Education – Page 14 – artdiamondblog.com

The Use of Note Cards to Structure Writing

(p. A21) I tell college students that by the time they sit down at the keyboard to write their essays, they should be at least 80 percent done. That’s because “writing” is mostly gathering and structuring ideas.
For what it’s worth, I structure geographically. I organize my notes into different piles on the rug in my living room. Each pile represents a different paragraph in my column. The piles can stretch on for 10 feet to 16 feet, even for a mere 806-word newspaper piece. When “writing,” I just pick up a pile, synthesize the notes into a paragraph, set them aside and move on to the next pile. If the piece isn’t working, I don’t try to repair; I start from scratch with the same topic but an entirely new structure.
The longtime New Yorker writer John McPhee wonderfully described his process in an essay just called “Structure.” For one long article, McPhee organized his notecards on a 32-square-foot piece of plywood. He also describes the common tension between chronology and theme (my advice: go with chronology). His structures are brilliant, but they far too complex for most of us. The key thing is he lets you see how a really fine writer thinks about the core problem of writing, which takes place before the actual writing.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID BROOKS. “The Sidney Awards, Part 2.” The New York Times (Tues., December 31, 2013): A21. [National Edition]
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 30, 2013.)

The article praised by Brooks is:
McPhee, John. “Structure.” The New Yorker (Jan. 14, 2013): 46-55.

Malcolm Gladwell, on Harvard, Rings True to Debbie Sterling

Debbie Sterling, GoldieBlox entrepreneur. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 2) Debbie Sterling is the founder and chief executive of GoldieBlox, a toy company dedicated to encouraging girls’ interest in engineering and construction.

READING I just started “David and Goliath,” by Malcolm Gladwell. He has some really interesting statistics about how at the top-tier universities like Stanford and Harvard, freshmen who go into engineering often fall out versus if those same students had gone to a second-tier school, they would have been in the top of their class and therefore would have stayed in. It really spoke to me because I was definitely one of those engineering students at Stanford who constantly felt like I was surrounded by geniuses. I was intimidated, but I stayed because I am just so stubborn.

For the full interview, see:
KATE MURPHY, interviewer. “DOWNLOAD; Debbie Sterling.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., December 22, 2013): 2.
(Note: bold in original, indicating that what follows are the words of Debbie Sterling.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date December 21, 2013.)

Book that “spoke to” Sterling:
Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Carnegie Objected to $2 a Year Fee to Use Private Library

(p. 44) The story of Andy Carnegie defeating the villainous adults played well in his Autobiography and the biographies that drew from it, but there is another side to the tale which we should not neglect. The Anderson Library was not a free public library, funded by the city, but a subscription library, which relied in great part on the support of its patrons.* Although “working boys” should, as he had argued, have been allowed to borrow books without paying the two-dollar subscription fee, Andy Carnegie, six months from his eighteenth birthday, was hardly a “working boy.” He held a man’s job and received a man’s pay of twenty-five dollars a month. Was it unreasonable for the librarians to ask him to contribute a two-dollar annual subscription fee to keep the library from having to close its doors for the third time in its young history?
Andy thought so. With a talent for cloaking self-interest in larger humanitarian concerns, he made a premature case for free public libraries.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Carnegie Attended a Private School Where Teacher Was an Entrepreneur

(p. 15) At the age of eight, Andra had begun attending school. Although he implies in his Autobiography that it had been his decision to put off school until then, eight, in fact, was the age at which most Scottish boys entered the classroom. There were numerous schools in Dunfermline in the early 1840s, thirty-three of them to be exact, almost half endowed or supported by the kirk (church) or the municipality. Andra was sent to one of the “adventure” schools, so called because they were started up and supported “entirely on the teachers’ own adventure.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: italics in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

“Professors Have Lost the Courage of Their Own Passions, Depriving Their Students of the Fire of Inspiration”

Source of book image: online version of the NYT review quoted and cited below.

(p. C4) Mr. Edmundson loves to teach, but he hates the conditions under which much teaching takes place today, even at an elite university like Virginia.
. . .
He knows the studies showing that students spend less time than ever on their classwork, and he writes of an implicit pact between undergraduates and professors in which teachers give high grades and thin assignments, and students reward them with positive evaluations. After all, given all the other amenities available through the university, the idea that “the courses you take should be the primary objective of going to college is tacitly considered absurd.”
. . .
Mr. Edmundson worries that too many professors have lost the courage of their own passions, depriving their students of the fire of inspiration.

For the full review, see:
MICHAEL S. ROTH. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; How Four Years Can (and Should) Transform You.” The New York Times (Weds., August 21, 2013): C4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date August 20, 2013.)

The book under review is:
Edmundson, Mark. Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2013.

Former Economics of Entrepreneurship and Economics of Technology Student Luis López Voted Crowd Favorite at Straight Shot Startup Accelerator Demo Day

“Luis López pitches his startup, CardioSys, to investors during Demo Day at Aksarben Cinema this week. The event was the culmination of a 90-day Straight Shot startup accelerator program that offered new companies networking opportunities, advisers and investment dollars. Seven startups were in the inaugural accelerator class.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited below.

Luis López, the entrepreneur who is featured in the article quoted below, was a student of mine in both my Economics of Entrepreneurship and my Economics of Technology seminars (and before that, in micro principles). I cannot say that I taught him everything he knows, but it appears that I did not do him much harm.

(p. 1D) The same day Luis López and his brother, Danny, were accepted into Omaha’s Straight Shot startup accelerator for their new company, corporate America called.

The 25-year-old Central High grad had received a job offer from Gallup. But he turned it down, choosing to take an entrepreneurial risk over a predictable salary and benefits.
“I can always apply for a job in the corporate world,” he said, but it’s not every day that one’s company is accepted into an accelerator program that offers $20,000 in investment, more than 300 mentors and more than $75,000 in in-kind services.
The risk paid off, López said last week as the 90-day program wrapped up. The López brothers’ startup, CardioSys — which uses predictive analytics to calculate a person’s risk of developing conditions like heart disease and diabetes based on factors such as age, blood pressure and lipid profiles — came out of the program with a group of nine advisers.
. . .
(p. 2D) Luis López said CardioSys is hoping to land some investment in the next month or two, and is now looking at applying for a short-term health industry-focused incubator program in California, which the founders were connected with via Straight Shot.
In the long term, however, López said that with its strong community of medical and insurance providers, Omaha is CardioSys’ home. At Demo Day, the startup was voted crowd favorite. “I was surprised. It’s an honor to have people excited about what we’re doing,” he said.

For the full story, see:
Paige Yowell. “Straight Shot at Success; Accelerator’s First Startups Make Their Pitches.” Omaha World-Herald (SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2013): 1D & 2D.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Straight Shot Accelerator’s First Startups Make Their Pitches.”)

“Luis Lopez, who with his brother Danny Lopez, created CardioSys, gives his pitch at Demo Day.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the Omaha World-Herald article quoted and cited above.

Montessori Taught Larry Page and Sergey Brin to Always Ask Questions

(p. 122) “Their attitude is just like, ‘We’re Montessori kids,'” said Mayer. “We’ve been trained and programmed to question authority.”
Thus it wasn’t surprising to see that attitude as the foundation of Google’s culture. “Why aren’t there dogs at work?” asked Marissa, parroting the never-ending Nerdish Inquisition conducted by her bosses. “Why aren’t there toys at work? Why aren’t snacks free? Why? Why? Why?”
“I think there’s some truth to that,” says Larry Page, who spent his preschool and first elementary school years at Okemos Montessori Radmoor School in Michigan. “I’m always asking questions, and Sergey and I both have this.”
Brin wound up in Montessori almost by chance. When he was six, recently emigrated from the Soviet Union, the Paint Branch Montessori (p. 123) School in Adelphi, Maryland, was the closest private school. “We wanted to place Sergey in a private school to ease up his adaptation to the new life, new language, new friends,” wrote his mother, Eugenia Brin, in 2009. “We did not know much about the Montessori method, but it turned out to be rather crucial for Sergey’s development. It provided a basis for independent thinking and a hands-on approach to life.”
“Montessori really teaches you to do things kind of on your own at your own pace and schedule,” says Brin. “It was a pretty fun, playful environment– as is this.”

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: italics in original.)

Key to Google: “Both Larry and Sergey Were Montessori Kids”

(p. 121) [Marissa Mayer] conceded that to an outsider, Google’s new-business process might indeed look strange. Google spun out projects like buckshot, blasting a spray and using tools and measurements to see what it hit. And sometimes it did try ideas that seemed ill suited or just plain odd. Finally she burst out with her version of the corporate Rosebud. “You can’t understand Google,” she said, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.”
“Montessori” refers to schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician born in 1870 who believed that children should be allowed the freedom to pursue what interested them.
(p. 122) “It’s really ingrained in their personalities,” she said. “To ask their own questions, do their own things. To disrespect authority. Do something because it makes sense, not because some authority figure told you. In Montessori school you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so. This is really baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking ‘Why should it be like that?’ It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.”

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: bracketed name added.)

Jeb Bush Reads Clayton Christensen on His Kindle

Jeb Bush. Source of caricature: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

Clayton Christensen is a kindred spirit: he cares about making the world a better place through innovation in free markets. He research is almost always thought-provoking, and sometimes highly illuminating. So it speaks well of Jeb Bush that he has the good judgement to be reading one of Christensen’s books on education.

(p. A11) Currently [Bush is] reading “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” — on his Kindle electronic reader.

For the full interview, see:
FRED BARNES. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with JEB BUSH; Republicans Must Be a National Party Florida’s former governor on immigration, school choice, and the GOP’s limited-government foundation.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., February 14, 2009): A11.
(Note: words in brackets added.)

The Christensen book mentioned on education, is:
Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: NY: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
(Note: a revised edition of the book appeared in 2011.)

“We Just Begged and Borrowed” for Equipment

(p. 32) Google was handling as many as 10,000 queries a day. At times it was consuming half of Stanford’s Internet capacity. Its appetite for equipment and bandwidth was voracious. “We just begged and borrowed,” says Page. “There were tons of computers around, and we managed to get some.” Page’s dorm room was essentially Google’s operations center, with a motley assortment of computers from various manufacturers stuffed into a homemade version of a server rack– a storage cabinet made of Legos. Larry and Sergey would hang around the loading dock to see who on campus was getting computers– companies like Intel and Sun gave lots of free machines to Stanford to curry favor with employees of the future– (p. 33) and then the pair would ask the recipients if they could share some of the bounty.
That still wasn’t enough. To store the millions of pages they had crawled, the pair had to buy their own high-capacity disk drives. Page, who had a talent for squeezing the most out of a buck, found a place that sold refurbished disks at prices so low– a tenth of the original cost– that something was clearly wrong with them. “I did the research and figured out that they were okay as long as you replaced the [disk] operating system,” he says. “We got 120 drives, about nine gigs each. So it was about a terabyte of space.” It was an approach that Google would later adopt in building infrastructure at low cost.
Larry and Sergey would be sitting by the monitor, watching the queries– at peak times, there would be a new one every second– and it would be clear that they’d need even more equipment. What next? they’d ask themselves. Maybe this is real.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: italics in original.)