Archive for Education

11 results.

When Words Fail

Apr22
by on 22April22 at 0917

When people have tried to communicate a problem and have been repeatedly:

  • Blocked
  • Ignored
  • Told to report it to an uncaring or partisan authority
  • Told that they are in the wrong
  • Told that the bad actor is in the right
  • Told that they are not allowed to deal with the problem (not allowed to defend themselves)
  • Told to deal with a problem that is too big for them to deal with on their own

When people have literally lost their ability to communicate, because the words they have been speaking are not being heard and they have no idea what words will work…

People become hurt, angry, and violent. After a while of being in this state, these people will again attempt to find a resolution, either by hurting or killing themselves or someone else (possibly multiple people). This is how you end up with kids in school with a weapon or adults on top of buildings with a weapon. These people feel that they have been wronged by the populace at large.

Does this mean they are right to act this way? No. If the first person in the chain of responsibility is unwilling or unable to solve a problem, then the next person in the line should be approached. If the teachers, counselors, or principle aren’t doing their job, then the next outlet is the police, a religious leader (such as a pastor), friends, family, etc. The buck doesn’t stop with teachers.

It does mean that something has gone terribly wrong with the system and it has festered long enough that someone has felt the need to respond very violently to a bad situation. This usually indicates that the person was being attacked in a very violent manner. This can still be a mental attack, but even mental attacks can be excessively vicious and cruel.

Again, this doesn’t mean that a violently lethal response is acceptable or reasonable, but it does make it understandable. Understanding a situation is the first step in resolving a problem. Which, in the case of students being wantonly physically or mentally attacked in a school, where the authority figures ignore the problem, take away the students’ rights to defend themselves, then tell them that they are in the wrong… This situation is long overdue for correction.

I recommend putting the kids in question into an arena that lets them pit their mental and physical skills against each other. This would prevent kids from feeling that they can gang up on one kid in order to prove they are somehow the big kid on the block. And seriously, point out that kids who excel in school are more likely to get decent jobs when they graduate. Teachers are responsible for pointing this out as many times as it takes, to get the point across. Kids who are bullies are more likely to be doing poorly in their classes, because they feel the need to prevent other kids from excelling. It’s as if they think that hurting someone else’s chances somehow makes their chances better. Eventually, this kind of bad actor will get caught in the act, but can’t we put a stop to it sooner, rather than later?

Ignoring the problem usually ends up with one kid getting beat up by multiple other kids; repeatedly. The logic behind a bunch of kids feeling the need to band together to beat up on a kid they think is weaker than any one of them… This thought process still fails me, but it is what they do. Again. If you provide no solution, the kids will fight it out, outside of your view and with no rules in place.

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Bright Idea Imagehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50a4Ddf5Amohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50a4Ddf5Amo

Inspiring DIY Ideas

Mar13
by on 13March21 at 0859

DIY Tips and Tricks. Or… Cool and very useful stuff that you can make for yourself.

I’ve noticed that there is a LOT of awesome and inspiring DIY (do it yourself) info out there for survival back to the basics, such as Food, Shelter, and Clothing. I’ve decided to repost this post any time I add something I’ve found that’s interesting. Whatever is newest, will be Bolded and in Italics. If this list becomes too large, I will break it down into sub-topics. If you find that one of these links no longer works, please let me know.

I figure, that we (humanity) can either help each other out and thrive or we can all go back to the dark ages due to hate and ignorance. I personally don’t believe that it was romantic to live in mud and wattle huts, with no electricity, and without the capacity to share ideas. Every additional voice has the capacity to make all our lives richer, so long as that voice is encouraged to learn and grow.

Now… you might just blow off DIY, because you can buy these things ready-made at the store. Or… maybe you think that some of these things are no better than Doomsday Prepping. Please reconsider. Some of the best inventions out there wouldn’t exist, if people weren’t trying to think of a way to do something for themselves or have an idea on how to do things better. You just have to come up with a way to make your idea easily reproducible, advertise it, and then get your product to your customer.

Who knows… You might be sitting on the next great invention!

30 Garden Hacks & 5 Minute Decor Tricks

Fishing Bow from Large Bicycle Tires

Homemade Alcohol Burner/Cookstove
– Requires a small jar with lid; another larger lid (or a metal plate); 3 long bolts, with washers and nuts; and a copper tube.

Multiple Seed Starting Tricks
– Some of these are duplicates of the 30 Garden Hacks. I will review and delete it if I find that everything is a duplication.

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Ignorance vs Stupidity vs Bravery

Sep25
by on 25September16 at 1419

Ignorance vs Stupidity vs Bravery

Many people mix up the terms ignorance, stupidity, and bravery. I discuss these terms under the topic of education, because knowing or not knowing the difference between stupidity and ignorance makes a difference to people’s ability to learn. The reason for this is that many people use the term ignorance as if it were a stick and as something that a person should be ashamed of. Example: “You’re so ignorant that you’ll never learn (stupid is also used incorrectly here) . I put to you that everyone is ignorant of something. Ignorance is only shameful when a person is obstinately and willfully ignorant. Stupidity really has nothing to do with a person’s ability to learn either, except when someone is willfully ignorant. Example: I don’t know versus I don’t want to know.

I recommend that the next time someone attempts to use the term ignorance as a stick on you, that you tell them, “Ignorance is curable with the willingness to learn, while the stupidity of making assumptions about a person’s character is a personal flaw that, if it becomes a habit, is difficult to alter. Wait, no… perhaps not the second half of that. Too likely to start a fight. It is helpful to know the second half; however, as it helps stiffen the spine, when dealing with such situations.

Getting upset with someone who makes such character assumptions is a wasted effort, as they have only proven their own ignorance twice over. The first time by making an assumption in the first place and the second time by using the term ignorant incorrectly.

If an educator uses either ignorant or stupid as a stick, bat, or blunt object to beat up their student, it should be simply reported to the school system and that person should be educated by the school system, not the student or their parent. The student should be moved to a different class or a different school altogether if the educator is not dealt with appropriately.

The difference between these terms, along with other mean-hearted/cruel terms and appropriate behavior related to their use is something that children should be made aware of, as there is a high probability that a child will not bring it up to their parents.

For example, children often have difficult experiences at school, because they are unaware of good ways to deal with or respond to the mean and cruel things that other children or their instructors might say to them. The last thing a child (or anyone for that matter) should do is act upset or angry when in a confrontation, regardless of whether or not they are.

Taunt: Your momma wears combat boots!

Possible Responses: So. Who cares? / So. Is that important to you for some reason? / So. That means she’s strong and a fighter. / So does that mean your momma doesn’t?

Attitude and bearing are as important as the response. If you act afraid or flinch away, you mark yourself as a victim for future attacks. If you act aggressively, you are inviting the situation to escalate to a physical fight.

I recommend teaching children to fight, but advising them that it should always be a last resort. My father told me, “Never throw the first punch. You had better not start any fights, but if you get into one, you had better finish it” In other words, if you allow yourself to be beaten up by bullies, they don’t simply go away, they keep coming back for more.

Please discuss this with your children and by all means, post a few other taunts, regardless of whether you have come up with ideas for how to deal with them. We might be able to toss around a few ideas and come up with some good solutions. On my website please, or I likely won’t see them and chances are that only your immediate friends will get to see them:.

To post on the website: thewilesway.com

  • You have to be registered and the post has to be approved.
  • The website will not allow a lot of crude words to be posted, so if it won’t post, you will have to simply refer to what you mean.)

Assumption: A theory or belief that is accepted as true without proof.

Bravery: Acting in the face of danger in spite of fear and with knowledge of the danger, because it is the right thing to do.

Ignorance: A lack of knowledge/information/data.

Stupidity: Behaving without sense or judgement.

Taunt: A comment meant to anger, provoke, or wound.

This means that a person who acts poorly in ignorance, does so because they are not aware of all the facts, while a person who acts poorly with stupidity does so regardless of the facts.

Example of bravery: She ran into the burning house to save a child.

Example of ignorance: He died of smoke inhalation, because he didn’t know the house was on fire.

Example of stupidity: She refused to be helped by a thief, so she drowned.

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Your Mind: A Stagnant Pond or a Fertile Playground

Sep10
by on 10September16 at 1238

I came across this question earlier today, while researching for something else and found people discussing and arguing over a bunch of awesome words that are niche-specific. These terms describe periods of time, which are most commonly used to identify and define other things or in financial reports. I could not find a single list/chart of these terms or a single word or phrase that includes these terms, perhaps someone can help me with this.

While doing this research, I read a post that hit on one of my sore spots, because it discouraged the use of the word Tertile, citing the complaint, “Why use a word that most readers will have to look up in a dictionary to understand?”. I don’t disagree that the term is unlikely to ever be a common use word, not even as common as its relative terms (such as quarterly and annually), but I do have a serious issue with the statement as a whole. Seeing as I do not wish to attack a person, but I do wish to attack a concept, I am bringing the problem here.

Quarterly is too hard a word for some people, but yet there is a time and a place for it. As such, it is a commonly used term gardening and in the world of finance and business, but far less used in other areas. Granted that I just can’t see “tertile” flowing off my lips in a sentence describing how often I do something… I have to file tertile reports (every three months or four times a year). It just doesn’t sound right, which means it will never be used, unless someone in a position of authority decides they just have to have a three month report and just love the term. No one is going to reach for this term automatically.

You might think triannually would work, but that is actually every four months and occurs three times a year and the popular term for that is quarterly. You might try to throw some terms together, like quadranually. It looks a little clunky, but it might catch on. (Quadrennially is every 4 years.)

The meat of this article:

I take exception to discouraging the use of less commonly used terms, just because someone might have to look something up. As shown in the example of quarterly (above), there are a lot of terms out there that are specific to tasks, such activities that are done infrequently and work related tasks that are fairly narrow to a specific type of field. Should we give up the word “rafting,” because I haven’t done it or talked to anyone about it in over 10 years? NO! Should we not learn what a cumulonimbus cloud is, because we don’t work in the weather industry? NO!

How far do we go before we say, “I know enough words and I don’t need any more for understanding the world around me and communicating with others.”? If we never learned new words (often accomplished after childhood by looking up words that we don’t understand or don’t see very often), we may as well all be grunting and pointing.

If you don’t know a word that someone uses or you find in an article, please look it up!

A stagnant mind rots from disuse, just like a scummy pond. The more words we know, the more creative we can be, because the variety of concepts a larger and larger word pool encompasses is just like using larger and larger numbers.

Given the digits 0 through 9 to create a two digit number, you have a relatively small number of possibilities for numbers that you can come up with. Assuming we’re working with whole or positive numbers, this gives you 90 possible numbers, because 0 through 9 are single digit numbers.  Every digit you add after that increases the number of possibilities exponentially. You can figure it out like this: If you have 10 you have 10 possible permutations. When you add a digit, you have 100 possible permutations, so times or multiplied by 10. 10×10=100, 100×10=1,000, 1,000×10=10,000. Simple, because to times by 10, all you are doing is adding a 0 at the far right of the number.

Learning is essential, not only to success, but to self-realization, world-realization, galaxy-realization, and universe-realization. What is your place in existence? If you are not willing and able to question everything and simply accept what you currently see or understand as “they way things are,” you will miss so many beautiful and wonderful marvels. You might accept many lies or myths as the truth. Granted that sometimes we find out that a myth was actually a reality that we did not understand yet, myths are often things we make up to quantify what we have to deal with in life, but have little to no grounding in reality.

If I learn about ambient today, I might also learn about ambient temperature, then I might decide to learn what can radiate heat and create a change in the ambient temperature. After that I might learn a better and more efficient way to heat our houses or melt ice off the roads. I could be amazing, but not if I don’t go out of my way to learn something new.

Quote: Once you stop learning, you start dying — Albert Einstein

Please learn, grow, and make every day of your life an adventure!

* Ambient: area around or surrounding

* Permutation: In math, the arrangement of numbers.

Note: If someone can come up with a better or nicer way to get this point across, I welcome recommendations.

2nd Note: If you don’t post your responses directly to my website, I probably won’t see it. I generally only see responses to my own Facebook posts, and which do not post to my website. And I have to approve posts, before anyone else can see posts submitted to my website. It cuts down on the unsolicited advertisements, viruses, spam, sheer rudeness, and profanity.

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English Language

May15
by on 15May16 at 1622

 

I feel that the English language is a fairly robust language, being a blend of multiple other languages and because of its versatility in being able to incorporate terms from other languages. I feel that this is largely because of its Latin and Greek roots (especially their roots and prefixes). The roots and prefixes provided by the Latin and Greek languages allows most words to be modified to alter the use of the words, such as using past tense and future tense.  Example: abjure – give up, throw away, or reject:  especially related to belief(s). This example uses ab, which is a Latin prefix that means away from.

I am one of those people who LOVE the English language. Yes, this statement makes many people look at me as if I am a bit crazy, but I really don’t care. I enjoy the grammar jokes, just as much as I enjoy techie jokes.

I would like to help other people come to realize why I like the English language so much and come to be as good using it as I am, preferably better. No, I am not perfect at using the English language. I still consider myself to be a student… considering how many words are in it and how many are still being added, I expect I will be a student forever. I do not consider this as a bad thing. I view it as I would any work of art in nature: a thing of beauty, which is ever-changing. I am, however, fairly proficient and always seeking improvement.

Word List

I will keep a compiled list of terms that I feel are essential in conveying meaning within the English language (but, which I feel might be a bit under-used) and which I happen to use in my articles, along with a short, possibly more clarifying definition than you will find in a dictionary. Example shown below:

  • Ab: away from
  • Abjure: give up, throw away, or reject:  especially related to belief(s).
  • Constructive Criticism: A recommendation for improving a situation or process and possibly for preventing future problems of the same or similar nature.
  • Jure: right, fair, or reasonable. Used in relation to judgements, law, jurors, and jury: abjure and de jure.
  • Proficient: competent or skilled.
    • Side Note: People who are proficient at something can still make gross errors and mistakes. Correction by people who care about that person should be appreciated and welcome (as long as it is polite and delivered with concern for the individual and the subject matter {though laughter and ribbing are sometimes acceptable for some mistakes, especially from dear friends}). Even better than a correction is a constructive criticism.

If you see an under-used term that I have used in my articles, but haven’t added to the list, please let me know and I will fix it.

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Education

Apr27
by on 27April16 at 1715

Within the topic of Education I plan to include education tips, hints, and recommendations.

Here is my first example:

The learning methods break down into the concepts of See, Hear, and Do. I advocate using all the methods possible to get the maximum learning experience. I would compare this to keeping at least three solid points of contact at all times, while climbing a cliff face (without a rope).

See It: Watching someone else do something.

Hear it: Listening to someone describe, define, or teach a topic.

Do It:

  • Doing a task, while someone explains how it’s done or shows you how to do it.
  • Doing a task, while doing research through: books, interviewing experienced people (everyday anybodies and pros), video tutorials, and web articles.
  • Doing a task through trial and error, using experimentation: preferably scientific experimentation (logging trials, errors, and successes) and improvements.

Rote: My grandmother’s mantra was: read, recite, review, repeat. This is the rote method of learning, which depends upon *dinning the material into a person’s head until it sticks.

Critical Thinking or Meaningful Learning: Encourages students to understand concepts so that the information transfers to other situations and purposes, rather than only within a specific scenario.

Everyone has a learning method that is best for them, whether listening to someone teach, reading, copying, editing the material, or a combination of these methods.

My recommendation

If I am going to learn by rote, my mantra is: read, recite, write, review, repeat. Writing the material that I am trying to learn gives me a chance to edit the material, thus ensuring that I look up unfamiliar terms and rewrite the material in a format that makes more sense to me and allows me to better understand it. Using this editing method ensures that even rote learning is more useful to me than it would be if I stuck to traditional rote learning, because if I understand a concept it sticks with me for far longer than simply memorizing data.

Traditional Teaching: Uses “Hear It”, “See It”, and “Do It” by having the teacher instruct the students, while writing on a blackboard/white board/overhead projector, and requesting the student to take notes, then encourages the student to think about the topic by asking them questions and asking them to ask their own questions. The best teachers encourage the student to consider how a topic fits into real world situations.

  • Rote & Din: Forced learning, by constant repetition. Example: Dinning it into your head (visual graphic – imagine hitting yourself over the head with a book.
    • Note: The reality of the example would be useless. It is simply a simile or comparison. A metaphorical example does not expect you to take the example literally.
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Improving Video Tutorials: A General How To

Apr27
by on 27April16 at 1710

A lot of us have been that person up in front of everyone, stressed out… pulling at the collar of our shirt, sweating bullets, and hoping we can do a good job, but so stressed out that we stumble around, regardless of how well we know our subject. No one really wants to be that person who stresses out in front of everyone. We all want to do our best, and we really don’t want to look incompetent, when we’re really just nervous. Video tutorials are the absolute best method for getting practice at public speaking, because we don’t have to show the parts where we stumble, we get a chance to see what we look like before the viewer does, and we can use this medium to train ourselves out of bad habits, while we learn to relax.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who are doing tutorials are not taking best advantage of this feature. Here are my recommendations to improving a video tutorial, so that you can “Look Like a PRO”. The more you practice at it, I promise, the easier it will be to do it with less and less editing.

  1. Remove Dead Air, mistakes, and nervous chatter:
    1. Cut sections of dead air. Dead air is very boring, it lends to an uncomfortable and stressed out instructor, it takes unnecessary viewer time, and provides no training benefit.
      1. Example: Cut download wait times by simply announcing how long it took after the cutout section. Example: After making the appropriate selections… “Ok, starting download of X. I’ll be back when it’s done. … Welcome back, that took x minutes.”
    2. Remove the sections where it doesn’t work right, such as the part where the install file didn’t run, and you realized you had to run it again using admin rights. At this point, start over from the “last known good” point in the video and simply state something like… “and this part requires admin rights, so right click on the file and select ‘Run as Admin’.”
    3. Remove nervous chatter, to include UM, UH, YEAH, and off-topic/agitated commentary, which does not lend well to public speaking or providing instruction/teaching. Nervous chatter makes the speaker appear to not know what he/she is talking about; regardless of the speaker’s knowledge base or skill level.
  2. Text Log:
    1. Keep a log to the right or left of what you are doing, which shows the *concise* instructions in text.
      1. Example: To clear cookies and temp files from the IE (Internet Explorer) browser:

IE: Clear Cookies and Temp Files

– In IE > Tools > Internet Options > General tab > Browsing History > Delete > Select preferred delete items (items 2 & 3 at a minimum) > Delete > OK.

Note1: Keeping a text log on screen allows distracted users, such as myself, to know that we have/haven’t missed something important, so that we don’t backtrack unnecessarily.

Note2: An additional benefit of keeping this text log is that it helps keep the speaker on-topic. It also provides the instructor with a downloadable take-away instruction for the viewer.

These are my recommendations; I hope they help.

PS: Some of these instructions also apply very well to public speaking.

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Recent Activities

Sep26
by on 26September14 at 0316

This month I have been a little distracted by research. I have been trying to expand my repertoire of knowledge about programming/coding/web development.

If you are interested in learning to program or code, here are a few of the sites that I have recently been visiting:

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Stating the Obvious

Jul24
by on 24July14 at 1720

Why should you state the obvious?

  • People often fail to pass concepts on to their children, coworkers, subordinates, etc., because they think the concepts are obvious and should not need to be stated. 
  • Sometimes the obvious to one person is not so obvious to others.
    • Sometimes people need reminders of the obvious, because they just aren’t thinking of it.
    • Often, people think of certain concepts as obvious after discussing them, but had not used them or incorporated them into their daily lives until someone mentioned them.

Why people fail to state the obvious:

  • Many people do not bring up topics that they think of as obvious, because they think they might be razzed, denigrated, dismissed, thought less of, etc. Many wise and important concepts are lost in this way.

 

Thought from Ehrin:

When I write statements up, I tend to forget to include the parts that I think of as obvious, but those points often seem to wow people. I don’t know why. Maybe because they WERE thought of and covered.

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Thoughts & Ideas

Jun04
by on 4June14 at 1810

Thoughts and ideas are like water flowing downstream. If you do not take steps to preserve them, they are gone: leaving no trace.

I have met many people who have wonderful bright ideas, but fail to write them down. Sometimes this is because they feel that the idea or thought is so impressive that they cannot forget it. Other times they feel that no one will think their thought or idea worthy of consideration. still others have so many ideas crowding around in their heads that by the time they find a writing implement, all they can remember is the latest idea.

Please write down your thoughts and ideas, even if you do not think them all that impressive. Not all ideas, on first review, are that impressive. Sometimes they have to be stored or put away and reviewed later. Sometimes thoughts need airing in front of an inventive and innovative person (we all know someone like that), a person who has the ability to see possibilities.

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What is “Common Sense”?

Jun15
by on 15June13 at 1006

The closest the term “Common Sense” comes to reality is within a *bailiwick (area of expertise).

Sense is the ability to ably apply learned information. Adding the term “common” onto sense implies that everyone should know a specified piece of information and apply it correctly. Considering the use of the term sense, it really doesn’t need anything tacked onto it to improve the term.

People who are professionals often have difficulty communicating concepts that they consider simple to people outside of their profession.

Example: Doctors and lawyers learn Latin as an integral part of their jobs, yet this does not mean that they communicate with each other any better than a doctor talking to a computer technician.

A clearer example might be a technician trying to explain computer terms to anyone that is not a technician. Example: A CAT5 cable is a more accurate but a less common term than a LAN cable. Regardless of this, even the people who understand that the LAN cable is the one that connects the computer to the Internet (via the modem and router), might not be able to identify that the term LAN means local area network or that it refers to a small home network or a network contained within a relatively small area (usually a single building).

Respectively, a MAN or metropolitan area network connects several buildings and a WAN or wide area network may incorporate a multitude of LANs and MANs. The Internet is the biggest public access WAN. (Now that we’re a little more edumacated, {as my mother would heartily joke}, back to the topic).

Perhaps you might think that there is a common core of information we are all taught in school… Yes, there is a certain amount of information that is supposed to be made available to anyone who attends the same school system. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean we all learn that information. Each teacher manages to impart their charge to educate people to a greater or lesser degree than is expected. Some students learn easier than others, some students retain information better than others, some students simply have more drive or ambition than others (and thus study harder), while some students don’t wait for the education to come to them. This last group of students has a thirst for knowledge that sends them scrambling and seeking for learning, rather than waiting in the classroom nice and patient for it. The point is, that we are all different and learn at different levels and get different things out of school, even with all these factors considered… I’m afraid that applying that knowledge is not the same as learning it, especially since the application of knowledge learned in school doesn’t tend to happen until we hit the job market.

The old saying, “If you don’t use it, you lose it,” comes into play here.

Using the term “common sense” implies that everyone should come up with the same solution that the person making the statement has come to and implies that someone is lacking this particular “skill.”

This term is complete nonsense. I have never heard this term used to compliment anyone. It’s a term commonly used to imply someone is stupid and lacking in problem solving skills.

It’s a mean and heartless term that I do not recommend anyone use, ever. You can only alienate or hurt people by using it.

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