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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Immigration is likely going to be a major topic in the 2020 election. From issuing a travel ban on many majority-Muslim countries to shutting down the government while seeking funding for a border wall, President Trump has made immigration perhaps the central defining issue of his presidency. And Democrats have so far successfully punted on tackling the issue head-on, opting to try to block Trump’s policies rather than propose a full-fledged alternative agenda.

However, survey data suggests that public attitudes toward immigration may be somewhat more in line with Democrats’ positions than Republicans’, so Democrats might do well in 2020 if they campaign on their vision for overhauling the immigration system. Yet this move still carries risks. Some views held by members in the left wing of the party — like abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — don’t poll well with voters and could be particularly alienating among Americans who are worried about border security.

First, let’s take a look at how American attitudes toward immigration have changed over the past 25 years and how that could work to Democrats’ advantage. This January, 62 percent of Americans said that immigrants strengthen the country, while just 28 percent said they felt that immigrants were a burden, according to the Pew Research Center. But as you can see in the chart below, this is pretty much a complete reversal from where the public stood when Pew first asked this question in 1994.

Back then, 63 percent of Americans said immigrants were a burden and 31 percent said they strengthened the country. In 2018, Gallup found that a record share of Americans — 75 percent — thought immigration was a good thing for the country. Ironically, some of the increase in pro-immigrant attitudes that pollsters are recording is probably attributable to Trump’s presidency. As the chart above shows, the percentage of Americans who told Pew that immigrants “strengthen” society shot up during and after the 2016 campaign and has remained above 60 percent since Trump took office.

But just because more Americans have a positive attitude toward immigration doesn’t mean they want to see more immigration. In early 2019, 30 percent of Americans told Gallup they wanted immigration levels to increase while 31 percent said they wanted levels to decrease and 37 percent said they should be kept the same.

Many Americans are also concerned about border security. A 2018 Harvard-Harris poll found that 61 percent of registered voters believed that current border security was inadequate and 39 percent felt it was adequate. This year, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that just 34 percent of adults thought the border was secure while 50 percent felt it was not secure. Two other polls from earlier this year found that Americans supported increased spending on border security — Gallup found that 75 percent of Americans favored hiring significantly more border patrol agents, while Fox News found that 68 percent of Americans favored spending more on border security measures other than building a wall.

These mixed signals voters seem to be sending in the polls have meant that Democratic leaders have proceeded cautiously on immigration reform. Since capturing the House in the 2018 midterm elections, the party has eschewed a sweeping overhaul and instead has focused on narrower policies that are relatively popular. For example, most Americans oppose more barrier construction on the U.S.-Mexico border, and so Democrats have fought to limit the amount of funding available for that project. Democrats have also used their oversight powers to challenge the Trump administration’s extremely unpopular family-separation policy. They also voted in February to block Trump’s national emergency declaration, which he made in order appropriate funds to build a wall on the southern border; Trump ultimately vetoed Congress’s attempt to overturn the emergency declaration, but a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 64 percent of the country opposes the national emergency order.

One larger piece of immigration legislation that Democratic House leaders have pushed is a bill that would provide legal protections and a path to citizenship for as many as 2.5 million1 undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who either came to the country as children or came fleeing conflicts or natural disasters in their home countries. And public opinion suggests Democrats might not be afraid to agitate for these protections: In 2018, Gallup found that 83 percent of Americans favored offering a chance to become U.S. citizens to undocumented immigrants who had come to the country as children. And just 30 percent of Americans said they wanted it to be harder for undocumented immigrants to request asylum while 34 percent said they wanted the process to be “left as is,” according to this week’s ABC News/Washington Post survey. (Another 27 percent said they wanted the asylum process to be easier.)

How should Democrats handle immigration?

Opposing Trump’s unpopular positions on immigration and fighting for legal protections for some undocumented immigrants has proven to be safe political ground for Democrats. Now it might be time for Democratic presidential candidates to expand on this approach and start tackling the issue of border security in a similar way. Simon Rosenberg, president of a liberal think tank called NDN, argues that Democrats should take advantage of the fact that Trump has attached himself to unpopular immigration stances that didn’t pay off in the 2018 midterms. “Democrats just have to be clear on what their positions are on the border and [border] enforcement.” And ignoring concerns about border enforcement could prove unwise for Democrats — for instance, a January survey from ABC News/Washington Post found that 54 percent of Americans thought the country was doing too little to prevent undocumented immigrants from entering the country. Rosenberg said he thought Democrats could find a way to craft an immigration strategy that’s both humane and “also takes border enforcement seriously.”

Others stress that Democrats can’t just respond to Trump’s unpopular approach to immigration — the party needs its own comprehensive approach. Matt Barreto, co-founder of the polling firm Latino Decisions, told FiveThirtyEight that “Democrats need to be prepared to talk about the issue — not just reacting to what Trump says, but leading with some solutions to the complex and varied immigration issues the country is facing.” Barreto said he thinks immigration can be a winning issue not only with Latinos but also with the public at large, and that House Democrats should use their majority to pass a comprehensive reform package. Even though such legislation would almost certainly fail in the GOP-controlled Senate, the attempt would give Democratic presidential candidates something to refer to as they formulate their stances on immigration.

But others in the left wing of the party, including some presidential candidates, are pushing for even more far-reaching — and controversial — changes to the immigration system. In the Trump era, “abolish ICE” has become a popular refrain on the left, and the agency has attracted intense criticism regarding how it handles its duties. And it’s still early, but at least one presidential candidate has taken a stance on the issue: Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro put together an extensive immigration platform, and as part of that plan, he proposed shifting ICE’s arrest and deportation responsibilities to other agencies.

Other presidential candidates have also laid out ideas for changing the agency: Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for ICE to be restructured, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren said last year that it should be replaced “with something that reflects our morality and that works.” However, efforts to diminish — or even disband — the agency could be politically risky because Americans generally want to keep it around. A Morning Consult/Politico survey last year found that 54 percent of voters favored keeping the agency in place while 25 percent wanted to get rid of it, and a 2018 Fox News survey showed that a plurality opposed abolishing the agency.

Aside from Castro, candidates in the 2020 Democratic field haven’t offered many detailed positions on immigration policy, so most of them remain something of an enigma. “There’s a risk that Democrats respond clumsily and ineffectively because they have to craft a new strategy,” Rosenberg said. Given that the public’s attitude toward immigrants has become more and more positive and that most people lack confidence in Trump’s ability to effectively handle immigration policy, Democrats could make immigration a winning issue in 2020 — if they are able to balance promises of reform with concerns about border security. Time will tell.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Geoffrey Skelley

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eldritchsurveys · 6 years ago

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o82.

[[ Random Survey Questions // By @x-hallie-x ]] 1. When was the last time you just wanted to be alone? What about the last time you really wanted to be around people? >> I don’t remember the last time I wanted either of these things consciously... like, they might be vague thoughts or feelings floating around in my headspace, but I don’t always focus on them. Also, I’m never alone, technically, so I guess there’s that.

2. Have you ever gone somewhere in your pajamas? What makes this acceptable or unacceptable to you? >> Yeah, sure, I used to walk to bodegas and shit in NYC in pajamas quite often. There’s really no point in changing if I’m just walking down the street to get a 40 or a sandwich, like... Also, the only dress requirement for leaving the house in a casual sense is to just be decent -- bits covered, you know. The idea that one must wear a certain kind of clothing in order to be seen outside of one’s domicile isn’t necessarily true. (Now, if I were going to a specific venue that did have a specific mode of dress -- a certain kind of event, say, or a government office, or something, then yes, I would wear the appropriate clothing. But like, no one in your local corner store cares how the fuck you’re dressed as long as you’re dressed.)

3. Other than the usual things like IDs, etc, what do you always carry with you when you go out? >> The only things that are always present with me when I leave the house, no matter where I’m going, are the standard PKW (phone, keys, wallet) and my lip balm. (If it’s daytime, then also sunglasses.)

4. If you were to go on a picnic, what type of setting would you prefer, what types of food would you bring, and would you bring anyone along with you? >> Honestly, anywhere somewhat nature-y is good as far as location is concerned, even if it’s just a municipal park or a place like Union Square (which isn’t a park so much as it’s a... like, town-square kind of construct). I guess the food I’d bring would just be anything portable and easy to eat without needing a table (sandwiches are always good, of course, but even something like a plate from the hot-food spread at Whole Foods is good, I’ve picnicked with that). A lot of my outdoor eating escapades have been alone, so like, it doesn’t matter who’s with me, I guess. Anyone who wants to come.

5. What is one song you feel as though you sing particularly well, if any? >> Guaranteed by Eddie Vedder. I think Eddie and I have a lot of vocal similarities. Which is good, because I love him and his voice. :p

6. Have you ever kept a mood chart or anything like that? Did it help you pick up any useful patterns in your moods? >> I’ve never tried to keep a chart of them, no, especially since I’m not sure what half of my feelings even are, when I do have them.

7. What was the last lengthy task you completed? >> The survey I took yesterday. :p

8. Do you look toward the future or focus more on the here and now? Are you good at being in the moment, or do you always feel drawn to worrying about other things? >> I do a lot better when I only have the present to focus on. It kinda glitches me to think about the future too much, not because of anxiety or anything, but just because it kind of doesn’t make sense to me. I can think about the future in entirely abstract terms, like for the sake of argument or flights of fancy, but not in any concrete sense. It is the greatest great unknown, and I’ve never had any success trying to manipulate it or understand myself through it. I don’t know what I’m going to be doing (or who I will be) in the next hour, and people want me to think about months and years into the future?! Wild. I also think that the way I’ve lived the past decade-plus before moving here made thinking about the future really difficult for me, because I was really living from day to day. When I’m concerned about where I’m going to sleep from night to night, planning for a future seems like a luxury rather than a fact of life. But also, I guess... I just like to focus on what I’m doing right now. I like to be present here. I have a pretty deep-set confidence that the future will take care of itself as long as I take care of the present, but if I focus too much on the future then I will have missed the plot entirely. I feel more secure when I focus on the present. It is the only point in time in which I truly exist.

9. What does it mean to you to have empathy? Do you think you’re an empathetic person? >> I’m not really sure what empathy means anymore, to be honest. I definitely don’t consider myself an empathetic person, by any of the definitions that I’ve heard. I think I can empathise with fictional characters, because I’m a storyteller and jumping into the heads of characters is kind of integral to telling honest stories... but actual people in front of me, not so much. (Characters are a lot less complex by design, anyway. Kind of like the difference between Sims and people -- Sims’ needs and motivations are pretty obvious and predictable, whereas people are... wild cards, a lot of the time.)

10. What was the last thing you did that was particularly selfish? What about selfLESS? >> I’m really not sure.

11. What is something about your life that is currently beyond your control? >> The weather, lmao. I’m watching it get real cloudy real fast and I’m like “but... I want the sun... :(” The weather don’t care what I want. ... Annnnnd it just started raining. Pfft.

12. What is one small thing you could do to change about your life for the better? >> Eating healthier is always the top option. I mean, I don’t eat badly or anything, it’s just that there’s always improvement to be made in that area. But I also understand that obsessing over my consumption is actually just as counterproductive, so I try not to make a big deal out of it, and just enjoy what I’m eating. We all gotta die of something anyway, I guess. It might as well taste good, or else what is really even the point.

13. What type of photography do you enjoy looking at? Do you take any photos yourself, and if so, what types of things do you prefer to photograph? >> I like urban photography -- not necessarily shiny cityscapes, but more like... street-level urban, like of old abandoned buildings and back alleys and people sitting on stoops and just city life. I like various landscapes, especially deserts/tundras, and marshes and complex ecosystems. And I like photography that evokes certain Moods(tm), whether it be because of the content or because of the lighting or the framing or... whatever. It’s definitely that “I know it when I see it” kind of thing. I don’t really take photos of anything except myself and random things I want to show people, I guess.

14. Have you ever gone out for the black friday shopping rush? Did you enjoy it, or not so much? Or, what’s the busiest shopping day you’ve ever experienced? >> I have never been shopping on Black Friday, but I have been just out and about while it was happening. I don’t really care for that kind of thing -- I like the sales and stuff, but I don’t like the mad rush. It just makes me feel kinda... alienated, like, in a “this is what life is?” kind of way. Just a deeply personal feeling, nothing against the whole concept.

15. Do you enjoy reading diaries or stories you wrote from when you were younger, or does it embarrass you? If you’ve kept them, was there a particular reason for hanging on to them so long? >> I do enjoy reading those things, and I wish I had more of them, but the ones that were on paper have been lost for a long time and a lot of the internet sites I used in the beginning are no longer active and the content has been lost (or I can’t find it anymore). My old deviantART accounts are pretty much the oldest content of mine that still exists on the internet in a form that I can access, and although a lot of that stuff is definitely amusing, I can’t imagine finding it embarrassing.

16. What would you say was your first true hobby? What about your most recently developed one? >> Drawing, maybe? I don’t know. My most recently developed one is probably MMO gaming.

17. Is there one thing that throws off your mood more than others, whether it be lack of sleep, lack of food, heat // cold, etc? & when was the last time you felt especially cranky? >> I’m not sure, since keeping track of my moods isn’t something I really do with any success or skill. Maybe sensory overload -- that’s always a reliable mood-tanker, and a lot of my inexplicable moodiness/mental exhaustion can probably be attributed to just being overloaded. The last time I felt cranky was last evening, and I’m not sure why, but it probably had something to do with being frustrated about Dragon Age Inquisition being broken and then like... some low-grade dissatisfaction with life or something. Nothing worth making a mountain out of.

18. What are some ways you deal with stress? Are these healthy or helpful to you? >> Distraction is usually my method. Playing video games, watching tv or youtube, slam-dunking myself into a pile of plushies, making origami stars and listening to music, that sort of thing. And yeah, I think distracting myself from stress is pretty healthy for me, since it lowers the cortisol and enables me to approach whatever is stressing me out later on without the heightened emotional response. (Although, also, a fair amount of my stress isn’t based on anything that’s solvable or like... worth even giving attention, so the distraction enables me to refocus my energies onto something actually worth doing, so then later I can just be like “lmao that wasn’t even a big deal” and go on with my life.)

19. What advice, if any, would you give someone else in your situation? >> I’m not sure what situation I’m in, lmao.

20. In general, are you the type to feel comfortable giving advice? Has anyone ever come to you for advice and you had no idea what to tell them? >> I feel comfortable giving it if it’s an area I feel experienced or skilled in. Otherwise I’ll just flat-out say that I don’t have any advice, or point them to someone that might.

21. What is one common area of life in which you feel you have little to no experience (college, children, marriage, etc)? >> Definitely college, I can’t even... like, fathom college. What is college even like??? All I have to go by is movies and shit, lmao. I’ve not been married yet, so that’ll be a new experience (although I strongly suspect it won’t be too much different from being unmarried, aside from getting accustomed to using a different set of words to describe my relationship). I have no experience in not being poor, since I’ve never not been poor. This is the most not-poor I’ve felt, but like, that’s not because of anything that’s changed in my personal finances. I just live in a cooperative household.

22. What kinds of things are you likely to complain about? >> I don’t know, really. I don’t do a whole lot of complaining unless it’s a quick vent and then I move on (or unless someone I’m talking to is bitching about something and I’m like “OMG SAME” and we have a little bitchfest lmao). I don’t really like to focus on stuff like that.

23. Besides money, what is something you would like to have more of in your life? >> Meatspace socialisation.

24. What types of blogs do you like to follow? If you have a tumblr, how has your blogging style changed over the years, if at all? >> I follow over 900 blogs, I don’t even know what my “type” is. I just follow whatever looks good at the time, and then unfollow if I get bored of the content or whatever. I think my blogging style has changed in the sense that I’m not as... talkative? I used to make a lot more text posts on my personal and then I kind of just... stopped. I’m trying to get back into it lately, varying up my content, appearing more like a person instead of just a reblog bot.

25. Do you like to put any extra effort into your food in terms of presentation, or do you prefer to just put it on a plate and eat it as it is, no frills? >> I don’t, because I... I don’t know, executive dysfunction, I guess. Also, like... I don’t have the stuff I want, like the kind of dishes I like, etc, and the kitchen is small and disorganised and usually I just want to get out of it as quickly as possible and yeah, I can’t be bothered with making my food look nice when I can barely be bothered with making food, period. I do like presentation and all of that, I think it’s great and definitely adds to the joy of eating. It’s just... not something I can do right now.

26. When was the last time you were mean or rude to someone else? How about the last time someone acted that way toward you? >> I don’t remember. I don’t think I’m especially rude in general, I’m just straightforward and I think people prefer sweeter tones or whatever. I’d rather put my social energy into saying what I mean rather than saying it in a way that makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy, or whatever, I don’t know. It’s just not a priority of mine to sound “nice”. It’s never been. I don’t remember the last time someone was rude to me, mostly because I forget shit like that really easily. It’s low on the importance scale.

27. What kinds of things are most likely to make you lose your temper? Have you ever done something regrettable or embarrassing while angry? >> It’s really hard to get me to lose my temper completely, which is good, because I already give an aggressive impression -- imagine what it’s like when I’m actually feeling aggressive. I’ve definitely done things that I would rather not have done when I’m angry, which is another reason why it’s good I don’t get angry often.

28. What has stood out about this day in particular? Has this day been an average day in terms of what you usually experience? >> Well, it’s still only 11a. That random two-minute rain was interesting (it’s now partly-cloudy again), but that’s it so far, really. This is a pretty average day.

29. How would you describe your current mood? Do you experience a lot of highs and lows or are your moods relatively stable? What is the most your mood has changed in a day? >> My mood is my normal baseline, which is... no mood. Like, I really don’t have a mood most of the day, unless something specific happens to change it. I kind of exist in a comfortable greyness most of the time, with little spikes here and there.

30. Do you remember what it was that got you into taking surveys in the first place, or why you initially decided to stick with them? Where did you originally start out taking surveys? Are there any blogs you recommend (lol, I’m always looking for more surveys!)? >> Man, I have noooo idea. It was over 10 years ago by now, so surveys really just feel like a permanent fixture in my life. I think I first took them on MySpace? That seems likely. And I’m in the same boat as you, I think, lmao -- I just take the ones in the tag or on LJ or whatever the “random” function on Bzoink gives me that isn’t terrible (there are so many bad surveys on that site lmfao).

#surveys #survey #random survey

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thesimplyluxuriouslife · 8 years ago

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An Everyday Necessity: Deliberate Rest

~The Simple Sophisticate, episode #139

~Subscribe to The Simple Sophisticate: iTunes | Stitcher | iHeartRadio

"When we take the right to rest, when we make rest fulfilling, and when we practice rest through our days and years, we also make our lives richer and more fulfilling." —Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done when You Work Less

Charles Darwin partook in regular 10 miles walks, Alice Munro walked three miles each day, Winston Churchill engaged in painting, Lin-Manual Miranda took his dog each Sunday for walks through the parks in New York City, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ray Bradbury took daily afternoon naps, workers at Bletchley Park during WWII chose chess as a favorite pastime and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court Elena Kagan boxes regularly with her personal trainer.

Initially when the word 'rest' is mentioned, we may think of sitting on the sofa, flipping through channels, but the difference between mindless rest and deliberate rest is that it "enables productivity". When we truly rest, our minds are not actually stagnant. In actuality, we are enabling them to do what they need to do, work through, dispose of, find and reach understandings and connections that when we are active at work, it is unable to do completely.

The difference between mindless and deliberate rest is what you are feeding your brain. Sitting down and watching a thoughtful, engaging film can absolutely be deliberate rest. It may offer ideas and insights that eventually help us make connections we didn't see prior to viewing of the film; the key is to feed our minds well. Give it quality fuel and quality results have the possibility of being produced, even while we sleep.

Recently, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's new book Rest was released, and contained inside the covers is a wealth of research, seemingly infinite anecdotes from historical and current individuals that reveal the power of deliberate rest being incorporated into our daily lives. Throughout today's post, I will be sharing many different quotes, and unless otherwise attributed, they are pulled from the pages of Rest.

As we begin 2017 and we look to the future we wish to build for ourselves, it may appear as though we have much to do in order to accomplish what we have placed on our list of resolutions or goals. But in order to be successful in whichever destination we pursue, the concept of quality over quantity guides the way. How is that possible? How can we do less and actually attain more? By tossing what the zeitgeist portrays as the "right way" to achieve success out with 2016.

"Today, we treat being stressed and overworked as a badge of honor, a sign of seriousness and commitment; but this is a recent phenomenon, and it inverts traditional ideas of how leaders and professions should behave under pressure. For most of history, leaders were supposed to appear calm and unhurried; success began with self-mastery and self-control."

~For more in-depth discussion on each of the points discussed below, be sure to tune in to the podcast.

Benefits:

1. Helps to organize your life

2. Cultivates calm in your life

3. Strengthens your will-power and self-control

4. Increases your confidence

5. Increases emotional intelligence and engagement

6. More time is given as boundaries are made firm and clear

7. Increases success and accomplishment, aiding you in reaching your full potential

8. Live a long, healthy, invigorating life

9. Helps you live a simply luxurious life

"It creates a life that's rewarding while it's lived, a life that has purpose and pleasure, work and reward, in equal measure. And that life feels complete and well-spent at the end."

How to welcome deliberate rest into your life:

1. Make rest a priority

"Taking rest seriously also helps bring more of your life into clearer focus."

2. Spend only 4-5 hours each day doing strenuous work

3. Establish a consist morning routine

"My morning is all about stilling the outside world so my mind can soar." —Scott Adams, the illustrator and creator of the comic strip Dilbert

4. Set clear boundaries between work and rest

"A day that starts with work creates rest that can be enjoyed without guilt. When you start early, the rest you take is the rest you've earned."

5. Take regular walks

6. Nap regularly and nap well

"The most obvious benefits of napping is that it increases alertness and decreases fatigue . . . but regular naps have other benefits . . . improve memory . . . [and] consolidate things you've just learned."

7. Enjoy a regular, deep night's sleep

8. Detach and take that vacation

9. Exercise regularly

"At first, researchers mainly investigated the benefits of exercise for healthy aging, but studies now show that for people of any age, gender, or athletic ability, exercise can increase brain power, boost intelligence, and provide the stamina and psychological resilience necessary to do creative work."

10. Cultivate a hobby you love and that challenges you

Perhaps when you read #2 on the list above, you said to yourself, nope, that will never happen, not in my world, not in the job I have to do every day to earn my paycheck. And on the surface, you are absolutely correct. But what if you could look at the job you go to each day and redesign your day? What if you could schedule your day so that you did tend to the most strenuous demands at the beginning and then schedule meetings, projects and activities toward the tail-end that allowed you to not tax your mind directly as much?

Understandably, what job you do and for whom you work and the expectations will play a significant role. What I appreciated upon reading Rest is that it validated what I already felt regarding the productivity of my work. When I worked at my best, when I felt my most exhausted, it gave me a reason as to why. It helped me understand my mind, my body and the benefits of what I am doing and what I need to make sure I continue to do and what I can begin to let go of as it no longer serves me or the quality of life I am trying to cultivate.

Saying no to what no longer serves the simply luxurious life you are building becomes easier when we have science to explain what works best, but we also have to understand what type of life we want to build, and when we know that and believe it to our core, the saying of "no" and the incorporation of deliberate rest into our lives becomes far easier. And that is when our lives begin to truly blossom.

We don't have to look busy to gain approval. The gift of living well is that our lives often will look paradoxical: How can she/they/he live such a life and not be exhausted/stressed and have time to enjoy, play and partake in the pleasures as well? But the reality is, it is indeed possible when we choose to live consciously and thoughtfully.

"A life that focuses on what matters most, makes time for rest, and declines unnecessary distractions may look simple on the outside, but from the inside it is rich and fulfilling."

Deliberate rest paired with deliberate work is a partnership: "One provides the means to live, the other gives meaning to life".

"When we treat rest as work's equal and partner, recognize it as a playground for the creative mind and springboard for new ideas, and it as an activity that we can practice and improve, we elevate rest into something that can help calm our days, organize our lives, give us more time and help us achieve more while working less."

~SIMILAR POSTS FROM THE ARCHIVES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

~15 Everyday Habits to Live a Life of Contentment

~10 Things People Who Have Found Contentment Understand About Uncertainty

~Relax: 21 Ways to Know You're Doing Just Fine in This Thing Called Life

Petit Plaisir:

~Equipment silk pajamas, Lillian striped washed-silk pajamas - 50% off at Netaporter ~use promo code EXTRA40, at Equipmentfr.com SHOP Equipment Pajamas: [show_shopthepost_widget id="2336799"]

Image: Vogue UK

Tune in to the latest episode of The Simple Sophisticate podcast

#tsllpodcast thesimplesophisticate

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themoneybuff-blog · 6 years ago

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Exploring the Connections Between Your Professional Life and Your Financial Life

This is the sixth entry in an eight part series exploring the connections between your finances and other areas of your life. A few weeks ago, I started a series exploring the connections between personal finance and the other spheres of my life. The first entry covered the connections between ones physical life and financial life, the second entry covered the connections between ones mental and spiritual life and financial life, the third entry covered the connections between ones intellectual life and financial life, the fourth entry covered the connections between ones marital life and financial life, the fifth entry covered the connections between ones parental life and financial life, and today were looking at ones professional life and financial life. As noted in the first entry, I tend to view life as a bunch of spheres, or areas of focus. I really like Michael Hyatts list of nine such spheres: physical, mental/spiritual, intellectual, social, marital, parental, avocational (hobbies), vocational, and financial they cover much of what life is all about. Ive come to view these spheres as deeply interconnected, in that success in one sphere is usually linked in some significant ways to success in other spheres (and failures are similarly connected) and that knowing the connections can help people figure out how to succeed in both areas at once. Today, were going to look at the professional sphere and how it connects to ones financial life. What Is Professional Life? Ones professional life is simply what one does with their time and energy in an effort to earn money. (Things you do outside of earning money tend to fall into the other spheres of life.) My professional life is centered around being a freelance writer, with a few other side gigs here and there. My wifes professional life is that of a teacher. My fathers professional life was commercial fishing and factory work. Professional life encompasses both the day to day work that you have to do to fulfill the requirements of your job and get paid as well as the additional efforts you take on to discover new and better moneymaking opportunities, like furthering your education or getting a certification or going to professional conferences. Obviously, the connections between ones professional life and financial life are many. After all, for most people, their professional life is the source of income in their life. Yet thats just the start of the connections between your financial life and your professional life. Here are several more. Often, your professional life comes with costs. Maybe you have to buy a particular wardrobe for work. Maybe you have to take classes in order to maintain certain certifications. Many people have some sort of commuting cost thats required to get them to and from work. Those costs add up and they drain away from your income. In fact, youre usually better off working for a dollar or two per hour less if the extra costs (like commuting and clothing) are significantly lower or nonexistent. Youll pay fewer taxes and have fewer expenses, which will recoup the salary difference. Stressful jobs often require unwinding, which also has financial implications. Many people gravitate toward expensive ways to unwind after a busy day, or else they gravitate toward simply resting to unwind and that ends up bringing on other expenses. I used to unwind by playing a lot of video games. I would often buy a new video game twice a month, which added up to $100 a month just to unwind from my job. I would often stop for a snack after work as well, because I would often eat to de-stress, and sometimes Id hit a bookstore as well. Those costs can add up. The stress of work can really add to your life. Your job benefits have a profound impact on your overall financial picture. A job with a strong 401(k) or 403(b) match, a continuing education program, and a great health care plan is well worth a lower salary than a job without any of those benefits. Jobs need to be considered in terms of the total value of their benefits and salary, not just the dollar amount on your paycheck. No job is completely stable, and treating your job as permanent and untouchable is a huge financial risk. Your eyes should always be peering ahead at what your next gig is going to be. An unexpected job loss would be financially devastating to the majority of American households. Dont leave your own household at risk. This list could go on and on, of course. The core message here is that the connection between your financial life and your professional life is much deeper than your next paycheck. Here are five low cost strategies I use for maintaining and improving my own professional life. Strategy #1 Never Stick with a Job You Hate If you are genuinely unhappy going to work each morning, substantially beyond the mere preference of a day of leisure that we all have, then you should not stick around at that job. It is likely damaging you in a number of long term ways and making your daily life miserable. Stress and worry and unhappiness have tremendous negative long term health impacts. No job is worth that. Your focus in that situation shouldnt be on perfect job performance, but rather on doing enough to maintain that job while you work on an exit strategy. You should be doing everything you can to open a new door for you to walk through in your career. What does that mean in practical terms? Change your perspective and look at your work solely as a tool to get ready for your next job. Everything you do there should be oriented toward keeping the job in the short term and preparing yourself for your next career step. If your task isnt doing either, then it should be a very, very low priority. Figure out what kind of job you want when you leave, then start building the resume to get that job. Ill cover this in more detail with strategy #2, but you should identify what the requirements and preferred skills and attributes are for the job that you are aiming for next. A good place to start is to go look at job listings for the job you want. Tap your professional relationships for leads. Again, Ill touch on this with strategy #3, but the key idea here is to reach out to your professional network to find out if there are any appropriate jobs available for you. Just ask around with professional colleagues who are employed elsewhere about the existence of jobs that you might be able to apply for and, ideally, those colleagues will help you get your foot in the door for those jobs. It is never worthwhile to stick around at a job that you truly hate. There is always another job that you can do that will earn a similar income. Leave behind poisonous situations and move to pleasant ones. Strategy #2 Always Have a Plan in Place for Your Next Step, and Always Be Taking Daily Action on That Plan Even if youre reasonably happy at your current job, its still a good idea to have a plan in place for whatever your next professional step might be. It might even be something as simple as a raise at your current job. You might be aiming at a promotion at your current workplace. You might be aiming for a big promotion at another employer, or maybe youre even considering moving to another career path entirely. Whatever you might have in mind, you should move that daydream into reality, setting it as a goal and developing a plan to get there. The first step, of course, is identifying where you want to go with your next professional step in a very concrete manner. Think seriously about where you want to be in a few years. It might be your current job with a bit more pay. It might be a promotion at work, or a move elsewhere. Whatever it is, give it serious thought and figure out what your goal is. Where do you really want to go next? Once youve figured that out, you need to develop a plan for achieving that next step. This is going to vary widely depending on what your aim is. If your aim is simply to get a raise at your current job or earn a small promotion at work, the best place to start is with your supervisor. Sit down with your supervisor and simply explain your goal to him or her, then ask for your supervisors help in developing a plan that will get you there. If your aim is a major promotion or a move outside of your current employer, you will have to develop such a plan on your own. I would highly suggest finding a mentor (see the next strategy) to help you do this. Regardless of how you develop a plan for your next career step, you need to be taking daily concrete action on it. This should not be just a fun exercise, but a very clear set of steps you should be following daily to move forward on your professional path. Ideally, you can synergize some of these steps with the work youre already doing by choosing tasks that will really help build you for whats next. If not, you should do your best to block off some time each day for taking that next step, whether its within your workplace or outside of it. If youre not moving forward, youre moving backward. The river of professional life is always flowing against you. Strategy #3 Build and Maintain Positive Professional Relationships and Avoid Burning Bridges Having a lot of positive professional relationships is a boon for any career. They can give you resources to draw on when things are difficult. They can give you a strong positive reputation in your field, one that will often precede you (and a negative reputation will precede you as well if you dont have positive relationships or have a lot of negative ones). They can give you people to swap stories with and connect with in a professional setting. They can give you powerful guidance in terms of what to do next. Occasionally, these relationships can develop into lifelong ones. Building a lot of good professional relationships requires a lot of effort, however. Here are some useful strategies Ive found for doing just that. Dont speak negatively about others, even when theyre not around. If you do speak negatively about others, not only do you establish a reputation for being a person who will trash other people, the word often gets back to the people you trash. The safest rule of thumb is to just avoid it entirely. Dont speak negatively about others, even when theyre not around. If you must criticize someone, do it to their face in a one-on-one session and do it in a constructive way so that they can move forward in a more positive direction. Speaking negatively just damages relationships. Dont burn bridges. If you step down from a position, do it with as much grace as possible. Dont destroy things or say negative things about people on your way out. It doesnt help you; all it does is close doors that you might want to have open in the future. Build positive relationships with everyone you work with. You should have some level of positive relationship with everyone you work with, if thats possible (obviously, there may be a few people who are difficult, but if youre finding most people to be difficult, you may want to look at yourself). Get to know everyone, even the quiet people, and have some things with which you can relate to them. Try to spend at least some time with everyone in your office and be a generally helpful and positive person. Get involved in local professional groups as well as conferences, and use those situations as an opportunity to make yourself known and to get to know others. Beyond your workplace, get involved in every situation you can where you will get to know professional colleagues in your field. Join any local professional groups you can find. Go to conferences. Look for any opportunity you can to present your work to people. Use social media in the same way. Give abundant credit to others and minimize the credit you take for yourself. This is one of the best things you can do for your own reputation. When youre discussing a work project, give as much credit as possible to the other people on the team and dont even mention your own efforts, and if theyre brought up, be humble about them. Talk about what other people contributed to the work in a very positive way. Your own efforts will be known anyway, youll be seen as humble, the reputation of those who helped you will be raised, and theyll think more of you, too. Its one of the best things you can do to build relationships while also building your own reputation. Check in with those people with whom you have a positive professional relationship regularly to maintain that relationship. One of the best strategies Ive actually found is to simply keep a list of people with whom I really want to keep a good professional relationship, split them into three groups basically at random, and then each month, check in and touch base with everyone in one of those groups, then rotate to the next group the following month. So, lets say you have 99 professional relationships. You split them into three groups of 33 each and then you touch base with everyone in one of those groups in January, then another group in February, then another in March. I do this simply to make sure that someone I care about doesnt fall through the cracks. I do it with both professional and personal relationships. When you can do a favor for someone without too much cost to yourself, do it without expecting reciprocation. To me, this is just a natural extension of the golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What youll find is that if you have a reputation of being helpful without expecting a tit-for-tat, when you actually do need help, a lot of those people you helped will be right there to help you if you ask. Find a mentor, but dont use that word and be careful with it. A mentor is someone many years ahead of you on a career path that you hope to follow. A good professional mentor is incredibly helpful to have, but there are a few challenges, the biggest being the fact that most of the people you would want to have as a mentor are incredibly busy and view a formal mentor relationship as yet another commitment that they dont have time for. It can also be difficult to be on their radar in a positive way if you go in trying to garner attention to yourself, it wont go well. A good approach is to not be formal about it. Rather, simply look for an opportunity to help someone that you would like to be your mentor figure. Then, when you have that opportunity, knock it out of the park without expecting reciprocation. Just nail whatever it is youve agreed to do. Do it so well that they notice your effort above all else, not your hand-waving. This usually opens a door, at least a little. In that situation, dont ask for a formal mentor relationship then, either. Instead, simply ask them that if you are ever in a very difficult situation and youve tried everything you can think of, if it would be okay to contact them once and ask for advice. Theyll likely say yes. Then, wait until you actually are in that situation and ask for that advice. List out all of the things youve already done, and then just ask what they would do. Dont try to schedule a lunch. Dont try to schedule any meeting. Do this by email. If the mentor is engaged and wants to help, theyll schedule a meeting; most likely, theyll just give you a good response by email. Leave it at that and dont make a pest of yourself. Rather, look for another opportunity to volunteer and wow that person. The most valuable thing that will happen here, however, is when youre not around. You will be thought of as a person that your mentor can use for an opportunity or recommend to someone else, and that will happen when youre not in the room. Strategy #4 Dont Shy Away from Professional Challenges, Even If You Fear Failure If youre in a situation where theres a big professional challenge on the offer at work and youre scared of taking it on thats a sure sign that you should take it on. Take that opportunity and give it your genuine best shot. Sure, maybe youll fail. Thats okay. Youll likely learn a ton from failure and that failure likely wont be the end of your career. Or, maybe youll succeed and youll find yourself in a much better professional position than you could have ever dreamed. In either case, youll push your limits and learn a ton along the way. Youll probably have experiences that will burnish your resume for whatever comes next. Remember, in these situations, a professional network is helpful. If youre really challenged by something, ask for help. If you happen to have a mentor, ask for help (in the hands-off way mentioned above). Dont back down from a challenge. It will open doors for you whether you succeed or fail, as long as you give it your genuine best shot. Strategy #5 Always Be Prepared for Unexpected Unemployment No matter how great your job seems, no matter how stable it seems, no matter how good your career seems to be going, unexpected events can and will happen. The government might shut down for a couple of months. Your boss thats your biggest advocate might suddenly die. The owner of your business might be secretly bankrupting the company and then one day its just out of business. Those things can and will happen, and you owe it to yourself and your family to be prepared. Here are a few things you can always do. One, have an emergency fund in a savings account that has at least a month or two of living expenses in it. That way, if youre suddenly out of a job, your financial situation doesnt immediately collapse. You have some breathing room and can immediately focus on finding a new job without worrying about paying the bills next week. Two, have your resume ready to go at all times. Have a well-formatted one you can send out, as well as at least one or two online where they can be found. Keep those resumes updated all the time. Three, know who you can immediately talk to in your professional network. If you lose your job, who might be able to help you quickly find more work? If you dont have those kinds of relationships, start building them. You should have those things in hand at all times. Final Thoughts Your professional life is a vital source of income that youll use to support the rest of your life. Your financial life is mostly about processing the income earned by your professional life. Thus, if you want to get ahead financially, you should focus on getting the most value possible out of your career. If you want to get ahead and build your income, you cant just go to work, clock in, and go home. That will help you keep your job, but it wont help you get ahead in your career and make more money. Hard work is a key ingredient, but so is smart work building relationships, working toward the skills you need for the next step, and making sure that a setback isnt devastating. Good luck! https://www.thesimpledollar.com/exploring-the-connections-between-your-professional-life-and-your-financial-life/

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bisoroblog · 7 years ago

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Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

Harvard University is one of the most selective schools in the United States, so it isn’t the first place that comes to mind when discussing how to make computer science appealing and open to a broad range of students. But Professor David Malan has been experimenting with different ways to make his introductory computer science class (CS50) the type of place where students from many different backgrounds can thrive. And he’s spreading what he learns to the broader educator community, hoping what he’s learning from the CS50 experiment spreads beyond Harvard’s walls to K-12 educators working to fire up kids about computer science.

Malan’s class attracts students who have never taken computer science before, as well as kids who have been coding a long time. His goal with this diverse group of learners is to create a community that’s equal and collaborative. One way he does this is by asking students to self-identify by comfort level. Those groups become different section levels, and they sometimes get different homework, but harder assignments are not worth more credit. Malan said recently that the “less comfortable” group has dominated his 700-person course.

“At the end of the day all students are treated with the same expectations,” said Malan, speaking at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. Students are graded based on each individual’s growth; Malan and his team of teaching assistants don’t use absolute measures when assigning grades. Instead, they look at scope, how hard the student tried, correctness, how right the work was, style, how aesthetic the code is, and design, which is the most subjective. When it’s time to assign grades, Malan and his teaching fellows have lots of in-depth conversations about how each student has improved relative to where he or she started.

And since computer code is particularly easy to steal off the web, Malan has a “regret clause” for his course “to encourage and allow students to come forward if they made a bad decision that historically is very hard to take back. “We encourage them to come forward.” If a student did cheat, but uses the regret clause, he or she can still be penalized, but Malan won’t escalate the incident to the university level. He understands that sometimes stressed-out students, many of whom are perfectionists pushing themselves in a completely new area of study, act on their anxieties against their better judgment.

Malan also uses many teaching assistants to help him provide personalized attention to students in this large course. He sees them as one of the most important parts of the course’s success and popularity. “One of our greatest assets is the human structure within the course,” Malan said. He also encourages students not to take notes during lecture, instead asking one of the teaching assistants to take notes for everyone so students can focus their attention on the discussion.

Office hours are another important support structure for this challenging course. During office hours several teaching assistants will be in one place offering one-on-one help. Malan has been pleased at how these meetups have gradually begun happening in social spaces, becoming a connection point between digital and analog support. He attributes some of his success with students new to computer science to the intentionally social aspects of the class.

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Malan’s team also explicitly tries to make computer science fun by planning events that foster a sense of community. They organize an annual puzzle day where students get together on a Saturday, and a hackathon. By merging the social and the academic, Malan is trying to make computer science feel approachable. “A side effect of holding these events is drumming up new interest,” Malan said. His students bring their friends, who might decide to take the course the following year. And the silly community events are shared on social media and the course website to help create the community feeling that keeps kids engaged in the academic work.

At the end of the semester, all CS50 students present their final projects to the community at a fair. “For us what’s most striking at this specific event is seeing their final projects and seeing them present something that we did not teach them,” Malan said. Students often take the initiative to go out and learn more on their own, rather than merely applying the homework he has assigned.

In addition to the 700 Harvard students who take CS50, Malan has opened the course to 150 Yale students, as well as about 300 Harvard extension students. The course is also available on edX, and high school students can access a version of it, CS50 AP, at 150 schools around the country. The course is one of the most popular offerings at Harvard, and students new to computer science keep joining. Malan believes the collaborative nature of the course, along with the intentional community-building that his team does, are a big part of their success.

CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

CS50 IDE: This is basically a computer in the cloud so students can write code and run it on the internet. It allows students to access their code from multiple locations and for groups to work together virtually. The program highlights the code written by different authors in unique colors to help evaluators see who did what.

Check50: Students and instructors use this program to check for correctness. Is a program giving the expected output? The tool checks student code against a set of tests Malan’s team has written and then generates smiley faces and frowny faces next to the code. This helps students identify trouble spots, but still requires them to problem-solve the fixes. Some of Malan’s teaching assistants are currently rewriting this program to make it open source, so any teacher could input their own checks to use with students.

CS50 Help: This tool rewrites the language of error messages to help students parse what went wrong with their code. It also provides feedback and action items for students to start fixing the error. “It’s just designed to be a resource for students to make that process of understanding error messages easier,” Malan said.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

Malan’s team also uses a lot of other productivity tools that aren’t proprietary and could be useful to other teachers. When discussing these tools with teachers at the BLC conference, it was clear that many K-12 teachers are frustrated by the limits their districts put on the tools they can use.

OTHER TOOLS

GitHub: This open-source code repository is a way for programmers to share code and get feedback. Malan’s students sometimes use it to submit their code instead of doing so through the Learning Management System (LMS).

MOSS (Measure Of Software Similarity): This tool is freely developed and can help determine academic honesty. The tools allow users to anonymously submit student work and see a comparison to other existing code. It gives the teacher a sense of whether similarly written code really is a problem.

Gradescope: This free tool was designed by UC Berkeley students. It allows teachers to upload student homework or tests and grade them online. The grader can add criteria as he goes and if anything changes, the program will automatically change the scores for that problem on everything that has already been graded. The student gets detailed feedback, all graders are consistent, and the instructor can see how many students made each mistake.

Dropbox: Users get 2G for free and can easily sync and share files. And, if a student doesn’t have a Dropbox account, there’s an anonymous upload feature that creates a unique link so each student’s work goes into a folder with his or her name. It can be an easy way to collect files and work around an LMS.

Asana: This commercially available task management system helps keep track of who’s doing what and when it’s due. Team members can add themselves to different projects and set deadlines. “We’ve used it for office-style team management, but I’ve used it for classes as well to assign homework,” Malan said. “It gives you eyes into what could be a fairly large data set.” There’s also a mobile app.

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

Help Scout: This tool is a bit like help desk software in that you can create tickets for different email items that require a task. It helps a user see what issues are closed and which ones still need attention.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Slido.com: This is an interactive online question forum. Users can up-vote or down-vote different questions. That’s useful because a presenter can look at the questions while giving a talk and weave answers into the presentation or follow up afterwards.

Piazza: This is a good discussion platform, a functionality many LMS’s lack. Teachers can create a classroom within Piazza. Students can also ask questions anonymously, making it more appropriate for certain discussions than other platforms.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

BaseCamp: This project management tool has a free tier for teachers. In general, Malan and his team suggest that educators should always ask for a discount from any commercial software provider. Many companies will be happy to accommodate, making paid products more accessible.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

ZipGrade: This tool is basically like a scantron machine on a phone. It’s useful for quickly grading multiple-choice exit tickets or formative assessments and tracking student data on those quizzes.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

stamps. It’s also possible to create one’s own video note with a question. And the service works with a Google sign-in (one limitation a number of teachers said they were experiencing with their districts).

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

GoSoapbox: Similar to Poll Everywhere, this tool can be used on a mobile device or computer. It enables teachers to get a sense of how well students understand the content with quick polls. It also has a panic button students can press if they really don’t understand. The instructor’s screen will flash red. It can also be used anonymously.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

Doctopus: Another Chrome extension built by a teacher to make classroom workflows easier. Some of its key functions are to create a file structure in Google Docs, allow a teacher to easily “pass out” blank templates and change or revoke different editing rights, and it’s a way to monitor collaboration happening on Docs.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized published first on http://ift.tt/2y2Rir2

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perfectzablog · 7 years ago

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Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

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CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

OTHER TOOLS

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized published first on http://ift.tt/2xi3x5d

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careerexpansion · 7 years ago

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Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized

youtube

CS50-SPECIFIC TOOLS

With so many students, Malan’s team has developed some CS50 specific tools to help them manage workflow and support students.

Droplet: This tool provides a bridge between more traditional coding languages and block coding, like what you might see in Scratch or a number of other learn-to-code programs.

OTHER TOOLS

Slack: This is a free chat service, but also makes it easy to share media. Malan finds it more group friendly than Google Hangout.

1Password, LastPass: These are password protection services that are not free, but Malan finds important to safeguard student work.

Doodle: Malan’s team uses Doodle for scheduling.

HubSpot: This is good for managing large courses with lots of contacts. It was designed as a customer relationship management system.

PleaseBringIt: This is an easy way to sign people up for open slots. It also functions a little like a wedding registry for running an event — different people can agree to bring various items.

Adobe Connect: This tool works well for online classes or office hours. It is not a free service, but Google Hangout would be a free alternative. Zoom is also similar, although more video-based.

Google Forms: Malan uses this a lot to collect work from students. It’s easy to integrate with spreadsheets, but limits the types of questions he can ask.

SurveyMonkey: This service has more question types and better analytics. It also has some interesting visualization options.

Quip: This software is good for sharing information. The platform makes it easy to organize information and share with others.

SmugMug: This is a good photo portfolio site. It allows the user to filter, but also provide textual context.

K-12 TEACHERS’ FAVORITE TOOLS

When Malan had finished sharing the tools his team finds useful to organize their work, grading and efforts to support students, other educators shared their favorite tools.

VideoNot.es: This open-source software allows users to take notes next to videos, syncing to time

Vizia: This tool allows teacher to integrate quizzes and questions into a video. The questions pop up as students watch.

DriveSlides: This chrome extension built by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler makes it easy to automatically insert images into Google Slide presentations.

Wizer.me: Teachers can create interactive quizzes in various question formats with this tool.

Goobric: When used in tandem with the Doctopus extension, this Chrome extension allows teachers to pull all the assignments into one Google Sheet and integrate with a rubric.

What are your favorite collaboration and sharing tools for the classroom?

Tools Harvard Computer Science Students Use to Collaborate, Stay Organized posted first on http://ift.tt/2tX7Iil

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theofficepolitics · 7 years ago

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Hacker News: As a New Employee of a Company, How Do You Assess Its Health?

As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?

What indicators do you look at to determine whether the company is in good or bad health or trending in a direction?

Do you have anecdotes (or even more significant data!) about signs or events or shifts in culture that ended up foretelling a change to the company?

[Update(s)]

I mainly meant "startup" (i.e. not Fortune 500) when I said company. But I don't want to prevent discussions about larger entities, so perhaps we can preface comments with which type of company you're talking about if necessary. :)

tiredwired

corobo

I generally work for smaller companies, < 50 total staff. Most of my variables and data pieces others have said. My main "rats, sinking ship" is in regards to others working there;

Health note: Employee churn when churn is not the norm.

Health warning: Certain people leaving with enough business knowledge it's noticeable they're gone

Health crisis: Multiple health warnings in quick succession (within 2 years).

At warning level I make sure my CV is updated and start setting up job alerts. At crisis I'm actively applying for jobs to keep my options wide open.

Edit: Ooh reading another comment - I watch the public docs of the company I'm working for. It's a year or so out financials-wise but you can get some info from it.

31415

Treat it as a learning opportunity. Three buckets to triage employees into: (o) the oblivious employees, (i) employees who step up and show initiative, and (ii) employees who decide to goof off and do nothing since some of the management chain is likely missing and not being replaced.

Companies that are successful are often unwilling to risk any element of their success and can be rigid/inflexible.

wiz21c

marketing team slices its customers pool into : customer-we'll-soon-contact, potential customers, potential leads, short-list-customers, customers with who we have very good relationships, customers who'll introduces to even bigger customers. You get it, many types of customers except the paying-type...

erikb

Also relevant should be the question how to act in different phases. An unhealthy company is not necessarily dying. And even a dying company is not necessarily bad for you. It's like with real people. When someone dies some others start to check out the valuables to get the best for themselves. If you are working in a brilliant team inside a dying company, you may all get picked up, get a raise, and be welcomed into new arms. That's one way to get into Google for instance.

For figuring out the current health status, I'd check:

the product line - is it understandable? is it modern? is it efficient?

the customer base - do they have customers that wouldn't easily change to alternative options?

the management team - do they have visions? are they cooperating? are they lying psychopaths, ambitious inventors, calm survivors (thinking Merkel here), idiotic burocrats?

HR - HR is managements comm channel to the employees. Does the promo material look good? How close is the promo material to the actual day-to-day work?

People - are there smart people you like to work with? How many of them are currently joining? How many of them are currently leaving?

Hiring - you are either new and just got hired or there for a long time and probably at least hear things about the hiring process at the water cooler. how reasonable does it sound? does it filter out idiots? does it assess quality attributes like culture? Does the feedback from the interviewers have influence on the hiring decision (more often than you think they actually just hire anybody, if they are hiring at all).

angelofthe0dd

A key indicator I've seen in past companies was when "top skill" or "top manager" level people suddenly submit their resignation and then spend two weeks calmly walking around the office with an ear-to-ear grin. Not too long after that, whisperings of "Why?" start circulating. And shortly after that, I got an upbeat email from HR about "Exciting new company direction" and "Rethinking our core strategies for better customer alignment." In all seriousness, shake-ups and re-alignments are frightening and kill everyone's morale with fears of uncertainty.

ryankennedyio

This [1] is a handy pocket guide. Quite seriously, start looking around if your gut is telling you to.

http://wiki.c2.com/?WarningSignsOfCorporateDoom

booleandilemma

I've read that a good way to get an early indicator of future health is to pay attention to the spending on the small things.

Does your company have paid lunches?

Does it have a snack vending machine or something similar?

A coffee machine with k-cups?

Other little perks that seem insignificant but are nice to have.

If these things start to go away, the company is experiencing financial stress.

striking

Steve Blank does a good job summarizing this and other related phenomena:

https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

(and its corresponding HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5751329)

draz

35 minutes ago

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- Employee turnover: a large layoff - Retention: some many know something you don't, especially at the high levels. - Restructuring/reorging: there are companies that view this method as a panacea for all ailments (rather than treating the underlying issue(s)). - Projects funded: a concentrated focus on projects that "reduce cost" or "introduce efficiencies" rather than on growth and R&D may be indicative of either a contraction to make a company more palatable for a buy-out, or a simple general state of the money in the bank.

jermaustin1

16 minutes ago

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I saw all of these in a single year in the IT department of a former client.

- A new CIO, - Then within his first week, a layoff of all the network engineers (except the manager) right before an all heads meeting - An all heads meeting where we were to provided an "accounting of our yearly hours" and it had to equal to 2080 and a reorganization of IT to be instead of a solutions provider to the company, a help desk. - Then over the course of the next three months, a lot of new projects that combined the various services we consumed (hr, payroll, etc) under one single product, beefed up helpdesk staff count (all temp/contract workers) and layoffs from various orgs in IT: security, development, and helpdesk (employees). - Then over the next two months, employee staff count dropped further bringing the total at the beginning from 60 heads to 12. And all the employees were replaced with contractors.

That said, the company gave out larger bonuses because the bonus pool had already been agreed to, and the employee count was almost non existent, so bigger bonuses spread around to the managers (since they were all that was left). Also the company is still growing elsewhere, just shrinking the places that are "cost centers".

blowski

25 minutes ago

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It's a bit subjective, and the more general the statement, the less meaning it would have.

Say a company is becoming corporate and dull, but at the same time becoming more profitable. Are they in good or bad health? As a short-term shareholder you might see them in good health, but as an employee you might see them in bad health.

That said, my experience is to look at team meetings. If they are full of conflict that is resolved respectfully by the end of the meeting, that's usually a good sign. If the same person is dominating and everyone else is quiet, that's a bad sign. If the same arguments keep repeating themselves, that's a bad sign. If there is no conflict at all, and people just stare out of the window while others are talking, that's a bad sign.

At bad companies, everyone knows the real story, but nobody says it out loud. Good people leave, bad people stay, and the problem gets worse.

inthewoods

3 minutes ago

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Status of accounts payable - is the company stretching out payments to vendors? Are vendors getting angry or lawyering up?

jasode

29 minutes ago

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Availability of information to analyze will depend on whether it's a public vs private company.

If it's a public company, an employee can look at the health in many of the same ways that Warren Buffet would look at it. Look at it's profit & loss statements for the last few years. If it took on debt, try to find out what the debt was used for. Look at the credit agencies' bond rating for the company. If it's not AAA, research why. Look at the company's major customers. Is it a growing marketplace?

If it's a private company, intelligence gathering is going to be harder and you often won't have good info until you actually work there. You can try to synthesize information from glassdoor, Google News (e.g. lawsuits, settlements, etc), and other sources.

>I mainly meant "startup" (i.e. not Fortune 500)

In this case, I would ask the hiring manager (often the founder) if the company is cash-flow positive. If not, ask how much "runway" is left before the company runs out of money. Some founders may push back with "I can't disclose financials, yada yada" ... maybe because of his paranoia about competitor espionage. You then have to ask yourself if you're willing to join a company with limited information. You can join a not-yet-profitable company because sometimes, it all works out. That said, the idea of concrete financial dialogue is to make the risks transparent to the employee.

beaker52

19 minutes ago

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I look at a few things. Company structure is quite telling. The relationship between teams, how teams work together. I usually get a good feel for any potential dysfunction in an organisation by this. The more splitting up and dividing there is going on, the more unhealthy it usually is. If the company is small enough, it should be self organising to some degree of success.

Other questions to consider:

- Are staff able to be honest?

- Is the company able to be honest with itself?

- Does the company have a vision that actually sells itself?

- Is the company actually pursuing that vision with it's actions?

- Does the company leverage the intelligence of it's employees, or does it just hand them work to perform?

indigochill

37 minutes ago

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My company's CEO says he looks at the survey answers to "Would you recommend Company X as a good place to work" as a health indicator of how the company's doing. Which makes sense to me, since if the employees overall would recommend it as a place to work, it's probably reasonably stable and rewarding, has reasonably trusted managers, etc.

I've never delved deep into actual statistics on this, though, so consider this just an anecdote.

le-mark

31 minutes ago

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One company I was at shipped a hardware product. The hardware would come in from the manufacturer, the techs on site would flash the firmware, apply stickers, and ship to customers. When I started they were shipping 10-15 boxes a day (this was easy to judge, they sat by the entrance and the UPS guy would come in and get them). Then a few month later, the senior sales guy left, and a new vp of sales was brought in. Over the course of a year, outgoing devices went to near zero. That's when I started looking. A year later the company was still alive, but limping with a skeleton crew of devs and techs. Most who stayed were fired.

hammock

29 minutes ago

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The sales team are at the leading edge of product-market fit. I've found that their level of engagement, or success, or retention, is a great metric.

INTPenis

11 minutes ago

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In my case:

* Stock price * Attitude of employees * Attitude of management * Statements and sometimes rumors heard around the office

swalsh

18 minutes ago

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The usually open CEO suddenly starts having closed door meetings.

robhunter

32 minutes ago

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"Company" is a broad word, and can include a wide variety of different types of organizations - but if you're talking specifically about startups, look at the following:

Cash in the Bank / Burn Rate - How much cash does the company have? How much of that cash is it spending each month? How long until the company reaches profitability? Could the company be profitable now if it wanted to be?

Headcount - LinkedIn actually tracks this now. How has the total headcount of the company changed over time, particularly recently? Headcount is certainly not a measure of success, but a significant decrease in headcount may be a red flag.

Growth Rate - How fast is the company growing? Ideally you're looking at this in terms of revenue.

Unit Economics - Even if the company is growing, is it making money from every sale? Or is it "spending $1 to earn $0.95" ? Getting a handle on the bottoms-up unit economics of whatever the company is selling is important to really getting a picture of its overall health.

Grit of the Founders - This may be more important than everything else on the list! Every startup is going to feel - frequently - like it's in "bad health." Founders with determination, grit, and the ability to fight through the tough times will overcome a lot of the problems presented by other items on this list.

hammock

25 minutes ago

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Benefit of being an employee in this scenario is that you have access to info outsiders don't. So take some of your metrics like headcount and unit economics and make them forward-looking: open job reqs and contract expirations perhaps.

Other things like grit of the founders can't really be controlled. That will never change for the life of a company.

champagnepapi

32 minutes ago

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I guess it would depend on the size and status of the company. What I mean by that, you would judge a startup 1-10 people that is privately held substantially differently than 1000+ employee publicly traded company. These indicators that you are looking for are going to be vastly different along the size spectrum of companies.

UseofWeapons1

28 minutes ago

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The easist method is by trend in employee count. If headcount is rising, that's a good indicator, if it's falling, that's generally bad. Stable can be perfectly fine, or bad, depending on the company. You may have concerns about the magnitude of growth, or claim lay-offs were justified or turnover is natural, but the trend generally holds.

You should also pay attention to other employees; ask yourself why folks who leave are leaving. This seems easy, but I know one start-up well where a small trickle of occasional high-level departures turned into an eventual flood and bankruptcy.

Beyond that, it's the usual. Anything you can tell about sales growth, competitive intensity, leadership, etc. are all helpful and good data points.

blowski

20 minutes ago

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Rising headcount is not necessarily a good sign. To the contrary, it's often a sign that the company is haemorrhaging cash, hoping that if they hire enough staff something magic will happen before time runs out.

le-mark

16 minutes ago

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There's also the idea that head count can signal revenue, or expected revenue. Companies looking to be bought can go on hiring sprees to appear more healthier to potential buyers. I experienced this at one company, when the new owner installed their CEO, the first thing he did was slash head count.

wolfi1

27 minutes ago

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it does not directly state the health but it indicates if it is a good employer: number of interns : if the ratio is roughly 1:1 I would quickly look for another company

bsvalley

31 minutes ago

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It's all about the money. Cost cutting such as layoffs, no annual bonus, no more free snacks, shutting down promising projects.

When a company is doing well, it's usually the opposite.

if_by_whisky

25 minutes ago

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Quality of snacks

dovdovdov

18 minutes ago

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or presence of snacks.

hammock

30 minutes ago

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Executive engagement, number of open job reqs, revenue goals (not necessarily growth or metrics of past)