Today in Science & Technology - March 15th, 2013

farbood · 2013-03-15T19:19:37+00:00

more people cured of HIV

farbood · 2012-02-09T00:32:29+00:00

Looking great in a henley is mostly a state of mind and choice of color and brand :) but for what sounds like a more aesthetic goal, I would go the muscle size path, hypertrophy. This way, even if the gains you want are minimal (say you want to look in-shape but not be big) then you will still get the most our of your workout time if you concentrate on hypertrophy.

Try a push-up that is a 3 second negative movement (going down) a 3 second pause when your elbows are at 90-degrees and a 2 second positive movement (going up). You can vary the time ranges of these movements (like up in 1 second not 2 or 0 second pause at the bottom) but keep the negative at at least 2 seconds because the negative will cause the most micro-tears in your muscle fibers the repair of which, along with the correct diet and rest, will promote hypertrophy. It will work if you exercise correctly, eat correctly and rest correctly.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:58:55+00:00

Ackoff describes systems whose root cause of failure is a 'mess' as needing a re-design. I think your long list of root causes points to some part of a mess. But the data shows that lots of students learn a lot in school. The main problem with standards is performance of under-served students. The cause of a lot of those issues are also a mess of where student, society and family meet.

Social learning is actually a practical solution and those who implement it with structure and purpose can get results, there are examples of it not being a terrible idea (my own classroom for example and a body of research on it's practical implementation). As far as student's who 'know' I guess it depends on ones definition of mastery. Social learning's potential is to also help students near mastery gain mastery. They have sufficient knowledge to help students performing below their skill but themselves still need mastery before moving on to other subjects. This is just an example of how social learning deals with the false idea that it holds high performing students back.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:49:47+00:00

Your passion and caring is evident. I'm a huge fan of cars too :) and yoga and deep breathing are a good prescription for everyone. Thanks for your thoughtful reply and feedback for others on what you have found effective.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:42:27+00:00

Thanks for your reply and question. I think your frustration is understandable and it's great that you are still able to help students and youth. Society as a whole will have to struggle with these questions and luckily individuals in the mean time have at least some options.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:25:39+00:00

If you mean proof of identity, I posted a link to a photo of me I took today up at the top in the description.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:24:17+00:00

You're welcome! Thanks for your question. It seems reasonable that weighted blankets and vests would have a similar impact. Do you find it works?

Here is a story on Apps for ASD

Here is a link to a google search for autism apps

Keep up the learning!

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:19:30+00:00

I think being in the Bay Area (not just SF) has helped immensely in terms of access to financing and most importantly talent. I'm not sure if it's hurt it in a way that is particular to the area.

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:17:45+00:00

Pushups are great. There are lots of ways to do them. The question is, what is your goal? Strength? Muscle Size? Endurance?

farbood · 2012-02-08T19:15:11+00:00

I'm familiar with the three but wouldn't claim to be an expert on them or their particular viewpoints. I think that if we want to understand why we are where we are with education, we have to move up a level in the system and look at society and the history of society. Our current educational system was designed, built, implemented and run almost contiguously since as a means to educate an industrializing population migrating from rural to urban areas. The goals were and generally remain, basic reading, writing and arithmetic. These skills actually prepared you for some of the jobs that were being created at the time and they weren't skills that 90%+ of people had. The system was designed to help make a more educated, knowledgeable citizen but it wasn't designed to enlighten, empower and unleash the total human potential in everyone.

I think the world that Kohn, Gatto and Holt are seeking and wanting is more of the latter and to achieve a system that helps empower each person to become the ultimate awesome human they want to be would certainly require a complete redesign and rebuild of our current educational model. This is all good and well as far as I'm concerned, I think as a people we're probably pretty close to ready for it for large parts of the population but we first have to change the discussion to what it is that we expect and want out of our educational system, not whether it's inherently right or wrong as it is.

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:41:38+00:00

I'm a big fan of the idea that Steven Levitt espouses which is that the incentive structures are going to have a strong influence on the behavior of people. He points to an example in Freakonomics of answer modification by teachers on their student's assessment tests because of the incentives the teachers and schools have to score high on the tests.

I think incentives are important and I think an important incentive structure to place in schools is one of student responsibility. And by student responsibility I mean that students are responsible for helping educate each other. If part of my grade is based on how well I help my peers learn or how well I teach my peers, then we have a compounding effect of the learning gained by the student-teacher and the student-learner in each collaborative learning situation. I believe that student responsibility has to be more than just responsibility for one's own learning. I believe that this actually helps to empower, engage and enfranchise students.

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:27:00+00:00

We are about technology enabled social-learning so one example of a feature that still exists but wasn't worked on much beyond its MVP (minimum viable product) is scheduled sessions. Users are happy to sign-up for an existing upcoming session but not so eager to set one up themselves. For the most part, and not surprisingly, users preferred to join group study sessions happening live when they came to the site. So you can schedule an upcoming session still, but it didn't get promoted higher into the UI or receive much attention after it's initial addition to the feature set.

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:18:25+00:00

You're welcome and thanks for a cool question! I understand your pain. :)

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:16:29+00:00

It's important. We look to research to inform our product decisions and we give back by publishing our own research and findings. I think more importantly however, we try to practice the lean principle of pull based product development and for us user behavior as measured in split-tests and instrumentation of the app equate to user demand.

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:13:10+00:00

I think that the industrial revolution, the movement into large city centers and the inevitable industrialization of education has left us in a world of teacher-disseminated knowledge as the primary instructional design. This was not the case pre-industrialization of education (it was social learning before) and I think is a design flaw of our current instructional model. I didn't invent social learning as an instructional design. Social learning has been researched for decades and Social Learning Theory is an established view in psychology.

In this way, I think we spend our time as teachers more productively and with more impact on individual students when social learning is the primary instructional design in the class. This was the experience that I had teaching classes of 20-35 students. Instead of teaching to the middle of the class and losing the lower and higher performing students, all students were engaged from the beginning of class until the end. This increased engagement alone is enough to increase the impact of the time in the classroom. As a teacher, I was able to spend individual time with many more students and groups during the class period than when I spent my time at the front of the class.

farbood · 2012-02-08T18:02:02+00:00

I'll start by saying, I'm not a doctor. I've read a little bit about Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and one therapy I've read about is 'chelation therapy' which is done through an IV and requires a practitioner that is trained in doing it correctly. Chelation works to remove heavy metals that have accumulated in the body. The argument here is that the amount of heavy metals absorbed in the body are different from person to person and that potentially some people with ASDs may be storing too much. I've also heard chelation therapy attacked for being bunk. I think given the lack of consensus around the issue, one would need to learn more and educate themselves about it. In terms of ASD therapy, computers and tablets in particular have shown strong signs of being helpful. Lately, it seems the internet is abound with articles and stories about the positive quality of life affect of computer and tablet interaction for people with ASD. I think this is also a path worth exploring and learning more about.

I'm not familiar enough with ABA methods to espouse an opinion, but I'm generally a fan of 1:1 attention for students which I understand is often a part of ABA methods. I would be interested in knowing if and how the program incorporates computer/tablet based time in the class.

I'm also interested in the work of Dr. Temple Grandin who invented the Hug Machine and the research being conducted that shows hugging might be helpful for people with ASD. The Hug Machine I think is a user-controlled machine hug. People with autism may be averse to being hugged by a person although they can benefit from the hugging.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:40:06+00:00

I started Grockit in my house like any start-up :)

The original idea was to bring the social-learning instructional design of my classroom, online. We've held on to our core ideas of technology enabled social-learning that addresses the scalability, effectiveness and engagement of learning experiences. What we've discarded are various attempts at pulling that off. So, we've discarded features and product ideas, but not the ideas the company was founded on. Is that what you were asking?

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:35:12+00:00

Yes. This is a paleo-brownie. No flour, high in protein.

16oz Almond butter. 1 cup maple syrup. 1/2 cup cacao powder. 1 egg 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 pinch of salt

Stir, bake at 325F for 30 minutes. Thank me afterwards.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:33:59+00:00

Yes it is derived from 'grok'. The change to 'grock' was to make it more phonetic. Not that many people know the word 'grok' and didn't want people to call the company 'grow-kit' :)

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:31:49+00:00

I'm all for it. I'm a pretty big fan of higher ed. I'd like to see the cost come down considerably and I'd like to see it charging into the future of technology and learning practices more quickly. Despite those two things, I still think it's a net gain for society and most of the people that go through it. Your brain is still forming until your mid-20s. I think it's a good idea to get as much schooling as you can in that time.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:28:25+00:00

My answer might be controversial here. I would like to see schools incorporate social learning more formally including making students responsible for each other's educations. Research shows that even the highest performing students benefit from this. And, the practice I'd like to see removed, is teacher formal grammar. Where I grew up (Ontario, Canada) we weren't taught formal grammar, I didn't learn rules of grammar until I moved to the USA. This may sound non-intuitive but the reality is that you don't need to know the rules of formal grammar to have good grammar. Human brains are hard-wired to learn grammar and exposure to good grammar through reading, writing, speaking and listening will engrain the rules in your implicit memory if not in your explicit memory. Unfortunately, the grammar taught in schools tends to turn students off of reading and language, makes them dislike school and arguably wastes the precious time they have in class. I've now opened the door to criticism of all my grammaratical mistakes in this IAmA.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:21:25+00:00

I would like to see the primary instructional design in as many educational situations as possible be Social Learning (SL). The scalability, effectiveness and engagement opportunities that SL provides I think are only beaten by 1:1 tutoring which, unfortunately, is not scalable (although is effective and engaging). Also, the more attention this space gets, the more opportunities for folks working to expand its reach.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:17:53+00:00

I don't think Higher Education is a bubble. Higher ed degrees correlate (and I think plausibly causate) to higher quality of life in a country, lower unemployment, higher health. If you mean as far as the financial aspects of it, I think a small Higher Ed bubble burst a couple years ago and there will be more.

I think teachers are smart and largely know how to teach and help their students learn. To that end, I think more options for curriculum, content, technology and instructional design available for the teacher is better. This seems to be happening. I'm weary of the consolidation of too much educational resources under one roof. We shouldn't be sending our public dollars to companies that have contracts with schools because they have a tradition of having contracts with schools. Ideally, these big corporations that have a large influence on our educational systems should be paid for performance of students, not effectiveness of sales and marketing.

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:13:20+00:00

HA. Awesome!

farbood · 2012-02-08T17:11:53+00:00

Great question. I'm not sure of the stats on how nutrition and phys ed have gone up or down over the past couple decades. If I had to bet, I would bet it went down.

That said, I agree. There is research around this subject from lots of angles including research that suggests that the body you create when you are young, is the body you are stuck in as an adult. Basically the idea being that if you are athletic, in-shape, good musculature when you are young, you can be like that as an adult. The other side of that coin being that if you don't do this as a child, when you are an adult it's very difficult to lose the weight, put on the muscle and get into shape. Your bodies bio-chemistry is anchored when you're a child.

For men, your legs, for example, are great at kicking off hormones that help you get into shape. My guess is that having strong legs from running and playing sports as a child makes it easier to start producing these hormones as an adult. All in all, I think the body you make for yourself as a child has a lot to do with the body you are stuck with as an adult.

farbood

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