Welcome! And don't judge the  blog by its "cover", please.

    Appearances can be deceiving.

Voted! What's next? A "race war"

Transcripts to the “Alien Thoughts” videos

 

The Litmus Test (a psychological experiment).

I am searching for managers in the field of (distant) education, who:

·     Know the  difference between remote teaching and online learning;

·     Distinguish being polite from being nice;

·     Are not afraid to team up with people who may disagree with her/him;

·     Seek in others professionals skills and knowledge;

·     Value long-term goals over short-term gains;

and

·     who are capable of making bold decisions.

I believe in the future of distant education, (especially for teacher professional development), and can help with making it better (my career choice). 

 

I have all the relevant experience (and more), including, but not limited to, teaching – in its most general sense: selecting the relevant content, developing a syllabus, envisioning learning trajectories, designing teaching strategy, creating teaching tools (to facilitate and guide learning, to assess learning outcomes), and teaching (literally – acting as a teacher).

In addition to my professional experience, I have various publications on the matters of teaching science and philosophy of education (and more).

My most valuable “badge of honor” is a decade of a proven (!) professional success <= this is the link I would advise to start from, of course, if you are curious enough.

I am curious how many managers have (a) curiosity, and (b) confidence, to reach out to a complete stranger who may provide views/opinions/ideas outside of orthodox/mainstream assumptions.

Dr. Valentin Voroshilov     http://iergo.xyz/

"I hated physics before taking this course, and now after taking both 105 and 106 with Mr. V, I actually really enjoy it. He is one of the best teachers I've ever had. Thank you"

 

 What I Do: Dr. Voroshilov: from A to Z; (Professional past, present, and future of a driven professional, an eloquent expert, a productive author, and a collaborative colleague)

Who I Am: Dr. Voroshilov: A Peek Inside!

·      

          The Full List Of Posts

·                Politics

·                Artificial Intelligence

·                Fundamentals of Quantum Physics 

·                Full List Of Post On Education

·                Philosophy Of Education

·                Strategies For Teaching Science

·                From The Top Of My Head: a collection of random ideas

Two short video presentations:

1. Open Classroom Initiative: invest in thefirst world-wide open library of lessons

2. Invest in EdTech and disrupt K12 education

Specific projects for addressing different areas of education and science of education.

 1. Entry125253: High Frequency Data Streams in Education 
(link to the full text)

2. Entry124656: objective measures of physics knowledge 
(link to the full text)
 
3. Entry125317: National database teacher PD 
(link to the full text)
 
4. Entry124655: role of NSF in funding education
(link to the full text) 

5. Entry125719: The new type of a science course for science teachers.  
(link to the full text) 

6. Entry126205: The development of the uniform standard for measuring content knowledge in physics.
(link to the full presentation)

Executive Summary of Professional Experience
(An excerpt from the full description of my path)

(I) Teaching

(A) Groups

5th-graders; 6-th graders; 7-th graders; 8-th graders; 9-th graders; 10-th graders; 11-th graders; 12-th graders; 2-year college students; 4-year college students; university students; school teachers; school administrators; district administrators.
(B) Subjects

Physics for Engineers (two semesters); Elementary Physics (two semesters); algebra, geometry; trigonometry; formal logic; problem solving; group theory (discreet and continuous); methods for teaching science courses; methods for advancing individual teaching practice; managing innovations in education (initiation, implementation, growth, support, assessment, audit).

(II) Managing/Consulting

Assistant to Director of an Institute; Director of Department of computerization and information technologies; Director of Center for Development of City School system; member or a team, leader of a group of consultants for schools and school districts (initiation, implementation, growth, support, assessment, audit of innovations in education).

(III) Learning

graduated from schools with high GPA; participated in a wide range of extracurricular activities; developed personal approach to teaching (flipped the classroom before the approach was described in publications); published papers on various aspects of advancing education; converted publications into PhD theses and then found an adviser; moved to a country without knowing the language; learned the language; learned how to teach using foreign language; started publishing in foreign language.

P.S. A large portion of my ideas come to me while I am in traffic or in a swimming pool. During the day there is not often much of a time to formalize them in a fashionable way. Most of my post are written in one seating as a raw flaw of thoughts. This blog is the best I can do. Well, so far - let's wait for retirement (and the memoir! ). However, I welcome anyone who would like to coauthor a piece and transform it from my "singing as you go" to a fashionable publishable form - polish statements, new points, references, ... . And also, if someone would find in any of my posts a useful idea and used it, I would appreciate a reference to the original.
(C) Education Advancement Professionals consulting services

We, Humans, are the only anti-entropic force in the whole Universe! Everyone has to do his/her part in fighting chaos! That's why the Universe crated us.
P.S.S.
From On the Definition of AI: 

"This is what teachers can do! From the NASA's "Brief History of Rockets"
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/history_of_rockets.html

“In 1898, a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket. In a report he published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics.”

What is the difference between an expert and a professional?

A professional does what is needed to be done.

An expert explains - why.  

How do people become professionals?

By accumulating professional experience.

How do people become experts?

By reflecting on accumulated professional experience.                                                        

A Master is an expert professional.

My Mentors taught me a secret of becoming a master teacher:

There are ONLY two rules for becoming a Master

1. Learn from the Masters;  

2. Never stop pushing yourself.

"In order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive" (From Jordan B. Peterson), because ability to take risk is correlated with curiosity (only curious people are capable of taking risk; people who play it safe have no curiosity and hence a vision). 

Disclaimer 
I am an "investigative blogger". I insert myself into a situation I study and then I expose all BS I found there (BTW: BS means "beyond sense-making). I  am not an idiot or a reckless person. I am a person who has strong opinions on matters (I believe U.S. needs more people like that, people who can lay out strong reasons for their statements and take a "blow" of a disagreement). The reason I can allow myself writing what I think, even if that is perpendicular to commonly adopted and conventional views, is that my financial situation is sufficient and stable. Of course, as a normal person, I wouldn't mind making more money, or being involved in more interesting projects (as described in my generic resume). But I do not have to pretend to be someone I'm not to make my living. I am aware of the fact that my chance to find many professionals with views similar to mine is slim. The demand for "professional correctness" is taken to such an extreme that it has become a demand for personal conformity. I believe in telling truth. Truth is facts. Facts are science. I believe in science. Facts can be upsetting or encouraging, but facts cannot be offensive. As a master in my field, I have no reservation to offer my critique of people whose actions overlap with the field of my expertise (human intelligence). I know (and fine with that) that the chance that my writing will have a significant effect is negligible. But the butterfly effect exists, so the chance is not exactly zero.

Welcome! 
Thank you for visiting!
And don't judge the blog by its "cover", please. 
Appearances can be deceiving.

If

then you should not read this blog.

Although, if you can't handle the truth, you cannot solve any problem, because the first step of a problem-solving process is accepting the fact that you have a problem.

Why Zoom sucks for teaching and always will.

My two cents in the discussion about virtual education (an excerpt from The Confession Of The Creative Brain).

 

I wrote a lot about education, including the distant education. 

 

For example, check

The future of education is impossible without a robust online component.

I want you to know what I did last summer!

Getting ready for the fall semester?  Here are some hints.

 

The difference between online learning and online teaching.

 

More on this page.

Here I want to point out at the useless but very active discussion how to effectively use Zoom for teaching. 

The answer is - you CANNOT effectively use Zoom for teaching. 

Zoom, Skype, WebEx, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or any other meeting software will never be good for teaching.

Of course, to understand and accept that, one needs to know what teaching is and is about.

In American culture, including the top educators, researchers and administrators teaching is not different from animal training, from training circus animals doing tricks.

BTW: one of the reasons for No sign for improving math education soon.

If teaching would have been pouring knowledge from a "knowledge storage" (a.k.a. a teacher) into an empty vessel (a.k.a a student) then Zoom would be sufficient. But teaching is not that. 

E.g.:

What is Teaching?

A handbook for a science teacher.

Teaching is the process of helping learners to learn. And learning is based on communication. If one-on-one communication would have been possible, then, again, Zoom would be fine. But that is not a case. Teaching requires an effective group communication. That requires a an ability to organize, manage and monitor communication between students. That requires s completely different technological instrument. 

A teacher needs to be able to see and not just all students, but the work of every (any!) student (and of course communicate with any student). And a teacher needs to be able to create and re-create collaborative groups and observe the group work and participate in that work. And this is just the bare minimum any teaching collaborative technology must do. Ideally, students should feel immersed in the same learning environment, and that means - use virtual reality. The need to do laboratory experiments brings even more demands to an effective distant teaching-and-leaning technology.

To my best knowledge, there is no company or a startup trying to develop that technology.

Hence, distant teaching sucks, and will continue to suck for years ahead.

Dr. Valentin Voroshilov 

For curious people - a reward!

No teaching technology can do any good if a teacher who uses it sucks.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of teachers in America sucks at teaching.  It is not their fault, though. America dose not have a system of teacher professional development (well, America does not believe in systems in general, and look what she got herself into).

E.g. this post, or this one (from many!). 

The roots of American decline - in all spheres, including education, starting from education! - is the extreme primitivism practiced by the managers of all levels.

America! The victim of the Primitivism.

 

How Stupidity Costed Trump The White House.

My first large piece on the matter of stupidity of the American elite was published in August 2018 and titled “The Degradation of White Male American Elite”. Even though that piece is more than two years old the vast portion of that post is still very much current.

 

Since then I have been returning to this theme many times, for example, read:

 

Knowledge Is NOT Power. At Least In Politics.

 

If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will (a word from and to David Frum)

 

Why Americans are Starting To Lose the World Race for Prosperity?

 

Greed - the American cancer that killed good management.

 

Monetary Feudalism, State Capitalism, or Why Does Putin Smile?

 

Why Do I Want To Vote For Trump?

 

China v. The U.S.: The Battle Of Strategic Thinking

 

Checking the Intelligence of Massachusetts Republicans

 

Why Americans are Starting To Lose the World Race for Prosperity?

 

The vast majority of my critique was aimed at the Democrats. There is no point to repeat it again, the main statement is very simple, no one at the top of the Democratic party has vision required for generating a single original idea, starting from 2016 election the only strong idea they were able to create and use was “Trump is bad!”.

 

A word to Senator Sanders, and other anti-Trump warriors

 

Why does Seth Moulton run for the President and what does it say about the Democrats?

 

Why Didn't Hillary Clinton Win The Race?

 

 How Smart Are You, Mr. Kennedy? The Test.

 

"Why Didn't I Win", by Elizabeth Warren (2020)

 

How and why the Democrats screwed up.

 

But the democrats are not alone in this sin, having no vision is the common trait of the whole American elite (fish rots from the head down).

 

You can find all my posts on this page.

 

The reason for this post is to add one more example of stupidity on the part of American elite, but this time on the part of Republicans.

 

I used to say that the Democrats are nice but stupid and the Republicans are smart but evil. Turns out – not so smart.

 

It’s obvious for me that the only reason Biden was able to beat Trump was the COVID pandemic. Actually, not the pandemic per se, but the way Trump administration handled it.

 

Or rather the way the top Trump’s circle handled it. Those few top Republicans who Trump needs to thank for losing the election, starting from himself.

 

If people would really liked the Democrats then they would put them in the state legislatures, in the House of the Representatives, in the Senate.

 

But they didn’t.

 

Trump’s team had a very good chance to beat Biden, if it wasn’t for their absolutely stupid pandemic strategy.

 

Instead of denying, diminishing, ignoring the epidemic Trump should have embraced it.

 

“America is at war with the invisible enemy” was the step in the right direction. The next step should have been “Let’s unite! Let’s beat the enemy! If you fight an enemy it is stupid not to use a helmet and a body armor! Our masks are our Kevlar, our protective gear!”

 

The vast majority of Trump supporters are either ignorant (poorly educated) or idiots (have some knowledge but cannot use it in new situations, cannot think). They would believe anything Trump would say, they do not assess the logic of his words, they just “drink” whatever he says. If Trump would have embraced masks, everyone in his cult would do the same.

 

But the inability of the top Republican circle to see the opportunity the epidemic gave eventually brought Trump’s presidency down.

 

Unfortunately, the top Democrats, including Biden, Obama etc., refuse to accept the fact that the only reason Bien won was due to the disastrous handling of the pandemic on the Trump’s part. Democratic Party has no people who have vision and can generate original ideas. That is why in four years the Democrats will be swept out of the American politics.

 

Stupidity costed Trump the White House. And in four years the Biden will repeat Trump's fate.

Obama's legacy is Trump. Who will be yours, Mr. Biden?

 

The roots of American decline - in all spheres, including education, starting from education! - is the extreme primitivism practiced by the managers of all levels.

America! The victim of the Primitivism.