Presentation Zen: Can (and should) scientists become great presenters? “”People can only learn something new if they can relate it to something they already know. That’s the only way.” “When people like you [scientists & PhD students] talk about their research, half of the time even your peers don’t understand what the hell you are talking about, and when they do understand they find it boring. That’s the sad truth.” “Scientists cannot communicate very well with non-scientists, but in fact they cannot communicate well with other scientists either.” “If you are a PhD student, a post-Doc, or even a professor, where have you been all your life? In School! And school is the worst place where you could possibly learn communication.” “You see the problem here. We are learning to communicate by explaining things to people [professors] who all ready know [the material]. What kind of learning experience is that? It’s the wrong approach…..on top of that the purpose is being graded, which means we have to prove to those people grading us how clever we are.” “Find a simple way to explain something complex.”” tags: presentation zen scientists educators communication learning itrt weekly Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

emulsifier on Vimeo h/t boing boing tags: perspective art fish bird weekly Vimeo Reddit and suicide intervention: How social media is changing the cry for help, and the answer. “Now, nearly 35,000 people are subscribed to SuicideWatch. Related subreddit, or sub, StopSelfHarm has 4,500 members; MakeMeFeelBetter has 15,000; the depression sub, which shares some moderators with SuicideWatch, has more than 100,000 subscribers. “ tags: reddit socialmedia suicide depression culture weekly Taylor & Francis Online :: Response option configuration of online administered Likert scales – International Journal of Social Research Methodology – Volume 18, Issue 1 “Results indicated that vertically unidirectional response options should be used when absolute judgments are being made using online-administered Likert scales. When relative judgments are being made, horizontally unidirectional response options should be used.” tags: likert scales orientation survey design research weekly It’s Open Season on the Tech Elite – Global Guerrillas “Over the weekend, ISIS threatened the life of Jack Dorsey, a co-founder and Chairman of Twitter.  Why?  Twitter, at the urging of the US government, has been shutting down the accounts of ISIS supporters for months.  So, ISIS supporters responded by making a threat with a nifty graphic: We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back. But when […]