edX: Friend or Foe?

A few years ago, when I wasn't in school, I talked a lot about different forms of self-education platforms (when i wasn't talking about bread). Over the years I've had a lot of fun listening to lectures on iTunes U and sometimes doing the reading along with the courses. One can learn a lot from these classes. However, I find that I sometimes fail to listen to the whole thing or fail to do it on a regular schedule. Part of the reasoning is that a lot of the courses don't have access to readings (or put syllabi and other information on other websites) and almost none of them allow access to exam materials, etc.

The other day, I read this article in the New York Times about a new educational group known as edΧ. Harvard and MIT started the program called edX for designed online learning. One of the major features of edX is the new ability for the software to read and grade essay and short answer questions as well as True/False and multiple choice. This feature was the main feature of the New York Times article, which made it seem as though professors were going to use this to free up time. As someone who will spend much of the next 6 years TAing, the idea of machine grading seemed to put my job at stake as well as being pedagogically problematic. However, looking at the edX website, it seems that the software is designed primarily for allowing students access to classes for free online, unlike current systems where classes are either free (with no ability to test or receive credit) or expensive (taken through the universities). While online classes can be great, a noted classicist who runs one of the biggest online classical databases told me that she taught an experimental online mythology class last year that had troubling results. Half the class enrolled online while half enrolled for an in-person class. While the students who were there in person had an average grade of a B+, the online class had a C average. While this is just one instance, I can imagine that there would be a greater disconnect for students doing online learning.

edX seems to be endeavoring to fix some of these problems. Those student motivated enough to use resources like iTunes U have the ability to test themselves on the material they learn which may promote greater retention. Furthermore, students have the ability to rewrite and gain additional feedback making testing about improvement as well as assessment. Since no institution could afford to make these classes free if they were graded by humans, the grading software can provide the ability for free learning. Students earning a passing grade will get a certificate, although obviously these won't count for much in the academic world, at least it will provide a small sense of achievement and a record of classes completed.

In Our Yard...

Mushroom Cloud

We have a small little strip of yard at the back of the house, not more than a few feet wide. It had been raining, which is fairly unusual for this area. We ended up, for the first time ever, with a strange congregation of mushrooms in one small space. I wanted to know what they were, but I don't know much about mushrooms. I assume they were poisonous.

Mushrooms Close-Up

Also, a few weeks ago I read a really interesting article in the New York Times about global warming affecting truffles.

I Have Good News and Interesting News

So I have good news and interesting news.

Good news first.

Two of the seven kittens I'm fostering have been adopted! A fellow alumna from my high school feel in love with these adorable kittens and she's coming to pick them up sometime next week!

Calico and Smokey Adopted!

Check out the rest of the kittens here. They are incredibly adorable. My friend rescued them from almost certain death


Interesting news second.

I happened upon this story this morning in the New York Times. I found it, well, fascinating for lack of a better term. Read it, it's interesting.

Quick Fun Video

So I was reading a New York Times article about NASA's new video. Apparently, the new Mars Rover will land on late August 5th PST. Here is a little promo. It's a bit melodramatic, but it's rather fun.

According to the article, there is a place called the Atlanta Science Tavern. They are hosting a party for the landing which will include five planetary lectures and a raging party. If you're in Atlanta, you should go and tell me about it. It sounds like fun.

More on Neutrinos

I mentioned in a previous blogposts that there was an experiment done in which neutrinos clocked in moving faster than the speed of light. The most recent development reported in the New York Times said that there were two possible errors in the calculation. I hope more developments are forthcoming.

The Shrinking Problem

So, I am avoiding reading some Lysias for a few moments and I took the time to read a New York Times article about ancient horses. I was really interested in the the ancient horse relatives since I did a presentation on the Equus Occidentalis whichis one of the varieties of North American ice age horses in second grade. Anyway, this article caught my attention because it explained that the earliest ancestor of the horse, the Sifrhippus shrunk due to global warming, and, this of course has implication for modern mammals with the current rate of warming.

Food for thought. Back to work...

Squirrels Might Be Good for Something!

My friends were standing outside the classics building, the other day, discussing the stupidity of squirrels. It's true, I have encountered some fairly idiotic and foolhardy squirrels in my time, but a new article has generated some faith in the little fuzzy beasts. According to the New York Times, Russian scientists claim to have re-germinated and recreated a plant from fruit buried by a squirrel almost 32,000 years ago. I can't wait to see whether the arctic flower will hold up to outside inspection.

Extra-Terrestrial Black Market

I saw this article the other day in the New York Times and thought it was really interesting. It's about the disappearance of moon rocks from various institutions and what happens to them (e.g. sale on the black market, etc.). I just though it was kind of cool.

Follow Up on Dolphin Comunication

In March, I posted a piece on a group of scientists who were trying to create a common language in order to communicate simply with dolphins. I thought it was pretty cool. Recently, the New York Times did a feature on the same topic so I thought I would post it.

Now time to study for my prose composition quiz.

More Astrophysics: Planets in the Distance

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Yale astrophysics class to which I was listening. I haven't had time recently because I have been studying for exams, but I did read a New York Times article this afternoon in which I realized I actually vaguely understood the science behind the discovery.

I am going to make an attempt at explaining this from memory, although science people please correct me if I explain this wrong. So in general, astronomers do not detect planets by seeing them. Instead, they measure electromagnetic waves and use Doppler shifts in order to determine the size, speed, and distance of stars an the planets that orbit them. In certain cases, the planets are oriented so that they pass directly between the telescope monitoring them and the star they orbit. In these cases, there are significant dips in the electromagnetic radiation whenever the planet crosses in front of the star and it allows scientists to determine that the planet is there and stuff about it with a great degree of accuracy. It's pretty cool. This is especially fabulous because the planet is actually circling two stars, hence the planet has been named Tatooine. Unfortunately, this planet's alignment is changing due to it's orbit and it will not pass directly in front of the star any longer.

Flamingos for Thought

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I have been writing my art history midterm most of this weekend so I am fairly swamped (it's due tomorrow), but I had a moment to read this fabulously written and interesting article about flamingos in the New York Times. I highly suggest it.

I learned in my high school biology class that flamingos develop their traditional pink color from pigments in the algae that they eat, but I did not know why they stood on one leg until now. The article is great, I highly suggest it.

Like Time Team, but Older

Recently, due to a construction contract and a harsh winter, paleontologist had to unearth one of the largest cashes of Pleistocene (the most recent Ice Age) mammals in 70 days. A great New York Times article Servia sent me discusses the time-crunched dig. What is most impressive about these findings is that the cash is so large that not only have scientists gained a vast array of bones, but they actually have enough data now in order to determine new information like migratory patterns of large mammals. There is a short slide show of Ice Age bones at the New York Times as well.

Primordial Musings

Yesterday, I read an incredible article on jellyfish in the New York Times. I realized that they were a primitive life form, but I had no idea that they were three times older than the first dinosaurs and had survived five mass extinctions. The article is quite fabulous and I highly suggest it to anyone interested at all in marine biology.

Infinite Summer: This is my fourth (?) day of Infinite Jest, and I still have little good to say about it. I feel slightly less in the dark than before because some of the characters have been given names instead of obscure nicknames which makes them significantly more identifiable. My greatest compliment for it is that it is is more articulate and sophisticated in verbal style than the stories to which I have been comparing it (Oy, The Dogfish Series), but, on the other hand, "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" was written by a twelve-year-old.

Speaking of primordial, I reread "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" today, after my Infinite Jest allotment. I realized that I glamorized the story significantly because I spent so many hours of my formative youth arguing over it [1] with it's author (who, for convenience, I will refer to as Sockhead [2]). I was even inspired to write a similar work of my own around the same age that was a historical and religious parody instead of a social commentary. However, there is still a life and a humor in it that is not only precocious, but still holds up to this day.

"So it was that a cluster of naive lunatics met in a pub" (DSU. 1) and the story is off describing each of the characters. I wanted to quote one of the funniest sections, but most of them require references from earlier in the work to make sense or included a set up that was simply more than I wanted to type out. One vignette-like struck me as amusing. It lacks the subtlety and humor of other scenes (in fact it isn't particularly funny) and the writing lacks a degree of verbal artistry built up in the sequels "Hell Heck" and "Trousers," but in a stand-alone moment it provided a snapshot of the staccato absurdest style that reminds me of Infinite Jest.

"We decided to walk to a place we had sighted on the way to the inn, two or three blocks away. It was a Liberian fast-good pub called Ye Olde Liberian Fast-Food Pub. All of the rooms had themes. Our table was in the "fluffy fire-hose room." Our waiter looked like a cross between a stereotypical caffeine-addict and a stereotypical boy scout. He introduced himself as John and promptly died. I guess Abilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro was correct. The manager said our waiter was under some stress because there had been a lot of complaints directed toward him. When I asked why, he said that John was more than a waiter; he was also a curator. He curated the rooms. He was criticized for putting stratified rocks in the ocean room. He thought that all stratified rocks came from the ocean. I guess he trusted Abraham Gottlob Werner's theories too much." (DSU 6).

Maybe my problem is that as much as I appreciate parts of Infinite Jest, I find it rather joyless and have not laughed or even cracked a smile at those things which I believe are supposed to be funny. While silly and unrefined, I found myself smiling and laughing at "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe." I am certainly a proponent of dark humor, but joyless humor seems like an oxymoron.

Endnotes

1. The story at once a bizarre fantasy, an exercise in humor, and a social parody of our social group. Any understanding of social dynamics I possess came from discussing, nitpicking, and expanding the social commentary from this book. My interests in social dynamics became so focused that in "Hell Heck" (the second story) my character was described thus: "Gruiforms had sort of become a "watcher." She merely watched (and watched and watched)" (HH 2). Obviously, my opinions are skewed.
2. At the time when this story was written, the author of the story constantly wore an eccentric gray beanie (for lack of a better term) which, when not being worn, looked a bit like a sock. This vague resemblance caused the author to refer to himself as "Sockhead" when some pseudonym was required.

Paleontology Geek: Hominin Evolution

In some form, all mammals require exogamous (literally, from the Greek, marriage-outside) mating patterns. Apparently, most mammals send the males to mate outside the local group, and the group is continued by females. For chimpanzees and early hominins, this functioned the opposite way. According to chemical composites in the teeth that scientists analyzed, all the males in the area were local while at least half the female skeletons apparently came from father afield. The article on australopithecines I read came from the New York Times.

Note: I thought originally that hominin was a typo for hominid. Apparently hominid has been expanded as a wider definition and hominin now refers to human ancestors. For reference, see this article from the Australian Museam.

How to Feed a Sauropod

Sauropods were the largest land animals to ever roam the earth. Back in the Jurassic Era, they moved, most likely in herds, across the land stripping it of vegetation. Although scientists have gained a certain amount of knowledge about these gigantic beasts, much remains a mystery. The biggest question remains how they were able to consume so much food: "How did they possibly get enough to eat to grow so hefty, to lengths of 15 to 150 feet and estimated weights of up to 70 tons? A mere elephant has to eat 18 hours a day to get its fill. Even in the Mesozoic era, there were only 24 hours in a day" (New York Times).

The apparent answer is that they did not chew. Without molars, these enormous dinosaurs swallowed the food and it was digested very slowly as it moved through the neck and stomach-- sometimes taking up to two weeks to process. The article is pretty fascinating.

Redwood Giants 2.0

As much as the new system at the New York Times disappoints me because I think it hampers self-guided education, I am still fairly addicted to the science and environmental news in the New York Times (even thought I am now limited to 20 articles a month). A recent article that I read was about cloning the gigantic redwood trees on the west coast. According to the article, some scientists believe that the threes which have been around for thousands of years can help save the environment and replace trees that have died because of bug epidemics and other natural problems. Other scientists argue that the trees that lived the longest may have benefited from earlier good fortune rather than strong genes and only cloning a small number of the oldest trees will reduce the genetic strength of the trees because it adds no new gene patterns to help make the trees stronger. The debate is especially interesting to me because of the massive foresting I saw on trips to Oregon where whole mountainsides are clean cut and then artificially repopulated until the trees are mature enough to be cut down again.

Possible New Particle

A possible new particle has been found in a last gasp of an accelerator that is scheduled to be decommissioned. Apparently, due to budget cuts, Tevatron (at Fermilab), the world's most powerful particle accelerator will be shut down in September. But, in it's last few months, it has yielded a possible exciting new find: a bump in the data that could be either a new light particle, a new "force of nature" or, unfortunately, possibly a mistake in splicing data. Hopefully in the next few months the accelerator will unlock the secrets of this anomaly. Read the New York Times article on the subject.

The End of "The Stone"

"The Stone," which was one of the things that really drew me into the New York Times, has finished its run. It was a set of philosophy professors from various universities discussing philosophy in the modern world. Sadly, my love of the New York Times as well is quickly disappearing because of their new pay-to-subscribe policy. I fully understand that the New York Times is a business that needs to support itself in order to provide high quality reporting, but it also acts in some ways as a public service. There should be some way to do both, but I cannot think of it (and clearly they can't either).

As such, I have replaced the RSS feed on the right side of my page, under the Google search bar, with the list of podcasts from Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time." The podcasts are fun and informative, even if Bragg is sometimes a bit of an arrogant jerk toward his guests. Enjoy!

In Our Time

How to Avoid Bread Weight Gain (Kind of)

I have been making a lot of bread recently. This means, of course, tasting a lot of bread. So how do I avoid gaining massive amounts of weight from all the bread (especially because a recent New York Times article [1] points to carbohydrates rather than fat as the primary culprit in weight gain)? Well, I make croutons. Croutons last a lot longer that bread and make it less appealing to eat on its own [2] and more appealing to eat in a salad. Around my house, we eat a lot of salad so the croutons will definitely get eaten. Finally, croutons make less-appealing bread (either because it's slightly too dense or not flavorful enough) appealing in another context.

When I was baking bread at my Alma Mater, I used to make croutons out of my loaves to send to my parents. This was a way that I could share my fabulous bread with them so that it was still edible by the time they got it. I would send little zip-lock bags of croutons in packages for them to taste.

My Crouton Recipe

• Stale bread, cut into approximately 1" cubes [3]
• 1/2 cup olive oil [4]
• 2 tablespoons dried rosemary
• 4 cloves fresh garlic, minced or pressed in a garlic press
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/8 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon salt (to enhance flavor)

Left-over mixture

Directions

1. Mix all of the ingredients together.
2. Put the bread pieces in a large oven-safe pan so that they are 1-2 bread pieces thick, but no more.
3. Pour the mixture over the breadcrumbs, stirring so that they become evenly coated
4. Bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes (or until golden-brown), stirring every two minutes.
5. Cool on a cooling rack over paper towels to absorb excess oil.
6. When cool, serve in a salad.

Note: I think the most creative use of breadcrumbs I have ever seen comes from Wild Yeast.

Endnotes

1. I searched for the article but I can't seem to find it. I will look again.
2. Servia is the only person I know who actually snacks on croutons.
3. If the bread is not stale, cut it and leave it in an open bowl on the counter or stale it at a low temperature in the oven.
4. If you do not have enough bread crumbs for this much oil, you can save the rest of the mixture in the refrigerator for later.

Real Public Education

In general, I try not to talk too much about politics, but today will be one of my few exceptions. I received an email this morning from my mother. Apparently, the US Republican party released a budget proposal which "zeroes out funding for both NPR and PBS" which is the worst funding decrease in more than a decade. I love NPR. Although I do not listen to it every day, I set up my iTunes last year to download NPR podcasts on international news and science and I gain a lot of my current news from these podcasts. Although I do not generally like online petitions, I signed this one on MoveOn.org to save NPR.

I am not the only person who gains their news this way. When I was working last summer, my bookstore colleagues spent their entire shelving shifts listening to different NPR programs through a similar podcast program on other topics. For a number of the college students I know, this and the New York Times online are the only place that people listen to the news. In reality, NPR is real, free public education that only requires people to pick the type of podcast they which they seek and download and listen to it. You can find your shows at the NPR podcast directory.

I read an article recently in the New York Times about the FCC expanding internet access to under-served areas and possibly expand the proposal in future. As the internet provides so many resources for self-education (including NPR podcast directory), I think this will be a great step forward in raising the level od education in these populations. Sugata Mitra's work, which I discussed in previous blogposts, shows that the combination of the internet and curiosity can allow children to educate themselves in anything for learning a new language to concepts in science and technology.