Category: <span>Education</span>

Breaking the Mould

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 28, 2022 @ 2:40 am

Kalpana Pathak, Breaking the Mould: Alternative Schools in India, Chennai: Westland Ltd., 2016, ISBN 978-93-85152-29-0, pp. XVI + 230, Rs. 295.

Education is a field of interest in our times. The mushrooming of numerous institutes and centres providing education and the amount of propaganda done are witness to this fact. The scene of education in India is neither something worth admiring nor is it deserving of absolute condemnation. There is no doubt that India doesn’t feature anywhere among the top countries when it comes to education. According to the Legatum Prosperity Index 2016, India ranks 102nd among the 149 countries surveyed, in the field of education. Our education system does leave a lot to be desired. While on the one hand there are people who uphold the IIT’s and IIM’s as exemplars of success there are a greater number who lament the rote learning approach that is characteristic of the Indian educational system.

In Breaking the Mould, the author explores the world of alternative education in India and attempts to present the intensive study she has made in the field. The book has nine chapters besides an enlightening introduction. The chapters explain different facets of alternative education and thus comprehensively provide a good view of alternative education in the country.

Alternative education in its broadest sense can simply be defined as everything that mainstream education is not. One’s first impression upon hearing about alternative education may be to think of it as a Western idea. If that is the case then one will be surprised to know that there have been illustrious Indians who have also pioneered this concept locally. Famous Western names associated with alternative education are Montessori and Steiner. In the pre-independence period, social reformers and freedom fighters began to explore alternatives to the education system of the day. Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Jiddu Krishnamurthi and Gijubhai Badheka emphasized on experiential learning and innovative pedagogy (pg. 19). For some of these individuals like Tagore, seeking a method of alternative education arose from their own negative experience with mainstream education.

The first chapter despite being named ‘The Origins and History of Alternative Education’ offers very little in that regard. What it does in fact, is give a brief history of education in India, beginning from the Vedic period through the medieval and modern and culminating in the post-independence period. The final part of the chapter introduces the concept of alternative education and briefly describes the reasons for its origin.

Chapter two is a lengthy one as it deals with ‘Philosophies of Alternative Education Thinkers and their Schools’. This perhaps is the most crucial chapter of the book as it forms the basis on which all further explanation depends. The author examines the situation of the philosopher in the light of his/her views on education. Then, she goes on to describe with care to fine details, one institute associated with the philosopher.

The third chapter scrutinizes the rationale of alternative schools and their views on educational components like classrooms, pedagogy, art and craft, physical activity and assessment and study material. The next chapter is also a very important chapter from the point of view of the book for it presents the ‘Advantages, Disadvantages and Myths of Alternative Schooling’. In order to emphasize the point, the author compares alternative education to mainstream education and thereby shows the advantages and disadvantages of such a system. The advantages far exceed the disadvantages and myths thereby showing a favourable inclination towards alternative education. The myths and disadvantages are presented albeit not in a completely neutral manner; the author tends to be defensive towards alternative schools.

The fifth chapter discusses the ‘Challenges for Alternative Schools’. Once again the challenges presented are decisive but receive a subtly biased representation. The author tones down the potency of these challenges and makes it seem as if they are minor hurdles that alternative education can hop over. A closer and critical examination will reveal that it isn’t as easy to push them aside as the author makes it look. Chapter six is evidently added for dramatic effect and chronicles the interviews of students, parents and a teacher associated with alternative schools. At this point the author does appear to become pushy with the concept of alternative education. The repeated emphasis on the goodness of alternative education works on the unconscious mind much like advertisements.

Chapter seven assesses the ‘Impact of the Right to Education Act (RTE) on Alternative Schools’. RTE threatened the ideology of alternative education and brought it to its knees. The stress on infrastructure and teacher qualification for example, placed heavy burdens on the shoestring budget of such schools and the voluntary nature of its teachers. Chapter eight briefly touches upon the topic of ‘Homeschooling and Alternative Education’. The author ends the book with a detailed directory of alternative schools in India. As I went through the list I noticed that mostly the bigger states were mentioned. I engaged on a little search myself and found a site (alternativeeducationindia.net) which acts as an online directory for all registered alternative schools. The author gives a brief description of each school and furnishes their contact details and address.

The book explores the lesser known contender to mainstream education. However, the author bathes alternative education in milk and honey and presents it in a glorified manner. On some occasions the author has repeated quotations in an attempt to drill a point. Such repetitions become tiresome after a while. The pictures accompanying the text are a fail as they are not clear on account of their conversion from colour to grayscale. On the backcover one reads: “All in all, a must-have on the bookshelf of every parent.” I beg to differ. While reading this may influence some parents into putting their children in an alternative school, most parents will find such an option not-feasible despite the attractiveness of the concept. Basic factors like proximity and transport have to be considered before enrolling a child in a school. While alternative schools are cheaper they are not always located in proximate vicinities on account of their pedagogical requirements. The book is without doubt very informative but suffers from numerous grammatical errors and typos. The author deserves credit for painstakingly visiting such schools firsthand and gathering data and feedback. Her presentation however lacked journalistic neutrality but made-up with thoroughness and style characteristic of a journalistic background.

Source by Ian Pinto

25 Sep

Regular Courses VS Distance Learning MBA

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 25, 2022 @ 2:27 am

Everyone knows that education plays a important role in our life. We learn from education more things that we use in our life. But it’s only a basic education that teaches us how to live in a decorous manner. But after basic education, we go forwards to higher education. Some of us want to jobs and some looking for higher education. But good jobs get only those people who have a higher educational degree like MBA programs. Presently, we can get higher education in two ways- regular mode and distance learning mode. In regular classes, we can get a good quality education, but at that time we can’t do any other work, I mean jobs and other professional business. So this mode of education learning is not so much good for working people. In such case they have to leave their jobs for attending regular classes. And mostly in India, there will be limited seats in regular courses and a very high competition in such courses like Executive MBA. While in distance learning mode like correspondence learning among the professionals is very popular. Because they don’t need to leave their jobs and easily can get a higher degree like distance learning MBA.

But in this mode there is lack of interaction between faculty and students. So this mode is applicable only for sharp minded students and those able to study themselves. And they are able to find solutions themselves.

In such cases we can say this mode is also not so good for less than average knowledge students. But to remove these constraints of distance learning academic intellectuals searched a new way- “Online Education”. We can say it has created a new revolution in the field of distance learning. In this mode you can take classes like a real regular class in your home and at your flexible time. So we can say for online MBA programs, you can do it with your job and after completion of it you can achieve a higher education degree and promote your self in your business fields.

Source by Dinesh Rohila

22 Sep

Today The American Education Is Being Reinvented

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 22, 2022 @ 2:16 am

Today the American education is being reinvented. The assumptions that have governed its structures and power relationships for more than a century are being replaced. This reinvention is breeding all manner of novel approaches to schools, and hybrid arrangements that blur the line that has long separated public and private schools. For example, the best of what have come to be called charter schools possess elements of today’s public and private systems. Moreover, this new model is not an unbridled, laissez-faire, free-market one. The public retains its interest in the delivery of educational services paid for by public funds. Public authorities continue to set standards for educational performance-especially student achievement standards-of all schools receiving public funds and monitor whether those standards are achieved.

– Shift of power from producers to consumers. Public education has long been producer-oriented. The primary beneficiaries of this model are the school and its employees, not its customers. Bureaucrats, experts, and special interests control the system and make decisions within the framework of a public-school monopoly.

New studies show that students want higher standards of behavior and achievement, and that nearly six out of ten parents with children in public schools would send their children to private schools if they could afford to, which the analysts interpreted as “a public poised for flight.”

– Emphasis on results. The second principle guiding reinvention is the primacy of what children learn and how well they learn it-not on what rules schools follow, how they are run, the (worthy) intentions of educators, or what they spend. Administrators should monitor the academic results of education, letting individual schools decide how to achieve them-including yearly calendar, daily schedules, staffing arrangements, student grouping, budget decisions, and so forth.

– Accountability. Schools must establish accountability and create an assessment system that measures results. An accountability system begins with a clear set of learning standards or expectations. There are two types of standard. Content standards define the skills and knowledge students should attain at various stages-what they should know and do. Performance standards-sometimes called achievement levels-specify an expected level of proficiency-what is good enough to advance from one stage to the next.

Students should be promoted and graduate only when they have met specified standards; universities should admit students only when they meet college-level entry norms; and employers should examine transcripts and use them in their hiring decisions. Likewise, teachers, principals, and other responsible adults should be rewarded for success, penalized for failure, and dismissed if they or their schools cannot get the job done.

– School choice. Also guiding the reinvention of American education is the notion that schools can be different from one another rather than identical and that families should be free to choose among a variety of educational opportunities and settings. Schools should fit the differing needs of families and kids-not bureaucrats, state and local regulations, or union contracts. Various current proposals would allow non-government schools and home schoolers to receive money under choice plans: tax credits, tax-free K-12 education savings accounts, publicly (and privately) funded scholarships, and others. Because these scholarship dollars would be aid to families, not schools, they could be used at any lawfully operating school-public, private, or religious.

– Professionalism. The reinvention model holds that those who work in schools should be treated like-and conduct themselves as-professionals. This means deregulating the schools, freeing them from bureaucratic control and micromanagement, and allowing individual schools, educators, and parents wide latitude in decision-making on issues such as teaching loads and methods, staffing, and resource allocation.

– The education profession itself should be deregulated. Recruitment of educators for the reinvented public school should not be limited to graduates of teacher- or administrator-training programs. The teachers’ unions may be an obstacle to such reforms, but even they have shown some hopeful signs.

This new vision of American education is spreading rapidly, redefining public education, and blurring the line between public and private schools. It is creating a radically new system of education in which families choose from a continuum of opportunities and learning designs, with public money following the child to the school of choice. As lines blur and private and public schools become more alike (and different from today’s schools), private schools too will change. Mounting private school opposition to vouchers suggests that some would rather keep their independence than participate in a blurring that is apt to bring considerably more control from others. States, however, already have the authority to regulate private schools; it is thus unlikely that reinvention will destroy their autonomy. The new model allows them to remain “private” in several important ways: they are self-governing, free from most regulations, able to hire whomever they like, in control of their own curriculum, and attended by youngsters whose parents choose them.

The central principle organizing the academic program of most parochial schools is a core curriculum for all students regardless of background and future educational plans. Electives are limited, and required courses predominate.

Students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds respond well to the challenge. The focused core curriculum of a parochial school improves student achievement, particularly among disadvantaged students, and protects against the academic fads that sweep through the education world with such depressing frequency. Schools of the future will require more core academic coursework of their students, particularly socially and economically disadvantaged ones.

Such a structure requires a strong communal organization. Parochial educators view teaching as a vocation, a ministry of service. The schools promote personal interactions and shared experiences among those who work in, attend, and support them. Numerous activities unite staff, students, and supporters-including athletic events, fundraisers, rallies, school plays, alumni gatherings, retreats, and various forms of religious ritual and prayer. Academically, the core curriculum plays this unifying role. These promote a commonality of purpose that supports the school’s mission.

Parochial schools are typically less constrained by centrally controlled bureaucracies than are public schools. Nearly all important decisions are made at the school site, under the leadership of the principal. This allows a school to develop a distinctive character and sensitivity to the unique needs of students and families.

This market responsiveness is moderated by the fundamental beliefs and values that permeate the school. The unique educational philosophy of a parochial school affirms the existence of fundamental truths and includes a special, religiously based respect for the dignity of each person and the sacredness of human community. This perspective determines not only what students know but also the morality they will follow and the moral community the school creates.

Perhaps the greatest difference between the public and private realms is this explicit moral education, character development, and, in religious schools, religious instruction (though public schools in recent years have become more mindful of these issues).

Charter schools-(mostly) independent public schools of choice accountable for the results of student learning-comprise a serious attempt by the public sector to reinvent education along these lines and give public schools full autonomy. Unfortunately, not all charter school laws are equal: some display the facade of freedom but not the reality. Policymakers must resist the temptation to constrain charter operators with the current web of state statutes, rules, collective bargaining agreements, and the like.

As charter schools demonstrate, a public school is coming to mean any school willing to embrace high standards, enroll students without discrimination, and be accountable for its results, regardless of who owns or operates it. Public money follows the child to these schools, and what unites them is a compulsory set of academic outcomes confined to a core list of broadly accepted knowledge and skills.

American “public” schools of the future will not look, feel, or act like “government.” But they are plainly larger than the individual or family. In that sense, they satisfy the classic definition of a “mediating” institution, They are, in fact, examples of what contemporary analysts term “civil society.” They are voluntary institutions, neither compulsory nor monopolistic. They are more responsive to their communities than schools created by large public bureaucracies.

Schools, of course, should play a fundamental role in this process, but today’s conventional public schools are hobbled by bureaucratic constraints against religious education. Of course, in a pluralistic society there are bound to be varying ideas of what this means. Unfortunately, the current system of American public education cannot accommodate such variety. Thus if we are to revitalize our communities, if we are to rebuild the social capital of our families and neighborhoods, if we are to educate our young people, especially those who are most disadvantaged, we must allow families much more choice in schooling, and with it a flowering of variety, pluralism, and freedom. Antiquated laws and attitudes that favor the status quo are the only real limit on the future of American education.

Source by Megan Wilson

19 Sep

Tips to Pay Off Your Student Loans Sooner

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 19, 2022 @ 2:05 am

After graduating, many people make paying off their loans one of their top priorities. Unfortunately, what people discover is that, as it often does, life will throw them curveballs, such as job loss, medical emergencies and divorce, which will force them to change their priorities. In such cases, paying off college debt can often end up at the bottom of people’s to-do lists. However, when people do this, what they often find out is that ignoring these debts is one of the worst things you can do. Depending on their loan’s interest rate, what was once a seemingly affordable expense has enough time to develop into an unaffordable debt.

How Can I Pay Off My Student Loans Quicker?

Whether you are hoping to find a way to vault paying off your loans back to the top of your to-do list or you are a new graduate hoping to knock out your school debt right out of the gate, here are a few tips to help you pay off your student loans sooner rather than later:

Avoid skipping payments – If you cannot afford your payments, do not just skip them. You should get in touch with your lender and speak with them about options, such as lowering your monthly payment amount or forbearance.

Make sure to read the fine print – You need to read your loan agreement, because knowing certain details before a problem arises could allow you enough time to contact your lender and fix the issue without incident. For example, if the interest rate on your loan rises, it can make your monthly payment more expensive. If you know ahead of time that your payment is about to increase to an amount you will not be able to afford, you may be able to get in touch with your lender and renegotiate the terms of your loan so that your payment remains affordable.

Treat student loan forgiveness like a myth – Aside from situations where a person was scammed by a private lender, generally, people must pay off their loans in full. If people think that they will not have to pay off their student loans, then they could allow their student loan debt to grow out of control. People can allow this to happen, because they believe it does not matter since they expect their loan to be forgiven eventually. However, once they figure out they are wrong, it can be too late.

Student Loan Debt Is an Issue That Is Not Going Away Anytime Soon

President Obama considered the student loan debt crisis such a pressing issue that as his time in the Oval Office was winding down, he continued to work to solve it. Before his administration left the White House, President Obama implemented protections that prevented debt collection companies from charging high fees on student loans in default.

Unfortunately, after taking office, President Trump undid many of President Obama’s student loan protections. As a result, many people are racing to not only pay off their student loans in full, but also to do so as quickly as possible.

Source by Wesley Bingham

16 Sep

3 Tips to Manage Change

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 16, 2022 @ 1:54 am

I’ve always said that the only consistent thing, is change! With all of the change that’s been happening in the past 6 months, I thought this was the perfect time to talk about how to cope with change effectively, so I met with Marion Grobb Finkelstein, Workplace Communication Consultant and Author of The Finkelstein Factor – What to do when things go wrong, because you know they will (sigh).

Marion is a skilled communicator who helps business people deepen their connections with clients, colleagues, bosses, and employees. She unties the knots in interpersonal communications and works with organizations who want to create healthy, resilient, and productive workplaces and teams. She will also help you find solutions to your most time-consuming, energy-sucking, budget-eating workplace communication challenges and will help you to be more confident in how you communicate, feel less frustrated, and say bye-bye to unwanted stress.

In this short interview, you’ll learn valuable tips to managing change at work and the answers to these 3 questions:

Did you know that the reason why some people can accept change easier than others is personality based?
Have you been getting the response you’re looking for when communicating change processes to others?
Are you willing to accept change when you’re not the one initiating it?

Marion and I share a lot of the same philosophies, ideals and strategies in our approach to leadership coaching. I’m sure you’ll find the content very worthwhile and use the information to manage change in your life both at work and at home.

Source by Penny Tremblay

13 Sep

Simple Time Management Tips to Make High School Life Easier

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 13, 2022 @ 1:43 am

High school student not just study and take classes. They also have to join school activities, socialize and do their homework. Apparently, they always have a lot of work in school and at home.

It is essential for high school students to be organized. If you are a high school student, it may seem like you are always running out of time and all you do is study and never get enough time with your friends and family.

Listed here seven tips for you to follow to make life of high school students easier and add extra time for you to be with your friends and family:

1- Set the target everyday – Before you go to bed, list down all the matters you want to accomplish on the next day. A ‘to do” list will help you to know what you are going to do and avoid doing unimportant tasks, of which will get everything done more efficiently and faster.

2- Prioritize your list of target – Once the “to do” list completed, try to prioritize the goals you want to achieve. Set your most important goal in life on top of your priority and your least important goals to down below on the list.

Be realistic on your list. It is better to list on what you need to achieve and not on what you want to achieve. If you have a long-term priority, it is probably best that you put it on the bottom of your list; you can always work on that tomorrow.

3- Utilize your spare time – As a high school student, sometimes you may not notice you have lots of spare time. Try to add up the minutes of the school bus ride to school and the school bus ride back home.

Use these times to create strategy of how to finish your homework effectively. By doing this, you will get an idea on what you need to do on your homework when you get home. This allows you to finish your homework faster and have extra time for other things.

4- Finding the right time – Sometime, students have specific time to study more efficiently. For instance, you can solve your math problems well on the afternoons; then do not wait until nighttime to do it. Mood is important here since mood can shifts immediately.

5- Taking notes – An effective way to study is to write down important notes. It is proven much better than just plain reading. Writing down notes has an effect on your mind. You can understand the topic more effectively and memorize it more effectively than by just reading.

Review your notes as your teacher might give a pop quiz on the next day. Reviewing your notes will help you be more prepared for the pop quizzes that your teacher may suddenly give.

6- Get adequate sleep – It is unhealthy trying to stress yourself out studying when you are supposed to be sleeping. It can bring ineffective results and unwelcome health problems.

If you need to sleep you have to sleep, do not force yourself to study if you cannot effectively study. If you try to study in this situation, you will most likely waste your time.

7- Keep your goals realistic – Trying to accomplish unrealistic goals can often result in failure and frustration. Setting realistic goals that is difficult and achieving it can give you self-worth and be proud on your achievements.

Just remember, everything you need to accomplish in one day is possible if you are organized and plan everything you do in a day.

Source by Fakhrul Anuar Malek

10 Sep

Learning Energizes Your Brain To Learn More

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 10, 2022 @ 1:32 am

Have you ever wanted to learn about something but didn’t know how? You’re not alone. For every question, there is usually an answer; it’s merely a matter of discovering the most appropriate avenue of access that will lead you to an explanation. Sometimes it’s a short road, other times it can seem like the never-ending highway to bewilderment.

Deciphering conscious thought is a more complex process than you might imagine. For the brain to input new quantities of information, an entire series of biological connections have to occur. Those connections are transmitted via electrical impulses called neurons. Explaining how conscious thoughts arise from electric signals is something numerous scientists are still trying to learn.

Not as simple as it seems, considering the brain is considered “the most complex object in the known universe,” according to Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Koch is one of many researchers diligently working on uncovering the mystery of how the brain connects its 100 billion neurons to perform the myriad of daily conscious activities we all experience.

Neurological Landscape Of The Brain Constantly Expanding

Science is now trying to explain questions about the brain that analytical thinking has not been able to answer. Koch compares studying the brain to examining the rainforest. With the amount of biological diversity found throughout a tropical jungle, new generations of scientific investigators continually discover new and uncharted territories. And again, the universe expands, presenting new questions and providing new observations.

It is much the same with our brain. As exploratory tools evolve, so too, does our capacity to analyze and understand the complexities within our brain. Neurologists have uncovered possibilities previously unknown, such as humans possessing 1,000 different types of nerve cells, just as there are 1,000 different species of trees in the rainforest.

Understanding how things work, reflecting on why they are, theorizing about possible explanations for unclear experiences, then experimenting to either prove or disprove a theory is referred to as the learning cycle: Experiencing > Reflecting > Theorizing > Experimenting. This scientific interpretation of the learning process may seem overly simplistic, but nonetheless represents the cognitive steps that occur when we learn.

What Learning Style Are You?

Keep in mind these actions happen must faster in the deep unexplored recesses of the brain than in the relative surface-level awareness of the conscious mind. Learning time can vary based on experiential differences; reflections may emerge quicker if the brain recognizes a previous related experience; theorizing can become more efficient if a reflection mirrors a previous action, and experimentation could be minimized given the cycle is familiar.

In other words, we learn as a result of previous learning.

D.A. Kolb, Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University, condenses the learning process into what has become known as the Four Learning Styles: Divergers are people who analyze experiences and think deeply about them; Convergers conceptualize experiences then give them the practicality test; Accomodators like to ‘do’ rather than ‘think’, and Assimilators prefer to think rather than act… they prefer collecting information over excessive experimentation.

Attempting to decipher the mysteries of the brain without reflecting on our past experiences to do so, would be short-changing the very learning process we are seeking to unravel.

Source by Gary G Sweet

07 Sep

Homeschool Math – 6 Key Techniques to Know on How to Teach Math and What to Use?

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 7, 2022 @ 1:21 am

If you struggled with Math at all when you were growing up, you probably don’t feel adequate to teach home school Math. The truth is, though, that we use Math all the time in our day and you can use those opportunities to share Math with your children. Help your children develop a love for math using these tools:

1. Play games – Card games and board games are great tools to use to teach number concepts. You don’t have to say anything about numbers or math, just play the game and have fun.

2. Use your time in the kitchen to work with numbers. Have your children count silverware, cut pizza into fractions, measure liquids and solids in a recipe, skip count items that come in packs, subtract items from a group as you eat them, and count anything else that they may see there.

3. Show them in daily life how math affects them. Show them how to look at a calendar and count the days until a special day. When they receive money help them know the value of the coins or dollars and show them how to count it. You can even divide the money into different envelopes with them.

4. Teach them that counting by one is not the only way to count. They can use skip counting to count by twos, threes, fours, fives and more. We have made up our own skip counting songs with popular children’s songs that we know. Now my 6 year old knows how to skip count by two, three, four, five and six, not because he is a super intelligent child, but because those numbers have been put to music in a fun way.

5. Read books that enforce math concepts. Books like “How Much is A Million” and “How Much is a Billion” can show children how enormous numbers can be in a fun and entertaining format. For younger children there are many counting books that you can get from the library that teach them about numbers.

6. Use the calculator to show them how large numbers are added. They certainly need to know how to do the basic concepts of math operations, but they can also have fun using a calculator occasionally for large numbers.

Use as many senses as possible to teach math. Different children will understand certain concepts of math using different methods than others. You can use workbooks, manipulative, math games, real life, computer software, and more. Attitude is everything. If you have a positive attitude about Math, then they will be more likely to accept that attitude.

Source by Heidi Johnson

04 Sep

Advantages of Mathematics

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 4, 2022 @ 1:14 am

Many of us wondered about the advantages of Mathematics during our childhood days. Many of us were not able to comprehend the benefits of mathematics beyond the daily usage of calculating simple numbers. Let us see in detail what are some of the benefits of learning mathematics and marveling at this arduous subject at early age.

The importance of mathematics is two-fold, it is important in the advancement of science and two, it is important in our understanding of the workings of the universe. And in here and now it is important to individuals for personal development, both mentally and in the workplace.

Mathematics equips pupils with a uniquely powerful set of tools to understand and change the world. These tools include logical reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to think in abstract ways. Mathematics is important in everyday life, many forms of employment, science and technology, medicine, the economy, the environment and development, and in public decision-making.

One should also be aware of the wide importance of Mathematics, and the way in which it is advancing at a spectacular rate. Mathematics is about pattern and structure; it is about logical analysis, deduction, calculation within these patterns and structures. When patterns are found, often in widely different areas of science and technology, the mathematics of these patterns can be used to explain and control natural happenings and situations. Mathematics has a pervasive influence on our everyday lives, and contributes to the wealth of the individual.

The study of mathematics can satisfy a wide range of interests and abilities. It develops the imagination. It trains in clear and logical thought. It is a challenge, with varieties of difficult ideas and unsolved problems, because it deals with the questions arising from complicated structures. Yet it also has a continuing drive to simplification, to finding the right concepts and methods to make difficult things easy, to explaining why a situation must be as it is. In so doing, it develops a range of language and insights, which may then be applied to make a crucial contribution to our understanding and appreciation of the world, and our ability to find and make our way in it.

Increasingly, employers are looking for graduates with strong skills in reasoning and problem solving – just the skills that are developed in a mathematics and statistics degree.

Let us look at a few examples. The computing industry employs mathematics graduates; indeed, many university computing courses are taught by mathematicians. Mathematics is used to create the complex programming at the heart of all computing. Also cryptography, a form of pure mathematics, is deployed to encode the millions of transactions made hourly via the Internet and when we use debit or credit cards. Mathematics and Computer Science is a popular degree choice, and four-year degrees with a placement in industry are also available. The latter give graduates plenty of relevant experience to increase their employability.

Mathematics led to the perfect ratios shown in Renaissance painting. The study of astronomy in the early times of its inception demanded the expansion of our understanding of mathematics and made possible such realizations as the size and weight of the earth, our distance from the sun, the fact that we revolve around it, and other discoveries that allowed us to move forward in our body of knowledge without which we would not have any of our modern marvels of technology.

The computer itself is a machine built upon the principles of mathematics, being an invention so important as to bring about an economic revolution of efficiency in data communication and processing.

Source by Shilpa Rao

01 Sep

Rocketry Experiments Apologia Science Curriculum

Posted in Education by anshbookstore on September 1, 2022 @ 1:12 am

Every action triggers an equal reaction in the opposite direction. There are many experiments that can use this principle, and it’s my goal to take you beyond your Apologia science curriculum experience, by making science fun and easy for you.

Have you ever kicked a brick wall? Off course you ended up hurting your toe. As strange as it may sound, when you kicked the brick wall, the stationary wall exerted an equal reaction force in the opposite direction, and therefore you felt the pain. Kick harder and it will hurt more- equal reaction force, you see?

This law has been explained by Sir Isaac Newton centuries ago, and came to be known as his Third Law of Motion. This is the same law that is at work when rockets are launched. If you have searched for cool rocketry experiments in the Apologia science curriculum and other homeschool programs, you will be glad that you found me. Let me show you a fun way of using balloons to simulate the launching of rockets.

Single-Stage Balloon Rocket: Take a twenty-foot long nylon fishing line and tie one end to a window or something strong. Pass the free end of the line through a plastic drinking straw and tie the free end to another strong object such as another window or a bed. The fishing line must be stretched and not left hanging loose. Now blow a long balloon and secure the mouth with a clothespin. Tape this balloon to the straw in such a way that the length of the balloon is parallel to the length of the straw.

Now remove the clothespin and observe what happens. When you remove the clothespin, air is pushed out of the deflating balloon with great force in one direction. Therefore an equal force is exerted on the balloon in the opposite direction, and the balloon moves. The same principle is used in launching rockets into the air.

If your Apologia science curriculum experience stopped here, let me take you further. Some rockets that need to go higher use double fuel tanks or double stages. In the next experiment, I will teach you how to make a cool double-stage balloon rocket.

Double-Stage Balloon Rocket: This experiment is similar to the single-stage balloon rocket experiment; only pass the fishing line through two straws instead of one. Make a one-inch ring out of a Styrofoam coffee cup by removing the base of the cup. Now blow a long balloon just enough so that it can fit snugly inside this Styrofoam ring with the rounded head of the balloon extending a little beyond the ring. Secure the mouth of this balloon with a clothespin. Tape this balloon to the straw on the left hand side with the balloon head pointing to the right.

Now inflate and tape a second long balloon lengthwise to the straw on the right hand side. Twist the mouth-end of the balloon to form a one inch tail. Now pass this tail through the Styrofoam ring and under the first balloon. The air pressure of the first balloon will keep the second balloon from getting deflated.

Bring these two connected balloons to the left hand side of the fishing line and remove the clothespin from the first balloon. What happens?

To get great science experiments and activities, visit the free “Homeschool Parent’s Guide to Teaching Science” at the link below.

Source by Aurora Lipper