Tag Archives: @nytimes

March 11, 2019 · 3:52 pm

Photos and notes from Day 2 of #FabLearn #NYC hosted at @TeachersCollege this past weekend. #MakerEd #edtech #elemaker #ArtEdTech

Day 2 of FabLearn

Day Two of FabLarn started rainy and early (yet magically!) with a choice of workshops that required advanced registration. I was so glad to have a secured a spot in the sold out Reuse/Remix/Rethink: Exploring Mechanical Toys led by Christa Flores, Ryan Jenkins, and Joel Gordon. I am totally going to hack toys with kids at Brearley! Here’s a blurb from the program about the workshop:

ABSTRACT: In this hands-on workshop, participants will carefully dissect used mechanical toys and explore innovative ways learners of all ages can extend circuit and mechanism explorations using both analog materials and digital tools. This workshop will give participants ideas for how to use recycled materials in makerspaces and classrooms to support tinkering with science, art and creative coding. We’ll share practical tips on how to find and organize materials, share parts and tools lists and host a reflective discussion about how this type of workshop can contribute to a financially and environmentally sustainable making program.

After the workshop, Amanda Cox, Digital Editor of New York Times, delivered an amazing keynote! Here’s a brief bio from the conference program: https://nyc2019.fablearn.org/speakers/

After Amanda’s keynote, we heard from a panel discussing “Making around the world: Experiences and lessons learned“. Following this was a collection of various Project Demos and Educator Posters on view in the Ed Lab. Two standouts were:

1. Fernando Puertas, Eduardo Lobo and Edison Cabeza’s Animachines consisting of game cards to help kids learn about species (since species are going extinct at an alarming rate).

2. Roy Ombatti’s work with a for-profit start-up that launched a ‘Digital Design Fabrication Workshop’ which taught digital fabrication skills to unaccompanied refugee youth aged between 9 and 17 years old.

Next up in the program were Educator Roundtables. I attended Roundtable 3: Making Accross Curricula which included Connecting Curriculum to a Meaningful Learning presented by Paula Oliveira and Diego Thuler, Connecting the Disciplines Through Collaborative Problem Solving: Interdisciplinary Design
from Kate Tabor, Anthony Shaker and Adam Colestock, and Rebuilding an 18th Century Town: Math, 3D Printing, and Historical Empathy presented by Heather Pang.

After the roundtables, there was an Educator Panel moderated by Jaymes Dec back in the main theater. On stage, Erin Riley, John Lynch, Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert, and Roger Horton shared some of their project ideas and experiences.

After this, I had to get home to decompress and spend some time getting ready for the week ahead. Unfortunately, I missed the final session where presenters shared their Full Papers about Tools for capturing learning in making and Designing maker implementations. I will console myself by trying to recall all the innovative, thoughtful, and inspiring things I saw and heard and all the people I reconnecting with or met for the first time. Can’t wait for the next NYC event! Check out all the upcoming FabLearn conferences including FabLearn Thailand happening January 10-12, 2020…

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 15, 2012 · 6:30 pm

IPUMS is an amazing resource for population data! Their official motto: Use it for good, never for evil.

Screen_shot_2012-01-15_at_12
Screen_shot_2012-01-15_at_12

My sister forwarded me an amazing article from The New York Times today: “Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations.” The article looks closely at the spectrum of just exactly who consitutes being included in the 1%. I know I don’t.

But in reality it is a far larger and more varied group, one that includes podiatrists and actuaries, executives and entrepreneurs, the self-made and the silver spoon set. They are clustered not just in New York and Los Angeles, but also in Denver and Dallas. The range of wealth in the 1 percent is vast — from households that bring in $380,000 a year, according to census data, up to billionaires like Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates.

There is a linked infographic that sort of blew my mind: The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have?  I love that on the lower left it includes: School teachers don’t earn enough to make the top 1 percent on their own, but many live in 1-percent households, primarily through marriage.

At the bottom of the infographic, it says information was sourced from IPUMS. I Googled IPUMS and found out it stands for Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. The Wikipedia entry about IPUMS (yes, Wikipedia is usually my first resource) taught me:

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) is the world’s largest individual-level population database. IPUMS consists of microdata samples from United States (IPUMS-USA) and international (IPUMS-International) census records. The records are converted into a consistent format and made available to researchers through a web-based data dissemination system.

IPUMS is housed at the Minnesota Population Center, an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Minnesota, under the direction of Professor Steven Ruggles.

IPUMS-USA draws on every surviving United States census from 1850 to 2000 (with the exception of 1890 census, which was destroyed in a fire) and from the American Community Survey of 2000-2009. During certain years, IPUMS-USA also makes available over-samples of African-Americans, Alaskans, American Indians, Hawaiians, and Hispanics. The IPUMS provides consistent variable names, coding schemes, and documentation across all the samples, facilitating the analysis of long-term change.

IPUMS-International includes countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America for 1960 forward. The database currently includes 159 samples from 55 countries around the world. IPUMS-International converts census microdata for multiple countries into a consistent format, allowing for comparisons across countries and time periods. Special efforts are made to simplify use of the data while losing no meaningful information. Comprehensive documentation is provided in a coherent form to facilitate comparative analyses of social and economic change.

Additional databases in the IPUMS family include: (1) the North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP), (2) the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), (3) the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS), and (4) the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-Current Population Survey (IPUMS-CPS).

The Journal of American History described the effort as “One of the great archival projects of the past two decades.” The official motto of IPUMS is “use it for good, never for evil.” All IPUMS data and documentation are available online free of charge.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,