danielford

6 ms·

1.
by danielford 8y ago
This is a good article, but it only touches on the main issue with learning styles. Multiple independent groups of educational psychologists (if I remember correctly it was three) reviewed all the articles they could find on learning style
2.
by danielford 9y ago
They choose the topic. I'm fine with anything in biology, medicine, chemistry, and even some social science topics. Some of them run into trouble and others don't depending on what they choose. I've considered removing the
3.
by danielford 9y ago
Community colleges like the one I work at can't afford the journal fees. One of my assignments involves reading several peer-reviewed articles on a narrow topic and writing an explanation of the research. Every semester I have studen
4.
by danielford 9y ago
I teach community college biology, and I agree that we're really bad at teaching critical thinking. But the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) cited by this article was graded by a computer last time I checked. Here's a direct
5.
by danielford 10y ago
I teach biology at a community college and most of the services listed in that article wouldn't improve my courses. I've already switched three of my four courses over to open textbooks, which students can download for free or pu
6.
by danielford 10y ago
> We didn't know how to talk or study or dress or think the way our peers did. It took me years to learn. Please tell me everything about this. I teach at a community college and my students come from the middle class, the working
7.
When did we decide to outsource the drug war to private employers?(suburbdad.blogspot.com)
4 points by danielford 10y ago|0 comments
8.
by danielford 10y ago
Yes that's wrong, but the paper that corrected this misconception wasn't published until January of 2016. I think you should give them at least a year to update before unleashing the disapproving scowl.
9.
by danielford 10y ago
Here's a news article about this and how to avoid it if you ever have to go on a program like the Daily Show. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-eve...
10.
by danielford 11y ago
The most disappointing YC-backed product I tried was Stypi. I teach community college and sometimes I wonder about the thought processes behind some of my students' papers. Paul Graham linked an essay he wrote in Stypi, where you coul
11.
by danielford 11y ago
When I was a kid I put water wings on my ankles so I could walk on the water like Jesus. I fell over within 0.5 seconds of entering the pool and they held me upside down with my feet sticking out. I remember thinking I was going to die ri
12.
by danielford 12y ago
I teach at a community college, and as it was explained to me by our financial aid office, student aid isn't paid out until a few weeks in as a mechanism to prevent financial aid fraud. Every year people sign up for classes, collectin
13.
by danielford 13y ago
Here's a link to either the study you're looking for, or a similar one: http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/139295/1/2002%20NASSP%2...
14.
by danielford 13y ago
I teach and that more or less sums up my current view on the subject. Academic departments and journals of education produce a large amount of crap that later turns out to be poorly researched. This results in nonsense educational fads li
15.
by danielford 13y ago
Thanks for the link to that review article, I'm definitely going to be reading it. However, I disagree that summarization isn't a valid form of practice testing. I've seen the sort of summarization described in the original post used as a
16.
by danielford 13y ago
I second this. I went to a very forgiving graduate school (at least two chances on each part of the process), and a lot of people still didn't make it past the first couple years. I also disagree with the author's point that a Ph.D. is abo
17.
by danielford 13y ago
I've played a few of these games, and I also think it's an issue with the core mechanics. Each match can be around forty-five minutes long. So it's really easy to dig a hole for yourself and spend a lot of the game getting repeatedly beat
18.
by danielford 14y ago
These simulations are wonderful. I'll be showing some of them to my microbiology class later this semester when I discuss vaccines. I wish there was a simulation for ring vaccination though. It would be a nice visual aid for explaining ho
19.
by danielford 14y ago
One reason for new buildings on college campuses is that donors and the government are much more willing to give funds for that purpose than they are for salaries and benefits, which make up the bulk of most college budgets. So, I understa
20.
by danielford 14y ago
I teach college biology, and I've never seen a textbook in my discipline that wasn't written in a soporific and meandering style. Some are worse than others, but I've never seen a textbook I thought was good. If I needed to fill a gap in m
21.
by danielford 14y ago
The most memorable part of the movie for me was when the interviewer asked Jiro what it takes to be a master of your craft. He started off mumbling standard old-man stuff about hard work, and then he mentioned something I've never heard be
22.
The Latest On Intelligence(danielwillingham.com)
218 points by danielford 14y ago|163 comments
23.
by danielford 14y ago
Not an option. Moving my teaching materials to other programs would be a mountain of work at this point, but in five years it will be exponentially worse. PowerPoint is the main issue. I've made a lot of animations for my courses that I'll
24.
by danielford 14y ago
PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote are more important to my job (I teach) than any other program. But none of those features will improve my work, and the impending subscription service makes me want to look at other options. I'd be interested
25.
by danielford 14y ago
I sent Greenspun's article to one of my students last semester, after he expressed an interest in academic research. He reported that the article was incredibly discouraging, and he shifted his career plans back to medicine. Pointing out t
26.
by danielford 14y ago
I agree this won't revolutionize research, but I also think it will work really well as a funding model for certain types of researchers. The first are researchers at small liberal arts colleges. While these institutions specialize in teac
27.
by danielford 14y ago
The last college I taught at had a similar set-up for Introductory Biology with McGraw Hill's Connect software. I was very unhappy about the cost to the students, but felt obligated to make it worth points, since students who were forced t
28.
College In Eighteen Years(suburbdad.blogspot.com)
2 points by danielford 14y ago|0 comments
29.
by danielford 14y ago
I couldn't find enough information to figure that out. I started by looking for Calleja's articles on PubMed, but nothing popped up. Eventually I found his LinkedIn profile, but all it had was the link to his company: http://www.fermenta
30.
by danielford 15y ago
I've been surprised by the lack of technical ability in my college classes, especially from students that are my age or younger. This semester, a student told me she couldn't find a program to write a short assignment. I sent her a link t

More ›