Is there a notable cook in your extended family? If so, what are his or her best dishes, in your opinion? What memories do you have of eating them?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article about the woman pictured above, who “may be the most popular and powerful grandmother in baseball” since for about two decades she has “filled the bellies of hundreds of players, most of them Latin Americans far from home.”
Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan. You can find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
President Cyril Ramaphosa had hoped that a decisive victory would hand him a popular mandate to carry out far-reaching reforms. But the results from Wednesday’s election — though largely positive given a stagnant economy and the relentless revelations of corruption in the party — were unlikely to quell powerful party rivals, political analysts said.
… For both Mr. Ramaphosa’s allies and rivals in the party, one of the most consequential questions focused on whether a Ramaphosa-led African National Congress would outperform the party under Mr. Zuma. The results would embolden one side or another in the continuing internecine battles.
4. How does contract cheating differ from plagiarism? How is plagiarism generally detected? Why is it more difficult to catch students who submit work that isn’t their own but which has been written for the assignment?
5. How is technology being used to detect contract cheating? What are the challenges to this undertaking? Where do you think this technology will be 10 years from now in terms of effectiveness? Why?
Going Further
What are the ethical issues raised in the article?
The article discusses college graduates in Kenya who have been paid to write papers for American students. The article states:
In Kenya, a country with a per capita annual income of about $1,700, successful writers can earn as much as $2,000 a month, according to Roynorris Ndiritu, who said he has thrived while writing academic essays for others.
Roynorris Ndiritu, 28, who asked that only part of his name be used because he feared retribution from others in the industry in Kenya, graduated with a degree in civil engineering and still calls that his “passion.” But after years of applying unsuccessfully for jobs, he said, he began writing for others full time. He has earned enough to buy a car and a piece of land, he said, but it has left him jaded about the promises he heard when he was young about the opportunities that would come from studying hard in college.
“You can even get the highest level of education, and still, you might not get that job,” he said.
In interviews with people in Kenya who said they had worked in contract cheating, many said they did not view the practice as unethical.
Why do you think the people interviewed in Kenya about their work in contract cheating say they don’t find their actions to be unethical? Do you think it is unethical and, if so, why? If you don’t have an ethical objection to contract cheating, explain why.
Are those who sell their writing just trying to use their academic skills for financial gain, much like freelance writers? Is the lack of other job opportunities reason enough to justify writing papers for other students for money?
What about the essay buyers? Besides cheating, are they also exploiting the people in developing countries whom they are paying to do their writing? If so, in what way?
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
2. 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.)
3. 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.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
My name is Sandra and I completed the Google IT Support Professional Certificate Program on Coursera. Prior to completing the Professional Certificate program, I was a restaurant manager. Now I’m an IT Consultant at a great company in Virginia.
I have never worked in the IT field before but my interest for IT began at an early age. When I was 14, I learned how to make websites with HTML, Flash, and some graphic design skills. When I was younger, I lacked the confidence and support to pursue such a technical career path. I was often told that IT was for men and that women were not good at such things. Instead, I graduated with a degree in advertising from a university in Brazil, where I’m originally from. After graduating, I moved to the US and worked 8 years in the restaurant industry in order to make a living. After so many years, however, I knew it was time for a change. I wanted to change careers.
Recently, with the encouragement of my husband, I decided to invest time in what I love and started working towards building my career in IT. I got admitted into the program that provided me with access to the Google IT Support Professional Certificate program. After completing the program, I was finally able to get my new job in IT this year.
The knowledge I gained from the Google program made the learning curve a lot less intense because of the exposure I had from the coursework. The course on Computer Networking and on IT Security were the most impactful for me because it helped me understand how networking and security works which in turn helped me understand the training material at work.
Learning how to use PowerShell, install a virtual machine, and how Linux works was helpful. In my new role, my responsibilities include multiple system management tasks, adding and disabling customers on their systems, monitoring their systems for availability, creating catalog items, discovery, monitoring data flow, data management, and more. I love my role because it’s challenging, involves creativity and allows me to help others in a great way. I love that I am part of a system where everything connects well. The labs in the program are so much fun and they give you an opportunity to get hands on experience while you learn and get a little taste of what it’s like to be an IT support professional. I have learned so much and it helped me land a new job in IT.
Professionally, I hope to develop a career at my current company, become a subject matter specialist or even a lead consultant and work on projects. I hope to help other women get into the IT field and I’m constantly getting involved in initiatives that aim to close the gender gap. I want everyone to know that if you have a goal and you put in the time and effort, it will happen. I hope everyone has the chance to go after their dreams.
Coursera sits down with Novartis’ Chief Learning Officer, Simon Brown, to learn how he and his team are fostering curious minds and a desire to learn across 130,000 employees in pharmaceutical and healthcare.
Coursera: What drew Novartis to Coursera as a preferred learning solution?
Simon: At Novartisour mission is to reimagine medicine, and we need to nurture curiosity to continue to develop transformative new treatments and find creative solutions to the world’s biggest healthcare challenges.
To support that curiosity, we are “going big on learning” and investing $100 million USD over the next five years to offer our associates the best possible learning and development opportunities. There are many elements to how we will achieve that, but two major things are; providing access to in-depth learning content; and offering flexible ways to access that content and learn. With Coursera for Business, we are able to offer access to content from world-leading universities that complements the other learning offerings we’ve developed. We’re also making it easier for our people to learn by providing flexible access to learning content whenever and wherever they want it all around the world.
What are the main business challenges you’re looking to solve through L&D?
As a science-based company, innovation is at the heart of what we do and we need to foster curious minds with a desire to learn and a passion to discover new and better ways of doing things.
Ultimately, we need to be constantly learning as a company to succeed and having an environment where continuous learning is actively encouraged is essential. We have to ensure we continually build the critical business capabilities that allow us to stay on the forefront of innovation. For example, harnessing the power of data science and digital technologies to reimagine medicine is a key pillar of our Novartis strategy and helping our associates upskill in digital is a top focus for our current learning efforts.
We also know learning and personal development is critical for attracting and retaining the best talent.
What is unique about Novartis’ approach to learning?
Our aspiration to bring the best in learning opportunities consistently across the whole organization globally – we’re talking around 108,000 people of more than 140 nationalities working at Novartis around the world!
And that’s not just providing access the best learning resources but also providing the space and time to learn – we have set an ambition to support our associates in spending 5% of their time (about 100 hours a year) on learning. I find the first question that people often ask when it comes to learning is ‘how will I find time to learn?’, so it’s important to address that head on.
Tell us more about your Curiosity Chapter?
We’re dedicating 3 months across the whole company to reinforce and focus on curiosity and galvanize our learning journey.
We’re promoting the great learning opportunities available across the company and also trying to change the perception of learning in people’s minds. In the past, learning was often associated with ‘training courses’ and a significant part of people’s learning was tied to things that they had to do, for example an operating procedure training, or training to get access to a system or tool. We are trying to change that and show our associates that learning is about investing in yourself and building your skills in areas that have been changing.
It’s been so energizing to see how learning is bringing our people together and the fun they are having with it. We have passionately curious associates volunteering to lead learning activities around the world – everything from ‘Boosting your creativity’ sessions in Russia to a storytelling skills campaign in China to a ‘curiosity hive’ in Prague.
The Curiosity Chapter culminates in September with our second ‘Novartis Learning Month’. We are hosting 100+ global webinars and events on different topics from internal and external speakers including startups and academia. It’s getting an amazing response in the first week we already had 28,000 registrations for sessions!
What are 3 best practices you recommend for every CLO embarking on a multinational or cross-functional upskilling initiative?
Firstly walk the talk – if you aren’t role modelling curiosity and taking advantage of the learning resources that you expect others to use, then how can you be credible when promoting them?
Secondly, don’t ignore the culture. Having great upskilling resources is only a part of the picture – people need a culture where they feel they can take advantage of them and spend time focused on learning. For example, can you sit at your desk and spend 30 mins watching a video without feeling guilty, and without people looking at you and thinking that you are ‘not working’? This is a hard feeling to change, but something that has to happen if people are to continuously learn!
Thirdly and finally, be prepared to get it wrong along the way – it’s a complex task and not everything will go to plan. We all make mistakes!
In describing workplace change, you have said that upskilling around digital is becoming mission-critical for pharma. Why?
A key part of the Novartis strategy is to harness data science and digital technologies to help us bring new medicines to patients faster. The nature of digital is that there are constantly new skills required that people need and that didn’t exist before.
We are working to help all our associates understand what digital is and what it means for us as a company through our Digital Awareness Hub. For our leaders we have a ‘Digital Immersion’ experience that helps understand the impact that digital will have for their area of the business and their role in creating the right culture and environment for digital to be successful.
Finally for associates directly involved in digital we need to support developing deep skills, this could be access to an 8 month Data Science specialization with John Hopkins University or a 4 week program of ‘Agile meets Design Thinking’ with the Darden Business School – that said, both of these are now also available to every Novartis Associate to be able to reskill!
How can a CLO best position the value of learning to internal stakeholders, including both employees and company leaders?
This is about staying consistent and true to the underlying vision and focusing the message to the audience. A CLO needs to understand the business environment the company operates in and the strategy the company is following, and then see where learning and capability building is best positioned. For some companies this is about efficiency, for some effectiveness, for some a combination, and it may be different for different parts of the business or different topic areas. A big part of a CLO’s role is to help prioritize the available resources in the way that they will best deliver best long-term value to the company and the employees.
How do you ensure that newly acquired skills are actually applied on the job?
I think this varies across an organization – how to encourage and support application will be different for a sales person in the field, someone operating a machine in a manufacturing plant or someone in an office role and will be dependent upon what it is that they are learning. Things that play an important factor will be the role of the manager, spaced repetition (to counter the forgetting curve) and alignment or relevance of the content e.g. how quickly is there an opportunity to apply the learning.
How are you measuring the impact that Coursera is having? Any early results you can share?
We have committed to $100m of new investment in learning over the next 5 years as we ‘go big on learning’, and so measuring the impact is crucial. Initially we are looking at the analytics for our new learning offerings – so enrollments, completions, time spent etc. We are also looking at where people are spending their learning time, so as an example the top course at the moment is ‘AI for Everyone’, which aligns completely with our goal to build digital skills. It’s too early to say what the impact will be, but if thousands of people are already spending many hours learning from world-class learning materials, from leading thinkers, in the topics that are most important for our strategy, then this can only be a good thing!
As a lifelong learner, is there a course you’re taking right now?
Currently I’m listening to ‘Trillion Dollar Coach, about Bill Campbell and his coaching approach with Apple and Google. Through our Coursera offering, I’m also taking a course on ‘Giving Helpful Feedback’ from the University of Colorado.
How learning is predicted to change in the future with new generations entering the work place?
For me, the changes will be driven more through technology advancement than generational change. I see the big shifts in technology enabling better access to more relevant and timely learning; making learning more accessible through flexible access to fit in around people lives; and then data and AI improving the discoverability of relevant content and providing what you need when you most need it.
About Simon:
Simon Brown is the Chief Learning Officer at Novartis.
Simon Brown is the Chief Learning Officer at Novartis. Working with Coursera, he and his team are enabling 130,000 employees to grow in an organization committed to continuous learning.
Coursera for Business provides a world-class learning platform for companies on and data science to software development and
About Coursera for Business:
Coursera for Business provides a world-class learning platform for companies that need to upskill, reskill, and deepskill their talent. With topics ranging from digital transformation and data science to software development and leadership, over 1,800 companies trust the Coursera for Business enterprise platform to transform their talent.
When you look at the photo above, what comes to mind first? Do you think about the styles, colors and name brands — or about how those shoes smell, how dirty they are and how many germs are on them?
If you were the person making the rules in your house, would shoes be left by the door? Why or why not?
Maybe you kick off your shoes at home because you don’t want to track dirt across clean carpets or floors, or maybe it’s just a relief to shed them.
Taking off shoes inside the home is also a common practice observed in Asian and Middle Eastern countries and households. But if you regularly take them off mainly because you’re worried about harmful bacteria from the outside getting inside and making you sick, you can probably relax.
Those concerns are overblown, according to experts, who added that more pressing health risks are often overlooked.
The article continues:
It’s possible to transmit germs from your footwear if you touch your shoes and then your face or mouth, for instance, or if you eat food that’s been dropped on the floor.
But in the hierarchy of potential health hazards at home, bacteria-caked shoes rank comparatively low, according to Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
He said there are more important considerations. Is anyone in the house sick? Are there frogs, turtles or snakes nearby, which can carry salmonella? Is food being stored and prepared properly?
Sponges, which retain water and food particles, are a “cesspool” of bacteria, said Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
Outside the home, there are objects and surfaces that are frequently touched but seldom, if ever, washed, such as money, A.T.M. buttons and gas station pump handles, he said, adding, “Focusing on people’s shoes feels like focusing on the wrong vector.”
Over all, experts emphasized that washing your hands with soap and water remained the most important health practice.
Lisa A. Cuchara, professor of biomedical sciences at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., said that fecal bacteria were certainly transferred from your shoes to your floor at home but that “for most healthy adults, this level of contamination is more of a gross reaction than a health threat.”
Putting the threat in perspective, she noted that the floor in a public restroom has around two million bacteria per square inch. A toilet seat, on the other hand, has an average of about 50 per square inch.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
How concerned are you about germs? Does any information in the article make you want to change any habits or practices regarding health safety? Are you surprised by anything in the article? Does anything challenge what you have long believed about germs?
Are you in the habit of removing your shoes when you step inside a home, either your own home or someone else’s? What are the reasons for these shoes-off policies or routines? Are there cultural or religious reasons? Health and cleanliness reasons? Explain.
Dr. Aaron E. Carroll states in the article, “Focusing on people’s shoes feels like focusing on the wrong vector.” After reading the article, do you think people should still be concerned about the health and safety issues related to wearing shoes inside homes? Why?
Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has made plenty of bold predictions. They don’t always come true.
On Monday, Mr. Musk said the company was on the cusp of making cars that could drive themselves safely on any road. He also promised that the company would begin operating a fleet of driverless “robo taxis” by the end of next year.
… Mr. Musk’s lofty prognostications about self-driving cars and the new business of robo-taxis came as investors are bracing for troubling news from the electric carmaker. On Wednesday, Tesla is expected to report a loss for the first quarter amid slumping sales. The company previously said it delivered 63,000 cars in the quarter, down 31 percent from the fourth quarter, despite beginning sales of its Model 3 sedan in Europe and China.
Do you have regular active-shooter drills at your school? If so, what happens during these drills? What are you expected to do? How do you feel about having to participate?
WASHINGTON — After the first day of school at Mark T. Sheehan High School in Wallingford, Conn., Mackenzie Bushey, a 15-year-old junior, came home upset that a teacher enforced a no-cellphones policy by confiscating students’ phones before class. She needed her cell, Mackenzie told her family last month, to notify police should a gunman attack her school.
And also, she said, “to say my final goodbye to you.”
Mackenzie’s mother, Brenda Bushey, blames her daughter’s fears on monthly active-shooter drills at Sheehan High. “I understand they’re trying to think about the children’s best interests,’’ Ms. Bushey said in an interview. “But you can’t help but think of how it’s affecting them.”
Nearly every American public school now conducts lockdown drills — 96 percent in 2015 and 2016 — according to the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. Law enforcement officials and many school administrators say they are crucial for preparing and safeguarding students, but methods vary widely and now include drills that child trauma experts say do little more than terrify already anxious children.
“A whole new cottage industry has emerged where people who don’t know anything about kids are jumping in and adapting protocols for groups like police officers or people preparing for combat,” said Bruce D. Perry, founder of the ChildTrauma Academy, whose clinical team assists maltreated and traumatized children through counseling, research and education. As a result, Dr. Perry said in an interview, “The number of developmentally uninformed, child-uninformed and completely stupid ideas is mind-numbing.”
The news media attention and policy debate surrounding school shootings, and the heartbreaking details of massacres like Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland, heighten the perceived risk among parents and students alike. After the shooting last year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., nearly 60 percent of American teenagers said they were very or somewhat worried about a mass shooting at school, a similar proportion as parents, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.
In fact, while the vast majority of gun-related homicides involving children occur in the United States, only a tiny percentage occur on school grounds. But August’s spate of mass shootings, including in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Odessa and Midland, Tex., have lent urgency to a flood of new preparedness efforts.
Students 13 and older 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.
