting errors.  When students learn a process for detecting and correcting their own errors they begin to take responsibility for their own learning.

The existing education system is primarily teacher-centered and is immune to any change toward a student-centered classroom. Probably only as high school extra-curricular activity or college level will anyone have a chance at introducing processes for students to learn how to detect and correct their own errors. I'm encouraged to learn about websites that are introducing these methods.

Debt and and GDP

As a percentage of GDP, debt by sector:
Non-financial business = 50 percent
Financial sector = 180 percent
Households and non-profit org = 100 percent
Public debt(state, local and federal) = 88 percent
The USA total debt is 3.5 times GDP


The data do not support the conservative focus on the federal annual debt and cumulative deficit. Cash flow is where the problem gets critical.  The USA is spending about 50% more than annual revenues and the costs are only going to increase.  Revenues need to go up and future expenses need to be limited for Social Security and Medicare, Military spending and other programs.

The Tea Kettle Movement

Dear Mr. Friedman,

Re: The Tea Kettle Movement, Sept. 28, 2010, NYTimes

One example of the leadership you advocate in your article can be found at universities like Portland State University.  PSU supports entrepreneurs with several programs, as you say “to attract, develop and unleash creative talent.”  The programs include Social Innovation Incubator, Lab2Market and other centers and institutes linking together entrepreneurial PSU students, staff, and faculty with private sector leaders including venture capitalists, attorneys, and economic development officials.

PSU programs attract and educate, as you say “men and women who invent, build and sell…goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable” and secure.  Teams of professors, students and entrepreneurs develop the core competencies and strategic advantage that you talk about in your article.

The answer to your article’s challenge: invest in higher education to partner with small businesses that create the jobs we need.  The answer to your leadership challenge: future leaders are learning how to work with entrepreneurs and small businesses at universities throughout the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/opinion/29friedman.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=thomas%20friedman&st=cse 

Predicting the Future

We predict the future when we publish the time for sunset and sunrise, the time for high and low tide, and the time for the equinox and solstice. The basic laws of physics allow us to accurately determine each of these events long before they actually happen.  These predictions require knowing the orbit of the moon around the earth and orbit of the earth around the sun.  These orbits vary and the earth wobbles on its axis over time so there is some uncertainty and adjustments are made over time to the values listed above.

The basic laws of physics apply to global climate.  We can predict the future average temperature of the atmosphere using physics just like we can predict the movement of the sun and moon.  Denying that global climate can change is like denying that the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun.

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.[1]  The greenhouse principle was developed as a theory and verified by experiment more than 110 years ago.  The basic laws of physics used to predict global climate change include the Stefan-Boltzman law and Kirchhoff’s law.

Over time, greenhouse gases like CO2 can have the same effect on the atmospheric temperature as changes in the output of the sun.  As humans cause the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to increase, even taking into account the absorption of CO2 by the ocean and vegetation plus the release of CO2 by the ocean, this has the same effect as an increase in sunlight caused by the sun.

Using variations in the Earth’s orbit, sunlight and ocean surface temperatures to explain changes in climate over time is like ignoring the effect of gravity on the orbits of the moon, earth and sun.  Global climate varies over decades based on the laws of physics not variations in measurements of parameters like orbit, sunlight and ocean temperature.

Applying the basic laws of physics to calculating the average atmospheric temperature, as the concentration of CO2 increases in the atmosphere, means we can predict the future just like we can predict the tides.  Denying the need to do anything now to deal with the certainty of a warming planet is like denying the need to move to higher ground before high tide.

By 2020, the earth’s average atmospheric temperature will have increased enough to cause a global migration and destabilize governments in developing countries.  Some of these countries have nuclear weapons now or will develop them in the next ten years.  We can not predict the consequences of this catastrophe only that it will happen.

---

[1] Greenhouse Effect, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect