Author Archive

Learning and Working From Home Basics by Craig Middleton

Wednesday, November 4th, 2020

Learning from home

Introduction

People learning and working from home whether by choice or necessity have a challenging proposition. Guidelines, rules, and boundaries should be in place, ideally before instruction or work begins. If you’re already into it, don’t be afraid to take a few minutes to reassess goals and routines for day-to-day instruction and overall accomplishments. While this article focuses on learning from home, working from home offers many of the same challenges.

Long-Term Goals

One of the first conversations to have with yourself should be about long-term goals for completing education or work. Whether you have your eye on a selective college or alternatives to college like a gap year or a job, you should understand that high school, in whatever form it may take, is the stepping stone to future success.

Short-Term Goals

When there are no bells telling you to hurry up, sometimes it’s hard to get started on the work that needs to be accomplished. At home, there are many distractions like computer games, TV, and even chores. Find a quiet place that will help you focus and leave the distractions elsewhere. Create short-term goals for each unit of study and for each day. Whatever your preference, you can set reasonable expectations for how long you should focus on each discipline and whether you prefer to work on one subject all day or break classes up into hourly chunks. Timers and timetables are both useful.

Study Basics

Without the guidance of a regular classroom teacher in the room, you might not intuitively know some of the processes that are used to help you excel. You should gather supplies before you start and have a designated workstation. Of course, learning from home comes with more flexibility than a traditional school, but keeping school supplies in one place and neatening your desk at the end of each day are good habits to acquire no matter where you learn.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning

While some home learning lacks any real-time interaction with a teacher, some of it does. This is likely to be the case for younger learners. Be sure your schedule indicates when it’s time to join online (Zoom) meetings and be sure to be there. Many schools still take attendance and some even use it as part of your grade. Also, be sure to know what the situation is with grading. Is it pass-fail, or are there certain expectations that will lead to a letter grade? If so be sure to make notes on that and check to see on a regular basis if you are checking all of the boxes. Getting good grades can be easy if you are organized and do everything that is expected.

Snacks and Exercise

One thing you have constant access to at home is your refrigerator. While an occasional snack can help keep your focus, too much food can result in unwanted weight gain. Try drinking non-calorie drinks like water. Although diet sodas don’t have any calories they are not generally recommended by many nutritionists. For adults, tea and coffee are good choices.
Exercise is also important for keeping you mentally sharp. Be sure to get up and move around frequently and schedule times at least twice a day for tinges like walking, jogging, biking, or lifting weights. Many people also report benefits from things like meditation and yoga. Consider getting a desk that goes up and down so you can spend some work time standing.
Learning at home and learning at home effectively are not necessarily the same thing. Help yourself by setting up routines and habits to get the most out of homeschooling.

Craig Middleton

Craig is a New York City-based retired business consultant, who is an expert in education and cultural trends. He has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters in Education from St. Johns and loves sharing his knowledge on the side through his writing. If you have any questions or comments you can direct them to Craig at craigmiddleton18@gmail.com.

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The Educator And The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges The Gates Foundation by Anthony Cody

Saturday, October 31st, 2020

The Educator And The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges The Gates Foundation by Anthony Cody shows how the Gates Foundations’ efforts to reform education have had a mostly negative impact. By spending a small fraction of the total education budget, people like Gates can buy politicians, muzzle the media, and control many special interest groups and non-profit organizations with grant money aimed at advancing their agenda. Please purchase this book and spread the word. (Note: Like every other book summarized here, this one was written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Preface and Introduction

The thrust of this book is that something is seriously wrong with our system when one of the richest men in the world can spend a few billion dollars and seize the reins of education policy. By funding almost everyone who does advocacy, including teacher unions, Gates can call the tune. The tune is Common Core and associated tests that are designed to yield wide-spread failure. Like tobacco companies in the 1960s, their sponsored research tells them what they want to hear. This undermines the public’s democratic control of education and devalues the teaching profession. There is nothing generous in using the power of wealth this way.
Unlike previous grant efforts by wealthy foundations, the Gates Foundation’s approach was different. Their starting point was “we know what is broken and we know how to fix it.” They invite proposals by directly contacting organizations. They then collaborate with the organizations to develop proposals that align with their agenda. With their vast wealth, an entire sector of organizations became dependent on their funds.

Part I: The Assault on Public Education by Bill Gates

1. Bill Gates’ Big Play: How Much Can Money Buy in Education?

Gate’s vision starts will the total reliance on standardized tests that were already required by federal law (NCLB). These tests were flawed and NCLB was bound to fail so it was necessary to develop a new generation of tests based on new standards known as the Common Core. It also helped to get staff from the Gate’s Foundation transferred to the Federal Department of Education. Gates held that the field of education didn’t know much about teaching. He started by funding research that defined effectiveness as high test scores. This means that teachers get paid for these results. Next, he donated to advocacy groups to the extent that he became their largest donor. The final step was to donate to the media’s efforts to cover education.

2. Circular Reasoning at the Gates: Education Nation Off to a Confusing Start

Here are excerpts from a Teacher Town Hall from 2011 on NBC moderated by Brian Williams. He tells the audience that they will be using facts provided by the Gates Foundation as they are the largest single funder of education in the world. (Doug: I think the US government is the largest single funder.) On this show, Melinda Gates claims that there are multiple measures that they are using along with test scores such as administrator and peer observations along with student questionnaires. But, the only models of these other measures that she wants to use are those that improve test scores. Here the author suggests that many of the strategies used to boost scores are harmful to our students.

3. Teachers Face Good Cops or Bad Cops in Push for Evaluations

The bad cop is the New York Post, which published the names of teachers with the worst scores. The good cops are Bill Gates and Michelle Ree who said this is wrong and that multiple measures should be used in addition to tests. Their other measures, as we have seen, are correlated to test scores. These good cops also push value-added ratings (VAR), which research has shown to be highly unstable for individual teachers. Translation: VARs are garbage and should never be used as part of a teacher rating system. There is also the false assumption that there are a significant number of crummy teachers who need to be weeded out. (Doug: From what I’ve seen as an educator since 1969, crummy teachers weed themselves out as being a bad teacher really sucks.) As it stands, 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years and turnover rates in high-poverty schools are 20% each year.

4. Cui Bono? The Question Rarely Asked, Let Alone Investigated

Cui bono means who benefits. Journalists should be asking this question, but they don’t seem to be doing so. They are, however, repeating false ideas that the reformers put forward such as our public schools are failing due to the ineffective teachers that need to be fired. They also tout the success of charter schools, which overall is not the case. The winners here are the testing companies, curriculum designers and publishers, consultants, technology and software companies, and various leadership organizations.

5. Bill Gates Discovers Money Cannot Buy Teachers

The main idea here is that people, in general, can sense when they are being manipulated and coerced. When this happens they resent it and resist. Here we are talking specifically about teachers. They aren’t opposed to being evaluated based on student work such as portfolios, but they resist being evaluated by invalid standardized tests that are closely correlated with the socioeconomic background of their students. Teachers, therefore, are justified in being ungrateful for all the money Gates has poured into education to remake it in his own image.

6. Bill Gates Goes to College. Has He Learned From His k12 Project?

Gates is also determined to change higher education with a focus on tests that measure specific skills that employers want. His focus is also on online courses, which have been shown to be less effective for all save the brightest. (Doug: We are seeing that now as well with remote learning) The approach sends the message that education is only for job preparation, which the author rejects. Blended learning, which offers a mix of online and in-person instruction appears to be effective, but 100% online doe not appear to be.

7. Is ASCD Embracing Market-Driven Education Reform?

Organizations like ASCD are being directly paid to support the implementation of Common Core, which converts them into advocates for the controversial standards. Along with it comes “market-driven” systems, which feature a push for charter schools, private schools, and vouchers at the expense of public schools. In 2011, the Gates Foundation awarded ASCD a grant of $3 million to help implement the Common Core. If you just read ASCD’s journal you wouldn’t know that the Common Core is controversial.

8. Is Gate’s Money Going to Influence the National Board?

While Gates claims that teachers participated in the creation of the Common Core Standards they were not involved. He also tries to convince us that since the schools can create the curriculum, teachers can still teach as they wish. He negates this when he says that he will know that his efforts have succeeded when the curriculum and the tests align with the standards. He pushes for control of schools by mayors as when just one person is in charge, change can be made more efficiently. It also means that he only has one person he needs to influence or buy off. Note that cities, where mayors are in charge, have fared worse. Other organizations know that if they want his money they have to sing this tune.

9. Gates and Duncan Seek to Use Trust in Teachers to Promote Common Core.

If Gates and the Department of Education under Duncan (appointed by Obama) trusted teachers, they would not have had Common Core standards drafted by test makers instead of educators. They would not have created the pseudoscience of VAM to try to hunt down bad teachers. If leadership organizations were true leaders, they would not have allowed themselves to be co-opted and bought off. Gates seems to operate by bad analogies. One mentioned here is “standardization is important to allow for innovation… like the standardized outlets we have in our houses.” He sees innovation as the domain of the creators of mass-produced tools and the teachers as consumers. He accuses teachers of not knowing much about effective teaching, which is why he came up with the Common Core and its testing to define excellence.

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How to Keep Your Children Safe Online by Craig Middleton

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

How to Keep Your Children Safe Online by Craig Middleton offers some specifics that parents can attend to as they try to keep the kids safe while they spend increased time online. Be sure to click on the links in this article for detailed advice.

Protecting Kids
Keeping your children safe online is more important than ever. With education and entertainment being online, kids use the computer more often than ever before. While using common sense can keep kids out of a lot of trouble, parents still need to monitor their children’s internet usage. Below are some handy tips that can help both kids and parents stay safer online.

Use Multi-factor Authentication

One way to keep kids safer online is to use multi-factor authentication. So, what is multi-factor authentication? To put it simply, multi-factor authentication is when people need to provide more than one credential (like a password) before they can access their account. Often, codes sent to email accounts or via text serve as the second authentication as do pictures and answers to questions that hackers wouldn’t know.
How does the use of multi-factor authentication help to protect kids? Kids tend not to pick the most complicated passwords. This makes it easy for hackers to break into their accounts. By using multi-factor authentication, it makes it a lot harder for hackers. Whenever a site allows users to enable multi-factor authentication on their accounts, take them up on their offer. It is usually free and can do a lot to protect your children’s accounts.

Set Up Parental Controls

If a parent knows that there are certain websites they do not want their children going on (whether the websites are too adult or for some other reason), then parents can set up parental controls on their computer. These controls can block specific computer accounts (like their child’s) from accessing certain websites.
There are a variety of services that can help parents to set up parental controls. Schools often use these services to prevent students from using social media websites or other distracting or educational sites. Parents can also set up parental controls on their internet browsers.

Warn of Stranger Danger

Not everyone tells the truth about who they are online. Someone may claim to be the same age as a child, but really be an ill-intentioned adult. For this reason, it is best that parents warn their children of “online” stranger danger. If possible, parents should encourage their children not to talk to anyone online unless they already know them in real life. Talking to school friends on apps is safe, but talking to someone they “met” while playing video games online might not be safe. When in doubt, tell children not to talk to anyone online.
Luckily, there are some good apps that kids can use to talk to each other. Facebook has created a messenger app specifically for kids. They can use this app to talk to friends and play games online, safely. This app, and others like it, can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or in the Google Play store for free.

Don’t Save Credit Card Information

Sometimes internet browsers will save credit card information to make purchases faster so you do not need to re-enter information each time you buy something. However, if parents have a child who uses the same internet account, the child would automatically have the credit card information saved. While this is not inherently dangerous to the child, it can negatively impact their parent’s wallets.
Young kids, especially, may not know that it is not okay to spend their parent’s money without asking. This can be extra confusing for kids when they do not see the money. For example, they may know it is not okay to take money from their mother’s purse, but since they cannot see the money when they use a credit card online, they may not register that they are spending real money. Parents would do well to explain that credit cards do spend real money. In the meantime, not saving credit card, debit card, or PayPal/Venmo information online can help prevent kids from making purchases online.
If you want to keep your kids safe online, keep these tips in mind. These little things can do a lot to keep your kids from getting hacked, getting into trouble with strangers, and more.

Craig Middleton

Craig is a New York City-based retired business consultant, who is an expert in education and cultural trends. He has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters in Education from St. Johns and loves sharing his knowledge on the side through his writing. If you have any questions or comments you can direct them to Craig at craigmiddleton18@gmail.com.

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The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova

Saturday, October 10th, 2020

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova chronicles her journey as a PhD psychologist and journalist into the world of professional poker. She starts with zero knowledge and experience and with the help of mentors and lots of hard work becomes a poker champion. While the framework for this book is the game of poker, each chapter features generalizations that we can all draw on to add quality to our lives.

A Prelude – Las Vegas, July 2017

We start with a story from the World Series of Poker, which is The World Cup, The Masters, and The Super Bowl for poker players. Anyone can enter as long as they put up the $10,000 entry fee. This can be a lifetime dream for many. As play continues Maria’s seat sits empty while the dealer takes the anti for each hand from her piles of chips and tosses her cards into the discard pike known as “the muck.” She is in the bathroom curled up in a fetal position on the floor after barfing her brains out due to eating some bad guacamole. At the time she understood the line between skill and luck. The message is that you can’t calculate for dumb bad luck and you can’t bluff chance.

Ante UP – New York, Late Summer 2016

Here we meet Erik Sidel, one of the top poker players of all time. Maria approaches him to see if he will mentor her for her experiment, which involves seeing if a psychologist with zero knowledge of poker can have success after spending only a year learning the game. Eric knows that most people who get serious about the game come at it thinking a deep knowledge of math is the most important attribute. He knows that a deep understanding of psychology is more important as the necessary math his not that hard to master. He also sees Maria’s language skills as another key attribute. (She is fluent in English and Russian, was fluent in Spanish and French, and can get by in Italian.) Eric accepts the challenge and it’s game on. You don’t play poker, you play the world.

The Birth of a Gambler – Boston, Fall 2016

Life is a gamble. It may not seem like playing poker, but in some sense, much of life features less control than you have as a skilled poker player. Here we have a conversation with Maria’s grandmother (Baba Anna) who is very disappointed that Maria is taking up poker rather than a “real job.” Skilled stock pickers do no better than chance in the long run while professional poker players routinely outplay amateurs. In poker, the best hand doesn’t always win. This sets it apart from other games. The process of betting gets your full attention unlike making a decision where no bet is involved. This allows you to benefit from life’s decisions as well. Accurate probabilistic thinking is rare, but it is necessary for success in poker. Like people who predict the weather and horse races, poker players get immediate feedback and have no one to blame but themselves.

The Art of Losing – New York, Fall 2016

Eric’s step one is to read the poker books by Dan Harrington, cousin to the golfer Padraig Harrington. Next, you need to watch streams with real hands being played by the best players. Sign up for the Run It Once a poker coaching site. Then start playing for real online for tiny stakes that can gradually get bigger. From there you can proceed to small tournaments and then move up to bigger ones. You need a balance between aggressive and conservative playing so that your opponents can’t figure you out. You also need to keep track of everyone’s stack size.
Here we encounter the importance of learning from losing. (Doug: The concept of learning from failure is found in many of the other books I have summarized.) You have to constantly think, analyze, and stay objective. This is hard to do. This means that you never take things personally as you treat triumph and disaster the same. Disaster can bring true objectivity. Eric teaches Maria that there is no certainty, only thought. There are no right answers regarding any situation without a greater context. Self-awareness and self-discipline should be your twin goals.

The Mind of a Strategist – New York, Late Fall 2016

Maria starts practicing online, but in order to do so, she has to take a train from Manhattan to New Jersey as online poker is illegal in New York State. She picks a puppy as her avatar and “psychchic” as her screen name. She describes a hand she loses and finds that she made a mistake by trying to copy a hand Eric had once and acted aggressively so as not to look weak. Time is an issue online and in real tournaments as it is in real life. In both cases, you want to use the time you have to think things through, but not act impulsively as time starts to run out. When playing you want to be the last one to act as that will give you maximum information.
The military analogy applies here. You need to know the enemy and survey the nature of the board in each hand. Like a general, you need to decide just how many of your troops you need to deploy. Everything from a scout to every soldier you have is in play. Your strategy cannot be predetermined. Another analogy is that of a jazz band where once it’s your turn you have to decide what to play.
If you only bet when you have top cards your opponents will figure that out and you won’t win much. You will lose more as you won’t often have top cards. This is why you have to bluff on occasion. Maria tells the story of getting an offer to write an article about what she was doing. She said no several times until she got an offer of $3/word. Like sometimes in poker, she got more out of her hand then she thought she could.

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Tags: Eric Sidel, Maria Konnikova, Phil Galford, Poker, Texas hold 'em
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Seven Top Tips to Keep Schools and Colleges Secure by Katherine Rundell

Sunday, October 4th, 2020

Security Cameras

Seven Top Tips to Keep Schools and Colleges Secure by Katherine Rundell

offers a checklist that all educational institutions can use to prevent crime. Modern technology makes this easier so be sure your school or campus is doing all that it can.

Our high schools and college campuses are primarily places where our young people go to learn, so we need to keep them safe and secure so that students do not have to worry about their safety. There has been a worrying rise in attacks on our college campuses and schools lately and there are many things that can be done to prevent these from happening. Here are our top seven tips for getting stronger security on campus.

1. Install a CCTV system

We recommend that you install lots of CCTV cameras in all corners of your campus as a vital security feature. You can check these regularly and they can capture any suspicious activity across the school site. They can also act as a deterrent for any potential intruders.

You should distribute fully functioning cameras liberally across your campus, especially in areas like stairwells, courtyards, and parking lots, where crimes are more prone to take place. Be sure to have cameras for each entrance. Ideally, you will also have a team of highly trained security guards to monitor the video and patrol campus.

2. Restrict Access to Campus

Be sure to restrict or limit access to your campus, or to certain parts of the campus, like lecture halls. This means that only people that you have authorized to enter, like certain faculty members, administration teams, and students, will be able to have access.

You can issue ID badges with a key fob or another security measure to ensure that this is adhered to. Your security team can make sure that nobody is allowed onto the premises without the proper ID or clearance. You should consider a sign-in system for the main entry point of your site to give you more control to screen who enters.

Around the perimeter, you should ensure the school is properly fenced with a high-quality secure fence. This will prevent intruders from entering and ensure all individuals entering are funneled through the entrances giving you a closer look at who is coming in. This also prevents young students from leaving the site without a teacher or parent present. All staff and students should have ID cards issued to them when they begin their time at the site. These can include a photograph to ensure that all school members are accounted for and you know exactly who is on-site.

3. Regular Patrols

If you are aware that certain areas of campus have a higher risk for crime, try to send your campus security to patrol these areas on a more frequent basis. Increasing the number of security staff, you have available in the evenings to check these areas is also a good idea.

Ideally, you will have security staff on campus 24/7 and have a security protocol in place, like using ID badges for entry. This will avoid unauthorized people from getting access to campus. It also ensures that any criminal acts that take place on campus can be dealt with and kept under control straight away.

4. Silent Alarms and Panic Buttons

You should place these throughout the site and tell all staff and students about their location. This means that the authorities can be advised quickly if an incident arises and allows the victim to ask for help without having to get out their cell phone during an emergency.

5. Create an Anonymous Tip Line

If any students become concerned about someone’s actions or have learned information that might lead to a crime, they can use an anonymous tip line to inform campus security without worrying about being penalized themselves.

6. Security Checks for All Staff

Most Western countries require all staff members to pass a security check before they can work with children. Make it a regular part of your practice to do full background checks on all new staff members for student safety.

7. Well Lit Campuses

It has been proven with research that criminals are more likely to act in darkness because there are fewer witnesses and reduced visibility. We know that darkness is an important driving factor in the rise in incidents of crime.

You can counteract this by installing, maintaining, and repairing street lights on campus to make sure that the site remains well lit at all times. This will increase visibility for everyone and campus security to be able to keep an eye on everyone.

Katherine Rundell is a strategist marketer for both Studydemic and Simple Grad, where she has already created a number of high-profile marketing campaigns. She writes content and edits submissions at My Writing Way. She can be reached at katherine.t.rundell@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineRunde2

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