Do you have a front lawn? If not, have you ever fantasized about having one? Why do you think a lush, perfectly manicured lawn is a dream for so many Americans? Did you know that kind of lawn can hurt the environment and contribute to the decline of bee populations?
In this lesson, you will learn how the No Mow May movement aims to transform the traditional American lawn into an ecological benefit. In Going Further activities, we invite you to make the case for or against a similar environmental campaign in your own community. You’ll also have an option to act as a photojournalist and document the often overlooked life in a front lawn or field of grass.
Warm-Up
Part 1: Closely observe a lawn or patch of grass in your neighborhood.
Do you have a front lawn? If not, think of a familiar field or patch of grass that you pass by or visit regularly, such as a schoolyard, park or neighbor’s backyard. What plant and animal species do you imagine live there?
Go to this lawn or patch of grass and take some time to observe the life, big or small, there. Be sure to record and annotate your observations in a notebook. Consider bringing a magnifying glass, binoculars and a sketch book.
After conducting your observations, respond to the following prompts in writing:
What did you notice? What plant or animal species did you identify? (Don’t worry if you’re not sure. It’s fine to write descriptions like “insect,” “bird,” “small yellow flower” or “strange looking bug.”)
What stood out from your observations? Were you surprised by the variety of life you found? What did you learn from looking closely at something you may have passed by without much thought before?
What did you wonder? What questions do you have about the life you observed?
Part 2: Watch a short video on the decline of bees in America.
Before reading the featured article, watch the four-minute “Why Are the Bees Dying?”by PBS from 2016 on the alarming rates at which bee colonies, wild and domesticated, are disappearing.
What are three reasons that bees are dying?
Why are these tiny pollinators so important to the world’s food supply? What will happen if all bees disappeared?
What are some possible solutions to help prevent the decline of bees, according to the video?
1. What did Anne Readel, a photojournalist, discover was different about the lawns in Appleton, Wis., when she drove through it last spring?
2. What is the No Mow May movement, and what are its goals? How did Appleton become the first city in the United States to adopt No Mow May?
3. Look closely at the photos in the article: What story do they tell about Appleton or the No Mow May movement? Which image stands out to you most? Why?
4. What animal and plant species have flourished since Appleton adopted the No Mow plan? How do these species compare with the kinds you observed in the warm-up activity?
5. Why are some residents and communities not so happy about the initiative?
6. Dr. Israel Del Toro cautions that No Mow May is only a starting point for bee conservation. What else can communities do to be more bee- (no pun intended, we promise) and eco-friendly?
7. What is your reaction to the article? What did you find most interesting, surprising or memorable? Does the article change how you think about the traditional American lawn? Will it make you notice the often overlooked and ignored natural world around us more fully?
Going Further
Option 1: Make the case for or against a No Mow May in your community
What are lawns like in your own neighborhood or community? Are they neatly manicured? Wild and weedy? Or a rarity?
Imagine that your town or city is considering adopting a No Mow May plan and that you have been invited to speak at an upcoming community meeting. Make a passionate and reasoned case for or against the proposal. Be sure to present evidence to support your arguments. Anticipate possible counterarguments to your claims. Inform listeners why they should care about the issue. And consider how you can draw upon your own experiences with lawns as well as your distinct point of view as a teenager.
As a bonus, create some visual media — a poster, infographic or public service announcement — to support your case.
Option 2: Watch and respond to a Times video
In 2019, The Times published a seven-minute film, “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured,” that explored how a perfectly manicured patch of grass came to represent the pride of homeownership and community. Watch the film and respond to the following questions adapted from our Film Club:
What moments in this film stood out for you? Why?
What did you learn about the history of lawns, lawn mowers and how the dream of the ideal front lawn was created?
Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew?
Option 3: Learn more about bees — and contribute as a citizen scientist
Why do bees buzz? How do they clean themselves? How can we all help with their conservation? What questions do you still have about bees and their alarming decline?
To answer these questions and learn much more, scroll through The Times’s Bees topic page or read one of the articles or short ScienceTake videos below:
After conducting your new research, respond to the following prompts in writing or through discussion with a partner or small group:
What is one new interesting fact about bees you learned?
How did your article or video deepen or challenge what you already knew about bees?
What questions do you still have on the subject?
Still interested in bees? Want to help efforts to prevent the decline of bee populations in North America? Become a citizen scientist and learn how to help efforts to collect better data on native bee populations and to build more bee-friendly environments with collaborative projects like The Great American Bee Count, Bumble Bee Watch, the Beecology Project or the Great Sunflower Project.
Option 4: Document lawns where you live
What role do lawns and fields of grass play in your life? Why should we stop to notice, appreciate and, perhaps, rethink them?
Imagine that The Times hired you to document the lawns and fields of grass in your own community for the World Through a Lens series. Using the main article as a mentor text, photograph the overlooked life and beauty of a patch of grass in your neighborhood.
How would you reveal this setting to others? What would you photograph? What details would you show? When would you use wide, medium or close-up shots?
After you have captured at least three photographs, write a short artist’s statement that explains why you chose them and what they reveal about the lawns in your community. Additionally, where possible, include identifications for each plant and animal species you documented. (Free apps like Leafsnap, Picture Insect or iNaturalist could help.)
Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.
It’s time. The Best of the Best Customer Education Bracket for 2022. To review last year’s amazing competition, take a look at the 2021 Results.
I prefer a bracket because it adds some vibe and experience that is completely different than a grid. It tells a story, and well, is visible so there is no mistaking where X is versus Y, and why C is over there in G8, and not D3. I admit I find some grids so confusing, just as I find it confusing why anyone would get excited that the best their football club (soccer) can do in the premier league is 5th (it’s dominated by four teams). This would not be acceptable in the states for American Football unless you are a Lions fan (Zing!).
Bounce into the 2022 Bracket
Here are the 16. Just as in 2021, vendors were seeded on two sides – let’s call one side – “A”, and the other side “B”.
These are seeding not rankings.
(Region A)
#1 Thought Industries (2021 Champions) – Nickname – Breakers (okay, I decided to have some nicknames) (Mascot – A person in a giant wave outfit)
#2Valamis (New Entrant) -Nickname- Vamps (Mascot – Nosferatu)
#4 Raven360 (New Entrant) -Nickname – The Ravens (Mascot -A Raven who dresses like Edgar Allen Poe)
#5 Cornerstone LMS (R1 2021) – Nickname -Quakes (Mascot-A person wearing rollerblades and dressed like George Kennedy – an actor who appeared in the awful but worth a view, Earthquake film of the 70s – he also appears in a lot of disaster films of the 70s)
#6 LearnUpon (Just missed the cut in 2021) – Nickname – Flames (Mascot- A person dressed like a fiery arrow)
#7 Skill Jar (R1, 2021) – Nickname – Blue Scorpions (Mascot – Scorpion)
#8 D2L (New Entrant) – Nickname – Banshees (Mascot- A banshee)
Region B
#1 Eurekos (R3, 2021) Nickname – Vikings (Mascot – Odin) – On a side note, you can see a full Viking ship fully restored that they found off the waters – nearly intact. It’s in Denmark – worth a view.
#4 Meridian LMS (Just missed the cut, 2021) – Nickname – Marbles (Mascot – A very scary looking marble)
#5 Fuse (R2, 2021) – Nickname – Cannons (Mascot – A mishmash of a cannon with a fuse on its head)
#6 SAP Litmos (Just missed cut, 2021) – Nickname – Steel Blazers (Mascot – A beam of steel with a tweed blazer)
#7 Workramp (New Entrant) – Nickname – Whispers (Mascot – Invisible the Whisperer)
#8 CourseStage (New Entrant) – Nickname – Packers (Mascot – The state of Wisconsin)
Opening Round 2022
Background – The Methodology
As previously covered in other posts, the industry has splintered into audience-focused types if you will, as in systems whose focus is employees, customer education, or a combo – employees and customers. The majority of learning systems are combos, which usually skew towards the employee side – there are a few exceptions. To be fully customer education-focused, the client makeup is at a minimum of 90%, which means 90% of the learning system’s clients are using the system for customer education/partner training/B2B. The old legacy term would be extended enterprise. I slide associations under B2B, because you are providing education/training to an audience base that is external (the main focus).
Employee-focused means that 85% or higher of their client base is for employees.
In our bracket, the systems are either “Combo” or “Customer Education Focused”. The latter market is now that large – system-wise, compared to the Combo, which adds additional features you usually wouldn’t find in a CE-focused system. This is changing, because a client can look at a combo and see features that are geared towards employees, like it, then compare them to a Customer Ed focused system and expect the same thing, not realizing that external audiences do not need workforce development for example. Skills are a key area in this example. Skills should be strong in Combos and Employees, not in CE-focused systems. That said, across the board, skill capabilities across the entire segment are still at the infant stage.
There are systems in this bracket that are actually doing far better than quite a few systems in the employee-only, and two vendors who are Customer Ed that have surpassed Combos. That’s the nature of business today.
Customer Education Focused Systems in the Bracket
Ignore the marketing hype that some “Combos” pitch as customer education-focused, here are the actual players (in our bracket)
Thought Industries
Eurekos
Intellum
Meridian KSI
Raven360
CourseStage – Association heavy focus
Workramp
The Combos
Docebo
Skill Jar
Cornerstone LMS
Absorb
D2L
Valamis
LearnUpon
SAP Litmos
Fuse
Methodology
If you wanted the NCAA tourney, as I did, why should teams get extra timeouts, because the refs are reviewing the replay? They should be required to just stay on the court. I’m not griping, okay, I’m griping.
With any bracket (or old school grid) there is a methodology for selection. I always hear from folks saying, well so and so doesn’t have this vendor, but you do, and thus, this and that. No analyst or firm will use the same methodology. Nor the same approach. I mean, look at Burger King? Flame-broiled. Mcdonald’s – Fried. Pete’s Burger Joint – Layered with chia seeds and grilled.
Customer Education Systems, even combos should recognize, some key capabilities and functionalities that will make a huge difference. The majority of clients sell courses/content – now sell can be free or it can be fee-based or some combo of it. Anyone who oversees the CE for a company, entity, association, or training provider knows they have one chance to roll this out and make it look slick. Archaic and stale won’t cut it. It has to be easy to use for some, but it can have some additional robustness if the client wants to push it forward as their audience grows or even as they desire additional flexibility.
When putting together the methodology, I tapped into what I know about this space – customer education – which is extensive, what folks are looking at today, and what is needed in the coming year.
Core
UI/UX – You have one opportunity to make this look good to an external audience, whomever that may be. Folks are used to finding places on the web, with slick websites. Why would they think differently about your system? Every vendor says their system is modern, clean, and user-friendly. I can tell you, that a lot is not. On the Learner Side – the end-user needs to be able to go to the catalog to pick courses/content – so the navigation has to be there, the selections visible on this page, playlists should exist – again, it is not universal, but at least a Grid view, – think “What are these folks seeing every day in their non-work world?” Netflix and other streaming sites. Lots of content. Lots of new experiences and exploration.
Admin side – Should ideally have a home dashboard, just as you would have a learner dashboard. Navigation is huge here. Fluidity and Agile are a must. Drag and Drop is a big plus, the majority of systems lack it.
E-Commerce – Included at no charge. We are not talking about a payment processor like Authorize.net, but some e-commerce is tapped into Stripe, which will work. You need to be able to have discounts, promo codes, send invoices (a nice plus), bundling, subscription (again, depends on the audience), VAT, and accept credit cards – VISA, MasterCard is a must. AMEX is a plus – because a lot of companies have corporate AMEX cards. Discover – ehh. It cannot be limited to just PayPal (that’s not what I consider full e-commerce). If you want to take it to the next level, I’d seriously look at adding Venmo and Zelle (which are being tested by various banks as payment in retail locations, such as Walmart). Amazon Pay is doable, again, the options are nice. If a vendor isn’t using Stripe or similar, then I have yet to see someone offering Apple Pay or Samsung, or Google Pay. Cryptocurrency is a wild card here – I’m not seeing a lot of folks overseeing training using crypto. Several years ago, there was one vendor who accepted bitcoin.
Multi-Tenant – It has to be there. And it should be free. If you can’t go free for as many sub-tenant as the client wants (and yes, there are vendors who offer it), then include at least 10 for free, and then charge in bundles, but do not overcharge – a lot do.
Under the Multi-Tenant (some vendors refer to them as portals. TI refers to them as Panorma)
Skin your colors/add logo – aka as white label or branded (Everyone offers this)
Ability to decide if each child (that is how I refer to sub-tenants) can add or remove their courses/content, set up rules for managers (if applicable) other entities, what the admin can do, instructors, etc – hierarchy rules (Every system offers this, some do a better job and offer more flexibility than others). Always remember the parent – The main tenant – i.e. you, set the rules for each of the children. A child can only see themselves, no one else. This means they can’t see the data from another child or access it (unless the parent allows that, which they never should). The parent – you, can see everything, all the data, etc.
Parent when viewing the metrics, data – can break it out by each child, and drill down into the data – it isn’t limited to just reports (I’ve seen the latter, and trust me, you want to see it on your screen, not via a CSV – Excel file). Some systems do an aggregate of all the children – and that’s it. I hate that. It tells me zip when it comes to customer education.
Custom Domains (Every system does this, but it gets tricky on what they see as a “Custom Domain” and what you may think it means.
Custom Domain
A lot of vendors say they offer custom domains when it comes to the sub-tenants, and even the main tenant as well, but what I have found, is that what they consider it to be, and what anyone who has ever had a custom domain (and knows what it is) are not in alignment. Again, there are exceptions with some systems.
The common way, when I hear custom domain is that the vendor will say yes, but then explain it as
Yourname.vendorname.com – or something similar. The vendor’s name is in the domain. It is not just your name and only your name. So, if you have a tenant called Pumpkin and your main tenant or site is called WallaceUniversity, the custom domain would look like – WallaceUniversity.Vendorname.Pumpkin.com or again something similar. Think about it, you are providing this to customers, members, partners, etc – do you really want to have the vendor’s name in it? Sometimes you have no choice because the vendor doesn’t offer that capability, but if they do, then you want it. What is worse, is when a vendor charges for this. Many vendors include “custom domains” and what they are referring to is the example above. Docebo follows this approach, but they are not alone- it’s very common.
A custom domain really means
Yourname.com – Pretty simple. You go and purchase a domain and then have the vendor help you with the server setup (since the domain sits elsewhere). When your customers come, they will be in the learning system, but with a branded URL – i.e. domain. I do this all the time, and I did it when I ran customer training aka customer education. An example: WallaceU.com – and let’s say, for a child, you are going to partners – generic, so it is WallaceU/Partners.com OR let’s say you have a client who wants their own name. No problem. It is Theirname.com (again a custom domain).
There was a time when vendors would offer the above at no charge and set it up for you. It’s difficult to find now, and thus, for me, with my methodology, vendors who offered the true custom domain option scored higher – in points than the “custom domain” angle. The majority of the vendors in the bracket, go with the first example – their name is in the domain.
FWIW – If you want a custom domain, another option is to see if the vendor can do URL Masking. I did it one time, and the end-user can’t tell. Nowadays vendors stay away from it, but if they can, that may be an option for you. It didn’t have any bearings on the methodology or points – this is more just for you to know.
Metrics
Customer-Education systems should offer metrics that go far beyond what you usually see in a system or should. If you are doing CE, and selling courses/content – the end goal is to generate profit, find out what courses/content are selling, which ones are not, how much usage (how often someone goes in), if you offer a Table of Contents in a course, which sections/chapters they are going to – which will help you when it comes to adding more courses on specific areas, than say generally.
Additional metrics should include trend lines or similar to show over a period of time, with filters, usage, content purchase, access – each should be a trend line, aggregate but breakdown by day, and then you can drill further down. Quite a few do the above, but really drill-down is a different scene.
Does the data tell me, a story? Data should always do this. If you can look at the data and say, I can show this to someone above me, the CEO for example, and say “this is why we do this and look at the revenue”, then the data offers a good story. Profit centers will open up budgets and get you more you need. Remember the old, ROI-prove-me attitude? Okay, here you go. Even without money tied to it, showing trend lines are relevant. Telling me only views – is worthless. And I don’t care that I can see how many licenses are being used (put that in settings and not on the home dashboard).
Modern UI/UX for data and reports. I’m a big fan of “Favorites” and dashboards that go beyond pie charts. Data visualization is called that for a reason, not a bar graph, which is a bar graph. Vendors who did well here, received more points.
Functionality
I used my Learning Systems template for this area, looking at features I knew are needed in a customer education-focused system. Items such as the ability to add CEUs to a piece of content (continuing education units), the ability to generate certificates, multiple ones even tied to one course/content, learning journeys (different spin/approach with curriculum paths or learning paths), peer to peer learning, and the list goes on.
Mobile
Scored higher if you have a mobile app – that is available in iOS and Google Play with on/off synch, and can be white-labeled. You did all four – you got 12 points. You did three – 9 points. You did two – 6 points. You did one – three points. You did none – Zero points.
White-label if your vendor offers it, I recommend it. The fee at the high-end should be about 10K USD. But it removes someone having to use VendorX app, and instead goes to WallaceU app in their app store.
Cornerstone does a lot of nice things with its mobile app, but you cannot white-label it. So, using them, they scored 9 points. Intellum – they do it all, 12 points. Docebo can do it all – 12 points. Thought Industries doesn’t have a mobile app (as of April 8th, 2022), they didn’t make a basket. In fact, the biggest minus on TI, is the lack of the app.
It should be noted that there are vendors who have an app in Apple but not Google. And there are a lot of vendors who have the app in both but do not have on-off synch. Rule of Thumb if you have to explain it to them, then, they likely do not have it. You want On-Off synch.
Other tidbits
Notifications – very relevant as reminders for maintaining certification (if applicable) and just reminders in general. E-mail is common in the industry, SMS is very rare. Notification schedule i.e. times you can send it, etc – is a must.
Event management – vILT/ILT – Waitlists are a must, auto waitlist is even better – you want this if you are doing vILT or ILT
Ability to capture data and add it to your system for external is a must for CE systems. I mean, I may have attended online nine events that are not by you, but as the client – you see value for them doing it.
Gamification – Customer Ed can do well here – depends on the perks – I mean, I get 75 points – what do I get for that? A 30-second email?
Skills – I went really low here – if you have skill ratings with the ability to explain what each number means, you scored two points; if you offered more skill capabilities then think of it as free throws. A lot of bricks were tossed (which means they missed). Skills should be tied to the content here, job roles shouldn’t be relevant. The goal here is to educate and train folks, not by job role and oh by the way, not by assigned learning – which is a BIG NO-NO for customer education.
Additional three’s
Support – This is massive. It’s major regardless, but for folks using the system for customer education/associations/B2B even B2C, partner training – you need good support. There are vendors on this list that outsource implementation/configuration – which isn’t ideal, especially since you – the client have no idea – about how that partner handles support or their track record. Anyway, support should include not just onboarding (everyone does this), but ongoing sessions when needed (for the admin or head of the dept or both) for free, videos, a knowledge center, and a discussion area that is checked frequently. Nobody is checking out your FAQ or Help section. I can tell you there are vendors who are in the bracket, whose support is below avg to poor. They did not score any points here.
Aiding the client in best practices to generate revenue (if that is your goal) or whatever. This goes beyond just your use case. And it is rare. Two vendors in the bracket offer it.
Messaging – Marketing is huge here, and so does the vendor message Customer Education in their pitch, on their website, beyond SEO purposes. This is a major problem in the CE space, or for anyone who seeks a system for customer education. The reason being is that vendors as a whole, believe L&D is the only game in town, forgetting that in the Customer Ed segment including Associations, its people with a background in training, or education. In fact, it is rare to have someone in L&D oversee customer education/partner training/B2B, even an association’s education dept. I can tell within the first 60 seconds if a system’s salespeople even the CEO know the difference. And I can tell you, there are a lot of vendors whose CEOs, even founders have no clue. And it should be a wake-up call because when you walk the trade show floor and the vendor is pushing “employee learning or employee development” and you want customer education – you will not stop and check them out.
I cannot say this enough, L&D and Training are not the same things. Different modalities, different approaches. Ever heard of OD? And as one vendor found it, there are companies that have both departments, and they do not talk to each other, nor like each other. I never met anyone who was in L&D wanting to report to Training, nor Training report to L&D, and nobody wants to report to HR.
The Games – A system could score up to 110. Nobody did.
Round 2 Results
Thought Industries 95, D2L 86
Cornerstone LMS 90, Raven360 89
Valamis 84, Skill Jar 76
Docebo 93, LearnUpon 82
Eurekos 94, CourseStage 80
Fuse 90, Meridian KSI 86
Intellum 92, Workramp 79
Absorb 93, SAP Litmos 82
Key Takeaways
Meridian LMS’s biggest weaknesses fall into two areas – Data/Metrics – which on one side are extensive, the other side, the UX is very dated and needs a massive update; plus some of the data I found missed some key CE indicators folks I think would want. The general UI/UX for the system itself is dated – which is a shame because this is a very solid system. I like a lot of it, but these were huge areas to overcome. Lastly, the forward-thinking I’m not seeing it. And they lacked in a few areas around functionality.
Thought Industries biggest miss is mobile – they lost 12 points right there. The admin side when it comes to their new dashboard is a vast improvement, but there were a couple of areas that needed tweaks. Panorma is outstanding.
Valamis is a work in progress – they will build it (you will pay), but the key tidbits that are essential, are missing a couple. The LXP spin is a joke – I remember going thru it, and what they thought an LXP is, and what it really is, are two different things. And what with the buy of a vendor who plays in employee development – that has me worried. I still like the system, they offer a slick UI/UX, and lots to like, but those areas probably will catch up with them – in the bracket.
LearnUpon is a nice system that plays well in association and customer education. I wouldn’t buy them if I was Large in user base, but that wasn’t a factor here. They just missed in a few areas, specific metrics for CE a big clanker (off the rim), and the sub-tenant capabilities need an improvement.
Cornerstone LMS – Probably the big upset in R1 over a very good Raven360, which is under the radar for so many people. Cornerstone LMS, is a nexgen system (so forward thinking is there), I didn’t consider the EdCast acquisition (the bracket was done before that, and anyway as it relates to CE, it makes no impact whatsoever). Minuses for Cornerstone – Marketing/Messaging around CE is really poor. If you doubt me, go to their website. A white-label mobile app is unavailable. They do need an update on UI/UX on Learner and Admin side, and the metrics again for the CE specific are subpar. That said, this is a very robust and strong system, and it just slides by.
I should note that “pricing” was not a factor in the bracket. Add-ons dependent on whether they are a need or just a nice to have. When reviewing Absorb – I based my analysis on the following (you will want all) – Absorb LMS, Engage, Analyze and Create LI – their authoring tool, for CE market, having an authoring tool really helps – it won’t ever be a deep threat to a commercial, but they are not designed to do so). For Docebo – I based it on Docebo Learn, Discovery/Coach, and Share (an add-on with Docebo Learn, you need and want), Learning Analytics – but dependent on what widgets you select and Docebo Flow – there are metrics that are key for CE space, and then those that are not). All of them are add-ons, i.e. additional costs on top of Docebo Learn.
Round 3 Results
Thought Industries 95, Cornerstone LMS 90
Docebo 93, Valamis 84 (Fans were leaving early in the 2nd half)
Eurekos 94, Fuse 90
Absorb 93, Intellum 92
Takeaway
Fuse, the #1 learning system overall for 2022, is a great system, but for the customer ed segment, it is still just not fully there yet, compared to Eurekos. Eurekos has a couple of things in the works (two of which do not appear in any system in the CE let alone the Combo side). The system has come a long way, in just a short time, and continues to improve. I like the authoring tool – a lot you can do, and ideal for beginners, but folks with experience can do a few more things too. Fuse has an authoring tool too, but the systems are just structured differently.
Absorb’s add-ons definitely made the difference here, and again, they were included in my analysis. That said, if you want heavy skills today, in a CE-focused system, Intellum does the best, of any way, with the exception of the Combo system – Cornerstone LMS, which is the #1 in skills capabilities in the entire industry. But this isn’t a bracket for the entire industry for skills, let alone employee-focused.
Round 4 Results
Thought Industries 95, Docebo 93
Eurekos 94, Absorb 93
Takeaway
What more can be said, than what is listed above. They are all outstanding in their own right – for the CE segment, although, I’m not fully sold on Flow – the metrics for CE are very good, the rest – I mean flow of work? Great, but how is the messaging for the CE segment here? That’s a miss. I recommend additional practice.
Best of the Best – Championship Round
Thought Industries 95, Eurekos 94
Both suffer from the mobile app issue, which made an impact as you can imagine. Remove that though, and you are watching two Titans stack up. One has been that way for a bit, gaining more traction in the CE space, the other an upstart.
If I was Thought Industries I wouldn’t be waiting around to see what Eurekos is up to, I would be pressing forward. And I was Eurekos, I know that a few things here, few there, and well, who knows?
Very few people who watch college hoops had ever heard of this school named Gonzaga when they started to appear.
A recent Times article spotlighted “cult cruisers,” the term given to people (many of them retirees) who book back-to-back sailings, essentially living their lives on cruise ships and spending as little time as possible on land.
Have you ever been on a cruise vacation with your family? How do you feel about this seafaring lifestyle? Would you ever want to “live” on a cruise ship? What waterways or global ports would you want to explore?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about “cult cruisers.”
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.
In a grove of old-growth trees, in Northern California’s Humboldt Redwoods State Park, emerald-tinged light filters through a dense green canopy. Fallen tree trunks are coated in a riot of fluorescent verdant growth and crescent-shaped oyster mushrooms. Stumps, 20 feet wide, are obscured with budding wildflowers and ferns. Earlier, I drove along the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile scenic road that winds through a tunnel of green and gold.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word verdant 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 verdant 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.
WordleBot is a tool that will take your completed Wordle and analyze it for you. It will give you overall scores for luck and skill on a scale from 0 to 99 and tell you at each turn what, if anything, you could have done differently — if solving Wordles in as few steps as possible is your goal.
How do I use it?
It’s very easy. First, play Wordle. Then visit the Wordle Companion, ideally using the same device and web browser.
How does it work (short version please)?
Every Wordle game starts with one of 2,309 possible solutions as the hidden word. At each turn, WordleBot chooses the word that will allow it to solve the game in as few steps as possible, assuming any of the remaining solutions are equally likely. It keeps doing this until only one solution remains — the right answer.
Why did you make it?
Months ago, before The New York Times bought Wordle, we, like many others, began wondering about the best starting word. It seemed like a straightforward mathematical question — yet every person who approached the problem seemed to come up with a different answer.
WordleBot started as an attempt to settle this question once and for all. But along the way we realized that (a) the answer was more complicated than it seemed; and that (b) we were more interested in how closely our guesses matched those that would be chosen by a machine designed to solve Wordles.
Thus, WordleBot was born.
OK, so what’s in it for me?
We hope the bot’s advice will help you think about Wordle more analytically, which will help you get better at solving the puzzles in the long run.
In addition, it may serve as a tiebreaker of sorts for those of you involved in competitive text chains with friends and family. If a Wordle took you five turns but you answered more efficiently than your friends, WordleBot may provide some bragging rights. If you did everything right and were simply unlucky, it will tell you that too.
We’ll leave it to you to decide which is more important.
So what’s the best opening word?
WordleBot solves the 2,309 possible Wordles using the fewest number of guesses when it starts with CRANE in normal mode and DEALT in “hard mode.”
This may surprise some readers, who have seen, in various places across the internet, people claim that words like IRATE, SALET or RAISE are the best openers. The truth is that it depends exactly how you’re playing and whether you are a human or a computer.
The various Wordle algorithms all take slightly different approaches in how they solve the puzzle. Some start with knowledge of the solution list; others do not. Some allow any of the almost 13,000 five-letter English words as valid guesses; others (like WordleBot) use a smaller set. We restricted WordleBot to about 4,500 words that are more common among English speakers — it didn’t seem particularly helpful for a piece of software to recommend words like VOEMA, CUSSO, SKATT or ZEBUB.
Apart from all that, it’s worth noting that the perfect opening word for a computer isn’t necessarily the perfect opening word for you. WordleBot has perfect knowledge of the 2,309 solutions stored in its memory. It’s likely that you do not. So while the bot might know the precise optimal path to take from a given guess, it’s possible that you might not and that a different guess would be more likely to lead you to the answer.
More important, unless you’re playing in hard mode, every game of Wordle is solvable regardless of which word you choose first. So go ahead, start with FUZZY, we won’t stop you. (And note: WordleBot ignores your first guess when calculating your overall skill score. Be free.)
Will WordleBot spoil the Wordle solution?
No. WordleBot will never analyze an incomplete or unsolved game; it will give you advice only for completed Wordles.
Which Wordles will WordleBot analyze?
By default, it will analyze whichever Wordle you’ve completed most recently on your device, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser. But you can also upload a screenshot of any completed Wordle — even if it’s from months ago, provided you’ve saved the screenshot— and it will analyze that for you instead.
Does WordleBot know the answer already?
No. It knows the full list of solutions, but nothing more. It also doesn’t know whether a Wordle solution has already been used.
Does WordleBot ever fail to solve a Wordle?
No. The bot solves all Wordles in six turns or fewer.
I play in ‘hard mode.’ Will it work for me?
Yes. The bot will give advice on your Wordle however you play. But hard mode presents a challenge.
It complicates things from a computational perspective: While eliminating the largest number of solutions with each guess is a tempting approach, it isn’t always the best idea. WordleBot needs to think several steps in advance to make sure that it’s eliminating solutions now and won’t get stuck in a losing position later.
For modern computers, this additional complexity is nothing to worry about, but we are somewhat constrained by the computing power of some smartphones and the amount of time we can reasonably expect you to wait for the bot’s analysis to load.
As a result, we did have to make some small shortcuts for the bot to analyze games in hard mode. In particular, it’s not always the best at knowing when it might be stumbling into a situation where there are more possible solutions than there are valid guesses remaining to differentiate them. In some cases, other guesses might have avoided these hard mode traps.
All this means is that the version of WordleBot that’s powered by a supercomputer would probably differ slightly from the version that runs in your phone, but the differences are mostly minor and we don’t suggest worrying about them.
Wait — is WordleBot running on a supercomputer somewhere?
No. It does all of its calculations on demand, on your smartphone or computer.
Is it possible to beat the Bot?
Absolutely. It’s hard to solve more efficiently than the bot, but quite easy to be luckier.
Will this affect my Wordle streak?
No.
Will this change anything about Wordle?
No. It may change how you play Wordle, but it’s completely independent of Wordle itself.
What does the skill measure actually mean?
A skill score of 99 is what WordleBot assigns to its chosen word at any given step. In its view, this is the most efficient choice to make to solve the puzzle in as few guesses as possible, averaged over all possible remaining solutions.
A skill score of zero is what you get if you just skipped a turn altogether. (While it’s impossible to actually skip a turn in Wordle, you can get the same effect by guessing a word you’ve already guessed: You lose a turn and you don’t learn anything new about the possible solution.)
Your skill score measures how close you were to the bot’s chosen word relative to the worst word you could have picked for that turn.
What does the luck measure actually mean?
Suppose, for example, you guess CRANE on your first turn. The best thing that could happen would be if the hidden word were actually CRANE — you would solve the Wordle in one guess. That’s obviously very lucky.
The worst result would be five gray squares; you would be left with 263 possible solutions to sift through. Considering that 89 percent of the solutions share at least one letter with CRANE, that result would be very unlucky, despite a strategically sound choice.
Our luck measurements represent how unexpected the outcomes of your guesses are, conditional on what we’d expect, on average, given what we know about the solution at that time.
How do you decide what makes one guess ‘better’ than another?
Maybe you’re familiar with the game Guess Who, a popular two-person board game in which players use yes-or-no questions to try to guess the identity of their opponent’s hidden character. A guess like “does your person wear glasses?” divides the remaining possibilities into two groups: people who wear glasses and people who don’t. You get only one piece of information with each guess.
It’s similar with Wordle, but guesses can reveal much more information: Each letter of each guess can turn green, yellow or gray. That means a guess could theoretically divide solutions into up to 243 different groups (three to the fifth power, or 3^5, for the mathematically inclined). Realistically, because not every combination of letters is a valid word in English, a guess can divide solutions into 150 different groups at most, found by guessing TRACE on the opening guess.
In general, as a solver, you want your guesses to divide the possible solutions into as many groups as possible.
Here’s an example. Suppose, with your previous guesses, you’ve narrowed the possible solutions to five: BATCH, CATCH, LATCH, MATCH or PATCH. What should you guess next?
If you guess BATCH, you’ll divide the remaining solutions into two groups:
If the hidden word is BATCH, great! But if it isn’t — which is the more likely outcome — you’re stuck with four possible solutions.
A smarter guess would divide these groups more efficiently, putting you in a position to solve the puzzle regardless of luck. Here, WordleBot would guess BLIMP. See how that changes the picture:
With this approach, you divide the solutions into five groups of one word each. You’d be guaranteed to get the answer on your next turn!
Why does WordleBot sometimes tell me my guess wasn’t a valid solution?
When Josh Wardle created Wordle, he and his partner, Palak Shah, picked a subset of the roughly 13,000 valid five-letter English words to be potential solutions, meaning that many guesses, while perfectly adequate words in English, are not Wordle solutions. (Many plural forms of nouns, for example, are excluded from the solutions list.) WordleBot knows the full solutions list, and if you guess a word that isn’t on it, it will tell you.
I played Wordle today, but WordleBot can’t seem to find it. Why not?
It may be because you’re using a different web browser to play Wordle than you are in using the Wordle companion. (When you complete a day’s Wordle, your guesses and preferences are stored in a small file on your device called a “cookie,” and the information in that cookie is not, at the moment, stored across different devices or browsers.) So you can either make sure to use WordleBot on the same device you play Wordle on, or upload a screenshot of your Wordle to WordleBot instead.
4. After you have posted, read what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting a comment. Use the “Reply” button to address that student directly.
On Wednesday, April 13, teachers from our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time.
5. By Friday morning, April 15, we will reveal more information about the graph, including a free link to the article that includes this graph, at the bottom of this post. We encourage you to post additional comments based on the article, possibly using statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets.
Reveal
We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!
• Learn more about the notice and wonder teaching strategy from this 5-minute video and how and why other teachers are using this strategy from our on-demand webinar.
• Sign up for our free weekly Learning Network newsletter so you never miss a graph. Graphs are always released by the Friday before the Wednesday live-moderation to give teachers time to plan ahead.
• Go to the American Statistical Association K-12 website, which includes teacher statistics resources, Census in the Schools student-generated data, professional development opportunities, and more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the 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.
Here is the March edition of Teenagers in The Times, a roundup of the news and feature stories about young people that have recently appeared across sections of NYTimes.com. We publish a new edition on the first Thursday of each month.
For ideas about how to use Teenagers in The Times with your students, please see our lesson plan and special activity sheet, both of which can be used with this or any other edition.
As states take the lead in the tuition-free movement after President Biden’s plans failed to gain traction in Congress, New Mexico emerges as a leader.
Twenty-three states require high schoolers to take the subject, and more could join them in an effort to boost the next generation’s financial literacy.
After Republicans attacked the school during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, parents, students and alumni said they firmly embraced its values.
The schools were supposed to reopen this week, and the reversal could threaten aid because international officials had made girls’ education a condition for greater assistance.
The vaccines shielded adolescents only against life-threatening Covid, not less severe illness, scientists reported. Still, hospitalizations remained rare in children, compared with adults.
A Louisiana high school lost its gym when a hurricane tore through town. Practicing on a dirt court, the girls’ basketball team adopted a defiant motto: No gym, no problem.
Three new Y.A. fantasy novels — “Castles in Their Bones,” by Laura Sebastian; “Lakelore,” by Anna-Marie McLemore; and “This Woven Kingdom,” by Tahereh Mafi — blend romance and magic to tell enchanting tales.
Are you a big-picture thinker? A good decision-maker? Do you like collaboration? How about owning a project from start to finish? If you answered “yes” to these questions, then a role as a Project Manager could be a good fit for you.
Project Managers work at companies in every sector, from technology to healthcare to real estate. They oversee the day-to-day tasks that are required to make projects successful. And these professionals often bring subject matter expertise to their role that they gained prior to transitioning to project management. For example, a Project Manager at a software development company might’ve worked as a developer for several years before moving into project management. At a machine learning company, a Project Manager might’ve been a Data Scientist before they took on their current role.
But you don’t have to come from a tech background to land a Project Manager role at a tech company. As long as you’re willing to develop some new skills and learn tools that Project Managers use on a daily basis, it’s totally possible to make the transition to Project Manager at a tech company. Here are tips to plan out your transition, plus advice on how to get started.
But first: What is project management?
Project management involves a variety of hard skills and soft skills to lead a team to meet specific goals and deliverables within a set of given constraints. In software development, an example of a project is developing a new app or software package, and a Project Manager would spearhead the operations of getting that project to the finish line. This person would ensure that the team is meeting deadlines and working within the budget.
Here’s another example: Imagine you’re in charge of building your dream house. Over the course of this project, you’ll be hiring and talking to dozens of specialists, like real estate agents, architects, permit agencies, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, and engineers. Not only that, but you’ll be working within a specific budget and a timeline.
To get everything done in the right order, on time, and within budget, you’ll apply project management principles. For example, you’ll prioritize tasks based on what’s most important in the construction process, and you’ll figure out which tasks are dependent on other tasks being completed. Then, you’ll purchase the materials to build your house, keep track of what everything costs, and line up all the professionals before construction starts. You’ll also oversee the work and make sure everything is on schedule, pivoting if need-be.
But project management goes far beyond these tasks. The most successful project managers are experts in risk management, communication, and foreseeing problems before they come up. They’re also great leaders who know how to motivate their teams and quickly adapt to changes. If they work in tech, they don’t need nitty gritty knowledge about how products are built, but they need to understand the field well enough to communicate effectively between stakeholders. (And the more subject matter expertise they can bring to the team, the better!)
Here are five steps you can take to pursue a Project Manager career.
1. Look for project management skills you already have
You might not realize it, but you probably already have a handful of relevant skills that’ll help you become a Project Manager. This is because many of the fundamental project management skills are universal.
Maybe you’ve coordinated volunteers for an event or planned a retirement party for a family member. Have you ever put on a bake sale or a car wash? What about putting together a vacation itinerary? To pull off any of these, you would’ve used skills, and in some cases tools, to get the job done that gave you some exposure to the skills you’ll need as a Project Manager. These include leadership, communication, scheduling, prioritization, time management, budgeting, and organization — and that’s all without doing any formal project management training.
2. Build the project management skills you need
Once you’ve figured out your existing project management skills, you can build on them by learning some hard skills in project management. These include Agile methodologies (such as Scrum and Kanban), the Waterfall software development method, risk management, planning and forecasting, resource allocation/budgeting, and analytical skills.
There are a number of different ways to develop these skills, from online courses to webinars to traditional college classes. If you’re looking for self-paced online options, you can check out our Analyze Data with Microsoft Excel course to get started building your analytical skills.
If you’re interested in being a Project Manager on a web development team and you haven’t worked in the space before, you could consider taking some courses to familiarize yourself with what developers do all day. Having knowledge of the work your teammates do can be really helpful and make your job easier as a Project Manager, especially when it comes to scheduling, prioritization, and communication.
Our Learn How To Build A Website Skill Path is a great way to learn the basics of web development while also learning how to collaborate with developers. And you’ll also complete the Skill Path by creating a personal website, which you could use as a portfolio to use for applying to jobs.
You could also check out any of our programming language courses, like Learn JavaScript, Learn HTML, and Learn CSS, which can give you insight into what it’s like to be a developer. Another course you could look into is our Code Foundations Skill Path, which gives you an overview of web development, as well as computer science and data science.
3. Learn to use project management tools
Project management software helps teams collaborate, stay organized, and track their progress over the lifecycle of a project. As a Project Manager, you’ll likely use a project management software on a daily basis to collaborate with your team, so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with one or more of these software packages.
Also, depending on the role and job description, the name of a project management software could be a keyword that hiring managers and applicant tracking systems (ATS) look for on applications. So don’t forget to list these on your resume when you’re applying for jobs.
Once you have the skills you’ll need to start a career in project management, it’s time to apply for jobs. When you’re searching for roles, look out for job titles like IT Project Manager, Technical Project Manager, and Engineering Project Manager, as well as simply Project Manager. You can also find these jobs listed with a descriptor. For example, Software Project Manager, Project Manager – Web Development, Agile Project Manager, and Senior Project Manager are popular ones. If this is your first job or you’re switching careers, some entry-level job titles to watch out for are Project Coordinator, Project Administrator, and Project Management Specialist.
Hiring managers will expect to see a resume from a Project Manager, so you’ll want to highlight all your technical skills, as well as your soft skills, on your resume. Check out this guide on how to build a technical resume, as well as this advice on how to showcase your soft skills.
One way to increase your chances of getting noticed by hiring managers is to submit an online portfolio with your application that highlights the skills that you’d bring to the position. Consider picking one or two case studies to feature and include details like the project scope, budget, timeline, and client testimonials. If you have any images or videos of the final product, include those too since they help the hiring team visualize how you’ve managed projects in the past. You can also discuss major challenges you faced during the project and how you overcame them — hiring managers like to learn how you approach issues and solve them. Remember that you can include a wide range of projects in your portfolio, from organizing a local fundraiser to working on a major software update.
All of your training, job searching, and resume writing have been leading up to this moment: the interview. This is your chance to prove your technical knowledge, demonstrate your soft skills, and show the hiring manager that you’re the best fit for the role.
Each company has its own interview process, which may involve a single meeting with the hiring manager or multiple rounds with different people from HR and the technical team. So you’ll want to make sure you’re as prepared as possible for your interviews.
One of the most effective ways to prepare is by setting up a mock interview. You could ask a friend or family member to play the part of the interviewer and ask you questions. If this isn’t an option, even just saying your answers out loud is a good way to practice. Another tip for the interview is to memorize examples that highlight your skills. For example, you’ll probably be asked a question about budgeting, so take some time to think through your past experience and find an example that illustrates your budgeting skills in the best way possible.
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“Getting here and being in our first drivers’ meeting gave me ,” said Atefa Saleh, 41, a Siemens engineer from the United Arab Emirates. “I’m excited to be the driver. But we’re switching if something goes really wrong,” she quipped.
Ms. Saleh’s co-driver, Eleanor Coker, 48, is an American living in Saudi Arabia. She had an unusual method to prepare for her navigation duties. “My son came home from school and caught me on his PlayStation doing the Dakar game,” Ms. Coker said, referring to Dakar 18, a racing simulator.
