Category Archives: Education

What the writing on the (bathroom) wall reveals about sex and culture

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Pamela Leong, Salem State University

Scrawls, doodles and stylized text adorn the walls of public bathrooms in places ranging from elementary schools to dive bars: poems penned by forlorn lovers, pleas for advice and cartoons meant to elicit chuckles.

The graffiti is usually anonymous. It’s often personal.

While bathroom stalls are spaces of privacy, the graffiti is very much aimed at future occupants. And unlike most forms of written communication that appear in public spaces (books, newspapers, even graffiti on buildings), these images and messages are intended for the eyes of the same sex.

As a sociologist, I was curious about the content of the graffiti text and artwork, the patterns in the response and replies – and whether these responses would vary by gender.

So I entered ten single-sex bathrooms (five men’s rooms and five women’s rooms) on five floors of a northeastern state university’s academic building. Each bathroom contained multiple enclosed stalls, and I photographed each stall that contained hand-written or hand-drawn graffiti.

Out of the 202 graffiti collected and analyzed, 59 (29.2%) were in the men’s bathrooms and 143 (70.8%) were in the women’s bathrooms. (This finding seems to contradict reports that females are less inclined to vandalize, due to their inclination to conform to social conventions and norms.)

Poring through the images, I also noticed that the graffiti – aside from its obvious entertainment value – contained deeply held, gender-specific cultural beliefs.

Sex, insults and more sex

Sexually explicit graffiti mainly populated the men’s bathroom stalls, as did humorous graffiti. There was also no shortage of insults.

In fact, insults comprised the largest category of graffiti in the men’s bathrooms, and characterized much of the response and replies to images. These slights often centered on evaluations of the artistry and accuracy of the sketches; a drawing of a topless woman, for instance, received the critique, “Nice rack but man, only a face a mother can love. Shessh!!”

A separate sketch of a vagina elicited a number of disparaging comments. One person felt the drawing resembled more of a silverfish insect than a vagina. Others insulted not the image’s artistic integrity, but personally attacked the artist. Another lobbed insults against the artist’s mother (“Well it is your mom’s pussy”), while one respondent claimed to have had intercourse with the artist’s girlfriend.

The doodles in the men’s bathroom stalls were overwhelmingly sexual in nature, with rudimentary sketches of women’s breasts frequently drawn, followed by sketches of gigantic penises and female genitalia. Of the 59 distinct images or text appearing in men’s bathrooms, only three were of a nonsexual nature: a doodle of a cat up to bat, a goateed male face and a marijuana joint.

In the author’s study, most of the graffiti in men’s bathroom was sexual in nature – in fact, an image of a joint was only one of three images that were non-sexual.
torbakhopper/flickr, CC BY

Support, poetry and…poop?

In contrast to the male graffiti, female graffiti contained fewer vulgarities and sexual content. A tiny sketch of a penis pointing to verses from Psalm 23:4 was the only sexually explicit drawing. On the other hand, flowers, stars, faces – along with poetry and advice in stylized, swirly font – were prevalent.

Curiously, female graffiti contained more scatological content than the men’s graffiti did. Such graffiti included explanations for what caused the artist to defecate (coffee, the campus dining service), references to flatulence, and the obvious: that they were currently on the commode and, in some cases, were in the process of defecating (“Sitting on the toilet Hahahah”).

Although this finding was unexpected, health studies do suggest that women are both more knowledgeable and more forthcoming about health matters and bodily changes than are men. Gender differences in health disclosures and the reporting of health symptoms and physical manifestations could explain why there were more scatological content in female graffiti.

Budding poets abound in women’s rooms.
Jo Morcom/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

There are also cultural assumptions about femininity, which demand that women suppress open discussion of their bowel movements.. However, in all-female spaces – away from the male gaze and surveillance – women may resist these cultural pressures through explicit dialogue about fecal matters, a freedom traditionally allotted to men.

Meanwhile, philosophical and poetic graffiti dominated the graffiti of women’s bathrooms, followed by supportive graffiti and relationship-oriented graffiti. In sharp contrast to the insults that dominated the chain graffiti in men’s bathrooms, the response and replies in women’s bathrooms tended to be supportive of the original artist. Absent were insults.

Graffiti in women’s bathrooms tended to be more supportive.
Quinn Dombrowski/flickr, CC BY-SA

Replies included affirmations, such as “AMEN!,” “Thank you” and “That was deep. Keep preaching sister!!!” Some responses offered emotional support (“It will be [better]. I promise. Don’t ever give up.”), while others expressed shared understanding: “Same here,” “Samesies” and “Mine too.”

While insults did not typically occur in female graffiti, there were corrections. Replies to the posting “Nothing is forever…except for love” included various corrective quips: “+ herpes! LOL”; “Except God”; and “lol tattoos are.”

One person wrote, “Love, it is the greatest thing to the human race,” which was similarly met with (humorous) responses and corrections, including: “Can I return it?”; “Love is not a gift…It’s a privilege that must be earned, nourished, and respected…”; and “Wrong, Love is something humans made up.”

What does it all mean?

As a whole, bathroom graffiti seem to reinforce gender expectations, although there were occasional breaches of – even resistance to – some of these expectations (almost exclusively in female bathroom stalls).

Above all, bathroom graffiti messages convey male desire to maintain the masculine hierarchy. Insults, expletives and masculine bravado, as well as pictorial depictions of masculinity through drawings of erect penises, all serve as symbols of masculinity – markers that identify the graffiti artist as strong, powerful, competitive and sexually competent.

In their responses to certain images or phrases, men evaluated and regulated one another’s behaviors. If a male graffiti author expressed emotional turmoil, he was met not with supportive messages, but with a barrage of unrelenting insults. Power dynamics, therefore, are evident even in seemingly anonymous, unmoderated spaces – even without the physical presence of others.

The policing, however, was absent in the women’s bathrooms, which was consistent with the overall tone of the women’s bathroom stalls: cooperative, supportive, encouraging and generally free of aggression and competition. There is a sense of female solidarity expressed on the women’s bathroom stall walls (a solidarity that was conspicuously absent in the men’s bathroom stalls).

Since the date of the original data collection, some walls have been painted over, revealing new graffiti; in other cases, old graffiti remain, with new ones cropping up.

What remains unchanged, however, are the cultural messages about gender, and the intense enforcement of hypermasculinity.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

The future of Auto Theft

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We live in a time where auto theft is incredibly impractical. Criminals in 2015 struggle to figure out how to get past electronic security and alarm systems,  reflecting an over 90% drop in NYC auto theft since the early 90’s. These days, even a successfully stolen vehicle can be recovered with GPS tracking and incidences of theft are often caught on video.

It might seem like convenience is weakness but since car theft is way down,  this might not hold true at the moment. The security holes that seem most vulnerable to exploitation revolve around a key fob. Fobs are those small black electronic keys that everyone uses to unlock their car these days.  They work by using A pre-determined electronic signal that must be authenticated by the CAN system. If the authentication checks out, the doors unlock. In newer cars, the engine will start via push button if the fob is in the immediate vicinity of the car so the driver doesn’t have to fish them out of her pocket.

Etymology of the word fob:  Written evidence of the word's usage has been traced to 1888. Almost no one uses a pocket watch these days but a fob was originally an ornament attached to a pocket watch chain. The word hung around as an ocassional, outdated way to refer to key chains. In the 80's, the consumer market was introduced to devices that allowed a car to be unlocked or started remotely. The small electronic device was easily attached to the conventional set of carkeys, and within a few years the term fob key was generally used to describe any electronic key entry system that stored a code in a device, including hotel keycards as well as the remote car unlocking device usually described by the word.
Let’s take a look at three ways a fob key can be hacked.

Recording FOB signals for replay. This is one of those urban legends that’s been around since at least 2008. The story goes: thieves record the key fob signal and can later replay it with a dummy fob. The car can’t tell the difference and unlocks/starts as if the correct key fob has been used. It’s easy for the thief to control the schedule and catch the victim unawares because it doesn’t have to interact with the fob in real time. Sounds like the most effective way to hack a key fob, right? Problem is, each signal is unique, created with an algorithm than includes time. If the devices are not synchronized the fob can’t open the lock. A recorded signal played back wouldn’t open the lock. The conventional wisdom is that the devices, proprietary knowledge and experience needed to make this method work are not worth a stolen car’s worth of risk. Secrets leak but honestly, a team organized enough to steal a car this way would be able to use the same skills to make a lot more money legally. Lastly, if you could reverse engineer and record fob signals the FBI would already be watching you. The demographic that used to steal cars in the 90’s were largely  not like the fast and furious franchise.  The idea that a huge tech security op could be thwarted isn’t necessarily far fetched but there are no recorded cases. Not one. For that to change, someone needs to figure out how the sync code is incorporated into the algorithm and apparently no one has.

Amplifying FOB signal to trigger auto unlock feature. Not only is this method genius but it is rumored to be already in use. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen this in use and it sparked theories about the methodology. Unlike recording a signal, amplification is a lot cheaper and requires almost no proprietary knowledge of the code to pull off. It works like this: A device picks up a range of frequencies that the key fob is giving off and increases the range. Some cars feature the ability to sense the authentic key fob in a five foot range and auto-unlock or autostart their ignitions. With a signal amp, the engine can theoretically be started if the real key fob is within 30 feet. So, the keys can be on your nightstand but the car thinks you are at the car door. The thief can then open the door, sit in the drivers seat and the ignition can be pushbutton triggered as if the key fob was in the car with the thief. I thought about repeating some of the anecdotes I found online about this method but none of them are confirmed. No one has tested it but it looks like a signal booster can be bought online for pretty cheap if you know what to buy($17 – $300). Last week, NYT ran a piece about signal boosting. You can read that here.

Random signal generator. So unique frequency codes means you can’t record  the signal and reuse it without a proprietary algorithm but signal amplification might not work on some systems in the near future. The rumors of it working successfully already have car companies working on a sensitive enough receiver that it would be sensitive to distortion and interference caused by the amp. But there are exceptions, where the signal is not random, such as a service codes. Manufacturers have overriding unlock codes and reset devices to assist with lost key fobs and maintenance/emergency cases. When these codes are leaked, they often open up a brief but large hole in security, during which thousands of cars can be swiped. The main reason it isn’t happening already is more about organized crime not being organized enough to plan and exploit that security hole. Or, you know, maybe the codes just haven’t leaked yet.

Hardware construction.

hackrfConstructing the hardware components needed takes specialized knowledge of hardware. Searching for information about this stuff if bound to attract NSA attention when followed by parts being ordered. The kind of guy who likes to sit in a workshop ordering parts and tinkering all day isn’t always the one who wants to go out and take risks with newer, higher-end cars. That is the kind of multifaceted thief NYC was famous for back before the numbers plunged in the 90’s but the hardware is becoming more and more esoteric. People are not as apt to work on devices that have such small parts on projects that run with such high risk. For that reason, there is more money to be made in producing a bunch of low-cost black market devices that are already calibrated and tested to work. Buying this device on the street and using it before selling it off again might leave a smaller trail than building it in a sketchy apartment-turned-lab that is sure to be searched if a heist goes wrong.

Paper trail & identity theft.

Technology has made it really difficult to even take the car int he first place but once you have a stolen car they are almost impossible to get rid of these days. There can be multiple tracking devices and serial number locations in one car and if the operation isn’t extremely current, the likelihood of the car being found in red hands goes up quickly.

Once the car is stolen, a tech-savvy thief would need special equipment to access the on-board computer and do things like disable the GPS system, take any additional tracking system offline, and disable tech support from manipulating the vehicle’s electronics. Equipment to hack the car’s CAN system has been expensive and shrouded in mystery for the last couple decades but in recent days the internet has united hackers and security researchers to create custom hardware like CANtact Device Lets you Hack a Car’s CPU for $60. 

 
Jonathan Howard
Jonathan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY

Children’s Museum, NASA Offer Elementary School Engineering

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BALTIMORE, April 13, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and NASA Goddard Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland have partnered to offer two engineering based programs to elementary aged children in the Baltimore area. The two programs, I’m an Engineer! and NASA’s Sunday Experiment, will allow children to engage in the engineering process and… Continue reading →

Are cyberbullies victims as well?

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Cyberbullying or online harassment often stems from the misuse of social networking sites, and is now recognized as a serious public health issue. Victims of cyberbullying, when ousted online for being gay or humiliated on Twitter, could suffer severe feelings of isolation and distress.

It is natural to feel empathy towards a victim of cyberbullying.

But what about cyberbullies themselves? Should they be ousted and shamed for their actions? Or should they be helped as they may too suffer mental health problems, which are often similar to those of their victims?

In my pursuit to better understand this phenomenon as a health researcher, I have conducted group interviews with college students to learn about their experiences with cyberbullying. One student in particular admitted to creating a social media account using an alias and tormenting a woman who had been a bully several years ago.

We know that cybervictims struggle with low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. The media has covered extreme cases of cyberbullying that have resulted in suicide, such as the case of Jessica Logan, who felt so distraught when her ex-boyfriend sent her nude photos to hundreds of teenagers that she took her own life.

We also know that bullies may be perceived as callous.

Cyberbullies may need help as well

However, research shows that cyberbullies may be in need of help as well. Cyberbullies struggle with higher levels of depression, stress and anxiety when compared to students not involved in such victimization.

In other words, they are distressed.

Cyberbullies may suffer from mental health issues because they were likely victimized in the past, and have lingering emotional trauma. Victims may lash out and become bullies in retaliation.

Cyberbullies may have been victims of cyberbullying.
Keypad image via www.shutterstock.com

In fact, students who fall into the category of victim-bullies often endure worse health outcomes.

In a recent study of college students, both bullies and victim-bullies showed increased chances for depression. What is more, bullies were also over four times more likely to have problem alcohol behaviors.

Victimization is a cycle and is not easily forgotten. In my experience, I have found that “hurt people hurt people.”

Cyberbullies may be victims too

So, how should we handle the cyberbullies?

While there is some discussion about criminalizing cyberbullying, others believe that rehabilitation is a more sustainable approach.

While this debate will likely continue into the future, we need to start thinking about best strategies. We know that aggressive personalities can develop from exposure to childhood abuse and hostility. We should, therefore, take it upon ourselves to stop the cycle. Instead of focusing on only helping the victims, we should remember that cyberbullies may have once been a victim, too.

After all, only 11% of teens report cyberbullying to a parent for fear of appearing immature. If victims don’t receive adequate counseling, they may take matters into their own hands and retaliate.

This needs to be addressed so the victims don’t become cyberbullies themselves. Research shows cyberbullies are more likely to be involved in drug crimes and in aggressive actions. It is better to take steps early on, so as to prevent any more serious criminal action later.

This is not to say that cyberbullies should escape consequences, especially in extreme cases of repeated, severe harassment. There needs to be accountability when it comes to one’s behavior.

The way we treat cyberbullies could help send a clear message. We could choose to communicate that they are unwanted and isolate them, or we could set standards for acceptable behavior and help them achieve it.

Of course, we cannot minimize the seriousness of cyberbullying and how destructive it is, in the first place. But the problem of cyberbullying cannot be solved, unless we address the issues of the victimizers as well.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Why is it so difficult to think in Higher Dimensions?

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Humans can only perceive three dimensional space but theoretical math works out just fine when manipulating objects in four or more spacial dimensions. Mathematicians, scientists and philosophers still debate whether higher spacial dimensions actually exist.

It’s hard to imagine higher dimensions. Even one additional spatial dimension is hard to see with your inner mind’s eye. If you want to imagine six, seven or eight spacial dimensions it isn’t just hard – no one’s even truly conceptualized hyperspace. It’s what makes the subject compelling but also what makes it frustrating to talk about. The examples theorists are able to use to help people “visualize” what can’t be seen must work within human limitations, and are thus second and third dimensional examples of a higher dimensional concept or object.

“Wait a second,” some of you are wondering, “Isn’t TIME the fourth dimension?”
This article is about spacial dimensions only. Personally, I agree with Amrit Sorli and Davide Fiscaletti’s work which I feel adequately proves that time is NOT a spacial dimension. If you want to debate this issue further, you can read my reasoning in my follow up piece, Time: fourth dimension or nah?, also available on Cosmoso.net

One of the most basic exercises in multidimensional theory is to imagine moving in a fourth. The distance between you and everything around you stays the same but in some fourth dimension you are moving. Most people can’t truly do this imagination game because there in nothing in our three spacial dimensions to compare the experience to.

Flatland_sphereFlatland

In the famous book about spacial dimensions, Flatland, living, two-dimensional beings existed in a universe that was merely two dimensions.  A being with three dimensions, such as a sphere, would appear as a circle able to change circumference as it moved through a third dimension no one in flatland has ever conceptualized.

Humans evolved to notice changes in our three-dimensional environment, inheriting our ancestors ability to conceptualize space in three dimensions as a hardwired trait that actually stops us from conceptualizing other aspects of reality that might nonetheless  exist. Other people see hyperspace as a theoretical construct of mathematics that doesn’t describe anything in reality, pointing to the lack of evidence of other dimensions.

Tesseracts Predate Computer-assisted Modelling.

A Tesseract. Many people in the advanced math classrooms of my generation of high school students struggled to wrap their heads around tesseracts without moving diagrams. If a picture is worth a thousand words are we talking animated gifs and words used to describe three dimensional space or should we make up a new saying?

We are able to conceptualize three dimensions in the abstract when we watch TV, look at a painting, or play a video-game. Anytime we look at a screen we watch a two dimensional image from a point outside that dimension. Having an outside point of view for a three dimensional space could give us a way to artificially understand a higher spatial dimension. Until that time comes, we are sort of stuck explaining fourth dimensions by demonstrating how it would look on a two dimensional screen which we view from a third dimensional viewpoint.

It’s kind of like imagining “one million”; you can prove it mathematically to yourself, you can count to it and you know how valuable it is but you can’t truly picture one million of anything. Trying to explain this conceptualization problem with words is pretty tough because your brain is not equipped to handle it. Humans try to wrap their minds around it and dream up ways to explain hyperspace to each other anyways.

4D Rubix Puzzle

A rubix cube is particularly compelling as a multi-dimensional teaching tool, because it puts spacial dimensions in the abstract in the first place, and then gives the cube the ability to change the dimensional orientation of a third of it’s mass. It’s hard to wrap your head around a normal three dimensional rubix puzzle. By adding another dimension and using the same principle, one can ALMOST imagine that fourth spacial dimension. Most people can’t solve a three dimensional Rubix puzzle but if you think you are ready for the fourth dimension, you can download it and play it on your two dimensional screen, here: Magic Cube 4D

If you don’t think you’re ready to try and solve that puzzle but you want to know more you can watch this roughly 1/2 hour video about it:

Miegakure

While Miegakure is still under development, it’s set for release in 2015. Interactive games like this can spur collaborative thinking from a larger pool of collaborators – and make game developers tons of money.

If you want something a little less abstract than Rubix, check out this prototype for Miegakure, the surreal PlayStation 4 game that lets the user explore a four dimensionally capable world through three dimensional spaces that connect to each other through higher dimensions. It’s a great idea that makes everyone have the initial thought of wondering how the heck they coded it. Then the idea sinks in and you realize they wrote the code first and played with the visual manifestation as they went. It’s a great metaphor for the idea in the first place; begins as a concept rather than an observation. The essence of the argument against hyperspace actually existing is the lack of physical evidence. Unlike a ghost story or a spiritual, religious attempt to explain the supernatural, there is actually mathematical evidence that seems to make higher dimensions possible. It has logical evidence as opposed to empirical data. There are ways to observe without using human senses but it’s difficult to prove an observation of something the majority of humans have trouble even seeing with their mind’s eye, so to speak.

One day we might be able to use technology to increase our understanding of this abstract concept, and manipulate an entirely new kind of media. For now we are stuck with two and three dimensional visual aids and an mental block put in place by aeons of evolution.

 Read More about Hyperspace on Cosmoso.net~!
Jonathan Howard
Jonathan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY

Physics Concepts Intuitively Understood Through Skateboarding

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People constantly manipulate technology without formal training but are not always able to explain what they know.

You probably aren’t surprised skateboarders haven’t been using proper physics terms to teach each other sick tricks. Try to wrap your head around Taylor Bray wrapping the board around his front foot while also turning his body around 360 degrees in this short youtube video:

Sometimes it’s almost like only the skater knows what’s going on with the board. As if to prove my point, the title of this video was written by someone who can’t even seem to label the trick. When I was a kid, wrapping the board around your foot like that was called an “impossible”. I originally encountered the clip on facebook with the trick labeled “front foot impossible craze”, making a total of three attempts to describe how Taylor Bray is spinning his body and the skateboard.

Here are some physics concepts Bray obviously understands without having to verbally prove himself:

Leverage. Most flip tricks start with an ollie, leveraging the board up into the air by tapping the end hard against the ground.

Friction. The top of the skateboard has grip tape to increase friction and make it stick to the soft rubber sneakers. The bottom of the skateboard has wheels to make it roll back and forth but not slide as much side to side. This trick doesn’t play to much with sliding friction but tons of tricks play with the various levels of slipperiness and stickiness a skateboard offers.

Potential energy. Bray is popping the board up with an Ollie but there’s also. A newer skateboard deck has “pop” which is basically when the wood is at its most springy. By kicking the board hard against the “ground”(in this case, the ramp), he can make the board bounce up into the air with him when he jumps. The more a skateboard is used it loses its pop.

Gravity. That brief instant where he kicks the end of the board into the ground allows him to jump and escape gravity. An Ollie let’s him bring the board up with him. Gravity always pulls things down at the same rate, making it easy to estimate how much time Bray has to perform the trick. The subsequent slow motion shots of the same trick allow the viewer to analyze the trick but the first version in the clip shows how fast gravity pulls Bray back toward the Earth, giving him about one second to pull off the impossible.

More rolling friction. When he gets the board in the air, he rolls it around his front foot. This trick was called an “impossible” when I was a kid in the 90’s but it’s basically wrapping the board around his front foot using rolling friction.

Inertia. Bray is using inertia in several ways. He is using the speed he has to travel up the ramp against gravity. He’s using the direction the ramp sent him in to help him continue up into the air after the Ollie. Inertia comes into play in a few small ways while he is in the air manipulating the board with his feet. When he finally lands, he continues in the direction he was already going, and it is important that he points the wheels in the approximate direction of that momentum so his inertia doesn’t throw him off balance.

Rotation. Bray is analyzing two different axises in quick succession. First he is rolling the skateboard around that foot in a move where the axis is outside the board itself, then he is catching it with his feet and rotating himself and the board on a vertical axis 360 degrees, landing in the same direction he was facing before the trick began.

In the box above, I stuck to physics concepts. There are additional science concepts at work in this example, such as muscle memory, spatial cognition, coordination, time perception and sense of balance.

A really common technical flip trick is the 360 flip. A 360 flip spins the board on 2 axises at once. In order to perform the move, a skateboarder has to conceptualize the simultaneous rotations before actually kicking them into place, and the rotations are often too complex for a layman to follow.

The next age of enlightenment could require humans to quickly communicate complicated concepts despite only possessing an intuitive understanding.

Consciousness and the human brain is a relatively young field of study. We are starting to understand what is happening in the brain when we perform complex physical tasks like a frontside 360 front foot impossible. Soon we might be able to identify the intuitive understanding of the related physics concepts and allow someone like Bray to access the verbal explanations of these physical principles as freely as he applies them to reality.

I’ll leave Cosmoso.net readers with this thought about language in skateboarding:

In the 90's, a newer, more symmetrical skateboard design allowed for a new school of technical flip tricks. As designs do when they've reached near perfection, the new school skateboard changes within a very narrow parameter based on current trends in skateboarding - the design has plateaued. Skate tricks are a folk art that are learned from advice from peers and pros. The communication about how to pull off a given trick comes in the form of an esoteric language that changes over time. The names for new and developing styles of tech tricks are different in different social circles, evolve and change over time, and seldom utilize proper physics vocabulary. Skateboarding remains a great way to demonstrate intuitively understood, applied physics.

 
Jonathan Howard
Jonathan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY

The Ancient Technology of Mirrors

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Mirrors out perform most modern image technologies in terms of resolution, efficiency and user experience.

The technology to understand and manipulate light took centuries to develop, and happened independently across many different cultures. Mirrors have helped to shape the modern human mind while also furthering our understanding of math and science. They are an impressive holdover from the analogue age that doesn’t require electricity yet can produce replicated, moving images at a resolution higher than the human eye can perceive. Cosmoso takes a look at the history of this uniquely high tech piece of our global, human ancestry.

Developing Reflective Tech Before Recorded History

Like a lot of ancient technologies, people were able to develop and perfect image reflection without fully understanding the principles and materials they were manipulating. Creating a mirror in a time before modern science took different paradigms of understanding, such as alchemy, superstition and religious belief.

Human technologies are often inspired by nature. Our ancestors often pondered the meaning of the reflective properties they no doubt noticed in pools of water. When water is flowing, falling or otherwise in turmoil, the light it reflects is scattered but a calm pool of water with a dark surface below it shows a reflection.

Technologies often lead to further inspiration, and the advent of metal smelting and the discovery of glass and crystal lead to a variety of reflective properties humans were able to control. Archeologists have found man made mirrors made of polished obsidian, a natural volcanic glass dated back to 6000 BC in ancient Turkey.

Thousands of years after stone reflective mirrors were created, mirrors made of polished copper were made by ancient Mesopotamians dated to 4000 BC, one thousand years before Egyptians discovered copper smelting and discovered copper reflection on their own, at about 3000 before Christ.

Other types of polished stone mirrors have been found in Central and South America much later around 2000 BC. Ancient Americans developed tech on a later timeline because the land was developed later in the planet’s history by nomadic people who often abandoned technology to live off the land while nomadically exploring previously uninhabited lands.

Aztec_mirror,_Museo_de_América,_Madrid

In times when the only access to your own reflection was an enigmatic piece of polished obsidian, the sense of self was a psychological leap away from modern man’s. Obsidian mirrors were used by various cultures to scry or predict the future, and mirrors of stone were thought to possess magic powers.

Chinese Technology: Far Ahead of the West

Around the time when the Americas were still developing stone technologies, bronze mirrors were being manufactured in 2000 BC China. China was very technologically developed at this time, and able to smelt and create a variety of metals, compounds and amalgams, including a bronze. There are many archeological finds attributed by forensics to Chinese “Qijia” culture. Proprietary secrets forced mirror tech to diverge, and it’s possible to find examples of mirrors made from various metal alloys such as copper and tin, at the same time other parts of Asia were still simply polishing copper smelted from the earth.  The tin, copper alloy found in China and India is called speculum metal, which would have been very expensive to produce in it’s time.

mirror-03-238x300Speculum metal coated mirrors brought such a high analogue resolution that people could understand what they looked like, which affected fashion and hairstyles but also began to affect other artforms like dancing and martial arts. Philosophical concepts such as duality, other worlds and multiplicity were suddenly easy to explain via analogy with the help of a mirror.

Manipulation of one’s own facial expression, slight of hand and other practiced mannerisms were now able to be studied and documented, creating new layers to the fabric of civilization.

For all of this cultural development, there was no scientific analyzation of why a mirror worked or the light it was reflecting. Before mirror technology could be advanced, there needed to be written, thoughtful investigation of why the tech worked in the first place. This was a slow process in any ancient tech but in a time before light waves and chemistry was understood, it was extremely slow. The earliest written work studying the way light reflects came from Diocles, a Greek mathematician and author of On Burning Mirrors who lived 240 BC – c. 180 BC. Illiteracy and language barriers slowed the technological development of concave and convex curved mirrors another few hundred years.greek math

Mathematics and mirrors will always have a reciprocal relationship, with math and science allowing humanity to dream up new ways of manipulating light and mirrors allowing that manipulation to inspire new questions and explanations. What was once considered magic became the study of the world we inhabit as  technology took root in the physical and psychological world humans are trapped in.

Another technological breakthrough happened in ancient Lebanon when metal-backed glass mirrors were finally invented, first century AD. Roman author Pliny wrote his famous work, “Natural History” in 77 AD, where he mentions gold-leafed glass mirrors, though none from that time have survived. Most Roman mirrors were glass coated with lead which might have used the same technological process and just been much cheaper than gold.

ptolemy's optics

Discovering the text On Burning Mirrors, Greco-Egyptian writer, Ptolemy, began to experiment with curved polished iron mirrors. He was able to peak the interest of wealthy benefactors and study with impunity. His writings discuss plane, convex spherical, and concave spherical mirrors. This was circa 90 AD. The image above describes light passing through a cylindrical glass of water.

Silvered Glass & the Modern Age:

Silver-mercury amalgams were found in archeological digs and antique collections dating back to 500 AD China. Renaissance Europeans traded with the known world, perfecting a tin-mercury amalgam and developing the most reflective surfaces known until the 1835 invention of silvered-glass mirrors. Historical records seem to credit German chemist Justus von Liebig with silvered glass but glassworkers guild records obscure the story behind it. Silvered glass coats metallic silver on the back of the reflective glass by utilizing silver nitrate in the dawning of applied chemistry. Silver is expensive but the layer is so thin, and the process so reliable that affordable mirrors began to show up in working class households across the planet ever since.

 
Jonathan Howard
Jonathan is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY

Choose Your Future

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Like many, my friend Paul stepped out of college and has struggled to find jobs with decent wages.

It is hard for Paul and his family to make ends meet, much less balance the increasing costs of baseball, soccer and other expenses required to enable his son to take advantage of opportunities.

Paul is part of a growing number of Americans who are considered “underemployed”. He has tremendous social skills but does not have the college degree needed to advance in his current employment.

Now, a new law that provides career development support offers hope for Paul and others in his situation.

In July 2014, President Obama signed the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act (WIOA) which will go into effect in Summer 2015. This supersedes the Workforce Investment Act WIA of 1988, which was enacted to support employment services provided in “one-stop” job centers and local workforce development agencies.

The new law expands performance measures beyond merely placing people in jobs. It includes career and education planning so as to take advantage of higher paying job opportunities.

WIOA will provide access to quality career development programs throughout life so as to enable people to identify career goals and build skills through further education and training.

Since 2008, my colleagues at the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth and I have been studying career development programs that provide personalized career and education planning skills.

Our research indicates that once supported in developing career goals, youth with and without disabilities were found to naturally select more rigorous courses, identify two and four-year programs to pursue, and seek out volunteer and other work opportunities to become employable in those careers.

Students identify their own goals

It is never too late to start. And even a two-year college plan provides a range of programs that will enable Paul and others in his situation to move into higher paying occupations.

For my friend Paul, this may mean completing a few college courses to move into a higher paying job within his organization. For others, it may mean a longer term commitment to education. Either way, the goal is helping each person define his/her career goals and find the education pathway to get there.

In our research, we found that the best programs encourage students to explore and identify their own interests. In the process, students become aware of the wide range of occupations that match those interests and come to identify learning opportunities needed to enter those occupations.

Technology is being used to support career development efforts.
Book image via www.shutterstock.com

To achieve these goals, technology is being used in ways that support these efforts. For instance, Paul and I were able to use his current job to quickly map his favorite skills to a range of higher paying occupations using an online career information system available here in Massachusetts. The federal government also has a free system available.

Using the online system, we found two-year and four-year colleges that were nearby and would enable Paul to be promoted within his company or become attractive to other employers.

Once Paul took the initiative, these tools helped him learn how he could move up in his organization. His current employer agreed to pay for a good part of his education as well.

In other words, the WIOA enables those who want to take the initiative to develop new skills and move on to new careers that are commensurate with those skills.

Career development for staff

While WIOA holds immense promise, the irony is that there are few career development opportunities for the staff of organizations working with WIOA. And career development prospects of these staff members is a big concern for researchers.

To be fair, many staff members within these agencies and organizations do possess the advanced degrees or certification needed to offer career planning and counseling services. But many do not.

The education pathway for their staff would include gaining a graduate degree in counseling or a certificate in Career Facilitation from the National Career Development Association (NCDA). This is not a simple task, but it offers an opportunity for higher education institutions to design a certification process.

Through this, we hope that they, like my friend Paul, will be able to receive an increased salary that is commensurate with these advanced skills. These steps will help recognize the critical role of workforce development professionals in improving quality of life for the people they serve.

And, just like my friend Paul who now has found his own opportunities, we hope that through this new law, many underemployed American workers find access to the high paying jobs to which they aspire.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Do classroom mobile devices really improve learning?

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Mobile devices as teaching tools are becoming a more and more common part of the American education experience in classrooms, from preschool through graduate school. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 58% of U.S. teachers own smartphones — 10 percentage points higher than the national average for adults. Those teachers are building that tech-savviness into their lesson plans, too, by embracing bring-your-own-device policies and leading the push for an iPad for every student. In 2013, an estimated 25% of U.S. schools had BYOD policies in place and it’s reasonable to assume those numbers have risen in the past two years.

What do these mobile devices really add, though? Is there more to this tech trend than just grabbing the attention of students? Is mobile technology boosting classroom instruction, or is it all just a flashy way to accomplish the same things as analog instruction?

Research finds benefits of mobile technology

That same Pew Research Center survey asked a group of Advanced Placement and National Writing Project teachers about the educational impact of Internet technology in the classroom. Here’s what those teachers had to say about mobile technology specifically:

  • 73% of the teachers reported using mobile technology in their classrooms, either through their own instruction or by allowing students to use it to complete assignments
  • English teachers are more likely to use mobile technology in the classroom than math teachers
  • 47% of teachers strongly agreed, and an additional 44% somewhat agreed, that students need digital literacy courses to be successful academically and beyond.

Even little pupils use tablets in some lesson plans.
abg_colegio, CC BY

As far back as 2010, reports were surfacing that mobile apps are not only engaging, but educational, for children as young as preschool. PBS Kids, in partnership with the US Department of Education, found that the vocabulary of kids ages three to seven who played its Martha Speaks mobile app improved up to 31%. Abilene Christian University conducted research around the same time that found math students who used the iOS app “Statistics 1” saw improvement in their final grades. They were also more motivated to finish lessons on mobile devices than through traditional textbooks and workbooks.

More recently, two studies that separately followed fifth and eighth graders who used tablets for learning in class and at home found that learning experiences improved across the board. 35% of the 8th graders said that they were more interested in their teachers’ lessons or activities when they used their tablet, and the students exceeded teachers’ academic expectations when using the devices. When self-reporting, 54% of students say they get more involved in classes that use technology and 55% say they wish instructors used more educational games or simulations to teach lessons.

My own college students report back from student teaching in P-12 classrooms and say kids do seem to respond well to the stimulus of mobile devices. They stay on task, they correct mistakes in real-time and, most importantly, they get excited about learning.

The teacher’s at the front of the room – is anyone listening?
technolibrary, CC BY-NC

Mobile devices also bring challenges

Alongside the benefits, mobile devices certainly come with their share of complications. Teacher authority, for example, is one area that can easily be undermined when mobile technology is allowed in classrooms. One of the often-mentioned benefits of mobile devices in classrooms is that they allow simultaneous work to take place — but does that undercut the master lesson plan?

There is also the question of cost. Of course there’s a price associated with schools purchasing the technology (and bringing teachers up to speed). But even having kids bring their own devices can be an issue. Bring-your-own-device policies may draw attention to situations where some students are more privileged than others, and there is always the potential for theft.

Tech policies are also more difficult to implement on personal electronics than on school-owned ones. A tablet that is owned by a particular school district, for example, can come pre-installed with the right programs and apps and not allow for any outside play. A device that goes home with a student, however, can’t have the same rules.

There are privacy issues to consider, too, especially now that tracking cookies are so prevalent on personal mobile devices. Do we really want third parties following our students on their learning paths? And should teachers have access to what students do on their mobile devices when outside the classroom?

Where they engage, mobile devices can help.
Waag Society, CC BY-NC-SA

Mobile tech in classrooms: what works?

Simply using mobile technology in the classroom does not guarantee a rise in comprehension or even the attention of students. So what types of mobile technology use make the most sense for classrooms?

• E-readers. Part of the issue with traditional textbooks is that they’re so quickly outdated, both regarding subject matter and which formats best reach readers. E-readers eliminate that issue and allow real-time updates that are useful to students and teachers immediately, not the next school year when the new textbook is released.

• Individual mobile modules. Within educational apps and games are options for individual student logins. This gives students the chance to work at their own pace, taking extra time in the areas where they need it most.

• Text-response programs. Websites that allow teachers to send homework or test questions to students via text, and then ask for responses, do result in a more interactive approach to learning. Most of the programs that facilitate this technology allow for real-time feedback on the answers, allowing students to learn from mistakes and put it all in context in the moment. Pew Research found that American teens send an average of 60 text messages per day, making this an effective way to reach students in a medium that is close to universally used. The OneVille Project has tracked teachers and their experiences with texting high school students and has found that students become more motivated to come to school and to complete work on time when they have text message access to teachers.

• Seamless cloud learning. Using mobile technology that is connected to the cloud means that students can transition from working in the classroom to working at home — or anywhere else — easily, as long as they have access to a phone, tablet or computer. This saves time and improves organizational skills for students.

When it’s good, it can be very, very good….
technolibrary, CC BY-NC

Mobile learning can and does make a positive difference in how students learn, and it’s not just because of the “cool” factor. When used the right way, mobile technology has the potential to help students learn more and comprehend that knowledge.

In an ideal world, every student would have his or her own mobile device that syncs information between school and home, those devices would stay on task and the students would see significant gains in their academic achievement. Real-life classrooms are never picture perfect, though, not for any learning initiative.

Mobile devices are not a silver bullet. In 1995, Steve Jobs famously said that the problems facing education need more than technology to be fixed. Competent, engaged teachers are more necessary than ever in the Information Age, and balancing mobile educational advantages with healthy teaching interaction is the key to maximizing the worth of both.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.