Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed over the past week. Do you know what it shows? At the bottom of this quiz, you’ll find the answer.
Have you been paying attention to the news recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right.
Aiducation International is one of Alison’s partners in making our goal of free worldwide education a reality. Through their Global Young Leaders Alliance (GYLA), Aiducation are empowering people around the world through education and skills training. GYLA president, Boniface Mahulo, spoke to the Alison blog about his experiences both as the GYLA president and as an Alison Learner.
Aiducation International is an NGO that believes that access to education is the key to empowering individuals and, by extension, their nations. Aiducation provides scholarships to bright students from underprivileged backgrounds in developing countries and through their Global Young Leaders Alliance (GYLA), also gives them the opportunity to use their education to contribute to the well-being of their country’s society.
Boniface Mahulo from Kenya, is both an Aiducation Alumnus and the President of GYLA: “GYLA is an international online network, consisting of Aiducation alumni, mentors and partners, that provides continuous learning and development for high performers from low-income families. GYLA offers them personalized guidance and exposure to opportunities. Currently, we have over 1000 active members from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and the Philippines. Hopefully there are many more to join soon.”
GYLA helps Aiducation alumni to empower others via a series of alumni-led initiatives and projects, demonstrating both the immeasurable benefits of education and fulfilling Aiducation’s goal of helping individuals with an aim to benefitting society as a whole. Mahulo is proof that GYLA is succeeding in its aims: “Being elected the first GYLA President was a great honour as it gave me an opportunity to give back to the organization which has had a tremendous effect on who I am today. Personally, GYLA has had a great impact on my life by giving me access to various opportunities like free Alison courses, a free GetAbstract account and many more. I have also had an opportunity to expand my network as we have members from different parts of the world.”
In March 2020, like so many other organisations around the world, GYLA had to quickly adapt to pandemic conditions. The closure of universities threatened to disempower GYLA members and stall their journey out of poverty through education. In order not to fall behind in their studies, GYLA members requested access to online education platforms. This was where Alison came into the picture. By partnering with Alison, Aiducation were able to offer education and training to GYLA members throughout the pandemic.
“One of the amazing opportunities we had in GYLA this year was the partnership between Aiducation and Alison”, says Mahulo. “I have benefited from this personally as I have successfully completed three courses from Alison – Diploma in Human Resource, Supervision Skills – Managing Groups and Employee Interaction and Corporate Governance. The skills I acquired from these courses have had a tremendous impact on how I work with others and how I approach solving challenges at school and at work. Above all, I have expanded my knowledge of fields that I have always had a passion for. I want to thank Alison for giving us this great opportunity to continue learning and acquiring certificates for free, especially during this challenging time.”
Although it was a partnership forged in extremely difficult circumstances, Alison and Aiducation’s partnership is proving incredibly fruitful, as is clear from these testimonials from some of GYLA’s Alison’s graduates:
“It was such an amazing opportunity to take the Designing and Implementing Monitoring and Evaluating Systems course with Allison. I believe that, by applying the knowledge and skills I gained from this course, I will be able to see projects through to the end. I’m advising everyone I know to seize the opportunity to learn as much as they can from these courses.” – Ikras Muzoora, Uganda
“My course was Nursing Studies – Role of Nurse in Surgical Care. The course taught me many different things, such as the classifications of surgical procedure, types of surgery and pre-operative care. At the end of the course, I took the assessment and I passed! If you fail, you can repeat the assessment which is a great opportunity. I’ve learned a lot from the course and I believe I can advance even further. I’m grateful for this opportunity, thank you to all who made it possible!” – Denise Lisa Amunga, Uganda
“I was really impressed with the partnership that Aiducation started with Alison. As a student, the courses help me to gauge myself before the start of online classes in my school. They give me a chance to be productive and keep my mental sharpness. So far, I have completed two courses, and I am about to complete nine more. It’s been a good way to discover other teaching methods that work better for me.” – Aaron John Duque, Philippines
Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.
The Times recently did a piece called “The Restaurants We’ve Lost” about beloved eateries that have closed during the pandemic.
Use the image above to inspire the opening of a short story or poem — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
About Picture Prompts
• Find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
• Have an idea for a Picture Prompt? Tell us about it.
• Teachers, discover more ways to teach with our Picture Prompts and learn how to use our free daily writing prompts for remote learning.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, 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.
: express a negative opinion of
_________
The word disparage has appeared in 45 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 27 in “N.B.A. ‘Boycott’ or Strike: What’s the Difference?” by Derrick Bryson Taylor:
Asked about players’ use of the word “boycott,” Mr. Lenz noted that calling it a “strike” could have legal and financial ramifications given that the players have a no-strike clause in their collective bargaining agreement with the league.
“I think that in situations involving job actions and withholding of services, people are going to want to phrase it in a way that aligns with their interests,” he said. “That’s not to disparage anyone, given particularly the league seems to be aligned with the players on this. I think that removes a lot of the potential issues between players and teams and the league itself.”
_________
Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.
“An Ode to the Before Times” is a three-minute animated film that touches on themes of loss, nostalgia, hope and our heroic struggle to keep sane amid our terrifying present reality. In the video, Tala Schlossberg, a producer and animator, ruefully recalls all of the small things she misses from normal life before the pandemic — hugging friends, dancing in crowded places, not being terrified of standing near someone with a dry cough.
What do you miss from the before times? Are there moments of normalcy that you feel nostalgic for? Is there anything from your life a year ago that you took for granted? Do you think someday in the future you might come to miss this past strange and difficult year?
Students
1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.
2. After watching, think about these questions:
What questions do you still have?
What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?
3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: What do you most miss from your life before Covid?
4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
More?
• See all the films in this series.
• Read our list of practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries in the classroom.
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, Jan. 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, Jan. 15, we will reveal more information about the graph, including a free link to the article that included 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.
We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!
More?
• See all graphs in this series or a slide show of 60 of our favorite graphs.
• View our archives that link to all past releases, organized by topic, graph type and Stat Nugget.
• Learn more about the “Notice and Wonder” teaching strategy and how and why other teachers are using this feature 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, professional development opportunities, and more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, 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.
Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.
This past year has been filled with death: More than 300,000 people in the United States and 1.6 million worldwide have died from the coronavirus.
Has the pandemic changed your understanding of death and dying? Have you had to grieve the death of a loved one? Has it made you consider your own mortality more? Has it made you appreciate the impermanence of life? Or have the staggering numbers made you feel numb?
In “What Is Death?,” Dr. BJ Miller writes about how the coronavirus pandemic has transformed our understanding of mortality and offers several frameworks for thinking about death:
This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own. It’s not just emotionally taxing; it is difficult even to conceive. To do this means to imagine it, reckon with it and, most important, personalize it. Your life. Your death.
Covid-19’s daily death and hospitalization tallies read like ticker tape or the weather report. This week, the death toll passed 300,000 in the United States. Worldwide, it’s more than 1.6 million. The cumulative effect is shock fatigue or numbness, but instead of turning away, we need to fold death into our lives. We really have only two choices: to share life with death or to be robbed by death.
Fight, flight or freeze. This is how we animals are wired to respond to anything that threatens our existence. We haven’t evolved — morally or socially — to deal with a health care system with technological powers that verge on godly. Dying is no longer so intuitive as it once was, nor is death necessarily the great equalizer. Modern medicine can subvert nature’s course in many ways, at least for a while. But you have to have access to health care for health care to work. And eventually, whether because of this virus or something else, whether you’re young or old, rich or poor, death still comes.
What is death? I’ve thought a lot about the question, though it took me many years of practicing medicine even to realize that I needed to ask it. Like almost anyone, I figured death was a simple fact, a singular event. A noun. Obnoxious, but clearer in its borders than just about anything else. The End. In fact, no matter how many times I’ve sidled up to it, or how many words I’ve tried on, I still can’t say what it is.
If we strip away the poetry and appliqué our culture uses to try to make sense of death — all the sanctity and style we impose on the wild, holy trip of a life that begins, rises and falls apart — we are left with a husk of a body. No pulse, no brain waves, no inspiration, no explanation. Death is defined by what it lacks.
The essay continues:
Beyond fear and isolation, maybe this is what the pandemic holds for us: the understanding that living in the face of death can set off a cascade of realization and appreciation. Death is the force that shows you what you love and urges you to revel in that love while the clock ticks. Reveling in love is one sure way to see through and beyond yourself to the wider world, where immortality lives. A pretty brilliant system, really, showing you who you are (limited) and all that you’re a part of (vast). As a connecting force, love makes a person much more resistant to obliteration.
You might have to loosen your need to know what lies ahead. Rather than spend so much energy keeping pain at bay, you might want to suspend your judgment and let your body do what a body does. If the past, present and future come together, as we sense they must, then death is a process of becoming.
So, once more, what is death? If you’re reading this, you still have time to respond. Since there’s no known right answer, you can’t get it wrong. You can even make your life the answer to the question.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
How often do you think about the fact that you will die one day — that we all will? Does contemplating your own mortality make life more vibrant for you? Or does it fill you with dread?
How do you view death? Do any of the perspectives shared by Dr. Miller resonate with you? Do you see death as a medical condition? An anatomical process? A religious or spiritual experience? Or something else?
Dr. Miller asks: “What is death to you? When do you know you’re done? What are you living for in the meantime?” How would you answer these questions and why?
Have you had any experience with death — the death of a loved one, a community member or someone you looked up to? How did that experience shape your understanding of death? How did it affect the way you live your own life, if at all?
Is death something that is easy for you to talk about with your family and community? Why or why not? Do you and your family have rituals — religious, secular or spiritual — that help you reckon with death and dying?
How well do you think our society deals with death? Are we able to look at the meaning of death — and its relation to life — with care and nuance? Or do we hide from and minimize it? How do you think we could confront the inevitability of death better?
Did you take a statistics class in high school or college and feel like you don’t remember anything you learned? Have you felt intimidated about taking a statistics class in the past? Do you want or need to improve your data literacy skills? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this beginner-friendly series is for you!
Our Curriculum Developers will walk you through the new Master Statistics with Python skill path, leading you through a step by step data analysis from start to finish. We’ll be streaming live on Tuesdays at 4pm ET from January 12 through March 2.
We’ll start by loading, exploring, and preparing a dataset for analysis in Python. We’ll then cover descriptive statistics and data visualizations that can help you learn about your data and understand possible trends and relationships. Finally, we’ll jump into the world of inferential statistics and cover hypothesis testing methods that are useful for understanding populations that we cannot observe. In the process, we’ll get to know the NumPy and pandas libraries (among others), and demonstrate how to use Jupyter notebooks. By the end of the series, you’ll be prepared to plan, implement, and interpret your own data analysis in Python.
Every Tuesday at 4pm ET, we’ll be streaming our weekly session to YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook. Each session will be approximately 1 hour. You can find out more about what will be covered in each of the sessions on the Codecademy Events Page. You can also add the events to your calendar so you don’t forget.
Each week, we’ll be covering a module or set of modules from the Master Statistics with Python skill path. This is a Pro course. The stream is free to everyone, but to complete the Path on your own, you’ll need to have a Codecademy Pro or Pro Student membership. For anyone who would like to code along with us off-platform, we recommend downloading Anaconda prior to the first session.
Check out the schedule below to learn more about what we’ll be covering each week.
January 12, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll walk through the process of loading a tabular dataset into Python, inspecting the data, and taking a first look at some of the variables. We’ll also cover basic Python and pandas syntax and discuss some of the different kinds of data you might encounter.
January 19, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll continue to investigate our data with summary statistics and some basic data visualizations, using the Python libraries NumPy, pandas, matplotlib, and Seaborn. We’ll also discuss how to choose an appropriate summary statistic to answer a particular question.
January 26, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll cover ways of assessing a relationship between two variables, using both summary statistics and data visualizations. For example, how could we use clinical trial data to get a sense of whether a vaccine appears to work?
February 2, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll introduce inferential statistics and hypothesis testing by learning about the central limit theorem (CLT). The CLT is the mathematical theory behind a number of commonly-used hypothesis tests, and we will demonstrate it using simulation (no math-y formulas)!
February 9, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll implement our first hypothesis test, but we’ll do it by writing our own simulation-based function in Python. The code might get a little tricky here, but the lessons learned will be invaluable for any statistician, data scientist, or data analyst.
February 16, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll discuss some of the problems that can arise when hypothesis testing is misused. We’ll cover error types and investigate some of the problems that can arise when a single study involves multiple tests.
February 23, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll turn our attention to hypothesis tests that can be used to evaluate an association between two variables among a population that we can’t observe. If we have time, we’ll even simulate our own two-sample t-test.
March 2, 2021 at 4pm ET | LEARN MORE
In this session, we’ll talk about experimental design and sample size determination in the context of an A/B test. A/B testing is often used by marketers to compare two versions of a website or product to determine if one is better for business.
We recently rounded up some of the big wins from our community in 2020. One of these wins came from Rosita — a learner from the Netherlands that went all-in on learning to code when the lockdown began in March and is now working as a front-end developer.
Rosita decided to use the lockdown as an opportunity to invest in herself and, 227 days later, it paid off. In October, Rosita shared that she landed her very first work experience position, doing front-end development at a marketing agency.
We spoke with Rosita to find out more about her learning journey, her new job, and her inspiring 2020 accomplishment.
Rosita shared the story of how she became interested in learning to code in a post on the Codecademy Forum called My story, learning to code with my disability:
“About 4 years ago I started a blog about living with cerebral palsy, because I had just quit my bachelor study social work and I didn’t know what to do next. I was getting treatment in a rehabilitation center because of cerebral palsy and found out I couldn’t become a social worker anymore. But I liked blogging and I learned to type blind with just my left hand.”
“Through blogging, I discovered I liked the technical stuff behind my self-hosted WordPress website and in November 2017 I became a free member at Codecademy and started to learn the basics.”
Rosita started with HTML and CSS and was hooked. “In 2017, I got a free account at Codecademy and started to learn just a little bit and just the basics,” Rosita told us. But in March of 2020, she says, “I got the idea that I wanted to become a developer so I would have to really learn. Because of COVID-19 everything was closed and everyone was at home, so I decided to pay for Codecademy Pro. I decided, if I don’t invest in myself, I’ll never learn to code.”
When asked what the biggest challenge was in learning to code, Rosita shared, “I have slow information processing in my brain, so I just can’t learn fast. If you’re on a forum or in a Facebook group, you hear from people that are learning all day, everyday. But I don’t have the energy to learn all day. So I don’t compare myself to others and their learning journeys. I just take my own time to learn.”
Even with taking her own time to learn, Rosita stays accountable by learning a little bit every single day. When we spoke with her, she was currently on a learning streak that had lasted 258 days. “How much time I spend every day depends on how much time or energy I have. Some days I don’t have much energy, so maybe I practice for 5 minutes in the app. Other days, I may spend up to 2 or 3 hours learning.”
“I have cerebral palsy and, because of that, I receive disability benefits from the government so I don’t have to work. But I want to work,” Rosita told us. She started by sending letters to different companies, but had trouble finding a job because of a lack of work experience. That’s when she turned to LinkedIn and Twitter.
“I made a post telling people what I was looking for, what I was working on, and what I can do — I shared that I know HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript and am learning React. I think that helped people to decide to give me a chance. A lot of people shared my post on LinkedIn.” Ultimately, that LinkedIn post led to Rosita’s work opportunity.
When asked what she’d like to see change about the job seeking process to make it more accessible, Rosita told us, “I think people have to know that people with disabilities have talents too. We’re also able to work and participate in society, and I think people don’t really know that. There’s a lot of misconceptions about having a disability and what it feels like. My disability is not a problem for me behind the computer.”
Join Rosita and the other members of our community on the Codecademy Forums. Find inspiration from other learners and share your own experiences. We hope to see you there!
After a busy end of the year, I finally have a chance to show you the design we made some time ago for an awesome La Cooquette! It is truly unique and colorful, like the content Maria makes. I had the pleasure of designing the new branding for her, including logo design and her blog look. This short post will give you a quick look at the creative process we went through.
As with all more extensive projects, I always start with the logo. This way, I make sure all other elements will go smoothly together. Colors and fonts used in the logo create the branding for the whole blog design, so it is essential to have them approved before making the design itself.
The main goal of this project was to create something funny, food-related, and colorful. The primary color for La Cooquette brand was teal, so we wanted to keep it in. Below are the three mood boards I send Maria after discussing some ideas with her.
All logos were well received, but there was still something missing. We decided to mix things up, and it is how we made the final mood board version. It has something from all three initial designs that makes it even cooler. Take a look at the image below for the conclusive logo look.
As you may notice, the final colors are quite muted, but they still look playful. The font we used is Sunshine Daisies, and I love its potential as it comes in various styles.
With the logo in place, I was able to build the design Maria wanted. We needed a layout that would showcase various post categories and show content diversity. Even though La Cooquette YouTube channel is all about cooking, you can read travel or lifestyle posts on her blog. Because of that, we needed a few post sections to showcase different types of content.
I think we did a great job with that, but let’s take a look at her previous design before I show you the results.
Her old blog look was plain and included only a custom logo (that was really cute!) and boring. You can see it on the print screen below. With such awesome content she produces, I knew she needs something more extra.
Here is a full view of her new design. It took us a few weeks to finish everything, but I think it was worth it.
I hope you like her blog transformation as much as I do! I love doing such creative projects and was really honored to work with Maria.
Let me know what you think in the comments below!
If you are looking for a custom made design, make sure to contact us via our custom design services page. I would love to chat with you and discuss possible options.
P.S This post includes affiliate links so by clicking them you are supporting us. Thanks!
