Category Archives: Education

Online Guides: Behind the Scenes

When we want to learn about a new topic, we don’t go to libraries anymore to browse through dozens of books only to be left confused. Schools only cover limited subjects, and if you don’t have a lot of money taking a course on the new topic might not even be an option.

So what do we do then? Internet has become the new “educator” for literally everything. We might ask help or recommendation through a social media, but usually the leg work is carried out in Google, YouTube or Wikipedia. Of course there more targeted channels for asking from the expert such as Quora or LinkedIn groups, but the three above are still the most used as we sometimes are shy to ask help from strangers.

Why?

For Wikipedia the answer is quite obvious, being probably the most comprehensive source of information for anything. Google and YouTube, the two most popular search engines are getting smarter and smarter. That means that they can better service the query with more accurate search results. This is really the key. Before you had to try several queries and try to guess the exact keywords to lead you to happiness.

Along being the most used tools for learning, search marketers have realized that various guides and easy to understand –approaches are being received with gratitude, and often work well as link builders and traffic magnets.

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Math Sequence Riddles – It’s never too early for them

If your social media friends are like mine you would have noticed a trend in increasing numbers of math problems being shared. I usually like solving and sometimes trying to solve these math problems. I mean, why not, they are fun.

The ones that I have come across recently especially in LinkedIn have been trap wired though. What I mean by that is that the problem is not what you think it is, or that they have laid out something front of you that captures your attention and stops you from seeing the knot. For example:

$Math-Sequence-Problems$

To get the result you would add the following number to the last result, right? 20+5=25, 25+6=31 and so on. So what about the answer? 38+9=47? Well it could be, if the rule was to add the last result to the next number. However, 8 is missing. So if the rule was to add the previous result to the next ascending number, to get the right answer you would have to first solve 38+8=46 and then 46+9=55 (Some could of course argue that 9=9, no matter what the numbers before it are). There are tons of these in the internet, if you like to exercise your brain a little.

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What’s Wrong with Our Current Education System?

I am a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson, not just what he represents, but the way he expresses himself. He has been appearing in TED Talks, and one of his speeches, perhaps the most famous one, is the all time most watched TED Talk. [The ones, who are not familiar with Sir Robinson, he is actively pushing an education system reform.]

What makes his case so special? Why is his TED talk the most watched? Is he bringing something new to the table that we didn’t know before? Perhaps, but lets have a look what he is all about:

The very clever video infographic that was made from one of Sir Robinson’s speeches, illustrates the problems in the education system he has been pointing out for a while: Since we are all different, why are we being educated in the same way. Arranged to classrooms based on the year we are born. Tested in the same way and measured against one criteria. etc.

So what’s wrong with that? Nothing, if the purpose of the education is to create soldiers and factory workers (which was the case of our 19th century built, still-in-use, education system). But what about today’s world?

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