Transdisciplinarity: Thinking Inside and Outside the Box Several years ago when I was teaching eighth-grade Latin American history, we were engaged in a unit on the Mayan civilization. During a discussion one day, a student asked, "Is this the same Mayan civilization that we are learning about in Spanish class?" Her comment made me stop in my tracks. I replied, "Yes, it is the same civilization." After class, I made a beeline to her Spanish teacher to learn about how she was teaching her unit on the Mayans. From that point on, we made a concerted effort to coordinate and integrate our teaching. Transdisciplinarity Integrated learning is the most rudimentary level of collaboration across disciplines. However, one of the key competencies for the 21st century is to position students with the skills and habits of mind to be transdisciplinary thinkers. Many of today's global problems are just too complex to be solved by one specialized discipline (think global warming or overpopulation). Inside the Box and Out-of-the-Box Thinking 1. 2. 3. 4.
Gravitational Waves Explained THE 2016 PHD Comics Calendar is here! - Adorn your dreary lab or desk with this fun calendar designed by Jorge himself: Watch the new movie! Summer Hiatus - PHD has been on Summer Hiatus while Jorge finishes the new PHD Movie. The PHD Movie 2 OFFICIAL TRAILER - is out!! Filming is done! Coming to Campuses this Fall! The PHD Movie 2 - starts filming today!! Happy New Year, everyone. - Thanks for another year of reading and supporting PHD Comics! Holiday Shopping? The 2015 PHD Calendar! Limited Quantity! POWER UP - The Thesis Fuel mugs are back in stock!
The #1 Thing Couples Fight About - The Gottman Institute Do you know Angelina Jolie? She’s that beautiful actor who adopts Asian babies, and married the world’s most gorgeous man. They even had their own movie, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Well, I’ve never met her. But I do know Christina. Like Angelina, Christina is an admirable and beautiful woman. When they first met, he was something different. She’s frustrated and lonely. Yesterday they were trying to pick a place to grab dinner. Christina starts. “Sounds good to me. “I don’t know, you?” “I feel like pizza. “I don’t want pizza,” she complains. “Okay, what do you want then?” “I don’t know,” she says with a puzzled look on her face. “What about seafood?” “No. “You always put down every idea I make.” Christina starts crying. How has something so small turned into something so big? According to the Einstein of Love, Dr. Christina and Brad remind me of the movie Mr. and Mrs. Sometimes relationships feel like we are emotionally shooting each other over the simplest things. Why Relationships Fail
Europe shouldn’t worry about migrants. It should worry about creeping fascism There is an urban legend about boiling frogs, and it goes like this. If you put a frog in a pan of cold water and slowly, slowly turn up the heat, the frog will sit there quite calmly until it boils to death. Creeping cultural change is like that. It’s hard to spot when you’re living inside it. You can stay very still while the mood of a society becomes harder and meaner and uglier by stages, telling yourself that everything is going to be fine as all around you, the water begins to bubble. This week I had coffee with a friend who has also just come back from a year away – teaching in Spain for her, studying in America for me. “Is it me,” said my friend, “Or is it just...okay to say things that are violently racist now? No, it hasn’t always been okay, and in fact it’s still not okay – but it is a normal part of the public conversation, in a way it wasn’t, even a year ago. By the time we touched down I realised how badly all of us were fooled in May.
Age Is Not a Thing - A Guide to Getting over Your Age The most common concern for all men, no matter their background, is their age. Be it too young or too old, we all have some sort of expectation of where we are supposed to be in life in relative to our age. Where we are supposed to be, just like the illusion of success and failure, drives us to obsess over how many times we’ve gone around the sun. This article is about why age is not a thing just because your mind makes it one. I spoke with Chris, a reader of TQM who wanted to explore a bit further into the age factor. When we were hunters and gatherers, we knew that our time on earth was short. So, the sense of urgency is built-in. All of us take different paths in life. Expectations of where we are supposed to be at a certain age caused us to be anxious of life. Yet most of our lives don’t turn out this way. So, now we know the culprit behind age being a thing for us. Hope is what society created to keep us in check. I say fuck that. You can become conscious at any moment. Quan
The 200-year-old painting that puts Europe's fear of migrants to shame | Art and design Nearly 200 years ago, Théodore Géricault painted a masterpiece of pity that puts modern Europe to shame. And now I have to ask: why can’t we modern Europeans show the same compassion and humanity that made our forebears flock to see this protest against callous indifference to people abandoned at sea? The Medusa was a French navy ship that got into trouble off west Africa in 1816. About 147 people were put off the ship on an open raft, in a heartless decision that contemporaries blamed on the recently restored French monarchy. They were cast helplessly adrift at sea, just as so many migrants making the perilous attempt to cross to Europe have in our time been cruelly left to drift in unseaworthy craft by unscrupulous people traffickers. Only 15 people survived the raft of the Medusa. Géricault’s painting depicts a tragedy in the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean – otherwise, the parallels with today’s migrants are terrifying. Why is America so different?
This '12 Signs of Bad Parenting' Post Is Dividing Users on Facebook Parenthood is a tricky thing. Babies do not come with manuals and so you have to figure out how to be a good parent as you go long. Most of the time, you’ll rely on instinct and on the advices of your family, friends, or relatives. For sure, you know a parent who’s been there before and you can use his or her tips in certain things. Other times, you may want to turn to parenthood books or, let’s face it, some stuff you see online. While it’s true that there are a lot of helpful materials available on the web, there’s no denying that there are also plenty of stuff out there that may not really be that valuable in the long run. Controversial Files recently shared these signs of bad parenting on their page. Go check out the photos here: Bad Parenting #1: Bad Parenting #2: Bad Parenting #3: Bad Parenting #4: Bad Parenting #5: Bad Parenting #6: Bad Parenting #7: Bad Parenting #8: Bad Parenting #9: Bad Parenting #10: Bad Parenting #11: Bad Parenting #12: Facebook user Geoff Jones commented:
How to Help Kids Find Their Aspirations Aspiration is often associated with a whimsical sense of dreaming about the future. The Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations, an independent non-profit organization, defines aspiration as the ability to set goals for the future while maintaining the inspiration in the present to reach those goals. When a student has dreams for the future and is actively working towards them, she’s in the “aspirational zone.” And in that state, student achievement increases. A lot of kids have big dreams about what they want to do as adults — whether that’s become a professional athlete or a teacher — but no idea of what it takes to get there. Dreaming about the future is important, but without a plan, it often ends with just that — a dream. [RELATED READING: Six Ways to Motivate Students to Learn] To do that, Quaglia suggests focusing on three guiding principles: self-worth, engagement, and purpose. Making sure kids are paying attention is another crucial factor.