Are Schools Really Measuring Our Education?

I have a friend who is an extremely talented medical professional. She is the lead radiologist at a huge hospital in the City of St. Louis. You would have never assumed that she would be in this type of career if you knew her in high school. She was constantly late, never studied much for classes she didn’t care for, and always cracked jokes when the teachers were trying to lecture. After high school we all thought she would become a career “goof-off.” Everyone was surprised when she took a couple of radiography courses, got a certification, and started making more money than those of us who took detailed notes

The current education system doesn’t promote or even tolerate individualism and creativity.

Public school administrators are more interested in herding children and getting them through the proverbial gate than actually educating and preparing students for life after school. Here are some of the things that are holding the education system and our schools down:

Cronyism Isn’t Just for Grown-ups

Office politics and political corruption plague the adult world. It’s often hard to break through glass ceilings if you are not kissing up to at least one boss. Teachers tend to pick out favorites in class and cater towards their needs. This might leave students who don’t personally get along with the teachers stranded in the classroom.

No Child Left Behind

In 2001, George W. Bush enacted the No Child Left Behind Act which rewarded schools for scholastic achievement. This didn’t mean that the schools with the smartest students got the most money, it meant that the schools who did the best on standardized tests received the most. The NCLB Act forced teachers to teach according to how the tests would work instead of to each individual student. Some school systems went as far as to teach the actual answers to the tests.

Outdated Subjects

When was the last time you used algebra at work? Students are forced to learn subjects that they won’t use after they get out of school. If they fail to achieve acceptable grades, they may be held back and dissuaded from attending college or a trade school where they will not have to take courses like algebra.

Outdated Technology

Windows 8 will soon be upon us, but most public school children have no idea what that even means. There are stories of children who want to go to college being forced to use pen and paper for completing homework in classes that are supposed to teach Microsoft Office. Teachers need to be on top of the latest technological trends and communities should focus on bringing in more technology than about the football team or a new building.

The education system is a complicated web of bureaucracy and endless red tape. It will take the efforts of many and a great deal of time before things start running more efficiently.

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Why we choose to learn Chinese

Some years ago, Chinese as a second language was something no one would even think of. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that less companies and employers sought to hire people that could speak the language. Or maybe it was simply because chinese was considered as something that would never come in handy. Whatever the reason of this behavior may have been, there is something else that we know for sure: speaking Chinese is, today, a golden tool.

When taking Chinese lessons Toronto students explain that what drove them to the language was not the current usefulness of the language, but their own curiosity. One student said -“I can speak French and a little bit of German apart from English. So when I thought it was time to add another language to my CV I thought ‘Why not try a different writing system?’ so I did some research on languages like Russian, Japanese, Chinese and other languages which require knowledge of another writing system and decided that Chinese would be more useful. Besides, it just sounds more difficult than the other ones. I had to try it!”.

It is true that Chinese sounds more difficult than other languages. It is said that the most difficult part is learning how to handle the tones. Two words that are spelled the same way may differ entirely in meaning depending on the tone you use while uttering it. No, it has nothing to do with the pronunciation, but the tones. Besides, you don’t need to learn the entire alphabet (which is not actually an ‘alphabet’ per sei), since they don’t use everything. The Chinese alphabet is beautiful because when you learn it, you also begin to understand their way of seeing the world, their culture. If you want to open your mind to a new world, you should definitely try learning Chinese. When choosing to take Chinese lessons Washington workers and students can count on many advantages that make learning an easier process. For instance, native Chinese speaking qualified trainers help you get a real insight into the cultural background of the language apart from its technical aspects. Something interesting from the grammar point of view, they explain, is that there are no verb conjugations, for instance.

All in all, Chinese is really something if you are into languages. Challenging, useful and mind-opening, Chinese makes one of the favorite second languages nowadays.

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The Khan Academy Approach to Education

When it’s all said and done, the toughest obstacle stacked against those in the education sector is the difficulty for young minds to focus and retain the information being taught to them. It’s obviously evident that there are children, who are in fact, quick and eager learners looking to absorb knowledge like a sponge.  But for the most part, kids are kids and they don’t particularly find sitting in a classroom for hours listening to someone talk for the reward of getting to do work to be very interesting. Because it’s not interesting, they don’t remember anything. Even the most advanced learning management system in the world can’t combat the specters of boredom and impatience.

But what is winning the fight against the childish inclination to tune out and forget information comes from a surprising source and works best in an even more surprising environment. The video lectures of Mr. Salman Khan available on Youtube, collectively dubbed the Khan Academy, are turning the tables on this country’s low performance levels by giving students the option to do something they never got to do before: schedule their own learning and replay the lesson when they need to.

The Khan Academy is incredibly simple. Originally just a sequence of basic algebra lessons strung together by Khan to help his nephew catch up on his math homework, the signature fluorescent neon handwritten work on a black background quickly caught on and went viral. Parents used them for their kids, teachers even included them in their lessons, and Khan was encouraged to create more of his videos, which to this day remain completely free for anyone to watch.

Complete confidence in the effectiveness of the Khan Academy is gained by the fact that Bill Gates, a self-professed sufferer of a low attention span, uses Khan’s videos to help his own children master math and science better. He’s recognized the potential of Khan’s system so much that Gates has publicly endorsed the online educator several times over the last few years.

The benefits of a video system of lesson learning are that children can learn at their own independent rate. In a classroom, teachers instruct students at single rate, those who cannot process the information fast enough are left behind while those who process it too quickly are bored to death. Videos allow students to repeat parts they didn’t completely grasp or skip over parts of the lesson they don’t need to learn.

The results have been pointing to key factor in adolescent education: everyone, if given their own allotted time to do so, will eventually grasp an equal level of knowledge. The learning process itself needs to be catered directly to the processing capabilities of a particular student.

The classroom model is archaic – having remained virtually unchanged for over four thousand years. Technology is allowing that to change, and more importantly it seems as though children are much more responsive to these new ways to learn. If you’re interested in seeing what could very well be the future of education, visit the Khan Academy website to see for yourself how innovative and useful the video system of education can be.

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Why Educate Through Multimedia?

Gone are the days of traditional education that was confined to tiresome lectures and silent books only. Today, multimedia has become an important part of education all over the world. Now educational institutes have become more conscious of how they impart knowledge to the aspirant minds.

What is multimedia?

Multimedia refers using more than one medium, such as audio, visual tools or both. It involves using five basic type media such as:

· Text
· Video
· Sound
· Graphics
· Animation

A few or all of these components are combined together to make education more purposeful. It offers immense benefits to students as well as teachers. The main advantages are briefly discussed here:

Effectiveness

With the use of multimedia, students are better able to comprehend what they are being taught at school, college or university. Learning becomes more effective for them. When multiple senses work together, human mind catches information readily and absorbs it fully. Usually, students at primary and secondary level are not smart enough to understand complicated things instantly. With the use of graphics, sounds and animation etc. their comprehension power increases substantially.

Fascination

Majority of learners are greatly fascinated by multimedia. For instance, a lecturer who is constantly speaking in front of a rostrum can make students feel bored or sleepy. On the other hand, same content delivered through computerized system full of colorful text, appealing graphics, clear sounds and animation attracts their attention. The same information remains vivid in their mind for a longer time, when it is conveyed using multimedia technology. For young ones and school-going students, this is a great way to keep them stuck for hours and increase their attention span.

Interactive learning

When students interact during class, it gives them an opportunity to learn in a better way. With the use of various software, they can do self-assessment as well. This is a huge benefit offered by multimedia. Now there is no need to stand in queue and wait to get answers checked by teacher. Use quick and reliable educational software instead. Most experts are strongly emphasizing the importance of interactive learning. Since, it is student-based; it offers more advantages than traditional education. Now learners are not listeners only but active participants in the class room.

Personal development

It might sound strange, but it is a proven fact that interactive learning, especially with multimedia helps a lot in shaping personality of the students. They become more independent by doing self-study and self-evaluation. Moreover, when their learning skills are improved, they get more confident. It teaches them to learn things in a systematic and disciplined manner.

Academic performance

Students perform better in assessment, when they are taught through multimedia. This is true only when curriculum is carefully planned and the methods of imparting knowledge are highly effective. A computer software with poor sound and blurred or extremely sharp images will rather hinder the ability to grasp quickly and frustrate the learner. Therefore, all the devices and tools must be working perfectly.

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Analytical Essay Practice Can Help You A Great Deal

In the college level, you will find that not every student has the ability to think analytically. This is why there is a disparity between the better performing students and the not so well doing ones. At the college or campus level, every student is required to have an analytical mind. It is from these kinds of mind that we get the best analytical essays worth the campus student level.

In definition, an analytical essay is one that has been backed by a series of processes; they include determining the ideal topic, doing extensive and exhaustive research on it, gathering the necessary information and then interpreting this information through the essay. Any term paper you come across from a student will tell you whether they did a proper preparation on the topic or not. The sad part is that a good number of students have no idea on how to come up with an analytical essay. Many will present to you a series of ideas thrown here and there and no general flow in the essays. This is why you need to understand what analytical writing is all about to earn the grades you deserve.

Getting to write an analytical essay will first need you to organize your thoughts together. Analytical essays are a representation of a person’s ideas put in writing. Learning how to write analytically can be a great stepping stone to getting better grades in school. And it all begins with determining the best analytical essay topics to write one.

Ideal analytical essay topics are those that are researchable and results can actually be concluded from them. All you have to do is identify a problem in your environment that needs serious addressing. Remember you are just honing your analytical skills so you don’t have to perfect everything. A suitable problem could be like “increased crime in society”. From such a topic you will be required to establish the variables, which in this case may be the cause of a rise in crime, then use these parameters to carry out your research.

Once the data is collected you then find a suitable plan to present the findings beginning with a hypothesis for the whole research and ending with a conclusion on what you found out. If your first research becomes successful, your road to achieving analytical thinking is paved. Writing a sample analytical essay is mainly used to help you thinking critically in an analyzing way on the surrounding. The general format of analytical essays is the introductory, the body analysis, your own personal views on the analysis and then the final conclusion.

Now you don’t have to go out there and dig hard for a suitable topic to write in; you can even find analytical essay topics in news events, books and even art works. From these areas you can come up with research topics that are rich in content and will help you in establishing a basis for your argument. But always make sure you understand the topics and if need be go through them several times.

The process of repetitive review on the topic will assist you in writing a meaningful thesis or the hypothesis which determines the direction the whole essay takes. Thus always take your time on the topic for better results. You will also be required to do a thorough research on the topic; writing the analytical essay in the correct format is not enough, if you don’t put the right content in the paper then the whole process was a waste. By right content we mean delivering meaningful content that is rich in information.

There are lots of places where you can gather information to put in the essay paper. The readily available place for you is the internet and you can combine this with books to get as many information as possible. And as you get the info you require for the essay body, don’t forget to write down the references that will end up on the last page.

Getting to think analytically through an essay is the best reward any student can ever give themselves. This specially involves those in colleges and universities; if you could get to think critically and analytically, you will never suffer bad grades in your performance. Analytical thinking is the tool many students lack and which contributes to the fall in performance. To be on the safe side, make sure you possess all the skills you can gain to write analytically. You can get this info from books or journals dealing with writing. The internet also has a lot of information on how to write analytically; you only need to Google a few web pages and write down a few notes and you are good to go. But make sure you implement all the tips and skills you gain about analytical writing.

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Technical Documentation In Simple Terms

Technical Documentation, in engineering terms, refers to any means of documentation that could describe the functionality, architecture and handling of a technical product or a product in use or under development. Such documentation may include patents (a set of exclusive rights granted by a nation’s government to an assignee or inventor for a limited period of time in return for the public release of an invention); the specifications and data sheets (which summarise the performance as well as other technical characteristics of a component, product or machine etc. in specific detail which is then used by a design engineer in the process of integrating a component into a system) of an item or its constituent materials.

Other types of Technical Documentation used in engineering processes include test methods (which are important for obtaining data in engineering, science and software development); regulating manufacturing standards; implementing requirements in quality management systems and also verification and validation (the process of ensuring that a product, system or service meeting given specifications and that they fulfil their intended purposes). Verification in particular focuses on quality control whereas validation is a means of quality assurance.

In contrast to a typical user guide or manual in an almost ‘cookbook’ format, technical documentation aims to provide sufficient information so that a user can understand the inner as well as the outer workings and dependencies of a certain product. It is for this reason that a Technical Writer is employed as they translate the usually very highly formalised technical documentation (typically produced in a development process) into a more readable form of prose.

During the development of a technological project, a significant role is played by a multitude of technological documentation: in particular System Requirements, System Design and System Architecture. The intended recipient for product technical documentation is not only the ‘proficient’ (the eventual consumer) but also the administrator or the maintenance/ service technician.

There is a large selection of companies who are able to provide technical documentation for both the defence as well as commercial sectors, the majority of whose employees are highly trained ex-service or industry personnel who are able to ensure that a business can receive the highest possible standard in technical documentation in whatever specifications or format is required. This information is produced by close co-operation with the engineering and support departments of the client businesses, which also produces the most technically accurate documentation possible.

I have over 18 years experience in various capacities of marketing, customer service and event management in the public and private sectors. This has placed me into specialising in online marketing and SEO, and as part of my SEO, I write articles for my clients.

On a private level, I enjoy a healthy lifestyle, cycling, horse-riding and running. I have two teenage children and two poodles, who are my wonderful companions.

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