Kids who were better at reading and math at age seven ended up in a higher socioeconomic class age 42, regardless of what other advantages they had.
More research showing the same trends. Still good stuff.
Source: gjmueller
Why School Leaders Should Build An Intentional School Culture (via gjmueller)
An interesting approach to disciplinary conversations. Words do matter in these kinds of situations. I wonder how this translates to the workplace…
(via gjmueller)
Who says North is up?
Upside Down maps (also known as South-Up or Reversed maps) offer a completely different perspective of the world we live in.
Technically speaking, even referring to the earth with words like “up” or “down” or comparing places with words “above” or “below” is flawed, considering that the earth is a spherical body (it’s actually slightly “fatter” at the equator) and flying through 3 dimensional space with no reference of up or down. However, the issue of “up” and “down” does become an issue when viewing the surface of the earth projected onto a flat piece of paper (a map). And the effect of the orientation of a map is more significant than you might realize.
As all maps require orientation for reference, the issue of how to layout the map orientation is as old as maps themselves. As map orientation is completely arbitrary, it is not surprising that they differed throughout time periods and regions.
The convention of North-up is usually attributed to the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). Justifications for his north-up approach vary. In the middle ages, East was often placed at top. This is the origin of the term “The Orient” to refer to East Asia. During the age of exploration, European cartographers again followed the north-up convention…perhaps because the North Star was their fixed reference point for navigation, or because they wanted (subconsciously or otherwise) to ensure Europe’s claim at the top of the world.
In modern times, reversed maps are made as a learning device or to illustrate Northern Hemisphere bias. Different from simply turning a north-up map upside down, a reversed map has the text oriented to be read with south up.
The famous “Blue Marble” photograph of the Earth taken from on board Apollo 17 was originally oriented with the south pole at the top, with the island of Madagascar visible just left of center, and the continent of Africa at its right. However, the image was turned upside-down to fit the traditional view.
While the orientation of a map might seem harmless, it can have a significant effect on one’s perception of the world, and the relative importance of the different place in it.
In speech, we often refer to places being “above” or “below” others. Think of how you would say you’re about to travel to the state or country to your north or south (to go “down” to Kentucky from Indiana, or “up” to Canada from the US). Without even mentioning geography, ask any grade school student whether Mexico is “above” or “below” the United States. We’re all familiar with the “land down under”. As we often correlate importance to relative height (think how a citizens of a country will fly their flag higher than all other flags), the north-up convention reinforces the idea that northern bodies are more important than their southern neighbors. Suddenly, traveling “down” to the South might have an inference much deeper than geographic location.
After looking at the map more closely, you may realize that the South-Up orientation may change your perception of the relative status of different places. For example, South America suddenly looks to have more prominence, and Africa and the Middle East completely dwarf Europe. Likewise, tucking Northern Europe, Canada, and Russia away at the bottom of the map, subconsciously takes away their status.
To summarize, unconditionally accepting the north-up map convention without at least appreciating the effect stands at odds with viewing all people and places within the world equally. x x
Nice piece about the power of maps and orientation. Reminds me of one of the “Big Block of Cheese Day” episodes on The West Wing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM).
(via ilovecharts)
Source: we-are-star-stuff
Apps that proactively help people with their lives represent a significant departure from earlier approaches to software.
A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computing. Typically, computers have just dumbly waited for their human operators to ask for help. But…
Yep. Expect more of this. LOTS more.
Source: jerrylieveld
This 17-Year-Old Coder Is Saving Twitter From TV Spoilers
Imagine you forget to watch a new episode of Game of Thrones the night it airs. Even if coworkers stay mum about important plot points, Twitter is abuzz with spoilers. Fortunately, there’s Twivo, a new program that allows Twitter users to censor their feeds from mentioning a certain TV show (and its characters) for a set time period. Jennie Lamere, a 17-year-old girl, invented the software last month—and won the grand prize at a national coding competition where Lamere was the only female who presented a project, and the only developer to work alone. Internet: Meet the reason we need more women in tech.
(From Mother Jones)
I’ll second that — we need more women in tech!
(via gjmueller)
Source: mightyhunter
aspiringchongqinger finds:
Taiwanese calligrapher Shao Lan uses a pictorial and story-telling approach to teach Chinese characters. Her website, Chineasy, is fantastic: when you click on a character, related and more complex characters appear. This will be one of many resources that I’ll use when I start learning Chinese characters next month. (For now: speaking and pronunciation practice).
Learn more about her project by reading The World of Chinese’s review or visit her website.
Images: screenshots from Chineasy.
This is a fantastic approach to learning — not just learning Chinese. Would love to hear from people who speak/read/write the language and learn what your take on this is.
Source: aspiringchongqinger
After 18 months of putting together charts on everything from beer to professional wrestlers, we’re often asked at Pop Chart Lab how we come up with this stuff. Our method varies a bit from chart to chart, but there are some tools and processes that serve us well. Here, we detail how we assembled our latest product chart, “The Insanely Great History of Apple.”We start all research in Excel. It’s a simple way to pool information, and working within the strictures of rows and columns gets us thinking about how to organize data. Here, we’ve pulled all Apple computer models released by year.
Nice walk-through of how the team designed and executed their infographics.
The infographic highlights findings from the mobile learning report, Living & Learning with Mobile Devices, released today from Grunwald & Associates and the Learning First Alliance.
Infographic from the Grunwald report that recently came out on the mobile/ed-space. Still making my way through the report, but there are some highlights here. Not the most illuminating info-graphic I’ve seen, but worth checking out.
Are you suffering a long Monday? Click the image to put the concept of time in context and relieve this pain by yourself.
More: exploringtime.org
Perspective. Love it.
Source: scienceisbeauty
Last semester, Ashley Collins often faced a terrible choice: go to her night class, or pick up a waitressing shift to help pay her community college tuition. Class usually lost out. As a former foster child with no family helping her pay for college, the 21-year-old works three jobs while trying to stay in school. This year, she switched colleges, and now does her schoolwork at home, in her pajamas when she feels like it. But this is not one of those trendy online classes everyone is talking about. Itâs more radical â a real, accredited degree program with no classes at all, not even online. No teachers, just academic coaches. And a price tag of $2,500 a year.
Really interesting model. There’s a lot to be said for focusing on demonstrated skills rather than butts-in-chairs time. Still, I think the real test will be how the market responds to all of this. Only once grads of the program start getting hired (and promoted) will we really be able to measure the value of this degree.
