Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Oh! No! Have you seen the San Jose Newspapers!!!

Have you seen the San Jose Newspapers!!! I was happy, then a black cloud somber my horizon! :(
Oh!!! No!!! What is going on!!! Failure!!! Poor rates!!! Look at the performance!!!
Some Media and their ways of putting things....
Remediation classes… Ha! It is exactly the word that put in a very questionable position the origin of an Olympian, wonderful, and amazing set of tools that Udacity is… It is also an experiment, and the population is a very special one. For one year+ Udacity has delivered in a very concise format a huge amount of knowledge. Udacity is a place to enjoy and learn; if remediation was the challenge then you do not put unreachable constrains if you want good comments from the Press; if your objective is to experiment then go ahead and learn from your experience, and that is a success.
In Udacity or while learning in any arena you need to have time to experiment, explore, try, challenge, dare, improve your abilities; which ones… well let’s see an example; when mankind were learning to play with electronic games some 20+ years ago, first we needed to learn to press the right buttons for any special movement, then it came the combinations; after, you are able to do the series of nested combinations. Nowadays, you can easily point out who has been playing for a long time just because it came natural to them all the micro movements they need to do in the fastest precise way to win over the opponent.
The population for remediation has very different problems to deal with but, the worst pervasive one is the LACK OF TIME as I just read and concurred in Sebastian Thrun post explanation. Next to that one is the pressure to repeat a concept in certain time and with that believe that you are going to assure success. The brain doesn't work like that… it is boring and then the attention to detail is lost in an abyss of boredom. Every single person who needs remediation needs to be diagnosed exactly with the special need or with the located misunderstood concept and start from that or those, people can have many. It needs to have a systematic approach of assistance. That means to diagnose from the beginning what are you dealing with. Or at least have a history of what has been happening.
What I have learned, study and seen in the amazing wonderful universe of learning is that it needs to be INTERESTING. Not long time ago a person told me to repeat courses that I have already taken. Wow! I was furious, and I refused for a long time, then I meditated. If I have already passed them then I can look at them again in another perspective, since I do not have any pressure but my own. I am taking my time and refuel my patience to hear the same things by the same people in the same manner. Well I do not reread books, I don’t see movies twice in a regular basis, it needs to be very, very good to make me do it. It is not the same if you read a book and then you see the movie, or the play of it. Theater is magic because no performance is the same because people behave differently every time, so it is not boring. With this I want you to notice that emotions are there you can not avoid them. Once you fail something you have a sour thought about it, that is stress...
You can learn the same thing in different platforms, or formats; learn with unlimited examples, experiences, games, contexts; the rule is always pursuing to be interesting! I did not invented it, there are many studies that talk about that I just concurred from my experience.
Our knowledge behaves like an onion, it has many layers; they started to form the same day you become alive. According to your experiences is the type of knowledge you have. That is one thing.
Knowledge behaves like energy does; one person can have it or a group of persons without changing the force. The wonderful thing is that a difference of energy, it can be storage. It is not like power, or money; it is really a sharable thing. Everybody gets enriched. You have seen how a student can explain to another student the concept in a particular proper vocabulary and Eureka everything became clear.
When people are stressed, they learn like a Swiss cheese, with holes. Or like with wrinkles in their layers or with jumps between them. So, in order to have perfect onions or layers of knowledge you need to peel the onion and check where the fault is. It can be done with a one on one assistant, or with software. The quality of the remediation outcome lies in the efficiency of the model use to locate the hole and how to fix it. Who does the software? It is People. Who does the tutoring? It is People. In every single origin of knowledge the primal source is People. Who is going to hire you? Who is making jobs? Who is designing courses? Who is putting the standards or conditions to say you know something? Always, the answer is People.
So, why it is this whole debacle idea and the debate about it that the Press is taking out of proportions? Udacity is a proven source of top-notch knowledge. The good thing is that a critical mass of people understands that online education is for the good of Humanity. So, for majority and for leadership we can keep forging in the right direction for a better future. There are many links on the web talking about this with big names and/or wallets that are helping. I just read the Scientific American article of this month about Learning in the digital age. Sebastian Thrun also explained it in the Udacity Global Meetup Day, you can see it in YouTube. Thank you to all of you! I think it is an unstoppable phenomenon. People need to be reassured that everything is going to be absolutely better. And by the way, once you take your course online if you are on the remediation club, you can go back and look in a calm manner what you missed. If nobody helps you, look inside yourself maybe you will find the best answer. A good idea if you find a way to succeed is just to give feedback.
Use Udacity or some other distinct MOOC's as what they are a wonderful source of knowledge. Being a little bit dramatic you can see it as some Prometheuses are giving fire to humanity, Udacity and some of the MOOC's give knowledge to mankind. The good thing is that this time The Gods are dancing of joy because that is the way humans can prevail in the Cosmos.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Africa, Last Part

    

  This is the last part of my trip to Africa. Before I go ahead, let me tell you a curious thing, last year when I went to Australia; it took me three months to put words and pics for you on the blog. I skipped a lot. Maybe I will return to tell you some anecdotes later. For some reason, it happened that people I know about went to the same place and took spectacular photos in the deep ocean with professional cameras and professional everything. I know the ocean; I have been blessing with countless adventures there. What I gave you was the most positive flare of an utmost interesting place. I was not in the pursuit of the best of anything, I was just exploring. For many reasons, I did not dive in the deep waters at that time; I know I did something good for everybody and for everything, sometimes not doing the extreme is the best thing to do.
    For Africa, it has taking several posts and more than half year to put the trip together. It happened because I wanted to picture Africa in a light, sparkling, and candid way as I saw it. I have read so many things in the internet, and magazines, about all the troubles, all the riches, all the rivalry, all the power, all the weakness, sadness, anger and despair. Moreover, powerful and ultra rich people have been there. I cannot refer to the same continent without asking if we can see the magnificent, outstanding, and marvelous places Africa has.   Mankind has in their hands an earthly paradise, how are they going to transform or exploit, preserve or destroy, develop or ruin, enhance or mutilate it? There had been so many mistakes done in the name of goodness, “Let’s do business”, “Indoctrination of religion or political views”, or the righteous order; that is pretty scary. How are all nations going to contribute, to take care, and to help to nurture such a hope for humanity?



      When you have a place to live, you need among many things, a space for Nature. We have there an International Preserve Park were expert people are living there and taking care of it. I did not even mention two plants, only the famous Baobab they have there. I did not see the pervasive Anthrax or other viruses or bacteria around. I did not carry a microscope, and I cannot identify the flora, like many of us, but is there. To say the least, technology can help to optimize the needs and harmonious coexisting life for everybody; we can contribute with all the knowledge we can give to Africa to accomplish it.
While I am writing this there are about 689,000,000 results I can find in Google that are or were talking about Africa. 650,000,000 about Europe. 1, 500,000,000 about North America. 567,000,000 about Latin America. 1 100,000,000 about China. India and Asia numbers are around the 500 millions. Australia 653 millions. These results are just because the name appeared in the search. So, humanity is occupied about it. That is refreshing! :D
    
     You have seen the photos of some of the animals I saw in Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia; still I am showing you here the giraffes, the meerkats, dung beetles  hippos, impalas, buffaloes  vultures, birds, crocodiles, monkeys…. Whoa!!! All majestic, all impressive.













     In this trip I can say over all that the weather was perfect, the landscape beautiful, the people so friendly and fun; the culture, the art, the food was superb.
      I tasted so many new things; the ones that I remembered because they were delicious and remained me other exotic places were the worms, toasty squash flower, and the crocodile grilled meat. We have a special drink made out of a special local plant served before meals in one of our party dinners; it was not alcoholic or sedative. It had like the Chamomile effect, but it had a milky aspect, it was tangy, and refreshing. They told us, it was served to us to be in the perfect mood for a celebration, with the feast, music, and dancing.
After dessert, they gave to every person a small drum; I played it until my hands were purple, and I noticed that until the show ended because I felt them so hot and itchy, so I turned to look at them… My palms were so swollen and purple!!! I thought they were going to hurt like for several days, but, no, they didn't. It lasted just for a moment. I was so happy!!!


      All my memories now are melting, even when I have thousands of pics to remember them and in the order taken to evoke every single detail. We took the photos of the big 5, in this post you can see the buffalo, the fifth one, an aggressive one, and we cannot take pics of it as close as we did with the other ones. Buffaloes are unapproachable. I do not hunt; I just took pictures of this mega fauna in their real habitat. Curiously I don’t remember seen zebras or ostriches. On the town’s newspaper I saw a photo of wild dogs, very impressive and the article was in a tone were you understood how extraordinary animals they are and how the people just live their daily lives among extraordinary living things. We visited the Victoria Falls again, but now by helicopter, what a beauty!!! We went over the bridge, some of us did the bungee, others the swing, others the straight jump. I think I said it before, but after the shaking adventure over the bridge, a ginormous baboon was after me! Yes, I remember that as the scariest moment, not the lions, or the leopard, or the elephants or the high altitude I was at the swing, or the kind of vertigo you can feel when you look down at the edge of the falls or above them flying by. The fangs of that baboon and its persistent way of following me was appalling, I was alone, just me and the baboon with its family; it only lasted some minutes, but that was more than enough for me…

We saw the baby elephants; one, only days of being born; walking with mom… other elephants taking a mud bath. Ah!!! The sunsets!!! They were perfect. The river!!! I was transported to all the books about the rivers in Africa were incredible adventures took place.




In the end we went around town several times; over there, another spectacular vision was always in front of us. The mastership, the crafts, the sculptures, the paintings, the musical instruments, awesome! The garments, the clothes, the special attires are so fascinating. Oh! The strong, athletic, and amicable people who showed us their native beautiful land, they talked to us; they showed us photos of their families, they told us about all the things that they were doing, their names and the meanings, the schools they were going, the accomplishments they have achieved, their future expectations; and we knew that we have the same dreams. Oh! Yes! Indeed… The places I visited in the southern part of Africa are great!!!



Here are the links to the other posts about Africa: