All posts tagged: learning

Growing up, I felt stifled by my parents’ many rules. Now, I’m learning to find compassion for them

Growing up, I felt stifled by my parents’ many rules. Now, I’m learning to find compassion for them

Published by Sam

SURVIVAL INSTINCTS IN ADULTHOOD This tension followed me into adulthood, where the survival instincts I’d honed in childhood led me down a never-ending spiral of self-doubt and regret.  At work, I held back from speaking up in meetings or disagreeing with stakeholders, fearing I’d be labelled as difficult or my ideas dismissed as irrelevant or wrong. I’d watch as colleagues around me voiced thoughts similar to my own, earning the recognition or validation I secretly craved.  Even in casual conversations with friends, I often refrained from sharing my perspective, not even on trivial topics like whether Friends or The Big Bang Theory was better.  I always convinced myself that silence was easier than risking conflict – or worse, rejection. But silence comes at a cost.  Over time, the weight of everything I never said built up, and I felt increasingly resentful and misunderstood. I held my tongue, went along with everything said by everyone around me, fearful of rocking the boat. All it did was make me depressed, anxious and, in my lowest points, suicidal. …

Learning to be an entrepreneur means building connections as well as studying business

Learning to be an entrepreneur means building connections as well as studying business

Published by skeptic

Entrepreneurs drive innovation, create jobs, and contribute to economic growth. But entrepreneurship is not just about having a brilliant idea. It requires skills that often must be learnt. Structured entrepreneurship education is designed to give people the knowledge they need to start and run their own businesses. It is typically provided through university courses, business schools and specialised training programmes. It includes a variety of subjects: business planning, financial management, marketing and innovation. However, there is a significant gap between traditional entrepreneurship education and the practical ways in which entrepreneurs actually learn. Traditional entrepreneurship education often focuses on theoretical knowledge and structured business planning. These aspects are important but they tend to overlook the dynamic and practical aspects of entrepreneurial learning. Entrepreneurs learn through experience, experimentation and, importantly, through interactions within their social networks. We carried out research to explore how entrepreneurs learn. We observed working practices in five co-working spaces, held discussions with 41 people and carried out more structured research interviews with six entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest that relationships and social networks play …

Is Obsidian Really Worth the Learning Curve for Note-Taking?

Is Obsidian Really Worth the Learning Curve for Note-Taking?

Published by skeptic

Obsidian is a feature-packed note-taking tool, but does it justify the time spent getting familiar with it and customizing it, or do the benefits fall short? Long-Term Reflection and Learning On the surface, Obsidian looked generic to me, like any other app out there, but only using it over a couple of months revealed its underlying benefits. Fast-forward to today, Obsidian has become my central hub, a map of what I have learned and what I am learning, finally making my search for a note-taking app come to an end. When I think of Obsidian, I consider it a tool that glues your notes together and makes notes as a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Previously, in my note-taking process, I used to jot down notes, and that was it. They were merely words and numbers, placed on one line after another, ready to be forgotten. Only after using Obsidian did I realize that my notes lacked a critical component — connections. How one note related to another. Instead of my notes …

why do some of us excel at learning empathy? – Evidence & Policy Blog

why do some of us excel at learning empathy? – Evidence & Policy Blog

Published by skeptic

Atefeh Galehdarifard, Mojgan Khademi, Mohammad Gholami, Moloud Radfar, Farzad Ebrahimzadeh and Mohammad-Hasan Imani-Nasab This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘The impact of knowledge brokering on nurses’ empathy with patients receiving cardiac care: an experimental study’. Empathy is a fundamental concept in the development of human relationships. Whether individuals have a natural inclination toward empathy or have cultivated it through education and upbringing, this background can significantly influence the effectiveness of interventions designed to promote empathetic behaviour. Our research suggests that individuals with higher levels of empathy are often more motivated to enact change, actively promote empathy, and show a greater willingness to learn and adopt empathetic behaviours in practice. The importance of empathy in patients with cardiovascular diseases Research by Dambha-Miller et al. (2019) has revealed that better empathy is linked to a lower risk of cardiac events (Dambha-Miller et al., 2019) , highlighting the need for cardiac nurses to engage in empathetic interactions with their patients. However, many nurses report facing significant challenges in establishing these connections, especially early …

Learning about Learning Transformed the Way I Teach

Learning about Learning Transformed the Way I Teach

Published by skeptic

Introduction Being in academia, we are specially positioned to make a meaningful impact on the lives of our students. How often does anyone get the opportunity to spend a few hours per week, over the course of several months, educating, influencing, and shaping the way someone thinks? As teachers, we can not only provide knowledge but also impart critical thinking skills that students can use throughout their lives. Given how meaningful teaching is to me, I’ve delved into the world of pedagogy. In this post, I’d like to share some of the insights I’ve gained. Shifting My Approach to Course Design In the past, the way I thought about course design started with the philosophical content I was interested in, and then the course was structured around that content. It was teacher-centered and content-driven. However, I’ve since reframed my approach to focus on students’ needs first. Now, I ask myself, “What skills and content are important for them to learn?” Starting with these learning goals, I then planned assessments, content, and activities aligned with those …

Why England’s new curriculum should involve as much hands-on learning as possible

Why England’s new curriculum should involve as much hands-on learning as possible

Published by skeptic

It is vital that children are motivated and engaged by the way they are taught at school, and that teachers use methods that help them learn in the most effective ways. My new research with colleagues has shown that teaching the curriculum through experiential – hands-on – learning can be a very effective way to help primary age children learn. England is in the middle of a review of the national curriculum, the current version of which has been taught in schools since 2014. This provides a welcome opportunity to put these research findings into practice. What is experiential learning? The key feature of experiential learning is that learners actively engage with a tangible, felt experience. For example, instead of a teacher telling pupils about how vegetables grow and how they end up on our plates, and using a textbook to help children read the necessary knowledge, for an experiential learning approach to the topic the teacher would plan for children to grow vegetables with the purpose of learning about food and cooking. The children …

How (and why) federated learning enhances cybersecurity

How (and why) federated learning enhances cybersecurity

Published by skeptic

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Each year, cyberattacks become more frequent and data breaches become more expensive. Whether companies seek to protect their AI system during development or use their algorithm to improve their security posture, they must alleviate cybersecurity risks. Federated learning might be able to do both. What is federated learning? Federated learning is an approach to AI development in which multiple parties train a single model separately. Each downloads the current primary algorithm from a central cloud server. They train their configuration independently on local servers, uploading it upon completion. This way, they can share data remotely without exposing raw data or model parameters. The centralized algorithm weighs the number of samples it receives from each disparately trained configuration, aggregating them to create a single global model. All information remains on each participant’s local servers or devices — the centralized repository weighs the updates instead of processing raw data. Federated learning’s popularity is rapidly increasing because it addresses …

United Learning to launch charity to run community hubs

United Learning to launch charity to run community hubs

Published by skeptic

But country’s largest trust stresses the initiative won’t ‘take resource from teaching and learning’ But country’s largest trust stresses the initiative won’t ‘take resource from teaching and learning’ More from this theme Recent articles United Learning, the country’s largest multi-academy trust, is setting up a charity to manage its new community hubs, but stressed it won’t “take resource from teaching and learning”. The 90-academy United Learning is setting up “United Communities” as a subsidiary to run the 26 hubs it plans to have up and running by the end of the 2025-26 academic year. The community hubs provide things like community meals, youth provision, early years groups, walking groups, skill-sharing sessions, cooking and family activities. United Learning said they also provided adult learning, community allotments, community action initiatives, and “parent-led” SEND support. For instance, Hill View community hub in Banbury hosts a weekly group run by parents, for parents, of children with additional support needs and disabilities. This is an opportunity for parents in the area to connect and and offer advice and support, the trust …

8 lessons on lifelong learning from an astrophysicist

8 lessons on lifelong learning from an astrophysicist

Published by skeptic

Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. Although most of us are fascinated with astrophysics — the science of what naturally forms all throughout the entirety of the cosmos — very few of us actually embark down the path of becoming an astrophysicist. To get there, one must not only master a large suite of mathematical tools, but also learn how to obtain solutions when faced with difficult problems. Sometimes, we run up against fundamental limitations: limits of what data or information can be obtained, limits to the applicability of our theories, or even limits to how well a problem can be solved, even in principle. As physicists, we don’t get to control or dictate the laws of nature; we can only approximate reality as closely as possible in our attempts to describe nature. Still, there is a particular set of skills that one must develop in order to be competent …

School pupils less happy and find learning less interesting

School pupils less happy and find learning less interesting

Published by skeptic

Teachers said they feel less respected by students than in previous years Teachers said they feel less respected by students than in previous years Pupils feel less happy at school and are less likely to find what they learn interesting than three years ago, while staff are more likely to report bullying or physical violence. Edurio’s ‘high-quality and inclusive education 2024’ report, published today, also found that just 32 per cent of students polled were likely to recommend their school to others. Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, said: “The decline in respect and trust that the profession is experiencing, alongside the increase in pupil violence reported here, is particularly worrying. “It has been associated with decreasing mental health and wellbeing among our teachers and leaders and growing teacher shortages in our country and beyond – teacher shortages that we simply cannot afford if we are to thrive as a society.” Dame Alison Peacock The report is based on data from three surveys of staff, pupils and parents, with more …