These graphs, showing the projected share of uncounted addresses for the 2020 United States census as of Sept. 30, appeared elsewhere on NYTimes.com.
By Friday morning, Oct. 9, we will provide the “Reveal” — the graph’s free online link, additional background and questions, shout outs for student headlines, and Stat Nuggets.
After looking closely at the graph above (or at this full-size image), answer these four questions:
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order.
2. Next, join the conversation online by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box. (Teachers of students younger than 13 are welcome to post their students’ responses.)
3. Below the response box, there is an option for students to click on “Email me when my comment is published.” This sends the link to their response which they can share with their teacher.
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, Oct. 7, 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, Oct. 9, 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.
• 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.
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.
Do you find it difficult to keep up with your friendships in a time of social distancing? Do you find it hard to make new friends in the era of remote schooling, and when people are spending so much time more at home? Has the pandemic brought you closer together, or moved you farther apart, from friends?
What does friendship look like for teenagers in 2020?
Friendships need four elements to grow, according to Kat Vellos, an author and connection coach: close physical proximity, regular interactions, a compatible outlook on life and a shared commitment to being there for each other. In her book, “We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships,” she calls these factors “seeds of connection,” because when they are all present, a healthy friendship can bloom. However, if any of these components are lacking “due to circumstance or not being actively nurtured, the greater your likelihood of failure,” she wrote.
If you’re feeling disconnected because you haven’t been able to spend time with your friends, it’s understandable. When we don’t engage in regular communication and do activities together, even the closest bonds of friendship decay, according to a 2015 study that appeared in the journal Human Nature.
Unlike family relationships, friendships are completely voluntary. Therefore, “they’re the relationships we put the least amount of effort into usually,” said Sabeen Shaiq, a licensed clinical social worker.
Another reason you might be feeling isolated from a friend is because you recently realized your ethical beliefs aren’t as similar as you’d assumed. Clashing viewpoints on social issues may reveal incompatibilities too distressing to ignore. Recent social movements are “really showing more about who people are, what they value, and what’s important to them,” said Ivy Kwong, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “And that’s changing a lot of friendship dynamics.”
Ms. Goldfarb provides some recommendations on what to do if your friendship has been rocky the past few months or if you have been experiencing emotional or physical distance. Here are three of her tips:
Express gratitude.
Write a handwritten letter telling your friend how much they mean to you. Voicing your deep appreciation could help strengthen your bond. “It is scary to do though, because they could not reciprocate,” Ms. Shaiq said. “But sometimes we just have to be authentic to ourselves.”
Try not to take a “no” personally.
If someone says they can’t talk to you right now, don’t spiral into negative questions and assumptions. “Whenever anyone says no, it’s basically them taking care of themselves,” Ms. Kwong said. Respect their decision and let them know your door is always open to them.
Consider this moment as a break, not a permanent chill.
Some relationships can’t thrive in this moment, but you may not want to give up on them entirely. “Allow yourself space to come back to them whenever things are more normal,” Ms. Denworth said. “Sometimes there are people who circle back into your life at different times.” She likens it to discovering a forgotten sweater in your closet that suddenly fits you perfectly. “That could happen with friendships again down the road,” she said. They don’t have to be “all things, to all people, all the time,” Ms. Denworth said, “including during pandemics.”
Students, read the entire article, and then tell us:
Are you having a tough time maintaining friendships these days? If so, tell us the challenges you are experiencing. How have they affected your mental health and your emotional well-being?
What does friendship look like in 2020? What kinds of things are you no longer able to do together with your friends? Has the quality or quantity of your friendships changed? How much time are you able to spend in person? How much is virtual? How does that compare with previous years? Have you experienced any tension or conflicts with friends over expectations around social distancing, mask wearing or hand sanitizer?
What have you been doing to sustain your friendships during the pandemic? Do you have a bubble or pod with friends? What are some creative ways you are staying connected?
Do you agree with Ms. Goldfarb that “some relationships can’t thrive in this moment, but you may not want to give up on them entirely”? Which of her recommendations do you think you might try?
What tips and advice would you give to others struggling to make new friendships or maintain old ones?
Ivy Kwong, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says that current social issues are “changing a lot of friendship dynamics.” Does that resonate with you? Have you experienced “clashing viewpoints” about politics, the Black Lives Matter movement or anything else? If yes, how have you addressed these differences?
The author says that you “might emerge from 2020 with fewer friendships, and that’s OK.” Do you agree? What have you learned about the nature of friendship during the pandemic? Has it made you appreciate friends and friendships 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.
How do these three questions prompt you to do something similar to some of the suggestions made in the article you just read? Can you apply them to some of the pieces you found in your art collection?
If you’d like to practice your visual observation skills, join us Mondays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern when facilitators from our partner organization, Visual Thinking Strategies, come to our site to live-moderate student responses. Or click through the slide show above and choose an image and apply the questions on your own or with others.
Use Art as a Source of Strength
This spring, as museums in New York closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Museum of Modern Art asked its staff members about art they have found themselves thinking of for solace, support and inspiration. “Is there a work in MoMA’s collection that has become particularly meaningful?” they asked. “Perhaps something unexpected or surprising?” Click through the slide show that resulted, called Art Is a Source of Strength. Do any of the works give you comfort? Why? Can you find a comforting work in your own collection?
Consider How Art Can Train Doctors and Police Officers
Art educators aren’t the only ones who think that looking closely and noticing detail in images can be good for your brain. In one 2016 article, “Off the Beat and Into a Museum: Art Helps Police Officers Learn to Look,” The Times explained how taking police officers to the Metropolitan Museum of Art helped train them to be more observant. In another from the same year, “What Doctors Can Learn From Looking at Art,” The Times explained how the same skills of observation could help train medical students. What other professions might learn something from going to art museums and closely studying the work? Why?
Go back to the collection you worked with as you read the main article. Can you find a piece there that would be useful to use to train police officers? Doctors? Why?
Take an “Awe Walk” in Nature
According to a study reported in the Times Health section, “Consciously watching for small wonders in the world around you during an otherwise ordinary walk could amplify the mental health benefits of the stroll.” Read the article and you’ll see that these walks draw on the same observation skills you have developed in this lesson, but this time you don’t need art to practice them. All you have to do is take a walk and pay attention. Here is how the researchers explain it:
“Basically, we told them to try to go and walk somewhere new, to the extent possible, since novelty helps to cultivate awe,” says Virginia Sturm, an associate professor of neurology at U.C.S.F., who led the new study. The researchers also suggested that the walkers pay attention to details along their walks, Dr. Sturm says, “looking at everything with fresh, childlike eyes.”
They emphasized that the awesome can be anywhere and everywhere, she says, from a sweeping panorama of cliffs and sea to sunlight dappling a leaf. “Awe is partly about focusing on the world outside of your head,” she says, and rediscovering that it is filled with marvelous things that are not you.
Explore Seven Elements of Art
A few years ago, The Learning Network ran a series called “Seven Elements of Art,” in which we paired videos from KQED Art School with New York Times articles on the visual arts to help students make connections between formal art instruction and our daily visual culture. Here are our lessons on space, shape, form, line, color, value and texture.
Choose one element, watch the video and skim the lesson on it, then use what you learn as you return one final time to your collection of art and find that element there.
About Lesson of the Day
• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column. • Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.
The goal of this resource is to help you take control of your job search timeline and provide you with strategies for advancing your job search process. It will be most useful for people who need to find a job within a certain timeframe and who want to be as effective as possible at every stage of the process.
This plan will help you design your timeline, set your expectations, monitor your progress, and make adjustments, as necessary, to improve your outcomes. To make the most of these recommendations, plan to put them into action once you have your resume completed and are ready to start actively applying for opportunities.
The first step in planning your job search timeline is understanding the main factors that influence how it plays out. These factors are:
1) the time it will take you to apply to the right job (the company that ultimately hires you)
2) the time between the application and the offer.
For example, if you estimate that it will take you four weeks to apply for the right job and another three weeks between the application and the offer, you should plan to receive a job offer in seven weeks.
We’ll begin by discussing how to develop estimates for your job search so you can plan your own timeline accordingly.
The time it will take to apply to the right job
How long it takes you to apply to the company that you eventually work for depends on how many total roles you need to apply for, and the frequency of your applications. For example, if you determine that you’ll need to apply to 50 roles, you can do this in ten weeks at a rate of five applications per week, or in two weeks at a rate of 25 applications per week.
It is important to estimate how many total roles you will need to apply for, as this will help you determine how many applications you’ll need to submit every week to reach your goals. To make this estimate, try to determine what you expect the following numbers to be, then bring these numbers together for a total number of applications you should plan to submit:
Application-to-first interview success ratio
First interview to second interview success ratio
Success rate of any additional interview rounds (as applicable)
Last interview-to-offer ratio
Here is an example:
If you presume a 20% chance of getting a first interview, a 25% chance of passing the first and second interview rounds, and a 25% chance of getting a job offer after the second interview, then you need to plan on submitting 80 applications to get a job offer.
These are metrics that you can influence. The quality of your application materials will impact how frequently you are invited to a first interview, and your interviewing skills will help you get from one round to the next.
The time between the application and the offer
In almost all cases, you will need to apply for the job and complete a series of interviews before receiving an offer. The amount of time that passes between the application and the job offer will depend on how many rounds of interviews there are, and how much time passes between each step. It is important to understand that this timeline is mostly in the control of the employer. Once you submit an application, they will invite you to interview based on their scheduling. For most roles, this process can take between two and four weeks. This can vary by industry, company, and role.
At this point in developing your plan, you should have a clear idea of how long you expect your job search to take. As you progress in your search, we recommend that you record and monitor the accuracy of your initial assumptions about your timeline. This will help you determine whether you are on track to receive your job offer under the timeline you first established, and where in the process you might be able to optimize your performance. Assumptions to track should include:
Application-to-interview success ratio
Success rate of each round of interviews (e.g., how many first interviews led to second interviews)
Number of interview rounds for each company
Tip: It is always a good idea to track details of your job search activities. You’ll gain insight into your success metrics and stay on top of important job search information that might otherwise get lost as your activities progress. You can use a tracker like this one to track your networking activities, application materials, action items, and notes from conversations.
Next, we’ll discuss how you can improve the efficiency of your job search activities at different points in the process.
There are a number of steps you can take to increase the number of interview opportunities you receive.
Apply to more jobs
Most people will be invited to interviews somewhere between 5% and 50% of the time. This means that you will need to submit between four and twenty applications to be invited to a single first-round interview. The more applications you submit, the more interview invitations you’ll receive.
Use the recommendations below to ensure that you are earning as many opportunities as possible:
Make sure you are monitoring major job aggregators (engines pulling jobs from multiple sites) such as Indeed and ZipRecruiter. You can set up alerts to receive new postings by email.
Separately track postings on LinkedIn jobs, as they might not be captured by aggregators.
Identify companies that you’d be interested in working for based on their geographic location or other parameters. Check their career pages directly once or twice a week for new opportunities that might not appear on aggregators.
Make sure you include remote jobs in your search and consider adding other locations if relocation is an option for you.
Monitor local job referral and networking groups on Facebook and other online communities where recruiters and hiring managers share opportunities not posted elsewhere.
Send an email to people in your network, letting them know about your job search and asking them to share relevant opportunities with you. Make it easy for them to help you by explaining what type of role you are looking for and including your resume.
Optimize your applications
In addition to increasing the number of applications you submit, you can improve the efficacy of each application by optimizing your resume and getting referrals.
First off, make sure your resume follows all the best practices outlined in the Coursera Resume Guide.
Next, get feedback on your resume from other people. Recommendations from professionals in your target field are best, but others with experience in hiring can also help. Keep in mind that people might have different preferences, so don’t feel that you need to incorporate every word of feedback you receive. Instead, collect input from multiple people and look for advice that is consistent and makes sense to you. Your goal is to create a resume that is captivating to as many employers as possible!
Finally, ask for referrals. Referrals are generally the best way to turn more of your applications into interviews. Most companies review employee referrals ahead of other applicants, so, at the very least, a referral increases the chances of your application being properly considered. In addition, employees referring you might be able to provide additional information on the role or the status of your application.
Before applying for a role, check LinkedIn to see if you, or someone you know, might have a connection at the company. Ask for a referral or an introduction.
Create a list of companies where you know people. Go through each company’s careers page to see if there are relevant open roles for which you can request a referral.
Make sure that everyone you know is aware of your job search, so they can send opportunities your way. Reach out to people directly, post on social media, and mention it in conversations. Remember that opportunities can come from unexpected places such as your barber, book club, church, and more.
Tip: Some companies offer referral bonuses to their employees, so even a stranger might be open to referring you if you are a qualified candidate. Be creative when seeking out referrals, and don’t hesitate to ask.
The next milestone is getting from one interview round to the next. Companies generally interview multiple candidates at every stage, so it’s to be expected that you won’t always advance to the next round. The good news is that you can increase your interview success rate by using the strategies outlined below.
First, to increase your chances of getting to the next round, make sure that your resume accurately describes you. Generally, the first round of interviews is a conversation with the recruiter or the hiring manager, with the purpose of confirming that their impression of you from your resume is accurate, and that you meet all the basic requirements for the role. Be careful about over-optimizing your resume—you may be disqualified as a candidate if the impression you make during your interview clashes with expectations set by your resume. If you’re unsure about the effect of your resume, ask for feedback from people you have recently worked with, since they know you best.
Finally, after you’ve done all the preparation you can on your own, you should get external feedback on your interviewing skills. You can do that by scheduling a mock interview—an emulation of a job interview used for training purposes. Your local job center or networking organizations might offer mock interview sessions. Alternatively, you can ask someone you know to conduct a mock interview with you. Ideally, it should be someone familiar with the role you are pursuing, or someone with experience in interviewing.
Here are a few tips for an effective mock interview:
Bring your resume and a job description that your interviewer can reference.
Prepare at least 5-10 questions that you would like to practice answering. Encourage your interviewer to ask additional questions that you didn’t prepare for.
Stay in character when answering questions, and try to reply exactly how you would reply to a real interviewer.
Ask for feedback. Come to this exercise with a growth mindset and help your partner by asking specific questions.
If you’ve followed the strategies laid out in this guide, you should know how to develop a timeline for your job search, monitor your progress, and troubleshoot your applications and interviews to improve your outcomes.
We encourage you to take the time to record your job search activities—starting with your first application—even if you are not actively trying to establish and maintain a particular timeline. Every application and interview experience is a learning opportunity. Plus, your goals might change over time, and information about your previous applications and interviews will help you analyze your past performance, set realistic expectations for future searches.
Knowing what to expect, and having visibility into what’s actually happening in your job search, is key to being in control of your employment, and landing the job!
Teaching and learning online can feel daunting, especially at first. With the pandemic forcing millions of instructors and students abruptly into remote schooling, many have questioned the quality of online learning and its effectiveness — especially those new to the online setting. This new landscape inspired those of us at Coursera to explore what drives the most successful online courses and why. Drawing on the satisfaction, skill development, and career outcomes of over 200 million course enrollments, the Drivers of Quality in Online Learning report showcases the power of online learning and provides actionable, data-driven insights for how instructors and learners can optimize their digital learning experience.
With eight years of data, we’ve found that, when done well, online learning can be extremely effective at helping students acquire and master new skills — including many that are in high demand in the current job market. In fact, 73% of our online learners report a positive career outcome within six months of completing a course. The percentages are more than 80% for those studying business, data science, information technology, and computer science.
Skill-focused learning has never been more important. In recent years, employers have struggled to find qualified workers for critical roles, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the skills gap, according to a recent article in The New York Times.
No matter the subject area, there are specific techniques instructors can use to dramatically improve student engagement, satisfaction, and career outcomes. Here are four of the most effective ways we’ve found to build job-ready skills through online learning:
1. Define specific learning objectives to help learners connect the content with their career goals.
You can drive career outcomes by defining specific and actionable objectives for each module and the whole course. For example, instead of “Learn basic Python,” a more helpful description would tell students that by the end of the course, they’ll be able to explain a “for-loop” and implement one to simplify their own code.
On the Coursera platform, students can see the concrete skills they’ll be learning in the “Key Concepts” section at the beginning of each week. When you make the learning objectives clear and provide examples of how that skill is used in an industry setting, your students get excited to dive into the content. Courses with specific objectives outlined for each week have a statistically significant increase in the rate of career outcomes.
Your learning objectives should shape every aspect of the course design. When creating a course, start with learning objectives and work backward. Where do you want your students to be at the end of their learning journey? Define those specific learning objectives, and then ask, “How are we going to assess if they’ve actually gained those skills?” Decide what projects will help students master those skills and how they can practice along the way. Finally, outline the instructional materials that will introduce key topics, provide concrete examples, and help students apply the skills to their own career aspirations.
2. Test students’ knowledge to keep motivation and engagement high.
When students take frequent assessments as part of an online course, they’re more likely to complete the course — and also more likely to achieve a career outcome. Because some universities rely heavily on end-of-term exams, students often receive very little feedback until the end of the semester. As a result, they don’t have an accurate sense of how well they’re doing or the concepts they need to review again. Instead, help students master new skills and identify gaps in their understanding by providing multiple checkpoints throughout your course. These checkpoints should include a mix of graded and practice assessments.
Consider beginning your course with a longer module to scaffold learners into the content, and then test their understanding early and often. Feedback could come from peer-review assignments or automated feedback on quizzes. At Coursera, we’ve developed option-level feedback: depending on how a student answers a question, the system prompts them to review a specific piece of content, or — if they answered correctly — it reinforces the concept by reminding them why their response was correct. Including option-level feedback on quiz questions is a rare method for significantly increasing both satisfaction and completion rates for online learners.
In this way, an online course can provide scaffolding that builds up the learner’s mastery over time. Low-stakes or no-stakes assessments are an important part of that process. Ask students to take a practice assessment after watching videos, engaging with readings, or participating in a simulation to see if there are still gaps in their knowledge, and then direct them back to what they need to review. Including in-video questions and hands-on practice, each produces a 10% increase in average skill development for those who complete the course.
Online education, if done well, can be highly effective because students have the flexibility to set their own pace and access the amount of practice they need, which varies from one student to the next. Having more practice not only leads to higher scores on graded assessments but also helps keep students’ motivation high — they’re more likely to complete courses that offer more practice assessments.
3. Use hands-on projects, including peer review and programming assignments, to drive higher skill development.
Instructors can help their students connect skill-based learning objectives to career goals by providing industry examples and authentic, hands-on projects. Applied projects foster higher skill development by engaging students in the creation and evaluation forms of learning. In fact, including programming assignments in technical courses on Coursera increases average student skill development by 30%.
For example, in a data science course, instead of using a contrived dataset, you should use real data from an open-source organization or partner with a company that can provide relevant data for the project. In a business course, you could design a project centered on a real case study or ask students to apply the core skills to their own work contexts.
Have students put their new skills into action with reflection and peer reviews. Not every student feels comfortable asking a question in a lecture hall with hundreds of other students. But in an online setting, students can write a question in a forum, respond to a discussion prompt, or learn from a peer’s work.
For example, in the Applications of Everyday Leadership course created by the University of Illinois, discussion prompts and peer review assignments guide learners to reflect on key concepts and evaluate new business situations. In Google’s Technical Support Fundamentals course, students apply what they’ve just learned about creating effective technical documentation by writing their own and then reviewing their peers’ work.
Students gain the most from giving and receiving peer reviews when they have a strong rubric that includes quantitative and qualitative feedback. Peer review and programming assignments lead to a higher likelihood of career outcomes by helping learners jump from theoretical concepts to real-world applications.
4. Break the content into bite-size chunks.
For higher engagement and larger skill gains, our data show that the optimal course length is 4 to 6 weeks, with about 4-6 hours of total learner engagement time per week. Avoid making students wade through a 90-minute lecture to find one specific concept by instead providing small chunks of video content with clear titles. Videos in the 3- to 9-minute range are ideal for continued engagement and satisfaction. In fact, by keeping lectures under 10 minutes in length, instructors can increase their course completion rate by 16%. This structure also makes it easy for learners to find and review specific concepts as needed.
The first module should be longer than average, to ground students in the subject matter. We recommend including the most videos in the first module and gradually transitioning into more project work, with most of the time in the final week spent on hands-on assignments. Students are more likely to complete a course when the total amount of learner engagement time per week stays relatively stable, but how you use that time should vary from week to week.
For example, the first course of the University of Michigan’s Applied Data Science with Python Specialization has more videos at the beginning to introduce students to key terms, definitions, and topics that will be used throughout the course. The instructor uses screen sharing to show his code and provides practice Jupyter notebooks, so students can follow along and run the same programs the instructor talks about in the videos. The first week has a light-weight assignment just to get students going, but by the end, they are building complicated data analysis programs on their own.
As universities everywhere build resilient teaching models in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, you should feel confident that you can deliver a high-quality educational experience by following these best practices. Even more importantly, your students can expect a strong return on their investment, in the form of in-demand, job-ready skills.
For more data-driven insights on how to increase engagement, satisfaction, and skill development in your own courses, read the full Drivers of Quality in Online Learning report.
“My name is Pronab Nandi. I am a textile professional with more than fifteen years of industrial experience. I have a post graduate degree in business analytics and a bachelor in Technology in Textile Engineering. I have done more than 20 online diploma courses with Alison and more than 500 online certificate courses with a variety of different learning platforms.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I came to know about Alison through LinkedIn.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
ISO 14001: 2015. I choose this course because I am an environment lover.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
Continuous learning is my hobby and I enjoy it very much.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
I will continue to work in retail industry and to enrich my knowledge from time to time.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
“My name is Polly Austin. I’m an African-American woman with four kids. I’ve completed a lot of education in life to get towhere I am now.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I learned about Alison through searching on Google.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
I think it was a Law course but my God I am totally unsure. Law is one of my favorite subjects to study.
What’s your favourite way to relax from studying?
Going for a brisk walk.
Where are you working now?
I’m working at the Positive Health Alliance.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
I’m continuing to learn and look for work in higher-paying jobs.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
How to increase the speed of completion in my classes, lol.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
I would tell them it’s a great school. It’s something you would love to do if you were an at-home-mom or have to work throughout the day. Then Alison is the place for you.
This year, I decided to refresh one of our oldest Halloween printable poster – Danger Zombie Quarantine. Looking at the current pandemic crisis, I’m more scared when I hear quarantine then when I think about zombies. Since most of us will probably stay at home, this printable poster is a perfect option for some seasonal decorations.
Halloween Printable Poster
Posters are the universal option for a quick house makeover. When I was renting a flat and did not have space for fancy decorations, I loved to get myself a few posters now and then get a more seasonal look in the living room. I encourage you to try that too if you do not have a lot of space! Our Halloween Printable Poster is easy to print and available in three different sizes – A4, A5, and US Letter.
For Personal Use Only.
What types of decorations are your favorites? Above all, do you even decorate your house for seasonal occasions like Halloween? I would love to know that so please let me know in the comments below!
If you are looking for more Halloween Freebies, make sure to check our free printables library
Looking for something specific?
If you have an idea for printable, let us know in the comments! We are always looking for inspiration. If you decide to print today’s Halloween printable poster, make sure to share photos of your decorated room with us via Instagram or Twitter.
What message do you think this image is trying to convey? How does it relate to or comment on society or current events? Can you relate to it personally? What is your opinion of its message?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to see what it is about.
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.
Last month in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of archaeologists and organic chemists described how they had spent a year cooking a variety of meals in clay pots and then investigating the organic residues left behind. No one got a hearty meal out of this lab work, but the researchers found that some residues traced just the last round of ingredients, while others reflected the long-term cooking history of each pot. By documenting the results of these experiments, the team hopes to help scientists reconstruct ancient culinary practices.
… One way of getting at food preferences and practices over time is to look at what’s left behind after a meal. As they are used, cooking vessels naturally build up organic residues such as charred bits, thin coatings known as patinas, and absorbed fats. The sponges and dishwashers we use today tend to eradicate these leftovers, but they are often found in and on cooking implements unearthed at archaeological sites.
