It’s been a long time since schools focused solely on the three Rs—reading, writing, and arithmetic. Along the way, we realized that there’s so much more that defines a successful student and citizen, and that schools play a central role in training students to improve on a multitude of skills and abilities.
As outlined in the Common Core State Standards, for example, we are now tasked to teach a set of speaking skills. More and more businesses are citing the ability to speak and communicate comprehensively as vital skills in terms of hiring and professional success. For K–12 teachers, this means more targeted lessons that are focused on oral presentation and verbal assessment.
The fear of public speaking, or glossophobia, strikes almost 80 percent of our general population. Throw in our country’s percentage of English-language learners (ELLs), which ranges from 10 to 25 percent of our K–12 population (depending on the state), and you have an issue that requires precise scaffolding to help prepare our students to hit grade-level speaking expectations. So how can we challenge students to improve their oral presentation skills?
Striving for Equity
I used to use TED talks as my oral presentation template, as many teachers do. As an English language arts teacher and recently retired coach of one of the largest middle school speech and debate teams in the country (Go Bulldogs!), I’ve relied on TED talks for both exemplars and research. But I found that despite my scaffolds, there was still a great divide in final presentation quality between those who could and those who couldn’t. Enter Ignite Talks.
TED and Ignite Talks have some similarities, but it’s their key differences that have worked out better for my high- and low-ability learners, native speakers, and ELLs, and for both extroverted and introverted students.
Here’s what these speech platforms have in common: They both use the format of advocacy: hook, background information, evidence, and a call to action. And they both blend writing genres—memoir/anecdote, argument/persuasive, and informational/expository—rather than segregate them.
And here’s how they differ: Ignite Talks include specific timing and pacing guidelines where TED talks do not. These guidelines, I find, work to bring out the best in all learners, leveling the playing field for students. In fact, with the Ignite Talks rules, I found that students who liked to talk were forced to be more concise. And those who were fearful really only had to muster their courage for a short, set period of time.
Ignite Talks break down as follows: 20 slides, with 15 seconds per slide = 5 minutes.
The slides are set to advance automatically, and because of this, they must be highly visual. So there’s an opening to teach symbolism as well as how to find and cite free images. Because of the speed, a speaker cannot rely on the slides as their script; there’s no room for bullet points or paragraphs. This encourages students to make eye contact and speak with their back to the screen and not to the audience.
The time limit reminds me of the math homework debate: If students struggle with five problems, why give them 50? And if they can conquer five, well, 50 won’t add to their learning. Having students present with a strict pacing structure helps to avoid repetition or babbling from those students who love to talk—or those who are underprepared. A strict pacing structure also helps those students who suffer from presentation paralysis.
Organizing the Speech
Sometimes students present independently. Other times, they work in small groups so they can divide up the Ignite Talks verbal workload. To help them break down the outline of a collaborative speech, I give them a choice in organization.
I also offer an executive summary structure—background information, evidence, recommendations—to simplify a possible outline even further and bring more authentic writing to their presentation.
Both speech structures (Musk’s and mine) basically ask the students to provide research and take a strong stance on an issue, but they can select the structure that makes the most sense to them. The structure of both helps them to chunk their slides and images.
Before they get started with their planning, I always go over the oral presentation rubric, so there are no surprises. For my most recent project-based unit, I used a speech rubric when my students presented Ignite Talks as superhero leagues, focusing on global issues that they felt passionately needed to be solved. Incidentally, the groups were heterogeneous: ELLs presented alongside native English speakers, and it was an equitable success.
Depending on your group of learners, you will decide which works best—TED or Ignite Talks. What ultimately matters, though, is that you are taking on the charge of preparing your students to speak credibly and confidently out there in the world.
The founder of Capriole Investments, Charles Edwards, has shared in his latest tweet an assessment that Bitcoin is still significantly undervalued at its current price. The creator of the Hash Ribbons indicator and one of the leading publishers of on-chain models, stated that Bitcoin is currently trading at a 33% discount to its fair value.
“The symmetry of the Bitcoin cycle and its fundamental data is something truly unique to Bitcoin. I suspect this is a trait only found in tamperproof assets, only Bitcoin,” Edwards wrote. The analyst provides a more detailed rationale in his Capriole Investments newsletter, which has been obtained by NewsBTC.
BTC’s fair value, according to the analyst, is derived from Bitcoin’s energy value, which is calculated based solely on the energy expended to secure the network. “A clean, simple equation that values Bitcoin purely on watts of energy used to mine,” Edwards says.
Currently, the Bitcoin Energy Value is $42,000, which means BTC is undervalued by 33%. Interestingly, both the price and hashrate have risen sharply since the beginning of the year. Therefore, although Bitcoin has increased by 70% since December, the relative value difference between the price and energy value has only decreased slightly.
According to Edwards, BTC is therefore currently undervalued at around $28,000 to the same extent that it was undervalued in December 2022, when the price was trading below $17,000.
Edwards further stated that the current undervaluation phase is similar to the bear market of 2018 where Bitcoin traded below its Energy Value for 285 days. Currently, BTC is already 298 days below its fair price.
The fair value of Bitcoin has increased in tandem with price. Bitcoin is worth $42K today based on Energy Value, and has seen a comparable length period of undervaluation to the 2018 lows.
Bitcoin Price Surges Due To Organic Demand
In the newsletter, Edwards also discusses that Bitcoin’s significant price increase since the lows of the FTX scam in November 2022 has been driven by organic spot buying. Unlike previous rallies driven by speculators in the derivatives market, there is currently a much healthier price appreciation.
The ratio of derivatives to spot volume has never been lower since the widespread adoption of BTC perpetual swaps in 2018, according to Edwards, who draws two bullish conclusions from this. First, the price increase is caused by organic demand; second, “we’re incredibly early in this bull cycle.”At press time, the BTC price was at $28,047.
Yesterday, the price briefly plunged by more than $1,000 on the rumor that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao received an Interpol Red Notice, reaching a low of $27,207. The rumor has since been debunked as fake news by the CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange.
Measuring health is important for many reasons. It can help doctors and scientists understand the risk of medical problems and develop prevention strategies that can improve patient care. Monitoring health status can also help economists understand financial outcomes and help policymakers identify the likelihood of people needing caregiver assistance or retiring early, life events that can have implications for programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Further, measuring health is essential for assessing the return on U.S. health care spending which is large—close to one fifth of U.S. gross domestic product—and growing. In the United States, people usually take surveys that allow assessment of physical well-being. Self-assessments of health can help forecast life expectancy and functional ability, and whether a person may require medical care at some point in the future. However, in some cases, a better measure of health than self-assessments might be necessary.
Enter the frailty index
In June 2019, the Atlanta Fed published a working paper cowritten by Karen Kopecky, a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta research economist and associate adviser. Kopecky and her coauthors discussed the frailty index, an alternative method of evaluating health. This measure, pioneered by researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, focuses on the total number of health ailments a person has and the nature of those problems.
Kopecky worked with researchers Roozbeh Hosseini, a visiting scholar at the Atlanta Fed who is also an assistant professor at the University of Georgia, and Kai Zhao, associate economics professor at the University of Connecticut, to create frailty indexes using three surveys of Americans that include a host of questions on various aspects of health conditions.
A key finding of the researchers’ work was that the proportion of individuals in the U.S. population in good health decreases faster as people age when well-being is measured with the frailty index rather than with individual self-assessments. “For this reason the frailty index is an especially good measure for studying how health evolves with age,” Kopecky said.
The architecture of the frailty index helps explain why it can be a better predictor of health during aging. The index combines information from a range of questions about an individual’s specific health ailments to provide a summary of the person’s overall well-being. Kopecky and her colleagues used 27 health variables to construct a frailty index for a sample of more than 18,500 Americans who responded to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 2003 to 2015.
The survey includes questions on specific medical conditions and activities of daily living. The variables the researchers looked at include difficulty with activities such as eating, dressing, walking, managing money, and getting in and out of bed, as well as the presence of conditions including cancer, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, and loss of memory.
The researchers derived the index by adding the total number of variables reported as ailments by an individual, then dividing that sum by the total amount of variables observed for that person overall in the year. The index captured expected variation in health: frailty was higher in older age groups compared with younger ones. Further, the sample showed that increases in frailty over time were three times more common than decreases.
Kopecky and her coauthors also compared the state of health over time using the frailty index with self-reported health status by making calculations based on the percentage of respondents in the PSID survey who self-reported their health as “excellent,” “very good,” “good,” “fair,” or “poor.” Their analysis found that when health is measured by frailty, the proportion of individuals with excellent or very good health declines faster with age.
They set cutoff values for frailty based on the distribution of self-reported health of 25- to 29-year-olds. When the cutoff values and frailty were used to determine individuals’ health categories as opposed to self-reported health, the researchers observed that health deteriorated much more rapidly with age.
In other words, the analysis showed that the fraction of people with poor self-reported health status rose with age, but when they measured health by frailty, they observed a much faster rise than with the self-reports (see the charts). For example, only 17 percent of people aged 70 to 74 had a frailty index low enough to fall into the “excellent” or “very good” health category. That compares with 39 percent of 70- to 74-year-olds who self-reported their health as “excellent” or “very good.”
“We interpret these patterns as evidence that self-reported health status underestimates the decline in observable health,” the paper says. The researchers also found that the frailty index was a better predictor than self-reported health of mortality and the probability that a person would enter a nursing home or become dependent on Social Security Disability Insurance.
Individuals’ self-assessments not always reliable
One reason frailty may be a better gauge of health than self-assessments has to do with the subjective nature of individuals’ judgments of their well-being, Kopecky said. “People tend to compare themselves to others their age” in self-reporting their health condition rather than considering how their present medical status compares with their past state, she said.
“People seem to be readjusting their self-reported health. So if you really want to map out how health evolves as people age, subjective measures don’t work well.” That isn’t to say that self-reported health information doesn’t have value. It can play a role in helping researchers understand the variation of health within an age group, Kopecky said. She added that self-reported data can also help uncover private medical information that a frailty index would not easily discern, such as hereditary conditions that may put individuals at risk for certain diseases.
Kopecky said the frailty index model holds much potential in economics. It can provide insight into such matters as the effect of health on a person’s earnings over time, a country’s labor supply, and individual consumption patterns. “It’s a step in the right direction in terms of improving our way of measuring health and as a result being able to understand how health interacts with economic variables and models,” she said.
Artificial intelligence has had an enormous impact on many aspects of our lives, including education. Even UNSECO has acknowledged it! In 2019, they’ve created the Beijing Consensus on Artificial Intelligence and Education, which includes recommendations on using such software in classrooms. As you can see, AI is here to stay.
This IvyPanda article will showcase top-notch AI-powered programs and apps that make your studying routine much more effortless. Whether it’s to help you prepare for exams, learn another language, or do anything else, AI software can be a very useful tool.
How AI Is Used in Education
Artificial intelligence can optimize and improve any process it touches, and education is no exception. AI’s decision-making capabilities introduce new possibilities to every aspect of studying. Here are some examples:
Personalized learning and smart scheduling.
AI makes it possible to develop a truly individualized approach. It can quickly analyze every student’s learning style and preferences and then create a detailed, personalized academic plan.
Online learning and tutoring. AI’s capabilities in this area are unrivaled. For example, it can seamlessly match students with tutors. AI is also perfect for creating a studying platform. Some online learning environments have proven to be as efficient as face-to-face classes.
Assessment. It’s faster and less demanding to let AI keep track of things. It can take care of tests, grading, and even assessing personal skills.
Recruiting. Finding new talents for your team of teachers can also be accomplished with the help of AI. Just find a suitable algorithm to use, enter all the requirements, and you’re bound to find the right teacher for your team.
School management. Almost every part of running a school or another institution can be automized by AI, including managing salaries, security, monitoring, and many others.
Learning content. You can even generate study resources with AI. Find a suitable program, and there will be no need to scroll through dozens of links.
Benefits of AI for Studying
As you can see, artificial intelligence can work wonders in the learning system. However, there are plenty of other perks that come with the implementation of AI in education:
Easy troubleshooting. When your management uses the help of AI, identifying problems within the classroom becomes easy. You can find all the information you need on any student and adjust their studying process accordingly.
Convenience. Automatic systems drastically reduce the amount of paperwork needed in educational environments, which lessens stressful work conditions — because, frankly speaking, nobody likes paperwork.
Engagement. Personalizing academic plans give teachers new opportunities to diversify the studying process. Knowing the needs and preferences of your students, you can transform dull exercises into exciting experiences. Finding supplementary materials like games, videos, or music also becomes incredibly simple.
Accessibility. Being able to study from home has its advantages. It no longer matters where you live since you can work with any teacher worldwide. Certain disabilities are no longer an obstacle either.Easy to use. With AI, it’s easier than ever to find an answer to any question. There’s no need to bother your teacher with minor questions.
Schools and universities are not the only ones that benefit from AI education software. You, the student, can also enjoy many advantages. There are numerous tools that aim to help with homework or prepare you for finals. We’ll discuss some of them in this article, so keep reading…..
LocalCentric is a new app that helps local businesses improve their online reputation and get more leads, sales, and profit. The app uses artificial intelligence to monitor and respond to online reviews, helping businesses keep their reputation positive
LocalCentric is an online review and reputation management solution designed to assist businesses/multi-location agencies in monitoring and responding to reviews and improving their online reputation. You can now start a full-blown brand management agency that tells local businesses what’s working, what’s not, and what to do about it.
How It Works:
Simply enter a keyword and this AI-Assisted Software’s Deep Search Algorithm gets into actions mode and finds you thousands of businesses (in any niche you select) that desperately need your help.
These are businesses that consistently get bad reviews online & have no one to monitor/respond to such reviews. These are businesses that do not have even a Google My Business listing.
Just contact these clients as they are most likely to pay you for your services… saving you headaches, time, money & other resources you’d have spent on dead leads!
LocalCentric Is The FIRST EVER A.I. Assisted Local Business Brand Management & Lead Generation Platform On JVZoo That Helps Local Businesses Monitor And Respond To Reviews…Improving Their Online Reputation + Find Laser Targeted Leads You Can Sell Your Brand Management Services To…
It Is The World’s #1 A.I. Powered Local Business Brand Management Platform. You Can Now Start A Full-Blown Brand Management Agency That Tells Local Businesses What’s Working, What’s Not, and What To Do About It.
In the details, It’s an online review and reputation management solution designed to assist businesses/multi-location agencies in monitoring and responding to reviews and improving their online reputation.
LocalCentric will obviously help your business grow by leaps & bounds. But don’t forget that it can also help you kickstart a brand new method of earning money.
Simply search for businesses that are desperately looking for Brand & Online Reputation Management Services using our built-in Lead Gen tool. Contact them & show them what you can do for them… and get paid every month for managing their online reputation.
Take a look at the kind of money people are charging for such services on Fiverr, UpWork, etc. Charge a monthly or an annual fee… for helping local businesses monitor and respond to reviews… and
improving their online reputation
Increasing their sales & profits
And even building a list of reviewers that may want to hear from them
LocalCentric gives you complete control over your & your client’s brand image with real-time and extensive assessment of your & your client’s brand’s online perception.
Use LocalCentric to easily engage with consumers thoroughly, to obtain a competitive advantage, and to prevent crises.
Actively monitor mentions of your business (or of your client’s business) on websites and social media and respond to any negative or misleading remarks… totally hands-free.
LocalCentric SaaS Platform makes it easy for anyone regardless of their technical skills, to BOOST the Social Proof Authority of any website by showing up real customer reviews on any website from any niche out there. Nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase decision.
Key Features
First let’s take a look at what you will get inside
A cloud-based software that finds and extracts all customer reviews from the top online reviews platforms known
You get to follow a step by step blueprint with “LocalCentric local method”
Done for you email campaigns to help you sell reputation management services
Access their top 100 local business niches that convert well and gives you the best results
The complete outsourcing cheatsheet for when you need help with clients
And more surprise bonuses (you’ll find out as soon as you join)
There are a lot of powerful features packed into this futuristic app including first to market feature like… Video review campaigns using QR code trigger. Users can Setup video review campaigns that get triggered with a QR code that can be printed on product packaging.
By simply scanning the QR code users can record a video review and submit it. They can even share the video review on social media or post it as a widget on their websites
Check Out LocalCentric’s Powerful Features
Find Businesses That Desperately Need Brand Management
Simply enter a keyword and our AI-Assisted Software’s Deep Search Algorithm gets into actions mode and finds you thousands of businesses (in any niche you select) that desperately need your help.
Complete Review Management with Unparalleled Control and Visibility
Connect Google My Business (GMB), Facebook, Yelp, TrustPilot, Capterra, Amadeus, Foursquare, etc.
Easily monitor and respond to reviews in real-time, improve local search engine rankings, track performance, enhance your reputation, and drive additional sales.
GMB & Facebook Control
Less than 10% of businesses take full advantage of all GMB tools to improve search discovery and achieve higher map rankings.
Bulk Upload & Schedule Google & Facebook Posts
Talk directly to clients in the search results via Google and Facebook Posts. Share updates, offers, events, etc. to inform and engage customers — driving website visits, phone calls, and walk-in traffic.
10X Competitor Reviews
Access ratings, comments, and brand responses for up to 10 competitors for each of your locations. Compare comment trends for products and services, track trending topics, and evaluate custom categories.
Deep Performance Insights Across Your Business
View insights for… searches, maps, driving directions, phone calls, website visits, brand vs. indirect queries, and photo counts & engagement by country, state/region, city/location… and more.
Powerful Collaboration
Enterprise-grade access control allows you to scale your local optimization efforts to the entire organization.
Video review campaigns using QR code trigger
Setup video review campaigns that get triggered with a QR code that can be printed on product packaging. By simply scanning the QR code users can record a video review and submit it.
Automated Review Campaigns
Set various feedback to customers’ reviews based on their rating for a specific period of time.
Review Management
Use the LocalCentric to effortlessly manage reviews across all your locations. Reviews are automatically retrieved daily.
Dashboard View
Access insights from Google My Business for all your locations in a single dashboard with powerful grouping and filtering.
Direct Responses
Respond to reviews with personalized messages or leverage saved replies to provide a consistent approach.
Performance Insights
Secure an understanding of exactly what your customers are doing in Google before they reach your web properties.
Workflows
Need to distribute yesterday’s negative review scores to 200 managers? Set workflows to socialize reputation control.
Reporting Suite
Save, share, distribute, download, and schedule reports across all data sets and locations.
Historic Data
Access up to 2 years of customer reviews for every location and up 18 months of Local Search Insights.
Integrations
Build integrations from LocalCentric to your existing customer support and Social Media platforms.
Email autoresponder integration
Capture leads of reviewers and add them to your email autoresponder so you can market to them over and over again
Built for Scale
Enterprise-class user rights management to support companies with tens of thousands of locations across the globe.
This Artificial Intelligence Software allows anyone to display eye grabbing and beautiful Review cards in front of their visitors, to boost conversions, sales and profits overall!
In other words, with LocalCentric you get the power to turn any underperforming web page, into a high converting and authority inspiring website that makes it impossible for any visitor not to trust and purchase within their first visit.
Yes, it’s that simple. With LocalCentric, not only you are able to show of your positive reviews from the most important sources that customers trust, but also offers you the ability to BOOST your reviews on top of converting visitors to long time customers.
©Shutterstock.com/Monkey Business Images
Striving for Equity
The slides are set to advance automatically, and because of this, they must be highly visual. So there’s an opening to teach symbolism as well as how to find and cite free images. Because of the speed, a speaker cannot rely on the slides as their script; there’s no room for bullet points or paragraphs. This encourages students to make eye contact and speak with their back to the screen and not to the audience.
