As part of his role as Alison CEO, Mike Feerick travels around the world promoting Alison’s goal of free universal education and encouraging projects, big and small, that share Alison’s ethos.
While the majority of our 21 million Learners engage with Alison independently as they empower themselves through self-learning, many organisations around the world use Alison as part of their own initiatives to promote accessible education.
While in the UAE last month, Mike came across another fantastic example of how Alison is helping organisations around the world make a real difference through free learning.
“One of the fun things I get to do as CEO of Alison is to travel the world meeting our learners wherever I go. Last month, I spoke at RewirEd 2021, an education conference in Dubai. After my talk, I was approached by Shadia Abdullah, the founder and Director of Rawafed Development & Learning Centre in Sharjah in the UAE.
Shadia told me that the Rawafed Centre has been using Alison for many years. The centre educates the children of migrant workers who come to the UAE who fall out of the education system. She and her team focus on teaching these young people basic literacy skills in Arabic and English, as well as basic mathematics. This gives them a chance of to rejoin the public schooling system or enter the workforce. Shadia said that Alison was useful in training the many teachers that she has working in the school – allowing them in turn teach English and Mathematics to their students.
Shadia said her teachers were delighted to hear that she had met me and so I asked her how far her school was from the conference. Long story short, Shadia and I visited the school the following morning at 8am before we returned to the conference. Visiting the centre was a real eye-opener. We often hear stories of migrant workers being exploited in the Middle East but we rarely hear about how local Arab people – equally dissatisfied with the situation – are trying in their own way to make things better through education.”
Teaching Teachers how to Teach
The Rawafed Centre in Sharjah is a fantastic example of how Alison is used by organisations not just to educate students, but to train teachers. Over the last year, Alison has greatly increased the resources available for the training of educators, through the creation of our Teaching Hub and the launch of the Alison Career Guide, which features career paths for a wide range of educational jobs, including:
When something goes wrong with a business’ website, how does it get fixed? You may imagine IT staff scrambling into a server room, fumbling through wires, sparks flying and choice vocabulary filling the air. Today, this kind of chaos can be avoided with site reliability engineering (SRE).
SRE is all about using technology to ensure organizations’ websites work 24/7. While that doesn’t rule out the occasional server room rush, Site Reliability Engineers work to minimize the time, effort, and resources needed to keep a company’s site up and running.
Read on to learn what a Site Reliability Engineer does, the techniques they use, what they’re paid, and how our courses can help you launch your career as an SRE.
How does site reliability solve problems?
A Site Reliability Engineer uses software solutions to ensure users have a good experience with a company’s website. Along with using software, Site Reliability Engineers may also manually perform reactive fixes to problems.
These differ from proactive fixes, which are typically engineered using software. Let’s dig a little deeper into these two kinds of solutions.
The differences between reactive and proactive site engineering
Reactive site engineering addresses issues that pop up with internal or external users of a company’s site. In other words, someone has a problem, and the Site Engineer has to figure out a way to fix it. Problems could involve:
Access to the site.
The functionality of a specific aspect of the site, such as an online shopping cart.
Issues with the site’s functionality, such as when someone clicks on a link, and it leads them to the wrong place or a 404 error.
Reactive site engineering is all about fixing these and other kinds of problems that can pop up at any given time.
Ideally, proactive site engineering forms the bulk of a Site Engineer’s job. And, when done right, proactive measures can significantly reduce the amount of reactive work that has to be done. Proactive site engineering may involve technologies such as:
Observability platforms.
Visibility technologies.
Self-healing network technologies, like those that address network problems by automatically shifting traffic or resources.
Root cause analysis (RCA) technologies and techniques, which are used to identify the source of a problem.
A Site Engineer identifies, deploys, and manages technologies that do much or all of this kind of work automatically.
For example, suppose a business has an e-commerce site to sell sneakers. The front end of the site relies on several dependencies to function. For example, the checkout process needs to pull information from a database regarding a repeat customer’s name, address, email address, shipping address, and credit card number.
A Site Reliability Engineer can use a root cause analysis (RCA) solution that identifies when a malfunction inside one of these databases causes a problem in the checkout process. The RCA system will send out an alert so admins can quickly address the problem and get the checkout process working again. An SRE can save the company many thousands of dollars this way — even over the course of a few hours.
Site reliability engineering skills
To become a Site Reliability Engineer, you need to have a background in coding and the languages used by System Administrators to manage network components and design effective solutions. We offer courses that focus on several of the languages used by SREs, including:
Plus, as a site reliability engineer, you need to be:
An effective problem-solver and critical thinker, able to identify the root causes of issues quickly and accurately.
Able to perform well under pressure. Often, time is not on your side as an SRE.
Able to understand networks, how they work, and how to protect them.
A Site Reliability Engineer needs to understand how software solutions work, what causes them to fail, and how to balance the implementation of new features and maintain the stability of a web app.
For instance, the dev team may want to launch an awesome new feature that can take the company’s site to another level. But if, as the Site Reliability Engineer, you think the new features may make the site less stable, you need to be able to explain and demonstrate why.
SRE salaries
Site Reliability Engineers make around $127,718 a year in the U.S., keeping a business’ digital assets available and advising dev teams on how to enhance stability. The amount you make as an SRE will vary significantly based on the company you work for. For instance, an SRE at Google makes an average of $151,470 a year, while at IBM, the average pay range is around $119,767.
If you’re just getting started as an SRE, your salary may be closer to $90,000 a year or slightly less. Either way, considering your earning potential, it’s a good idea to dive in because your pay can skyrocket as you get more experience.
How to become a Site Reliability Engineer
To become a Site Reliability Engineer, you’ll want to educate yourself on how networks and web applications work, as well as the programming languages used to design solutions for them. Along with the courses listed above, aspiring Site Reliability Engineers should consider taking our Back-End Engineer Career Path. This will give you a foundational understanding of the back-end technologies that power software solutions.
Once you have the knowledge you need to ensure the reliability of sites, you’ll need to gain some experience. No two apps are quite alike, especially when it comes to the dependencies that power them. So, it’s important to gain exposure to as many different kinds of web apps and network configurations as you can.
Our courses, Skill Paths, and Career Paths are a great place to start your SRE journey. You’ll gain the knowledge required to keep businesses up and running and build an impressive portfolio of your work. Sign up now to get started.
The latest seasons of many television shows are returning this winter.
What new or returning shows are you most excited for? What was the last great show you binged? Have you ever been surprised by how much you enjoyed a certain TV show? Why?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
A French bulldog named Mathew — wait, shouldn’t that be Mathieu? — won the nonsporting group, and an Old English Sheepdog called Connor was judged the best of the herding entries. (He also looked big enough to eat a couple of them if the result had not gone his way.)
On Saturday night, the judges at the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show whittled hundreds of entries down to four group winners. On Sunday — with judging in three more groups — the field will winnow to the final seven dogs who will compete for Best in Show.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word winnow in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how winnow can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Have you heard of “sleep accounts” on social media that catch students dozing off in class? Why do you think they are popular right now?
Have you ever appeared on a sleep account or other account related to school culture? If so, what were you doing in the photo? How did you feel about it? Have you ever posted a photo of another student doing something unintentionally funny?
In “The Latest High School Prank? It’s a Snooze,” Katherine Rosman writes about the rise of “school accounts,” which catch students dozing off in class, slouching, parking their cars poorly or otherwise being at less than their best for social media fodder. The article begins:
Zach Lewis swears he was just resting his eyes.
But when a fellow student at Stowe Middle High School in Vermont surreptitiously snapped his picture during English class and shared it with the school’s “sleep account,” it was hard to dispute the evidence. There he was, book open, lids shut.
After Zach was tagged in the photo on Instagram, he sent a message to the people who manage the account to remove it. They quickly deleted it. “I wasn’t worried about a teacher seeing it,” Zach, 16, said. “It’s just embarrassing to have it up there.”
But that didn’t stop him from secretly photographing another student who fell asleep in English, then submitting it to the account for publication.
“Everyone,” Zach said, “has been trying to catch each other.”
Part prank, part extracurricular documentary project, sleep accounts are among several types of so-called school accounts that have proliferated on Instagram in recent months, as students have returned to classrooms following two disrupted academic years. After many months of pandemic-mandated remote instruction, teenagers have come to regard such banalities as their classmates eating, slouching and parking badly as fodder for amusement — and, of course, content.
The article — which also quoted Ash Saple, a 17-year-old junior at Hamilton Southeastern High School, in Fishers, Ind. — offers some explanation for the popularity of school accounts, and the intention behind them:
The students behind these accounts say they are mostly a harmless trend, predicated on the novelty of being in the same physical space as their classmates again. There is also a poignancy to the accounts; as many students head out for winter break amid a national surge in Covid-19 cases, there is some uncertainty about whether in-person instruction will resume in January.
“On your computer in your bedroom, you can’t see people napping and you don’t see how badly people park their cars because no one left their house,” Ash said. “There are so many things that you forget about that are just normal things that we’re now able to notice.”
The account that posted the photo of Zach appearing to doze off in class in Vermont is run by two sophomores, Teague Barnett and Andrew Weber, both 15. They had seen on Instagram and TikTok that other students at schools had started slouching and “bathroom feet” accounts.
They decided to create one themselves: a sleep account in which anyone who wished to have their photo removed would be respected. “There is a high school cliché that everyone is falling asleep in class and this account is here to poke fun at that,” Andrew said.
The boys see it as a lark. “A lot of the things that are fun to high schoolers are risqué and things parents wouldn’t be OK with,” Teague said. “But this is a good way to escape and play a little prank and no one is getting hurt.”
Parents seem to agree. “It’s great to have the kids back in school and able to poke fun and have a good chuckle,” said Andrew’s father, Chris Weber. He sees it as a reflection of a generation that has grown up with smartphones and social media, observing and being observed.
“They document their entire lives,” Mr. Weber said. “And they’re very comfortable being seen by their peers at almost any moment.”
Are school accounts popular at your school? Why do you think they have suddenly become so ubiquitous?
Are you a fan of these kinds of accounts? Do they “keep everyone on edge” as one student said, or are they all in good fun? What is one quote from the article that best captures your thoughts about school accounts?
Do you think there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to capturing and sharing images of things that students do? If so, what should be off limits? Why?
If a person who had no affiliation with your school saw social media accounts devoted to showing everyday life there, what impressions would they get? What doesn’t get reflected? What gets overemphasized?
You read about a school account that captures “good parkers, bad parkers, cute outfits, shoes, fast walkers, slow walkers and red-haired students.” What is missing from this list that might be of interest to students at your school?
Could school accounts build a greater sense of belonging or increase school spirit? Why or why not?
Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
In 1911, someone checked out a copy of the book “New Chronicles of Rebecca” by Kate Douglas Wiggin from a library in Boise, Idaho. It was not returned until 110 years later in November 2021 — in immaculate condition.
In this lesson, you will learn about the journey of this book and librarians’ response to its mysterious return. Then, you will discuss the importance of public libraries and practice tagging archival materials as part of a citizen archivist project to learn more about the way libraries are cataloged.
Warm-Up
In your journal, reflect on a time that you found something you had thought was lost forever.
How did it feel when the item first went missing? What circumstances allowed you to recover the item? How did you feel when you finally found it again?
1. What is so special about the journey of the book “New Chronicles of Rebecca”?
2. What do librarians know about the book’s return? What remains unclear?
3. What questions do you have about the book and its time away from the library?
4. What is one theory that librarians have about the book and its return? What do you think? How might the book have remained in such good condition while being checked out for so long?
5. What makes this copy of “New Chronicles of Rebecca” unique? What also makes it ordinary?
Going Further
Option 1: Tell us about your experiences with libraries.
Respond to one or more of the following questions in writing or in a discussion with a partner:
Do you use your public library or your school library? What do you use it for? If you use neither, why is that?
Has your local library ever encountered a mystery like the return of “New Chronicles of Rebecca”? If so, what was it? Was it ever solved? What questions do you have about it?
The article mentioned that many libraries are now getting rid of overdue fines. Do you think this is a good policy? Or should libraries charge patrons when books are returned late? Why?
How important do you think public libraries are? Do you think it is important for communities to have free physical spaces where all types of people can congregate? Is it necessary for all people to have free access to books and other resources that libraries offer? Or, with so many things moving online these days, are libraries less important than they once were?
Option 2: Try a citizen archivist project.
To ensure that books and historical artifacts are easily accessible to the public, libraries use metadata — language that describes what is included in a collection — to catalog items and help people find them. Learning about it can help you better understand library science.
Try your hand at using metadata by participating in a citizen archivist project for the Adler Planetarium. The project asks you to tag digitized items to help the planetarium organize their resources and help people find them.
Tag at least five items. Then, reflect on your experience with these prompts:
What was your experience tagging the images and artifacts? How often did you have to create your own tags?
How important do you think tagging is for members of the public who need to find books or archival materials?
What biases might individual taggers have when doing this work? How might that affect users of the catalog trying to find different historical artifacts?
Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.
Alison is proud to announce the launch of the Disaster Management Hub in association with Catalyst 2030. The hub brings together crucial and potentially life-saving information both on how individuals can survive disasters and how organisations can better respond to and resource disaster situations.
Catalyst 2030 is an organisation of social entrepreneurs united in their commitment to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Catalyst 2030 is composed of various dedicated groups specialising in particular areas. The Disaster Management Group, chaired by Alan Braithwaite, has worked closely with Alison in creating this unique and free resource that aims to radically alter how we respond to disasters.
The Alison Blog spoke to Alan about the fundamental roles that both social enterprise and education have to play in reshaping disaster relief.
Hi Alan, can you tell us a bit about the aims of Catalyst 2030 and your role in the organisation?
Catalyst 2030 is a movement of social entrepreneurs across the world who are coming together to try and have a significant impact on the achievement of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The proposition is that, compared to top-down government actions, social entrepreneurs on the ground can make a disproportionate difference in promoting and implementing change.
Catalyst 2030 came together just two years ago and already we’ve attracted over a thousand members. We’re sponsored and funded by some of the most significant charitable foundations in the world – Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation, the Scholl Foundation, Echoing Green and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well.
Catalyst 2030 is built around both geographical groups and groups who come together around various conceptual or operational issues. I’m chairing the group on Disaster Management, organised around what we’ve called the three R’s of disaster: readiness, response and recovery.
We’re trying to craft and define a role for social entrepreneurs in the global system of how the world deals with disasters. There’s no question from the research that we’ve done that the way in which the world copes with disasters is broken. It’s characterised by not being as prepared for the obvious scenarios as one could be, arriving late, bringing the wrong things, leaving before people have had a chance to recover and all of the associated and well-documented questions of white colonial judgements as to what is good for people on the ground.
How did this collaboration between Catalyst 2030 and Alison come about?
Mike Feerick, Alison’s CEO, is a member of Catalyst and we identified very early on that there was a lack of both knowledge and access to knowledge for social entrepreneurs, agencies and authorities in terms of what needed to be done in disaster and potential disaster situations. So Mike stuck his hand up and said Alison is one of the largest online providers of educational resources and knowledge. Also, while Alison is a for-profit social enterprise, they don’t charge the ultimate user so it’s free at the point of use. And so Mike offered this amazing organisation’s capability up to the group. So Alison has created, discovered and consolidated a relevant body of knowledge into a Disaster Management Hub that is easy to access.
Why is education so vital for disaster management?
If you’re in a disaster, it’s likely that you’ll never have encountered one before so having the ability to access basic information on what’s happening, and what would be good or not good to do, is really important. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that we’re trying to create an organisational framework so that social entrepreneurs can be a credible resource in the disaster relief chain. We need resources and information to be made available so that social entrepreneurs, who haven’t necessarily dealt with disasters before, can pivot to help and leverage their resources. They need access to knowledge and understanding in the easiest possible way and so that’s the value in the Disaster Management Hub.
How do you hope to see the Disaster Management Hub on Alison work?
The Disaster Management Hub carves out a specific space for information that we can then promote easily. It will also help us to invite contributions and attract partners to the project. We’ve found that was there’s actually a lot of courses already on Alison that are extremely relevant. The hub allows us to centralise those resources and then expand them.
What role do you think social enterprises can play on the ground in disaster situations?
Social enterprises are generally speaking local. They’re on the ground, they’re trusted and they exist with the consent of their community. If and when disaster strikes, they’re already there. They very often have relationships with local government and therefore they’re in a position to pivot and offer support with logistics, resources and organisation much more quickly than external organisations.
We know from all of the anecdotes that when disaster strikes it often takes three or four days for the big agencies to start to appear because they often spend time competing with each other for resources, rather than worrying about the people that are affected.
If the people on the ground can be better organised through the capabilities of social entrepreneurs, then the international resources can be better informed and the relief will be more relevant, targeted and effective.
What are the next necessary steps in setting up Catalyst 2030’S Disaster Management Group?
We’ve got a clear strategic plan now and we’re in the process of creating a full-blown programme. Having formalised the training and education, we now have to devise an operating protocol so everybody knows what their role is in the future system.
Alongside education we’ve obviously also got to build partnerships. We need to create an understanding as to what the information and communications technology infrastructure will be to support information flow in a disaster situation and how that can be managed.
We also need to explore how we make funding available. For example, if an area is particularly prone to disasters then maybe there are things they can invest in that will both mitigate that and also produce a return. There’s a lot of experience now in impact investments and that’s something we’ve got to integrate into our operating system.
Have you ever wondered how CEOs of big development companies oversee all of the apps their companies produce? Well, they don’t. That’s what Project Managers (PMs) are for.
Without Project Managers, all you have are high-level ideas and programmers trying to make them happen. Project Managers form the bridge between ideas and apps. Read on to learn how much Project Managers make, how their salaries vary by location and experience, and their daily responsibilities.
How much do Project Managers make?
In the U.S., a Project Manager makes around $88,907 on average. But, your salary will vary greatly depending on the company you’re with and the area in which you work.
There are also different kinds of Project Managers, and their salaries vary considerably. For instance, people with the title “IT Project Manager” earn significantly more, with salaries averaging $104,126 a year. This is likely because IT Project Managers may have more technical responsibilities, and the value of the products they create justifies a higher salary.
How much do Project Managers make at different companies?
As mentioned, your salary may also rise or drop based on the company you work for. The responsibilities involved and budget constraints vary greatly from one company to the next, so it makes sense that Project Managers’ salaries vary with them.
For example, a manager at Wipro makes a little less than average — around $80,443. Meanwhile, a Project Manager at Cisco Systems brings home a salary of $134,065. It’s important to remember that because each company’s projects are so different, what they pay their Project Managers will vary just as much.
The key, then, is to choose a company whose products align with your skillset. For example, if you want to focus on applications written in JavaScript and C++, you may want to gear your search towards companies whose applications are built using these or similar languages.
To gain both training and experience with JavaScript and C++, check out the courses below:
How much do Project Managers make in the Northeast?
Project Managers tend to make a little more in the Northeast than they do in much of the country. This is because the Northeast is home to many big-name companies who reward their employees handsomely for their work.
For example, in Boston, you can expect to earn an average of $93,500 a year. A few hours south, in New York City, you can expect to earn $95,250 as a Project Manager.
How much do Project Managers make on the West Coast?
Your pay as a Project Manager goes up even more if you work for companies on the West Coast. The competitive nature of Silicon Valley and other tech epicenters likely accounts for the boost in pay.
For example, Project Managers in San Francisco earn $103,872 a year. Further north, in Washington, you can expect to make $96,261 a year.
How much do Project Managers make in the Midwest?
While the salaries for Project Managers drop a little in the Midwest, you can still earn around the national average. For instance, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you can expect to bring in around $85,862 a year. And in Indianapolis, Indiana, Project Managers average $84,200.
Keep in mind that the cost of living in the Midwest is typically lower than on the Coasts. So, while salary expectations in the region might be slightly lower, there’s a good chance that the money will stretch just as far.
Project Manager salaries by experience level
Like many other professions, Project Managers make more the longer they’ve been in the field. The Project Management Institute recently released a report revealing the potential for significant earnings increases according to experience. For example:
Project Managers in the industry for less than three years earn an average of $83,000.
Between three and five years of experience earns you over 8% more, with an average of $90,000.
The jump is even more significant when you have between five and 10 years under your belt — 14.9%, or $103,407.
The climb is even steeper when you progress into the 10- to 15-year range: $120,000, which is 16% higher than the 5- to 10-year range.
What does a Project Manager do?
A Project Manager’s job comes with a diverse set of responsibilities. Depending on the company and situation, the most pivotal tasks tend to be focused around:
Developing new business solutions
Monitoring and measuring the success of projects
Strategizing
Leading teams
Developing new business solutions
A Project Manager doesn’t only guide existing ideas to success — they’re also responsible for coming up with the ideas themselves. For example, a Project Manager may meet with a company’s executives to figure out what kind of app will most appeal to a certain target market. In this way, as a Project Manager, you’re involved in every stage of a project’s life cycle, including the birth of the idea.
Monitoring and measuring the success of projects
Ensuring that projects proceed to a desirable outcome is central to a Project Manager’s job. To measure the success of the project you’re working on, you have to collect data along the way. This requires:
Quantifying success at different phases
Setting goals for team members
Designating time to evaluate progress
Finding ways to improve processes to meet goals
Strategizing
Strategy is a huge element of project management because it’s involved in everything, including deciding which projects to pursue, who should take on which responsibilities, and how to mitigate issues that pop up.
Strategy is also a key component of making sure individual team members stay motivated and driven to succeed. This may involve customizing schedules, setting different goals for certain individuals, or making allowances such as flexible hours or work-from-home arrangements.
Leading teams
As a Project Manager, your leadership ability will be one of your most important assets. Along with delegating tasks, you’ll need to find ways to keep people focused as well as hold them accountable for successes and failures. At the same time, regardless of whether a project is thriving or just surviving, you have to figure out how to keep your team motivated and invested.
How to start your Project Manager career
Our courses are a great way to start building the skills you’ll need as a Project Manager. To lead teams of programmers, you’ll first want to learn the basics of coding, and our Learn How to Code course will help you do just that.
Then, once you get a couple of programming languages under your belt, start building projects to familiarize yourself with the development process. Plus, expanding on your technical knowledge will make it easier to communicate with your dev teams and other stakeholders throughout your career. To get started, visit our project library.
Reducing the percentage of Francophone Quebecers who can attend English-language colleges is a measure that critics say will unfairly punish future generations of French-speaking Quebecers.
Julius Grey, an eminent human rights lawyer in Montreal, who has argued landmark cases before Canada’s Supreme Court, told me he feared that limiting English language education for Francophone young people would curtail their career horizons in a world in which the lingua franca is English.
“Francophones will be lulled into thinking you don’t need English for a successful career in North America, which is not the case,” he said.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the term lingua franca in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how lingua franca can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
