Another Pivot We Did

It's question and answer site.
Another Quora, Stackoverflow?
No!


It's an online learning site.
Another Khan Academy, Moodle, Udacity, Udemy?
No!

Differences for Teachers

1. A teacher can protect her/his own clients from other teachers.
2. The teacher gets paid 80% for her/his effort. S/he can check her account balance any time.
3. The teacher can re-use her/his solutions with a few clicks. Eventually we will fully automate it with AI/Machine Learning.

Secure, Mobile-friendly!

Carlos Castaneda for English3Day

One of Carlos Castaneda 's books, The Wheel of Time is full of nice ideas. Here I relate some of them that apply to our students. If some of them sound a bit too mystic, well, just ignore them.

 A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, ...

page - 13
 

Absolute assurance? How?

A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry.

page - 82
 

Or is it more like this?

A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows noting.

page - 97
 

Enjoy more of such experiences at English3Day.

Kumon Method -- Examples and "Cheating"

Many weeks ago, I was reading books on Kumon Method. One thing that struck me particularly was the founder's willingness to allow the students to 'cheat.'

In one book, it is said the founder (Mr. Toru Kumon) made a sensation among the students for allowing them to use "cheat books," books with answer keys and worked out solutions.

In another written by one of his sons, Hiroshi Kumon, the author said that his father let him use his older brother's books to see how some problems were solved.

Well, well, well ... "Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach." - Albert Einstein

See that philosophy in action at our web site English3day.

Kumon Method -- How Many Worksheets?

A few weeks ago, I was reading books on Kumon Method. At the back of a book, they showed a sample curriculum for Math and English for North American continent.

In particular, I checked to see how many worksheets they used per year and per subject. And I noticed that moving in English from very simple sentences to rather elaborate sentences took about 400 sheets times 5 years plus 200 sheets times 1 year. It totalled to 2200 worksheets.

I couldn't help recalling how I had journeyed across that distance with nothing more than 6 or 7 A-4-size grammar notes of my own, based on a few grammar books I read in those days.

Do we need 2200 or do we need 20 worksheets?

Facebook Rants --- Teaching and Honesty

When a teacher says her/his subject is tough, maybe it is tough for them. So be helpful to them

Teaching and Honesty

1. Prof Noam Chomsky on BBC: If we don't know enough, we call it linguistics, metaphysics etc. When we know enough, we call it physics.
2. Richard Feynman: If we can't explain it to intelligent high school students, we don't really understand that subject.
3. Another Nobel winner in Physics: we call this course 'advanced', because we don't know about it really.
   

So, please, teachers, be honest.

Is your subject difficult?

So, kids, if your teacher says 'this is tough,' feel sorry for him/her and be helpful!

How to Criticize Education

I used to be a university teacher. At that level( and maybe in our country), the main pressure came from the management and the government. I think that that is true in most countries. How lucky to be a uni teacher?

Except in US and UK. In US, a few Nobel laureates, esp, the economists, would keep complaining that uni degrees and diplomas are tickets to jobs that don't exist anymore, so-called "degrees of deception", or that education has become just a transaction where customers (previously known as students) are kept satisfied while being prepared for job markets.

In UK, the government is unleashing market forces into the nooks and crannies of the academia, (ah, these UK politicians are Tom Peters fans after all.)

Common people don't go to unis, don't know what uni teachers do, and thus usually leave uni teachers to their own devices.

The situation becomes tougher for teachers as you go down, the toughest being in the Primary school levels. There every parent becomes an expert. Almost all of them have primary education and so they presume (or assume, not to show my bias ;-> ) that they know to how to teach, test, do syllabus. do curriculum and more.

The more educated the parents, the more likely to complain to, interfere with, and supervise the actual teachers, unless ...

They have a longer format for their mental video.

What Happens When the Mental Video Plays for Only A Few Hours

The most daring, the most can-do of such parents will offer to demo, to do a prototype, to run a pilot, to run a trial etc for their kid's classes.

For the demo class, they will read up in depth, compile important insights, exploit excellent methodologies, perform tirelessly etc.

The school, the admin, the teachers themselves should encourage such enthusiasm. Let these parents do their demos.

How long is a demo class? 2 hours?

Ask them to repeat it one more time for the day.
Ask them to repeat the day for a few more times for the week.

Ask them to repeat the week for a few more times for the month.
Ask them to repeat the month for a few more times for the year.
(Do I need to go on?)

How long will they last?
When will their smiles become forced and weary?
When will they start losing their temper?
When will their explanations and answers become curt and vague?

When will they start to feel like Tom Cruise acting out Top Gun on stage? He has to fall in love, defend his family honor, mourn his buddy's death every night for a dozen of days in a row? Will he, will you stay fresh?

The next time you want to criticize (or advise, to hide my bias) a teacher/school, play the classroom scene with you as the principal teacher for at least 200 times.

If your method is still fine in the 201st show/run, please let us hear your method. Or else, please keep it to your self as a souvenir.