Category: Education

Modeling fall classes on campus

From Inside Higher Ed

“The model examines a hypothetical large university of 20,000 students and 2,500 instructors who interact daily for 100 days. The mean class size in the simulation is 24 students, with 90 percent of classes having 50 students or fewer.

Each day in the model, there is a 25 percent chance that one individual on campus not in quarantine, who has not already been infected, can become spontaneously infected by nonuniversity contact, a rate researchers said was rather low compared to other estimates.

In the absence of any intervention at all, the model suggests that all susceptible community members would acquire COVID-19 by the end of the semester, with peak infection rates between 20 and 40 days into the semester, even if the semester begins with no infections.

A standard intervention, consisting of quarantine, contact tracing, universal mask wearing, daily testing of 3 percent of the university population and large classes (30 or more students) moved online, suggests a slightly rosier picture, with infections kept below 66 people in 95 percent of simulations.”

It is possible to do this in a smart way with responsible amounts of risk. #maskup

Of course if the students are not willing to follow guidelines…

If I can’t hear your band on your band’s website, is it really a band website?

There is a new record out by a band that is made up of a former student and sometimes colleague. It is quite good. The record is very well produced slightly quirky pop music. Not my usual space, but I really like it. I was going to write a short review and encourage you all to go listen to it. I prefer to link directly to a band’s website, so they can control how their work is presented, instead of a facebook or youtube page. I finally found this band’s website, even though a search of the band’s name and music did not easily get me there.

When i got to the website, I realized I could not listen to the band. The media page only hosts pictures. There is a link to an Instagram account, but no bandcamp, youtube, spotify, apple music…nothing. The pictures are really good, but I am trying to help people HEAR THE MUSIC!!!! Why is hearing the music not the easiest thing to do on your website?

It is kind of a bummer, because the music is pretty good. Hopefully the next thing that catches my ear will have a website with sounds…

On Judging Creative Activity or Sometimes My Kids Teach Me Stuff

The ranking of creative activity often strikes me as awkward at best, and counter-productive at worst. Competitive cooking shows are a great example. One chef leaves in tears, as I am thinking, “that looks great, pass that plate over here.” “This band is better than that band” always seems like a futile exercise.

Last night we attended the big end of the season high school marching band competition. My daughter is in one of the bands that competed. This competition has a prelims and finals format. They played two great shows. I think the best two shows they have played all season. When the rankings were announced after finals, they did not place as high as many hoped, or expected. There are some natural emotional reactions that can flow out in times like that. But, it made me remember something that my step-son said to me a few years ago.

My step-son, Blake, spent three summers performing on the DCI Tour with the Madison Scouts. (DCI is the highest level of marching band field show in the world. They would be pros, except you have to pay to do it…maybe another post.) At the end of one of Blake’s seasons, as I picked him up at the airport the day after finals, I commented that I thought they should have placed much higher. His response taught me something. He said that they had played one of their best shows of the season, and the audience loved it, and that was what they were there to do; be as good as they could be, and make something that moved people. They did that, and it was a success in his mind.

I feel like that is what my daughter’s band did last night. They performed as well as they could, and people liked it. That’s all that really matters.

…and that third place cheesecake can still make someone VERY happy.

Comparing Artists To Start-Ups Lazy, Unhealthy, Beside The Point. – hypebot

The money or art conversation came up in class the other day. This article takes some interesting looks at the topic. Note the articles preference for and use of the word art…

Comparing Artists To Start-Ups Lazy, Unhealthy, Beside The Point. – hypebot:

“Comparing artists to start-ups is a trend that has emerged this last couple of years as music and tech became ever more increasingly tied and the latter churned out its daily dose of spectacular stories and unicorns. When a particular field is successful, it would be a shame not to try to find some key take aways and apply them to an ecosystem like music where everything has been challenged and turned upside down these last 15 years or so.”

What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out – The New York Times

What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out – The New York Times:

“In pinpointing roadblocks, the university also looked beyond academics. About a thousand Georgia State undergraduates were dropping out every semester because they couldn’t pay the tuition. When a closer look revealed that many were short just a few hundred dollars, the university started awarding small just-in-time grants and financial counseling. Last year, some 400 students who otherwise would have dropped out were able to receive their degrees.”

My thoughts on Cutting Louisiana higher education by $300 million

A note to the apparent morons who run the state in which I live: I WILL PAY MORE TAXES TO SUPPORT HIGHER EDUCATION!!!!!!!!!

The nature of Louisiana’s backwards legal system makes much of the state’s budget protected and very hard to adjust, except for higher education, which is easy for the legislature to cut. Our governor, who pays lip service to a religion that is supposed to be based on helping the poor and caring for our fellow humans, refuses to allow taxes to be raised for any productive reason. I think he (and his fellow lawmakers of similar political ideology) does this not out of a sense that it is really the right thing to do, but out of a loyalty to a political party that places money above all else, and even then, really just the money of people who already have a lot of it. The lawmakers of Louisiana, led by our governor, are cowards, who are afraid of the dogmatists of their own party, to the point that they will do nothing to help the people of our state in any way.

I actually voted for Jindal. I thought he was a smart man, and he made me believe that he would use that intelligence to run our state well. I did not realize at the time that his political aspirations would out weigh all other considerations to the point that he would be incapable of straying one millimeter from republican dogma, even if it is the best thing for our state.

I got both of my graduate degrees from state schools (the University of New Orleans for my M.M., and Louisiana State University for my Ph.D.). The system worked well for me. These degrees helped me learn many things, and led to me getting a great teaching job and staying in our state. I can now afford to pay more in taxes, and I would love to do that if that is what is needed to keep our higher education system alive.

One more note to our lawmakers: PLEASE LET GO OF YOUR POLITICAL DOGMA AND USE THE BRAINS THAT GOD GAVE YOU TO MAKE DECISIONS WITH THE WELL-BEING OF YOUR STATE IN MIND!

This nola.com article offers a good perspective on the amount of the cuts that are being envisioned.

Cutting Louisiana higher education by $300 million, putting it into perspective | NOLA.com

$139.00 eBook. Really?

I am on a number of email lists focused on subjects related to music technology. Today a member of one of those lists sent an announcement of her newly published book. The title sounded interesting, so I followed the link to her website, with the idea that I would likely purchase the book, until I saw the prices. The hardcover version is $170 US. The eBook, yes, eBook is $139 US. “How is this rationalized?” was my next thought. Who would pay that?

Then it hit me. Regular people don’t buy these books. Libraries or institutions may buy them. Sometimes students are forced to buy them under the duress of it being a required text for a class. In all of these instances, there is a layer of financial bureaucracy between the user and the book publisher. Even in the case of students, it is often student loan money or some other financial aid that buys their text books, so it doesn’t feel like “real” money.

This is similar in principle to the way healthcare costs have risen because there is a layer of “insurance” companies between the providers and the patients. There are financial transactions between doctors and insurance companies, and between insurance companies and patients, so the cost of each individual transaction gets obfuscated by the layers of financial (insert expletive here) between the doctors and patients. The patients don’t pay directly for the services, so they don’t get outraged at how much it costs.

Similarly, if my university library is paying some outrageous sum of money every year for access to online journal databases, but my colleagues and I are the ones using the databases, no one is in a position to get mad about the cost. The users don’t see the cost, and for the folks who pay the bills, it is just another bill to pay. It’s like financial three card monty. Just keep things confusing enough so that no one notices or thinks about it.

It seems like a very inefficient system for the outsides of the system, and very lucrative one for those who create the layers of obfuscation in the middle.

Why do we let this happen? Is it because we need a super expensive publisher to legitimize our writings to the tenure committee? There has to be a better way.

If that book had been $40, this post wouldn’t have happened, that publisher would have 40 of my dollars, and I would be waiting for what seems to be an interesting book to arrive in my mailbox.