education

Learn More by Studying Less

- Adam Clare

I’m back in Toronto now and discovered a bunch of people are starting their school year; so to celebrate their return to education I figured a post on studying is needed.

The ever helpful ZenHabits strikes again with a good overview of how to study and retain knowledge. They focus on a holistic approach to studying, which may or may not work for you. The key is to figure out what does work for you and role with it.

For example, the last thing they suggest happens to be a waste of my studying time but the same thing is essential for one of my friends:

Write – Take a piece of paper and write out the connections in the information. Reorganize the information into different patterns. The key here is the writing, not the final product. So don’t waste your time making a pretty picture. Scribble and use abbreviations to link the ideas together.

Euro-centric Thinkers Humbled

- Adam Clare

In every science text book I’ve seen only European thinkers are praised for their discoveries and this was to go unquestioned. As a result of my education I take great pleasure when those who wrote the books (so to speak) are proven horribly wrong. It boils down to the fact I like seeing credit given to those who deserve it.

Sir Isaac Newton is credited with discovering a cornerstone of modern mathematics, but in reality a group of Indians made that discovery 250 years before Newton!

The team from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal the Kerala School also discovered what amounted to the Pi series and used it to calculate Pi correct to 9, 10 and later 17 decimal places.

And there is strong circumstantial evidence that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century.

That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself.

A Guide to Climate Change for the Perplexed

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

earth.jpgNew Scientist has a great article for people who are at all confused, misinformed, ignorant, or othwerise boggled by all this talk about climate change. They clarify many things that people may not know much about. It’s worth a read if you don’t think you know enough about climate change, or if you just want a reminder what climate change means.

Our planet’s climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.

Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.

Green Website for Kids

- Adam Clare

An Indian NGO has started a website directed at kids to educate them about the environment. OneWorld has a great description of the site with some good background too.

Indian NGO Center for Environment Education (CEE) is working to promote awareness and understanding of environmental issues in the country. It has recently introduced a website for children – www.kidsrgreen.org – that allows children to explore and discover environment-related issues.

Eco Challenge

- Adam Clare

The finalists are now online for the Eco Challenge, which is something that MTV and GE have conceived together.

“The mtvU GE ecomagination Challenge is asking college students from around the country to develop new, creative ways to green their campus. We’re looking for innovative and groundbreaking ideas that can have a positive impact at the local level or the global level — or both. The sky is (literally) the limit.”

To me this seems like an odd partnership for an environmental cause, but whatever their reasons I’m glad they are doing it.

Thanks, mkb!

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