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6 votes
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Furor over Pennsylvania teacher's pension fund widens with push to oust leaders
7 votes -
Lake Highlands, Texas high school valedictorian discards her pre-approved commencement speech to read a statement about abortion rights
15 votes -
Masculinity attitudes across rural, suburban, and urban areas in the United States
8 votes -
The fight to whitewash US history: At least fifteen states are trying to ban schools from teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. The reactionary movement stretches back to the 1920s.
18 votes -
Choosing a school in a segregated city
9 votes -
Yearbook photos of girls were altered to hide their chests
21 votes -
NYC snow days: Dismay as school snow days cancelled
12 votes -
California will discourage students who are gifted at math
16 votes -
Recommended training courses for graphic arts?
My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people. So he's been unemployed for a long time...
My fiance is an artist who was laid off because he worked for a major employer in the entertainment industry that required him to be in contact with people.
So he's been unemployed for a long time now, but he has been trying to find work, but there isn't really anything available that uses his particular skills. So we invested in a digital art workstation (basically just bought a monitor with a digitizer built in to use a pen with) so that he could work on becoming an independant artist. But he's so bad at marketing and he spends so much time worrying about fine details that it takes him over a week to finish a single piece, so he hasn't had any success.
So if you combine this with a broken tooth that he hasn't been able to get taken care of because of a lapse in his dental insurance, he's not been in a good place.
I just bought a Mac and was looking for mac-native graphics programs (I sometimes work on marketing, so I need to do photo editing from time to time. Also I used to do photography as a hobby and want to get back into it), when I came across Serif's Affinity Designer Workbook. And I thought to myself that getting my fiance a training course in graphic design would allow him to shift gears into a segment where there is more work. It'll also give him a bit of a kick in the pants to get him moving and feeling better about himself.
I'm sure everyone knows there are millions of online training courses available right now, so I'm hoping someone might have any recommendations. I have some money saved up, so I don't mind paying a little bit extra if it'll result in better results. I'd prefer if it were a class that didn't rely on Adobe Illustrator if possible, but I know that it's the 'standard' and he'll probably have better luck if he has experience in it.
9 votes -
School almost 'eliminates bullying' with break-time ban on games
23 votes -
Proctoring tools and dragnet investigations rob students of due process
19 votes -
What are you learning right now?
Whether it be for school, work, a hobby, or personal interest, what are you learning right now? How are you learning it and what prompted you to start learning? What are some things that surprised...
Whether it be for school, work, a hobby, or personal interest, what are you learning right now? How are you learning it and what prompted you to start learning? What are some things that surprised you about what you are learning? What advice would you give to someone who just started to learn about it?
17 votes -
Relative student ability is remarkably static and predictable from pre-K to college and beyond
17 votes -
In Finland, high-quality free school meals are provided to all children between six and sixteen as a public service – students everywhere deserve the same
8 votes -
Your hat sucks: UbuWeb
4 votes -
Becker College (Worcester, Massachusetts) closing its doors
8 votes -
Pakistan’s first transgender-only madrasa breaks barriers
8 votes -
If the US Federal Government was to stop issuing student financial aid to private colleges and universities, what would be the impact to those institutions?
Posted this over on r/highereducation, thought it might be interesting here. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, especially in the context of "free college" proposals. Subsidizing private...
Posted this over on r/highereducation, thought it might be interesting here.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately, especially in the context of "free college" proposals. Subsidizing private colleges and universities would be a political non-starter. I'm assuming the government would have a "teach-out" style plan to transition schools off federal dollars. Regardless, the impact would be massive. I've briefly glanced at financial aid and revenue data for one R1 school, and it seems federal money makes up a significant (20-30%) portion of annual operating revenue. While that doesn't seem like much at first, I suspect enrollment would drop significantly at many schools if there was the alternative of going to a public university for free. Several thoughts come to mind:
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What percent of schools would close or merge?
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What would be some of the most surprising schools to close?
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How quickly would schools close? Would they immediately shutter, close at the end of the transition period, or struggle on for a few years?
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What is the breakdown of institution types (R1/2 vs SLAC vs engineering schools)?
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What would be the impact on religiously-affiliated colleges, especially Catholic schools (there's already many little-known ones in the middle of nowhere)?
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Of the schools that survive, what sort of strategies would they employ to remain solvent (lean heavier on foreign students, reduce admissions standards, have mandatory work-study programs to reduce administrative costs, create alumni contracts akin to tithing, invest more in the financial sector/Wall Street)?
Edit: Whoops, I thought I posted this in ~misc. Oh well.
12 votes -
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Defrauded students to receive loan forgiveness
9 votes -
Alabama House votes to overturn ban on yoga in schools - but "namaste" is still forbidden
8 votes -
What are the single best resources for learning something new?
When learning something new, often available resources are lacking in some departments - whether they're missing information, poorly written, or tedious and dry. But occasionally, some content...
When learning something new, often available resources are lacking in some departments - whether they're missing information, poorly written, or tedious and dry. But occasionally, some content just stands out as above and beyond the rest, serving to not only make the learning process enjoyable but also to kindle interest in further exploration. What is that for you?
This could encompass everything from computer programming to literary criticism, and could be in the form of a website, book, video tutorial, or the like.
13 votes -
Thoughts about article: The miseducation of America's elites
9 votes -
The lost year: What the pandemic cost US teenagers
8 votes -
Thoughts on moving out
So recently I've been kind of hating big parts of where I am in life, most of all where I live. I am still living with my family, and while they are all good people, our place isn't the biggest so...
So recently I've been kind of hating big parts of where I am in life, most of all where I live. I am still living with my family, and while they are all good people, our place isn't the biggest so there isn't too much privacy most of the day. So over the years I have basically started to quietly resent everyone in this house, which got exacerbated over the quarantine (and even much more when we were all stuck at home for 14 days when we got the corona and were in isolation).
I've been thinking that basically the only way to make sure I don't go fully insane is to finally move out. Also, I don't really want to admit it to myself, but I am not very independent, and I feel like I really need to change that. This year I will be finishing my Bachelor's degree, so that seems like the perfect time I would like to aim for. The problem is that after I am done with the degree I want to continue by doing a Masters in the same place. The obvious easy solution is to just rent some place with roommates I'd have to find, which is probably what I'll try to do.
But I have also been engaging in a lot of fantasizing - escapist thoughts involving doing my Masters in a different country. I was already thinking about this a bit before starting my Bachelor's degree, but I ultimately decided not to, which might have been a good call as I was definitely even more of a baby back then. But now, as I have another opportunity I have again been thinking about this a lot.
I am from the EU, so I could study in any other EU country for free. Mostly I've been thinking about Finland, or other Scandinavian countries (maybe kind of cliche?). It would definitely be really hard though, and I am not sure am I strong enough to do this. As I said I am kind of a not very independent wuss, so I am kind of scared if I could survive by myself in a different country with basically no one I could fall back on. Finding a place to live would also probably be quite hard and I would very likely need to find a part time job there, because even though I spent almost 2 years saving up money at a part time job, the countries I am looking at are more expensive than mine so my savings wouldn't most likely be enough. Hopefully there would be some student dormitories available that would be quite cheap? I don't really care too much about how prestigious my university is, but it could also be nice that I could choose a better rated one somewhere.
I hope I wouldn't lose my current best friends. I probably have some very overblown expectations about this though. I always dream how I would meet some new cool friends, maybe even find a relationship. I am quite an anxious person, especially socially anxious which I'd also hope I would have to overcome a bit. But I probably wouldn't magically become more extroverted, and less anxious. I might even just be unable to make any friends there, but I'd hope that I would be kind of forced to make some and get out of my shell so to speak. Suddenly having to do everything by myself, while having a job, in a foreign country might be too much though.
Also another random thing that I would like about this is I would kind of like to change my name at the same time and I am fantasizing that it would work out nicely. I don't dislike my name too much, but I feel like I would like a different one much more, and that it would kind of help me become myself more or something? I don't really want to change my name legally, I am more thinking that I would just start telling people that my name is <name I like more>, so it would kind of be more like a nickname. Yeah, writing that out I should probably try telling some friends to just start calling me by the name, even though I feel like they would just be like why and cringe a bit.
I know I am probably fantasizing about studying abroad too much, and that it wouldn't be that great, studying abroad most likely wouldn't help me find a relationship or anything, but I'd think it would definitely force me to become more independent. I feel like I am once again coming up on quite a big decision in my life and I am still not really sure how to proceed. Did anyone here study abroad, for the whole degree, or even as an exchange student - Erasmus or similar stuff? Any other thoughts would be appreciated too. Thank you for reading, I hope my writing isn't too much of a messy stream of thoughts.
Edit: Thanks to everyone for your responses, you are all so nice, uplifting and motivating <3. I will definitely be seriously researching much more about studying abroad, and while I can't guarantee I'll go forward with this plan, I'll try working towards it for now. I still have almost 2 months to decide, and if I decide to go ahead with it, it would still be at least a year away. But I promise to you guys, that I will at least move out of my parents house for my sanity, one way or another.
21 votes -
Seven years of spaced repetition software in the classroom
6 votes -
Why is Africa still so poor?
1 vote -
Book review: The Cult Of Smart
18 votes -
Children with same-sex parents do better at school than their peers
11 votes -
Will American ideas tear France apart? Some of its leaders think so.
17 votes -
How our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines
8 votes -
Hong Kong unveils national security guidelines for children aged six and above
7 votes -
A page containing videos/lectures for an entire computer science degree
7 votes -
Parents with disabilities face extra hurdles with kids' remote schooling
8 votes -
Beer company Natty Light is the unlikely force behind the 'Da Vinci of Debt', now on view in Grand Central Station
11 votes -
Is college still worth it?
11 votes -
A year of spaced repetition software in the classroom
8 votes -
I just got accepted to do a Master's degree!
I'm dead excited, and I just wanted to share somewhere! Since graduating from my Bachelor's I've been working in IT support, and it's slowly killing me. Progression is slow, the work is boring,...
I'm dead excited, and I just wanted to share somewhere!
Since graduating from my Bachelor's I've been working in IT support, and it's slowly killing me. Progression is slow, the work is boring, and at the end of the day all I have to show for my efforts is (hopefully) a slightly lower number of open tickets than at the start. It all feels incredibly pointless, and like I'm not making a difference in peoples' lives.I decided earlier this year to start looking into possible Master's degree programs, to help me enter a different field, and I'm happy to say that from next September I'll be returning to my alma mater to study Linguistics and English Language Teaching. From there, I'm hoping to go into teaching English as a foreign language, first abroad, and then to immigrants and refugees back here in the UK.
I'm super excited, and also a little nervous. I coasted through my Bachelor's and the past few years of my working life, so it'll be a shock to the system to have a proper workload again. I've got to get through the next 8 months or so first, but that will be easier knowing that I have something different and exciting waiting for me at the end of this particular career path. I'm desperately saving up as much money as I can to cover my living expenses for the year (I don't intend to work during my degree), which is another thing to feel nervous about.
But right now, I'm mostly just ecstatic, and wanted to share! In the interest of discussion, I'd love to hear about your experiences studying a Master's degree, and whether or not it helped you in your life after graduation.
25 votes -
Teachers in Africa are using radio to keep remote learning affordable and accessible, since many households have no access to internet or a computer
7 votes -
Is computer code a foreign language?
14 votes -
Companies often want to keep loyal employees when their jobs change or go away. Here are some effective ways to move people onto a new career path.
4 votes -
The morality of canceling student debt
17 votes -
Remote learning is here to stay — can we make it better?
5 votes -
Scientific publishers consider installing spyware in university libraries to protect copyrights
9 votes -
The enduring relevance of college radio
5 votes -
As the racial gap closes, the Democrat-Republican education gap widens
7 votes -
How do you (or your company) retrain staff for new roles?
Hive mind: Does your company re-train people to teach them new skills? What about mindset skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking? What's worked -- and what doesn't? I'm writing an...
Hive mind: Does your company re-train people to teach them new skills? What about mindset skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking? What's worked -- and what doesn't?
I'm writing an article on how to do effectively re-train workers, and I'd like to hear from you (particularly if you have a management or HR background). I might like to quote you, but I certainly would like your input even if that isn't possible.
Companies have always needed to ensure their employee learn new tools (such as replacing OldProgrammingLanguage with NewLanguage) or entirely new skill sets (e.g. for those whose jobs are replaced by automation). But the rate at which old skills perish and new ones have to be learned is increasing.
If we assume that technology changes jobs rather than destroys them, what does that mean for companies in practice?
I was inspired to write this article after reading about “the work skills of tomorrow" https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them in which critical thinking and problem-solving top the list of skills employers believe will grow in prominence. But that made me wonder: How the heck do you teach soft skills? This isn’t like telling someone, “Take a course in data analytics.” What, if anything, can you do to improve a worker's agility in learning new things, or to become a better problem-solver?
So: What has been your experience? What worked, what failed, what advice would you offer someone (particularly in larger organizations) who wants to take care of their people and move the company forward?
Note that I'm thinking less in terms of training an individual with a new skill (PhotoShop) than skills for a different career (a move to the Accounting department). And please leave out the "I trained myself!" stories; they're a tangent that doesn't help me. And yes, I know plenty of companies just lay people off rather than retrain them; we can leave those out of the discussion, too. This is meant to be a useful how-to to guide companies that want to do it right, so I am interested in practical advice.
We can take this to a private discussion if that's easier.
5 votes -
How the ballpoint pen killed cursive
17 votes -
The mad, mad world of niche sports among Ivy League-obsessed parents
10 votes -
Preparing the workforce for current unfilled jobs
5 votes