The New York Times- Invisible Child

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/invisible-child/?smid=pl-share

The Modern World:Global History since 1760 Final Message

Final Message

Dear fellow learners,

This is a good time to take stock of the experience we have had together. Although this surely is “distance learning,” your responses to the course have been enormous and vital. Some of you have pointed out errors and offered alternative interpretations. But what stands out is that this course has helped a great many people think about our common history and that this has enriched their lives. Professors learn as they develop a course; good ones learn more as they teach it and hear the ways their students respond.

More than 5,000 of you participated in the mid-course survey. The responses to the open-ended questions take up hundreds of pages. Here is a link to the quantitative responses so that, if you are interested, you can see in a completely anonymous way how your fellow students responded to those questions. In addition, many of you have posted comments. Some of you have written emails directly to me. And I've encountered a number of you in person as I travel from place to place. Everywhere, whatever the constructive criticisms, the responses have been as gratifying as any teacher could ever hope to experience. In my career as a teacher, no experience has been more satisfying than this one. Thank you.

Since a number of you have asked about some of the course statistics, I'm glad to share some with you, in addition to the quantitative data in the survey. The number of students that enroll in a MOOC (in this case around 47,000) is not a very interesting number. Many of those students never even try out the course. About 26,000 people around the world sampled this course at some point, perhaps just glancing at part of a video presentation. Of these, my estimate is that somewhat more than half of those — maybe 13-15,000 — decided to give the course a go and really work at it.

Of that number, it seems that about half of those were determined to take all the quizzes, more or less on time. Almost 5,000 students earned Statements of Accomplishment, the large majority of those Distinguished. Since this is one of the longest courses on Coursera, running the length of an entire 14 week semester (not counting spring break), earns no formal credit, and is usually a significant addition to the very busy lives practically everyone leads, that represents a striking level of commitment to studying and reflecting on modern world history. In addition to that number, I estimate that a roughly comparable number, perhaps another 5,000 or so, are auditing the course thoroughly — taking some or none of the weekly quizzes — but nonetheless working their way through the material. (The 92 presentations already have 945,840 unique views, which screens out students who streamed or downloaded the presentation more than once.) Those working for the Statements wrapped up around May 7; but about 5,000 students were still actively viewing presentations during the last week, including presentations along the entire length of the course. So my impression is that a majority of those who decided to tackle this have pretty well stayed with it, despite the large time commitment it entails.

The course will remain available until the end of this month. Then we will put it in the garage for rest and refit. Thanks in part to your comments we hope to make a variety of fixes, correcting inadvertent errors, improving map animations, etc. As an example of the importance of your input, we really noticed how valuable many of you found the transcripts, which were largely machine-generated. So we will improve the quality of the transcripts, hoping someday to find the funds to translate them into other languages so that we, in effect, can offer subtitles to help students whose English skills are more limited. We plan to offer the course again in Spring 2014, beginning in January. Some of you have asked what else I'm teaching. For now anyway, my other duties (I am a dean at my university and have some other obligations) limit how much I can teach at all. But you've got me thinking…

My teammates at Virginia (Brandon and Stace) agree, though, that your responses vindicate our choice to use the kind of format we did, as if you were in my office (which is where we filmed), offering a mix of outlines and many sorts of images — even the occasional film or audio clip. And as those of you who took the quizzes know, it was not that easy to do well if you did not pay attention — many of you working out your own ways of taking notes or reviewing the material at your preferred pace (including the impatient fast forwarders!).

As I mentioned in an earlier message, developments like this course are themselves becoming an interesting facet of modern history. One point I stress is that my university, and others, is now reaching a very large number of non-traditional students, who are at least as eager to learn as many of those we see in our classrooms. Institutions of higher education will need to think hard about how we can serve — and learn from — more students like you.

Thank you and best wishes,

Philip Zelikow

Tue 14 May 2013 1:40 AM SGT (UTC +0800)

Disputing A Charge On Your Credit Card

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/your-money/what-happens-when-you-dispute-a-credit-card-charge.html?pagewanted=1&ref=global-home

Education and Social Mobility

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html

Idi Amin Dada Autobiography - Uganda Discovery

iframe width 480 height 270 src http://www.youtube.com/embed/ygmHRjimpq4?fs 1 frameborder 0 allowfullscreen> /iframe>

Morning in America

 

 

 Interesting take on the day after the 2012 U.S Presidential Elections by Michael Moore

Morning in America

This country has truly changed, and I believe there will be no going back. Hate lost on Election Day. That is amazing in and of itself. Add to that all the women who were elected and you have a total rebuke of Neanderthal attitudes.
Now the real work begins. Millions of us — the majority — must come together to insist that President Obama and the Democrats stand up and fight for the things we sent them there to do. Mr. President, do not listen to the pundits who call for you to “compromise.” You already tried that. It didn’t work. You can compromise later if you need to, but please, no more beginning by compromising. If the Republican House doesn’t want to play ball, do a massive end run around them with one executive order after another — just like they have done and will do if given the chance again.

Kap / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Kap)

We have to have Obama’s back. As he is blocked and attacked by the Right, we need to be there with him. We are the majority. Let’s act like it.
And please Mr. President, make the banks and Wall Street pay. You’re the boss, not them. Lead the fight to get money out of politics — the spending on this election is shameful and dangerous. Don’t wait until 2014 to bring the troops home — bring them home now. Stop the drone strikes on civilians. End the senseless war on drugs. Act like a pit bull when it comes to climate change — ignore the nuts, and fix this now. Take the profit motive out of things that any civilized country would say, “this is for the common good.” Make higher educational affordable for everyone and don’t send 22-year-olds out into the world already in massive debt. Order a moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions. Enact economic policy that will create good-paying jobs and spend the money that’s needed to do that. Make your second term one for the history books.
Finally, thanks must be given to the Occupy movement who, a year ago, set the tone of this election year by getting everyone to talk about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. It inspired Obama and his campaign to realize there was a huge popular sentiment against what the wealthy have done to the country, and there was something wrong if just 400 rich guys owned more than 160 million Americans combined (all those moochers and bums). This led to Romney’s “47 percent” remarks, which were the beginning of the end of his campaign. Thank you Mother Jones for releasing that secret tape, and thank you to the minimum wage worker who placed a camera on the serving buffet next to the candle.
The Washington Post’s headline following Election Day said it all: “At Romney headquarters, the defeat of the 1 percent.”
Thank you Sandra Fluke for enduring the insults hurled at you and then becoming an important grassroots leader against the war on women. Thank you Todd Akin for… well, for just being you. Thank you CEOs of Chrysler and GM for coming out forcefully against the Republican(!) candidate, saying he lived in “some parallel universe” when he lied about Jeep. Thank you Governor Christie for your new bromance with Obama. You know, you really didn’t have to!
And you, Mother Nature, with all your horrific damage, death and destruction you caused last week, you became, ironically, the undoing of a Party that didn’t believe in you or your climate changing powers.
Perhaps they’ll believe now.
Once again, thanks to all of you who brought a nonvoter to the polls. In a last minute effort to get Obama an extra million votes he wasn’t counting on, I enjoyed talking and texting with your loved ones and friends yesterday who weren’t going to vote — but then changed their minds after a little nudge and some TLC (“Damn! Michael Moore? I’m getting in to car right now to go vote.”).
To my fellow Americans, I think you’ll agree: it was nice to wake up following the election in the United States of America.

 http://www.cagle.com/2012/11/morning-in-america/
—–
©2012 Michael Moore
Michael Moore is the Oscar and Emmy-winning director of “Roger & Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which also won the top prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and went on to become the highest grossing documentary of all time.
Reach Moore at his Web site is MichaelMoore.com.

Veteran's Day