Don't study harder—study smarter!
No one is born knowing how to study. It takes time and experience to know how to study well, and we'd like to share some of our experience with you.
These study skills have been developed specifically for high school students currently undertaking VCE, but they will also be useful in university and the workplace.
We might not be around in five years,” says Max Ventilla, AltSchool’s 38-year-old co-founder and CEO, as the two publicists minding our interview cringe. “Don’t put that in your article,” says AltSchool’s communications director, Maggie Quale, while a young woman from Rubenstein, the giant New York-based corporate PR firm, sits in awkward silence.
We’re two intense hours into an interview in a stuffy, glass-paned meeting room in a former 24 Hour Fitness that is now home to one of AltSchool’s two small private schools in San Francisco for grades pre-K through 8. Ventilla, who left Google to launch AltSchool in 2013, has spent $30 million annually over the last several years while trying to find steady footing for his for-profit education startup, which runs four schools; the other two are in New York City.
AltSchool’s 240 students, including two of Ventilla’s children—Leonardo, 5, and Sabine, 7—are guinea pigs for a software platform that AltSchool is attempting to sell to hundreds of schools both private and public. So far it has 28 customers. Revenue in 2018 was $7 million. “Our whole strategy is to spend more than we make,” he says. Since software is expensive to develop and cheap to distribute, the losses, he believes, will turn into steep profits once AltSchool refines its product and lands enough customers.
But as Ventilla admits when he lets his guard down, reaching profitability will be quite a stretch. The story of how AltSchool arrived at this point—burning cash in a failed attempt to create a profitable private-school network and fighting to sell an expensive edtech product in a crowded field—shows that the best intentions, an impressive career in tech and an excess of Silicon Valley money and enthusiasm don’t easily translate into success in a tradition-bound marketplace where budgets are tight.
Ventilla, wearing jeans, scuffed black leather slip-ons, a faded polo shirt with AltSchool’s logo and a black fleece jacket, has been able to hemorrhage cash because, as he has it, “I’m good at telling AltSchool’s story and I’m good at raising money early.” So good that he has raised $174 million in venture capital at a $440 million valuation, according to PitchBook, more than almost any other startup working on K-12 education. That sum includes a personal investment of more than $15 million from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Zuckerberg initiated two hours-long one-on-one meetings with Ventilla in late 2014, when AltSchool was only 18 months old. “He’s very detail-oriented, and he likes to drill down,” Ventilla says of Zuckerberg.
It’s easy to see how Ventilla would appeal to tech billionaires and their investment vehicles, including Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz, all of which have become AltSchool backers on the strength of his high-minded pitch. “Our mission has always been to make the best education the most available,” he says. “Students shouldn’t just be cogs in a wheel. They should be agents of their own goals.” (None of the five billionaires responded to requests for comment.)
B
efore starting AltSchool, Ventilla says, he read two dozen books on education and emerged a fan of Sir Ken Robinson, a British TED Talk speaker known for lamenting the dearth of creativity in early education, and Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and the winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant who has written about the need for children to cultivate “grit.” The quality of primary and secondary education in America, stuck in an industrial-age model, has been in steady decline for the last century, says Ventilla, citing the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, a worldwide test of reading, math and science ability in which U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 38th out of 71 countries. “The factory model in a non-factory world disengages kids,” he says. AltSchool’s solution: “Foster in children the development of an internal compass so that as things are changing around them more rapidly, they can always reorient.”
ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
To do this, AltSchool adopted an educational philosophy backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Emerson Collective and by Zuckerberg in his much-publicized letter to his oldest daughter, Maxima, born in 2015, a year after his meeting with Ventilla. Known variously as “personalized learning,” “learner-centric learning” and “competency-based learning,” the philosophy argues against the traditional model of an all-knowing teacher dictating from the head of the class, sometimes called the “sage on the stage” approach, where students are expected to progress as a group. Instead children, together with teachers, set individual goals, explore areas that most interest them within a defined curriculum and trade lots of feedback along the way.
The technology piece of personalized learning is the most controversial. No one wants students to sit in front of screens all day doing math drills with software driven by artificial intelligence. At AltSchool, Ventilla proposed developing a software platform that would make it efficient and easy for teachers to customize assignments, assess performance and communicate with administrators and parents. He calls AltSchool’s private schools “lab schools,” where teachers try various approaches on students while working closely with a staff of engineers, many of whom were hired away from Google, Apple and Facebook.
DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG
But he learned quickly that education is a much tougher nut to crack than search engines. Early on, he had a big plan to expand into Chicago, and he was working on an idea to franchise a network of AltSchools across the country. But in 2016, he ditched both possibilities. Altogether he started nine schools in San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York. By the end of 2018, he had closed five of them, including the one in Palo Alto, with its 62 students. (Ventilla says most students from the shuttered AltSchools in San Francisco and New York transferred to other campuses.) With tuition starting at $26,000, which is expensive but still lower than many Bay Area private schools, none of the locations were paying for themselves.
Ventilla says schools tested different models. One San Francisco location had a single room and 32 students in grades 6 through 8, a setup that died when the school closed. He says he made it clear to parents that the schools were experimental and might remain open for only a short time. “We were doing a lot of iterating and learning,” he says.
He also abandoned experiments like setting up four cameras per classroom to film students interacting with teachers. He had read a Gates-funded study that recommended videotaping. Teachers used the cameras for two years before Ventilla put a kibosh on the project. “It didn’t really make sense when you thought about the cost to maintain the system,” he says.
Other bigger expenses made even less sense. Because none of the properties had been designed as schools, unexpected problems surfaced, says Carolyn Wilson, AltSchool’s former director of education. “What ate our lunch more than anything was doing real estate retrofits,” she says. At one of the schools in San Francisco, the toilets kept backing up. None of the locations had playgrounds or gyms, so AltSchool took children to city parks. In one San Francisco park frequented by the homeless, human feces presented a problem. To ensure students’ safety, AltSchool hired Mike Ginty, the former head of global security at Uber. (Today, AltSchool has worked out secure arrangements with a combination of public parks and private facilities, like a YMCA in Manhattan.)
In 2016 Ventilla decided the most cost-effective way to realize his vision was to put the schools on the back burner and focus on the software platform and selling it to customers he calls “partners.” Those schools would give feedback to his engineers, who could further hone the product. He is betting that he will find massive numbers of school leaders ready to embrace personalized learning and pay AltSchool’s steep fees. But a half-dozen other companies, including Schoology, Moodle, Blackboard and Canvas, offer so-called learning management systems that also claim to facilitate personalized learning. Canvas, based in Salt Lake City, bills itself as the market leader with thousands of customers, and has both a free product and a customized version for an annual cost per student of $10 or less.
RYAN ANSON/BLOOMBERG
By contrast, AltSchool’s charges work out to $100 to $150 per student per year. “From what I’ve heard talking to administrators and educators, $150 per kid feels like a prohibitive price point,” says Tony Wan, managing editor of EdSurge, a media company in Burlingame, California, that covers educational technology. “Who can afford that?”
Ventilla brushes off the naysayers. “The name of the game is always scale,” he says, predicting that AltSchool’s software price will fall as low as $50 per student. AltSchool has also been building open education-curriculum software into its product, including math and English lessons that meet state standards, and its software gives automated prompts to teachers that can improve their performance. “We’re not just selling software,” he says. “We’re selling a replacement for the curriculum schools have to buy. We’re selling professional development. Those are big numbers for schools, many times what AltSchool is charging now.”
Ventilla himself was not educated this way. The son of Hungarian immigrants, he grew up with his sister and parents in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. His father, a filmmaker in Hungary, scraped by as a sculptor and illustrator. His mother taught business courses to Columbia University undergrads and was the family breadwinner. A gifted child, he won a scholarship to Buckley, a private Manhattan boys’ school with a traditional approach where Donald Trump Jr. had been a student. He went on to Andover and Yale on scholarship and was admitted to the Yale School of Management in a program for exceptional Yale College grads, called Silver Scholars, which paid the first year of tuition.
In 2000, while an undergrad, he started a data-mining software company with some buddies from Andover and Yale, raising $1 million before selling the company 18 months later for an undisclosed sum that he says gave his investors a good return. After business school and a gig working for a classified advertising firm in Europe, he landed at Google in a unit that worked on business operations and strategy.
But he stayed only a year before starting a social search engine company called Aardvark in 2007, funded with $10 million in venture capital. Less than three years in, he sold the company to Google for $50 million, making his stake, which Forbesestimates at more than 10%, worth upwards of $5 million. “It was totally life-changing money for me,” he says. He bought a house in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighborhood with his wife, Jenny Stefanotti, a UC Berkeley and Harvard grad he had met during his first stint at Google. Before starting AltSchool, he returned to Google for three years, where he worked in a small group that developed the Google Plus social network, before heading up the company’s personalization team.
By the winter of 2012, he and Stefanotti already had Sabine, who was one and a half, and son Leonardo was on the way. They started searching for preschools and were appalled by what they found. “There were a handful of good preschools, and each one of them was insanely competitive to get into,” he says. “The implication was that if you didn’t get your kid into the right preschool, they were going to be penniless and alone by the time they were 30.”
Itching to start a new venture, he threw himself into researching the kind of school where he imagined Sabine would thrive. Within months he quit Google and started raising cash. In the deck for his Series A funding round, he showed a picture of himself lying on a bed, reading to Sabine and baby Leonardo, a Gandhi quote across the top of the screen: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Though Ventilla’s business plan was no more than a vague outline, he was a Silicon Valley insider, and investors bought in. “He was talking about a shift from a lecture-based model of education to a learner-centric model,” says First Round Capital partner Josh Kopelman, who sits on AltSchool’s board. “That made total sense to us.”
Inside AltSchool’s Manhattan middle school, in an office building on the busy corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, there are more books, papers, pens and pencils than computers, though students are each assigned a Chromebook, which they use off and on throughout the day. In a humanities class, a black-clad teacher with close-cropped hair, Jaqi Ruiz-Garcia, is conducting a Socratic discussion with her eight seventh and eighth graders. They have all read the same texts: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, printed on dead trees, and a photocopied James Baldwin essay. Students refer to essays they have written with pencils in old-fashioned notebooks, and Ruiz-Garcia has a stuffed yellow caterpillar that she passes around the classroom to each student who wants to speak.
“People need to be more aware that we’re not a perfect country,” says one girl.
“What are some ways we can build bridges in society?” asks Ruiz-Garcia.
“There was more time in this country—250 years—when people were enslaved than when they were free,” responds a girl with tight braids. “People who make $15 an hour are still enslaved.”
“I heard a quote on Instagram: ‘Vote like your life depends on it,’ ” says another student.
As the yellow caterpillar makes its way around the group, three kids are staring into space.
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Children are going back to school soon and, for many, it may be a time of change. Maybe it is your child's first year of school, their first year of high school, or maybe they're switching schools.
Whatever the change, it will bring many new opportunities for friendships and learning. But is your child ready?
Some children are born more resilient to change, but others can be sensitive to the world around them and need more support to manage.
For every child, a new school or new stage in their schooling is an opportunity to develop or boost their skills in managing transitions. Making this transition smooth is not about removing the obstacle itself, but instead giving the child skills to manage the change.
Children feel worried or nervous in a new situation if they think something bad might happen or if they feel they won't be able to handle the situation.
The best way to learn a negative outcome is not as likely as predicted is to practise facing the situation. Practising new or challenging situations provides opportunities for your child to learn to handle new situations.
This is best done in a gradual, step-by-step way.
To help prepare your child for change, consider what it is they might find challenging. Think about opportunities you can create before school starts to practice this specific situation. Is it how to catch the bus independently? Is it making friends? Or is it handling uncertainty?
Work with your child to think about ways you can practise these situations in the holiday period to provide them with more information that show things usually turn out OK — and, more often than not, they can handle it.
If this is your child's first year of school, use the time in the holidays to practise school-relevant tasks like being away from you, asking questions, independent toileting, sitting still, or following instructions.
Early learning environments, like preschool, have already prepared your child for many of these tasks.
But if you are concerned your child is still not ready, then practise these situations in a gradual step-by-step way.
Encourage your child's independence over the next few weeks by giving them opportunities to do more for themselves.
Visiting the new school ahead of the start date can be a useful way of preparing for the new school. But as this is not always possible, there are many other ways you can practise new situations over the holidays, like attending holiday programs, doing a new activity, or gently encouraging your child to move outside their comfort zone.
Ask your child to think about other times they have been in a new environment and made friends. Remembering past positive situations might help them to better predict what is most likely to happen on day one at school.
The first year of high school will, for many students, bring new routines and structure. This may include different bell times, multiple teachers, new transport, and new expectations.
Orientation days are a good way to find out more about the school. Practise any new tasks, like catching the bus, before school starts to reduce anxiety about this on the first day.
Some may need to practise getting used to unpredictable routines or not knowing every detail beforehand.
If your child doesn't have the stress management and study skills to manage the increased workload of the final years of high school, there are several programs and services available which can help them improve.
It may also be valuable to have an honest conversation with them about what they need from you and how you can best support them in their final year of school.
Children of parents who provide supportive and encouraging environments actually perform better than children whose parents pressure them to perform.
Given most students will report feeling stressed in the final year due to high-stakes testing, consider reducing additional stresses — like moving or other big changes in this year.
Fears and worries are common in childhood and adolescence.
For some children, this worry may become unmanageable and might prevent the child from attending school, making friends, sleeping or from achieving their best at school.
If you think your child's worry is affecting their life, there are many evidence based programs and services effective in reducing anxiety and worry like the Centre for Emotional Health or Brave Online.
Experiencing significant problems with anxiety in childhood does increase the young person's risk of developing other mental health difficulties throughout life. It is important to reach out for evidence-based help such as cognitive behavioural therapy.
Children look to their parents and caregivers to know when they should be worried or fearful in a situation. If you are communicating messages, subtle or overt, that the new school is a scary situation, then this will serve to increase the child's first-day jitters.
It is important to normalise your child's feelings of anxiety on the first day, but it is also important to communicate the message that you think they can handle it.
Milestones in your child's life are significant.
Think ahead of time what strategies you might need to put in place (like visiting a supportive friend after the first drop-off) so you can provide the best "coping" role model for your child.
This is not about you being fearless — but about showing your child effective ways to manage challenging situations.
Kind Regards
Olivia Cassidy
Associate Principal, HR and Curriculum Performance
A spate of prosecutions in the agriculture industry is a timely reminder to make 2019 a safer year for agriculture industry workers, particularly young and inexperienced workers.
The prosecutions follow several fatalities, including the death of an inexperienced worker at the Toowoomba Showgrounds when he fell off a trailer towed by a tractor. A Workplace Health and Safety Queensland investigation found work for the dole participants were expected to perform their duties without appropriate inductions and training, and little supervision.
The magistrate determined that simply having safety systems in place was not enough, and there must be measures to ensure they are followed, and fined the defendant $90,000.
In a separate action, two farming companies and a sole director were fined $475,000 after the death of a 14 year old boy in Goondiwindi. In the 2016 incident, twin inexperienced 14 year olds were employed during school holidays to perform various tasks around the farm.
On the day of the incident the boys were told to pick up irrigation pipes using a tractor with a trailer. The tractor had one seat – occupied by the operator – while the other boy sat on the trailer and after one load was collected, the passenger stood on a small platform on the drawbar, placing him between the tractor and trailer. Tragically, he fell and was run over.
The company had a responsibility to ensure work systems were in place for everyone, including child workers, and had an obligation to provide appropriate supervision but it did not have these systems in place. The magistrate said there was obvious risk to a vulnerable category of worker and the operation failed in its system of supervision.
In another December case, a timber company was fined $60,000 for failing to protect a young inexperienced worker who lost a thumb and three fingers in a workplace incident. The investigation identified that three months earlier an audit had revealed some guarding was missing from the saw and recommended replacement as a high priority. Although the audit results were discussed during a safety committee meeting, no action was taken.
Another recent agriculture prosecution followed the electrocution of an overseas worker while using a cherry-picker. A North Queensland avocado grower was fined $200,000, with the magistrate saying there were simple steps which should have been taken given the potential risks, including planting trees away from the 3m powerline exclusion zone.
Finally, the Maryborough Magistrates Court fined a meatworks $200,000 over the death of a worker who was struck by a ramp unloading a triple-deck truck laden with pigs. The worker, who had only been with the abattoir a month, had no previous experience unloading livestock, no formal qualifications, nor training in the trade.
The court heard that during a delivery, the worker came to help stop pigs jumping off the newly raised ramp near the holding yard when it started moving in a see-sawing motion. The pigs continued moving, adding extra weight to the ramp when the cross bar suddenly dropped, trapping him between the ramp and the ground.
The court heard that no risk assessment, engineering or independent certification had been undertaken or was in place. There was no understanding of the impacts of the weight that the worker would be unloading onto the modified ramp.
For more information on industrial prosecutions, visit worksafe.qld.gov.au.
Your sincerely
Peter Smith
Principal
Famed 19th-century author and orator Frederick Douglass was an eminent human rights leader in the anti-slavery movement and the first African-American citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank.
Abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. He became one of the most famous intellectuals of his time, advising presidents and lecturing to thousands on a range of causes, including women’s rights and Irish home rule.
Among Douglass’ writings are several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences in slavery and his life after the Civil War, including the well-known work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. He died on February 20, 1895.
In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass joined a black church and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He also subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal The Liberator.
At the urging of Garrison, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. The book was a bestseller in the United States and was translated into several European languages.
Although the work garnered Douglass many fans, some critics expressed doubt that a former slave with no formal education could have produced such elegant prose.
Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime, revising and expanding on his work each time. My Bondage and My Freedom appeared in 1855. In 1881, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892.
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born around 1818 into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. The exact year and date of Douglass' birth are unknown, though later in life he chose to celebrate it on February 14.
Douglass initially lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At a young age, Douglass was selected to live in the home of the plantation owners, one of whom may have been his father.
His mother, who was an intermittent presence in his life, died when he was around 10.
Defying a ban on teaching slaves to read and write, Baltimore slaveholder Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia taught Frederick Douglass the alphabet when he was around 12. When Auld forbade his wife to offer more lessons, Douglass continued to learn from white children and others in the neighborhood.
It was through reading that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He read newspapers avidly and sought out political writing and literature as much as possible. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator with clarifying and defining his views on human rights.
Douglass shared his newfound knowledge with other enslaved people. Hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly church service.
Interest was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. Although Freeland did not interfere with the lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding. Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed the congregation permanently.
With Douglass moving between the Aulds, he was later made to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant abuse nearly broke the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually, however, Douglass fought back, in a scene rendered powerfully in his first autobiography.
After losing a physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him again. Douglass tried to escape from slavery twice before he succeeded.
Frederick Douglass married Anna Murray, a free black woman, on September 15, 1838. Douglass had fallen in love with Murray, who assisted him in his final attempt to escape slavery in Baltimore.
On September 3, 1838, Douglass boarded a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Murray had provided him with some of her savings and a sailor's uniform. He carried identification papers obtained from a free black seaman. Douglass made his way to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York in less than 24 hours.
Once he had arrived, Douglass sent for Murray to meet him in New York, where they married and adopted the name of Johnson to disguise Douglass’ identity. Anna and Frederick then settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which had a thriving free black community. There they adopted Douglass as their married name.
Frederick and Anna Douglass had five children together: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Redmond and Annie, who died at the age of 10. Charles and Rosetta assisted their father in the production of his newspaper The North Star. Anna remained a loyal supporter of Frederick's public work, despite marital strife caused by his relationships with several other women.
After Anna’s death, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white feminist from Honeoye, New York. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts Jr., an abolitionist colleague. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication and shared many of Douglass’ moral principles.
Their marriage caused considerable controversy, since Pitts was white and nearly 20 years younger than Douglass. Douglass’ children were especially displeased with the relationship. Douglass and Pitts remained married until his death 11 years later.
After settling as a free man with his wife Anna in New Bedford in 1838, Frederick Douglass was eventually asked to tell his story at abolitionist meetings, and he became a regular anti-slavery lecturer.
Founder of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison, was impressed with Douglass’ strength and rhetorical skill, and wrote of him in his newspaper. Several days after the story ran, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket.
Crowds were not always hospitable to Douglass. While participating in an 1843 lecture tour through the Midwest, Douglass was chased and beaten by an angry mob before being rescued by a local Quaker family.
Following the publication of his first autobiography in 1845, Douglass traveled overseas to evade recapture. He set sail for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and eventually arrived in Ireland as the Potato Famine was beginning. He remained in Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking to large crowds on the evils of slavery.
During this time, Douglass’ British supporters gathered funds to purchase his legal freedom. In 1847, the famed writer and orator returned to the United States a free man.
Upon his return, Douglass produced some abolitionist newspapers: The North Star, Frederick Douglass Weekly, Frederick Douglass' Paper, Douglass' Monthly and New National Era. The motto of The North Star was "Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."
READ ARTICLE: "Frederick Douglass at 200: Still Bringing the Thunder" on History.com
In addition to abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights. In 1848, he was the only African American to attend the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution stating the goal of women's suffrage. Many attendees opposed the idea.
Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor, arguing that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women could not also claim that right. The resolution passed. Yet Douglass would later come into conflict with women’s rights activists for supporting the Fifteenth Amendment, which banned suffrage discrimination based on race while upholding sex-based restrictions.
Astronaut, military pilot, and educator, Neil Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, by becoming the first man to walk on the moon.
Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. After serving in the Korean War and then finishing college, he joined the organization that would become NASA. He joined the astronaut program in 1962 and was command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII, in 1966. He was spacecraft commander for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar mission, and became the first man to walk on the moon. He died in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2012.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong developed a fascination with flight at an early age and earned his student pilot's license when he was 16. In 1947, Armstrong began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University on a U.S. Navy scholarship.
In 1949, as part of his scholarship, Armstrong trained as a pilot in the Navy and two years later, served in the Korean War. He flew 78 combat missions during this military conflict. He left the service in 1952, and returned to college. A few years later, Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). For this government agency he worked in a number of different capacities, including serving as a test pilot and an engineer. He tested many high-speed aircraft, including the X-15, which could reach a top speed of 4,000 miles per hour.
In his personal life, Armstrong started to settle down. He married Janet Shearon on January 28, 1956. The couple soon added to their family. Son Eric arrived in 1957, followed daughter Karen in 1959. Sadly, Karen died of complications related to an inoperable brain tumor in January 1962. The following year, the Armstrongs welcomed their third child, son Mark.
That same year, Armstrong joined the astronaut program. He and his family moved to Houston, Texas, and Armstrong served as the command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII. He and fellow astronaut David Scott were launched into the earth's orbit on March 16, 1966. While in orbit, they were able to briefly dock their space capsule with the Gemini Agena target vehicle. This was the first time two vehicles had successfully docked in space. During this maneuver, however, they experienced some problems and had to cut their mission short. They landed in the Pacific Ocean nearly 11 hours after the mission's start, and were later rescued by the U.S.S. Mason.
Armstrong faced an even bigger challenge in 1969. Along with Michael Collins and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, he was part of NASA's first manned mission to the moon. The trio were launched into space on July 16, 1969. Serving as the mission's commander, Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, with Buzz Aldrin aboard. Collins remained on the Command Module.
At 10:56 PM, Armstrong exited the Lunar Module. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he made his famous first step on the moon. For about two and a half hours, Armstrong and Aldrin collected samples and conducted experiments. They also took photographs, including their own footprints.
Returning on July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 craft came down in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. The crew and the craft were picked up by the U.S.S. Hornet, and the three astronauts were put into quarantine for three weeks.
Before long, the three Apollo 11 astronauts were given a warm welcome home. Crowds lined the streets of New York City to cheer on the famous heroes who were honored in a ticker-tape parade. Armstrong received numerous awards for his efforts, including the Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Armstrong remained with NASA, serving as deputy associate administrator for aeronautics until 1971. After leaving NASA, he joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as a professor of aerospace engineering. Armstrong remained at the university for eight years. Staying active in his field, he served as the chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., from 1982 to 1992.
Helping out at a difficult time, Armstrong served as vice chairman of the Presidential Commission on the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986. The commission investigated the explosion of the Challenger on January 28, 1986, which took the lives of its crew, including school teacher Christa McAuliffe.
Despite being one of the most famous astronauts in history, Armstrong largely shied away from the public eye. He gave a rare interview to the news program 60 Minutes in 2005. He described the moon to interviewer Ed Bradley, saying "It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it." That same year, his authorized biography came out. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong was written by James R. Hansen, who conducted interviews with Armstrong, his family, and his friends and associates.
Even in his final years, Armstrong remained committed to space exploration. The press-shy astronaut returned to the spotlight in 2010 to express his concerns over changes made to the U.S. space program. He testified in Congress against President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Constellation program, which included another mission to the moon. Obama also sought to encourage private companies to get involved in the space travel business and to move forward with more unmanned space missions.
Taking this new decision, Armstrong said, would cost the United States its leadership position in space exploration. "America is respected for its contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that would be in our best interests," he told Congress, according to a report on NewsHour.
Armstrong underwent a heart bypass operation in August 2012. A few weeks later, on August 25, 2012, at the age of 82, Neil Armstrong died of complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was survived by his second wife, Carol, in Indian Hill, Ohio, and his two sons from his first marriage. He and his first wife divorced in 1994.
Shortly after his death, his family released a statement: "For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
News of Armstrong's death quickly spread around the world. President Obama was among those offering their condolences to his family and sharing their remembrances of the late space pioneer. "Neil was among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time," Obama said, according to the Los Angeles Times. His Apollo 11 colleague Buzz Aldrin said that "I know I am joined by millions of others in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew. My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world and will forever be remembered as a landmark moment in human history," according to CBS News.
Caversham Wildlife Park; A Western Australian family owned and operated tourist highlight.
David & Pat own and operate Caversham Wildlife Park with their son David & daughter Debbie.
When they purchased the park in 1988, the park housed a small collection of animals and birds on a modest 5 acre (2ha) property. A few years later, the park doubled in size, when the family purchased the adjoining property and the collection started to boom. In May 2003, the family designed and built a new park in Whiteman Park, once again, more than doubling in size.
The park is home to about 200 species, and more than 2000 head of animals, birds and reptiles. This impressive collection makes CWP the largest privately owned collection of native wildlife in Western Australia. The park is the premiere development of its kind in Western Australia, attracting visitors from all over the world.
CWP pride themselves on their unique interactive experiences with Australia’s most interesting animals, without being commercialised. CWP is a world-class attraction whilst maintaining the laid-back Aussie touch.
Visitors receive personalized service by wildlife professionals who are dedicated to exceptional service, ensuring their visitors receive the best opportunities for animal interaction, information and photographs.
As a local, WA family owned and operated business, we do not receive any assistance from the Government, so we are sincerely thankful to our patrons for assisting us to care for our unique Australian wildlife. We have very proudly owned CWP for 30 years, and with continued visitor support, we endeavour to continue providing a world-class facility for all to enjoy.
Pat, Dave, David & Deb
Whiteman Park is a Recreation & Conservation Reserve, that is approximately 4300 hectares; that’s about 10 times larger than Kings Park.
While in Whiteman Park, don’t forget to visit the other attractions:
There are also a variety of children’s amusements, including numerous playgrounds, a paddling pool and bouncy castle. Whiteman Park is home to a number of tranquil bushwalk and cycle trails. There are approx 70 BBQ and picnic areas inside Whiteman Park. There is also a licensed cafe, for dine in or take away lunches.
Feel free to wander over to Whiteman Park at any time throughout the day, and then return into Caversham Wildlife Park later – our friendly shop staff will provide you with a pass-out stamp.
For further information, please contact Whiteman Park – 9209 6000 or visit their website.
Caversham Wildlife Park is a wildlife park currently located in Whiteman Park in Western Australia.
It was originally located in the locality of Caversham.
It shifted into Whiteman Park in 2003.
The will and vital capacity of Australian universities to support academics to combine teaching and research is under grave threat. Intensifying workloads—much of it kept invisible in workload models—short-change time and opportunity for research. And governing forces—within and beyond universities—have been moving to restructure investment in university labours towards teaching at the expense of research.
The Australian Government and university governing bodies are introducing policies to split research from teaching and expand teaching-only academic positions. If this trend persists, it won’t just be careers of younger academics that suffer. Disconnecting research from teaching, we argue, severely challenges how universities can contribute to sustainable social futures for Australian communities and globally.
We see need for collective political response to this crisis. In this post we diagnose what is happening and consider ways to fight back.
What is happening
The role of the current government
Federal Government policy is forcing this cultural change in our universities. Along with freezing funding to universities overall—pressuring university budgets and leading to fewer funded places for students—it has reduced funding for research by moving some of those funds to pay for additional student places in regional universities.
At the same time the Federal Government has introduced measures that rank each university’s scholarly outputs, fostering an environment of hyper-competition, and fateful choices, based on rankings. Universities are induced to strategize options for sustaining their reputations within tight budgets. Decisions are being made on where to direct reduced research funding: whether to employ fewer but ‘higher-producing’ researchers; and whether to cut down on domains of research focus: in effect, shifting some universities towards ‘teaching institution’ status.
Government typically justifies pressures towards teaching focus with simplistic rhetoric that student fees fund the lion’s share of university budgets, and ‘students need training in skills for knowledge economies’. We argue that our universities are, and need to be, much more than training centres for job seekers. Nor should universities be political footballs that governments kick, ideologically, at students facing insecure work futures: a problem that deserves complex and substantive policy and cross-sector efforts.
The role of consultancy firms
External consultancy firms currently play a political role in generating rationales for university Councils and Managements to invest more in teaching and less in research. Thus KPMG’sReimagining Tertiary Education report, led by Stephen Parker, former University of Canberra Vice Chancellor, argues that, since the late 1980s Dawkins reform that created greater numbers of universities, not all have shown they can shine in both teaching and a range of research, and therefore some should focus more on ‘teaching excellence’. Similarly, a paper from the Nous Group proclaims:
Sooner or later we will need to face the issue of separating the cost of research from the funding of teaching places … [to] reduce the cost of teaching at bachelor level … [while] valuing great teachers within universities … The contemporary challenge is to provide great training, credentialing and educational service at an affordable price to the great middle of the post-school education population. The current system [provides to]… most of its participants based on the needs of the outlying 15 per cent and the experiences of their parents.
Such whistling-up of class distinction between a ‘great middle’ versus an elite ‘15 per cent’ fails to recognise that all university students, across their diversities, need researchful capacities to engage meaningfully with work and life challenges for their, and their communities’, futures in a precariously changing world.
The role of University Councils and Managements
There is no doubt universities feel the budget–pinch imposed by government policies. However, this does not justify how university Councils and Managements redistribute funds, labour and other resources away from the core university work of academic teaching, research and service, and into HR, Marketing, Legal and other offices.
They then try to turn ‘budget necessity’ into ‘pedagogic virtue’, as did the Vice Chancellor of Flinders University, Colin Stirling, in a radio interview by proclaiming:
Teaching specialists are a marvellous new opportunity for the very best educators to be in front of our students in our classrooms ensuring our students get the very best education possible.
Stirling gave no rationale for why teaching-only means ‘very best’ teaching, compared to academics whose teaching is informed by deep research/scholarship in disciplinary areas. Similar flimsy rhetoric has been reported from senior managers at Murdoch, Curtin and Victoria universities where restructures to replace many teaching-and-research academics with teaching-only staff have already taken place.
Why splitting research and teaching is a bad idea
We suggest that all university students need to graduate with researchful capacities to analyse and act in relation to emergent-future challenges that they, with others, face in spaces of work and wider community life. Indeed, many professions now require student research projects in order to accredit relevant university programs. Students thus need teachers who themselves engage in research.
Removal of researchers to isolated havens, away from teaching-only staff, debilitates both the research and teaching cultures of universities. Academics need healthy communities of teaching informed by research/scholarship, in which they partake, in order to model and impart the knowledge capacities and passions that university graduates need for navigating work and social futures.
This is what has, and should, distinguish university culture: a teaching-research nexus, embodied in a goodly number of teaching-and-research academics.
If the portion of university academics who combine teaching with research continues to shrink, this threatens futures of younger-generation academics who want research as part of their careers, which in turn threatens re-generation of the university sector. We already see numbers of promising academics who quit universities due to pressures, in early years, either to produce at ‘alpha’ research rates while handling large teaching workloads, or face relegation to non-research and insecure employment categories.
The combination of research and teaching is a unique way that universities contribute to social advancements. Research is an invaluable connector between academics, students, and local-global communities, which need sustaining so that all can benefit.
The way our universities work matters to all of us
We do not argue for a romanticised ‘collegial university of the past’. We want academics, students and communities, in connection, to imagine and create universities that best serve local and planetary futures. We believe splitting research from teaching does not advance university contributions to social futures, but is a backward step, breaking connections at a time when building them is vital to futures.
Social futures currently face many broad-based crises including un(der)employment, environmental damage, refugees fleeing chronic wars, governments losing purpose and effectiveness, and more. Universities, in mutually informing dialogue with students and communities, can play crucial roles in helping all to understand and pro-act as citizens able to address big-picture crises and associated local-life problems.
To do this, universities need to foster methodological approaches that connect research, teaching and community service, so as to expand the abilities of diverse social groups to work with an informative range of knowledge in defining and pursuing their needs and aspirations. Robust teaching-and-research academic cultures are needed to fit this purpose.
What can we do about it?
This is a critical historical juncture for university futures. We suggest four fronts for academic political action.
First is research-and-teaching practice in which academics collaborate with students and their communities on projects that matter to all involved. In this process, we can consult widely about what kinds of universities diverse Australians need and desire for their futures.
Second, in connection with the first, is to mobilise students and communities to join us in challenging governance constraints on how universities can inform and serve their best interests. We should work with our constituencies to recognise undue political machinations and communicate to wider publics how the quality of both research and teaching in Australian universities is under threat.
We need to encourage informed publics that join us in defining social purposes for Australian universities. These purposes are too important to be steered by politicians for political gain, or university Managements caught up in saving budget or competing for advantage in unfortunate market-competition with other universities.
Third is to pursue an inter-generational politics of academic bodies, with especial care for early-career academics who embody the future of university disciplines, institutions and the sector. Those of us who have had research opportunity need to stretch beyond small-scale things we do for younger colleagues, such as taking a few ‘promising’ early scholars under our wings in research projects. We need to challenge governance across the sector to expand early-career research time and opportunity within fair workloads. Older academics need to learn from younger colleagues about how they experience changing university cultures, so that, from multi-generational standpoints, we can build stronger analyses and answers to shifts in academic work and governance.
Fourth is to spur our research organisations, in this case AARE, to help us take action. Within universities, academics are at significant risk of reprisals if vocally critical of workforce restructures. We need support from organisations of mass membership, such as the AARE, which are not subject to control by university Councils, Managements or party politics.
We are heartened that, at an AGM at the 2017 AARE annual conference, those attending overwhelmingly endorsed a motion for the AARE to become politically active about threats to futures in education research per se, and reaching out to organisations representing other academic research fields. The AARE followed up by supporting a working party that organised a special session at the 2018 AARE conference, where participating members discussed ideas for next steps. The working party will report to AARE members about this session, and a survey stemming from it, in the near future.
We encourage AARE submission to the current Review of the Higher Education Provider Category Standards, led by Peter Coaldrake (former Vice Chancellor at Queensland University of Technology), articulating membership concerns about university research futures. Submissions to the Review are due by 5.00pm on 8 March 2019.
Finally, we encourage greater media savvy, and stronger academic connections with students and wider publics, towards making an effective case for expanding rather than contracting research, and the teaching-research nexus, in Australian universities.
Kinds Regards
Lew Zipin ( Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at Stellenbosch University, )
Marie Brennan ( Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia and Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University )
" I am very pleased to hear that we have a new champion and finally have someone that can act or play in important role, During Monday Night Entertainment ( Wrestling Show) I was there to see who wins the match and earned the title from winning the Fatal 4 ways match. You all may already know that I have elected as New General Manager of the show. The reason I relinquish the title is because I was elected as a new General Manager during the United States Championship were Vacant . All of other 4 superstars came up to me and asking me for a request for a Match for the Vacant Title . Also I wanna mentioned that every superstars are extremely talented, For 2019 I want to make a new goals for the Audience and the fans i have worked so hard to make this match happened and finally It's happened the goals for this year are to make a successful year for all of the Superstars and make their future successful. This year is gonna be a entertainment and fun year for us and the Audience. Finally I had the chances to take the show in charge, the shows are still in the same days every monday of the weeks. I was surprised that we have a lot of title defenses match is because I gave them a opportunity to be the best one and I am proud of every single superstars sportmanships since the starts of new year's day
Last Year in 2018 I reviews end of the year match I see a lots of dramas last year in 2018, I'm just hoping that this year won't be that lots of dramas as last year"
What will the Monday Night Entertainment General Manager, Damian Miller has to say next monday!
The Boss ‘N’ Hug Connection have long dreamed of becoming tandem champions in WWE, and their journey toward that goal officially begins on Raw when they face the unpredictable alliance of Alicia Fox & Nikki Cross in a WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship Elimination Chamber Qualifying Match.
The winning duo of this match will join Raw’s teams of Nia Jax & Tamina and Liv Morgan & Sarah Logan and SmackDown LIVE’s IIconics — along with two other blue brand teams yet to be determined — inside the formidable Elimination Chamber structure in a clash to determine the first-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.
In today's match we have seen lots of matches since the starts of 2019 and we are so pleased to see this two amazing champions. On 1 February 2019 - The United States Champions Will Dawson and Universal Champions Adam Anderson joins forces, They had a match against "The Best Superstars Ever" In a Mixed Tag Team Match In a Non - Title Match, Newly Crowned United States Champions Will Dawson since he becomes the new United States Champions, He has defeated every superstars streaks. Yesterday's match he joins forces with the Reigning fighting champions Universal Champions Adam Anderson he has hold the Universal Title for 213 Days
What will the "The Best Superstars Ever'' has to say after their streaks got defeated against the two Amazing Champions!
Following their monumental SmackDown Tag Team Championship victory at the Royal Rumble event, The Miz & Shane McMahon came to SmackDown LIVE with one very simple goal: throw The Best Championship Celebration in the World!
Shane told Miz that he wanted to give him something that’ll last a lifetime. Shane first showed his co-bestie a video package that documented their journey to becoming SmackDown Tag Team Champions together, and then, in a beautifully touching moment, Shane welcomed Miz’s dad George to the ring.
Miz was stunned, saying that he thought his dad had left the Valley of the Sun yesterday. George told his son that he loved him and was proud of him. Father and son embraced, and emotion was overflowing from all three men in the ring for a few tender moments. Shane-O-Mac then quickly redirected the team’s focus, announcing that their first challengers would be determined in a Four Corners Elimination Tag Team Match … next!
