Online Learning with The University of Western Ontario, Part 1: The Course Begins!

By Joanna Cabot

I?m taking an online course this summer through the University of Western Ontario. It?s called an AQ, which stands for additional qualification, and is part of a modular system of credits one can add to a teacher?s certification to expand their areas of expertise. This is part three of three, and will give me a specialist designation in teaching French as a Second Language.

This isn?t one of those MOOC classes?we had to prove eligibility for the course (by taking the part one and part two modules previously?and passing a test or interview to qualify for those) and we get an actual, real-world credit for it.

I thought it might be fun to bring TeleRead along for the journey. The last AQ credit I took?also with this university?was four years ago. Has online learning progressed since then?

1. The Textbook

The big innovation this time around is ? no textbook! The part one course five years ago had one. The part two course four years ago had one, but you could get a digital version as well, which turned out to be a fiasco of usability issues locked by DRM restrictions. Well, they?ve done away with it now. The organizer for each module of the course now incorporates links throughout with articles and websites to visit and read.

What has not changed is the manner in which these readings play into your final grade for the course. As I did before, I have to both initiate conversations, and respond to conversations initiated by others, in a way that proves I?ve done the readings. Since the course is only four weeks long, I?m expected to do this every day!

2. The Technical Setup

The course is set up as a website?you log in, and a side panel offers links to the organizer (which contains the course content), your mailbox (where you can receive emails or messages from the professor and other students), the file area (where you upload your assignments) and the forum (where most of the work happens).

The forum is, unfortunately, a horrible setup.

I would have preferred a Google Reader-esque side panel that would list the messages so I could click and read. Unfortunately, it?s all one giant screen.

There are several different forum areas (the main discussion, areas for the different groups of a small-group course-long project, and a place to post questions for the teacher), and they?re all just plopped in.

What?s worse is that once you open up one area and read a message, it reloads the entire forum when you mark it as being read?this means you?re back to the homepage with the list of all the forums, and you have to go through the root levels and back down to where you were again.

Hugely clunky! Ick!

3. The Workload

They gave us one day to read the organizer and introduce ourselves to each other, and now we?re onto the real stuff. As best as I can determine from the many ?Read this first? files the instructor has posted thus far, my responsibilities for the first module include the following:

??Read through the organizer and introduce myself, which I?ve done
??Initiate a discussion based on a question that?s been assigned to me
??Initiate a discussion based on a reading that?s been assigned to me
??Respond to topics initiated by others, on a daily basis, citing the readings
??Write a short paper comparing two articles I must find myself

That will take us to?July 8, at which point the paper is due and the second module commences.

4. Initial Impressions

This feels much the same as my previous courses did. And I am a little surprised by that. No video content yet? No Skype chat? Just typing on that horrible forum in a way that proves I have done the readings? Um, OK ?

Stay tuned for my thoughts next week on Module Two.

Maybe it gets more fun later?

?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/gN1GgRiXEdY/

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The Epic 'Lone Ranger' Train Sequence: How'd They Do That?

Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and Gore Verbinski take MTV News inside the 'massive puzzle' of the 'Lone Ranger' climax.
By Josh Wigler

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709993/lone-ranger-johnny-depp-armie-hammer-train-sequence.jhtml

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UPDATE 2-Japan banking body to tighten interbank rate monitoring

Fri Jul 5, 2013 6:19am BST

* Japan banking body to set up independent monitoring body

* To hire outside auditors

* Measures in response to global scrutiny on interbank rate setting

* No wrongdoing has been found in Tokyo interbank rate so far

TOKYO, July 5 (Reuters) - Japan's banking industry group said on Friday it will tighten monitoring of how its interbank lending rates are set, responding to growing public distrust in benchmark rates around the world in the wake of rate-rigging scandals.

The Japanese Bankers Association (JBA) said it will set up an independent monitoring body to oversee the operation of the Tokyo interbank offered rate (Tibor), hire outside auditors to improve its transparency and scrap rates that are rarely used.

The reforms mirror similar proposals already announced in London and Singapore, though they are not expected to be finalised until the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) announces its blueprint for how financial benchmarks should be regulated, which is due in the coming weeks.

The JBA set up a committee in April to review the operation of Tibor in the wake of global investigations into manipulation of benchmark rates such as Libor and Euribor.

Scandals have raised questions about how these benchmark rates are set, prompting authorities and banking industry bodies worldwide to overhaul rate-setting processes.

Bank branches in Tokyo were found to have been at the heart of some Libor manipulation cases.

Japanese subsidiaries of UBS AG and Royal Bank of Scotland have both pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud filed by authorities in the United States in relation to the Libor cases.

On Thursday Tom Hayes, a former Tokyo-based trader of derivatives linked to yen-Libor, appeared in court in London charged with conspiracy to defraud

In December 2011 Japan's regulator forced UBS and Citigroup to temporarily suspend some of their trading operations after it found some of their traders had tried to inappropriately influence Tibor rate submitters at other banks.

The JBA has not found any evidence of wrongdoing, though, at the panels of banks that set its rates.

Unlike other markets, Japan's regulator has not yet proposed major reforms to how it will oversee benchmark setting. Singapore and London are both proposing that manipulation of benchmark rates should become a criminal offence.

Currently, 15 banks including major Japanese banks and BNP Paribas are reference banks for Japanese yen Tibor, and 14 banks including JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank submit rates for euro yen Tibor, according to the association's website.

In the rate-rigging scandal involving Libor, U.S. and UK regulators so far have fined three banks, including Switzerland's UBS, a total $2.6 billion for their role.

Allegations of rate manipulation have spread to Asian interbank markets.

Last month, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said 133 traders from 20 banks had tried to inappropriately influence benchmark rates in the Southeast Asian city-state.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) also said it was investigating HSBC, UBS and a number of other banks about possible misconduct relating to its submissions for the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor).

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/05/japan-banking-tibor-idUKL3N0FB0D820130705?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews

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Having breathing difficulties? Try singing

John Cameron-Turner participates in a singing class at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

John Cameron-Turner participates in a singing class at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Joanna Foster, actress, singer and singing teacher, right, leads a singing class at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Joanna Foster, actress, singer and singing teacher, left, leads a singing class at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Joanna Foster, actress, singer and singing teacher, second right, leads a singing class at Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

Dr Nicholas Hopkinson, consultant chest physician, speaks to the Associated Press at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, Monday, June 17, 2013. Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital have introduced a weekly singing group led by a professional musician which is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD, after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

LONDON (AP) ? In a third-floor room of a London hospital with orange and white walls draped with Tibetan prayer flags, roughly a dozen people gathered recently to perform vocal exercises and sing songs, including folk music from Ghana and Polynesia.

While the participants were drawn to the session by a fondness for music, they also had an ulterior motive for singing: to cope better with lung disease. The weekly group is led by a professional musician and is offered to people with respiratory problems including asthma, emphysema, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, or COPD.

Doctors at London's Royal Brompton Hospital started the program after reasoning that the kind of breathing used by singers might also help lung patients.

"Since many people enjoy singing, we thought it would help them associate controlling their breathing with something pleasant and positive rather than a standard physiotherapy technique," said Dr. Nicholas Hopkinson, the hospital's top chest physician. "It's almost accidental that they learn something about their breathing through singing," he said.

People with COPD have damaged lungs, which limits how much air they can breathe in and out. "Some people start to breathe very rapidly, which aggravates the problem," Hopkinson said. "They take many rapid, shallow breaths and that makes it even harder for them," he said. Hopkinson said learning to sing gives patients better posture and teaches them to breathe at a more manageable rate.

Still, two trials on the singing therapy conducted by Hopkinson and colleagues haven't found much improvement in patients' performance on breathing tests. "The lung function test doesn't change because the underlying disease hasn't changed," he explained. Hopkinson said that in a study comparing patients who went to the singing class versus those who attended a film discussion group, only the patients who sang reported feeling physically better afterwards, even if it couldn't be measured objectively.

Other experts agreed the singing therapy was an unusual but worthy approach. "There's a sound physiological rationale for this," said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. "Controlled breathing, like the kind you might learn in singing, is very important because people with COPD should try to take deep breaths and slowly synchronize each breath when they're doing something like walking up stairs," he said.

Some experts said singing would probably only appeal to a minority of patients and emphasized it could not replace traditional treatments. "Not everybody wants to sing but everybody can learn exercises to help them," said Julia Bott, a spokeswoman for Britain's Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. She said other activities like yoga and tai chi had breathing techniques similar to the types of physio exercises respiratory patients are usually taught.

Bott also said the breathing techniques used for singing would probably only be helpful for people with mild problems. "If you've got severe disease, it will be pretty hard to sing if you're panting and out of breath," she said. Bott said the songs used would also have to be pretty basic. "No one is going to be singing any Wagnerian operas after this," she said.

John Cameron Turner, 77, is convinced the singing classes have helped him breathe easier. Diagnosed with severe emphysema in 2002, Turner has tried various medicines but said none have really helped. "I have damaged lungs, but singing helps me use as much of them as possible," he said.

Since he started coming to the singing classes five years ago, Bott says he is able to do more things like gardening and walking. Turner said he used to have to stop repeatedly during the half-mile walk from his home to the subway station to catch his breath. "Now I don't do that because I'm breathing better," he said.

Turner said it was hard to know if he was breathing easier just because of the singing but thought more people with lung difficulties should sing. "It's turned me into a social animal and the songs are great fun," he said. "It's such an easy thing to do that you might as well give it a try."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2013-07-04-Singing%20Therapy/id-07a26767460d41c7a8b9b2594cb0944c

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Navy awards weaponized railgun manufacturing contract to BAE Systems

Just over 18 months after making its video debut, the Navy's electromagnetic railgun has a manufacturer. BAE Systems -- known for e-ink-powered tank camouflage, autonomous spiderbots and machine-gun-mounted lasers -- won the government contract and hopes to have phase-two prototypes ready "as early as next year." While the current design is capable of firing one shot, the Office of Navy Research hopes for six to ten shots per minute. If that doesn't scare you, consider this: The pulse-driven projectiles travel at Mach 6 and can hit targets over 100 nautical miles away. Don't worry, it's not too late to rethink that career of sailing the high seas as a pirate and get to work on that accounting degree instead.

Filed under: Science

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Via: Defense Tech

Source: BAE Systems

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Der Spiegel: Snowden Released Information That Could "Endanger the Lives of NSA Workers" (Little green footballs)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/316753746?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Obama ends Africa trip by joining Bush at memorial

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and former U.S. president George W. Bush walk to meet with family members of the U.S. embassy victims during a wreath laying ceremony to honor the victims of the U.S. Embassy bombing on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and former U.S. president George W. Bush walk to meet with family members of the U.S. embassy victims during a wreath laying ceremony to honor the victims of the U.S. Embassy bombing on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama demonstrates "the Soccket Ball," which uses kinetic energy to provide power to charge a cell phone or power a light, during an event at the Ubungo power plant to promote energy innovation on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, right, and former U.S. first lady Laura Bush talk each other as they participate in the African First Ladies Summit: ?Investing in Women: Strengthening Africa,? hosted by the George W. Bush Institute, Tuesday, July 2, 2013, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama board Air Force One at the end of the final leg of their weeklong visit to Africa, at the Julius Nyerere airport in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Tuesday, July 2, 2013. President Barack Obama on Monday courted African business leaders and announced new trade initiatives to open up East Africa's markets to American businesses, as he sought to counter the rise of Chinese economic influence in the growing continent. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, walks with former president George W. Bush during a wreath laying ceremony to honor the victims of the U.S. Embassy bombing on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The president is traveling in Tanzania on the final leg of his three-country tour in Africa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) ? Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican predecessor President George W. Bush found common ground in Africa on Tuesday, honoring the victims of a terrorist attack in an unprecedented encounter a world away from home.

The U.S. presidents observed a moment of silence together at a monument to victims of the 1998 embassy bombing here in the east African city where Bush coincidentally happened to be as Obama wrapped up a weeklong tour of the continent. While the two leaders didn't say anything publicly, their wives engaged in a warm and chatty joint appearance at a summit on African women.

Initially the two presidents weren't even planning to meet while in town, but first lady Michelle Obama joked as she sat next to her predecessor: "They're learning from us."

The Obamas departed Africa for home shortly after crossing paths with the Bushes, who were hosting the summit promoting the role of African first ladies in bringing change to their countries. Bush ended up joining the current president for the wreath-laying ceremony honoring the Tanzanian victims of the simultaneous attacks at the U.S. embassies here and in Kenya masterminded by Osama bin Laden.

Both presidents have bin Laden in common. Bush's two terms were tinged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out in New York and Washington by bin Laden's al-Qaida network; Obama ordered the U.S. military raid that ended with bin Laden' death two years ago in Pakistan.

Obama and Bush bowed their heads as a Marine placed the wreath of red, white and blue flowers in front of the large stone memorial on the grounds of the new U.S. Embassy. After a few moments, they shook hands with survivors of the attack and relatives of those killed before returning to the embassy together in private discussion.

At that very moment, their wives were putting on a public display of mutual affection in a discussion moderated by American journalist Cokie Roberts. Mrs. Obama said she wanted to appear with Laura Bush because "I like this woman" and it's therapeutic to share the challenges of their roles.

"It's sort of a club, a sorority, I guess," Mrs. Bush responded.

Their goal was to encourage African first ladies to raise their voices for causes they are passionate about, even if the public is sometimes focused on more trivial matters, the said.

"While people are sort of sorting through our shoes and our hair, whether we cut it or not ..." Mrs. Obama started.

"Whether we have bangs," Mrs. Bush interjected to laughter. Mrs. Obama expressed surprise that her change in hair style this year would prompt so much media coverage. "Who would have thought? I didn't call that."

"But," Mrs. Obama said, "we take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see. And eventually people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what we're standing in front of."

"We hope," Mrs. Bush joked. Mrs. Obama replied, "They do, and that's the power of our roles."

When it comes to the power of their husbands' roles, Obama has said he wants to usher in a new era of U.S.-Africa relations. Obama has praised Bush for helping save millions of lives by funding AIDS treatment. But, he said Monday, "We are looking at a new model that's based not just on aid and assistance, but on trade and partnership."

"Ultimately, the goal here is for Africa to build Africa for Africans," Obama said. "And our job is to be a partner in that process."

In that spirit, Obama announced a program to bring more power to Africans without access to electricity. During a visit to a local power plant built with a U.S. grant, Obama demonstrated a soccer ball designed to bring power to communities off the power grid.

One invention that could help on the electricity front is the SOCCKET ball, developed by two Harvard graduates. The ball has a pendulum-like mechanism inside that creates kinetic energy during play and stores it. Its maker says 30 minutes of play can power a simple LED lamp for three hours.

Obama kicked the ball off his foot and did a low header. "We're going to start getting these all around Africa," Obama said. "Pretty impressive stuff."

In remarks afterward, he touted his "Power Africa" electricity program as a win-win for Africans and U.S. companies. He also reflected on the trip, recalling some of the folks he met along the way, including a female farmer in Senegal and young people in the Soweto area of South Africa's capital city, Johannesburg.

"I'm inspired because I'm absolutely convinced that with the right approach, Africa and its people can unleash a new era of prosperity," Obama said.

___

AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-07-02-Obama/id-15bbce336e6b4d13b9a16ddf81390565

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