Hi Bill, Pamela and all, I share a letter that I wrote to Dr.Tae in
Chicago, the skateboarder physicist. Andrius
--------------------------------------

Dear Dr.Tae,

I was excited to read about you in the Reader, then hear of you from
Maggie Meiners, and then find you on the web and Twitter @drtae   I very
much agree with your video "Building A New Culture of Teaching and
Learning" at http://drtae.org

I have a Ph.D. in math, B.A. in Physics and I live on the South Side of
Chicago.  I would love to find ways to work together.

My main passion is to document and share the ways of "figuring things
out".  I've collected more than 200 ways:
http://www.selflearners.net/ways/   I've written a brief proposal to
collect such ways in various fields such as science, engineering, math,
medicine, finance, law, politics, agriculture, etc.  The "scientific
method" itself is used very differently in astronomy, geology, quantum
physics, genetics, evolution, cognitive science, etc. and it would be
great to bring out those differences.

I've also been working part-time as a tutor.  I've been writing notes
for a concise math book for adult self-learners that would lay out all
the deep ideas that I've noted in basic math.  Here are my notes:
http://www.gospelmath.com/Math/DeepIdeas

Here are some prospects I'm engaging:
http://www.selflearners.net/Business/Prospects

I share your vision of distributed teaching.  I hope we might talk and
think how we might help each other make that happen.  I invite you to
read more about me at http://www.selflearners.net

I share with my working group Living by Truth
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/livingbytruth/

Andrius

+1 (773) 306-3807
ms@...
Twitter: @selflearners

Hi Pamela, Franz and all, I wrote this for another list.  I'm
@selflearners on Twitter.  Andrius
--------------------------------------------------------

I'm just starting to use Twitter and have a lot to learn.  I'm finding
it very useful.

This week I engaged @DaveGray who's a perfect example of an innovator
I'd like to work for or be supported by to create my catalog of "ways of
figuring things out".

On Twitter, I:
* learned of his free web seminar on "Gamestorming"
* showed him my notes, which he liked and retweeted
* then showed him my list of their 80+ games with my summaries of their
"object of play"
* he liked that, called it a Gamestorming cheat sheet, which had been
requested in London, and retweeted
* then I made a visual diagram and theory of how the games fit together
* he retweeted that "Awesome!" and "Brilliant!" and asked me to blog it
at the Gamestorming site, and here it is:
http://www.gogamestorm.com/?p=536
* I also got to know Sunni Brown and others

Now I can build bridges from my Gamestorming work to other
methodologies, such as John Caswell's http://www.grouppartners.net or
Dave Snowden http://www.cognitive-edge.com or others you may think of.

Hopefully, I can get paid as a "social hacker" as my lab did for Leon
Benjamin and the Mornflake Video Contest:
http://winningbysharing.typepad.com/oaxaca/2010/02/some-learnings-on-community-o\
utreach-and-the-value-of-authenticity.html


I "follow" people who speak to "ways of figuring things out", which is
to say, have posts that I would retweet for that.  I don't follow those
who write about their day, so instead I keep lists:
* "keep in heart" for people I've met and know
* "keep in mind" for people who I met through Twitter and would like to
remember at some point
* "innovators" for people who might fund my work or find somebody who would

The lists are useful, I think.  I'm learning.

I really appreciate how Twitter is different than Facebook, not a walled
garden, open and, for practical purposes, because of the brevity and
culture, Public Domain.  In 140 characters you don't have room to fiddle
with licenses.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
http://www.selflearners.net
@selflearners
+1 (773) 306-3807

Hi Franz, Pamela, Janet and all,

The Worknets wiki has been down since last summer.  Today, however, I
put it back up again.  See: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi

It's read-only, which is to say, the pages can't be edited any more.

On the left hand side I've made a sidebar with links to our new
activity.  Please let me know what sites of yours you'd like me to link
to.  We have thousands of wiki pages and so it may steer some traffic to
you.

Thank you for participating at Worknets and Minciu Sodas!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
http://www.selflearners.net
ms@...
+1 (773) 306-3807
@selflearners

Hi Pamela, Kiyavilo and all!  I'm getting great response to a letter
that I wrote to the Math Future group.  I share my second letter.
Perhaps we have thoughts?  Andrius
------------------------------------------------------------

I'm replying to the thread "Doubling the Area and Discovery" at
http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/, and yet starting a new
thread, which might be interesting to authors Eli Maor and Mark Levi,
and so I CC them.

Linda, going back to your original question about "fourths" of a
rectangle.  I found it interesting, as you said, that if you cut up a
rectangle by its diagonals, then all of the fourths have the same area.

I think a straightforward proof is to cut up the rectangle into
"eighths".  For example, you can cut up the rectangles into four smaller
rectangles, then slash those in half along the diagonals.  Then you can
see that there are eight right triangles, all of the same size.  They
make up the fourths.

Alexander, what a fantastic site you have! I appreciate your page of
proofs of the Pythagorean theorem:
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/index.shtml
I just finished looking through "The Pythagorean theorem: a 4,000-year
history" by Eli Maor, which I found quite inspiring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Maor

I'll take the opportunity to explain the kind of book I'd like to write
in the Public Domain for adult self-learners of basic math.  I'm trying
to explain teach math in terms of the deepest principles, and thus the
fewest principles, but also classic problems that illustrate them.

Here's a classic problem:  Your usual sandwich at your Usual Cafe costs
$9.  Across the street, at the Unusual Cafe, the same sandwich costs
one-third more.  But today you have a coupon good at the Unusual Cafe
with which everything is one-third off.  Where is it cheaper to buy the
sandwich?

I've had stock traders and professors tell me "the price is the same".
But actually, one-third more than $9 is $12, and one-third off of $12 is
$8.  So today it's cheaper across the street.  The lesson is a deep
idea: "Algebra is thinking step-by-step".  You can't solve this problem
by doing it in one step.  That's because the meaning of "one-third"
changes.  This may be the simplest problem to illustrate this point.
And it's a real life problem that builds math intuition, not a contrived
problem that destroys it.  I think that several dozen such "classic
problems" could illustrate all of the deep ideas in basic math.

Some more deep ideas: "Every answer is an amount and a unit".
(Otherwise, we don't know how to interpret it, we don't have the
context.)  "If the units are the same, then addition means combine."
"If the units are different, then addition means list."  In other words,
2 feet + 3 feet is 5 feet, but 2 feet + 3 inches isn't 5 anything.  And
similarly, we can add 2 / 7 + 3 /7, or 2 % + 3 %, or 2 X + 3 X, or 2
million + 3 million (noting that a number can serve as a unit).  We use
a single unit to calculate, but we use multiple units to make final
answers understandable, as in running a marathon in 2 hours + 9 minutes
+ 36 seconds.  This is the spirit that I want to teach in.  I wrote a
set of notes for precalculus where I was able to cover all of it in 10
weeks at a rapid clip by just focusing on the deep ideas:
http://www.worknets.org/upload/AndriusKulikauskas/precalculus.pdf
I want to write a short, punchy paperback (something like Darrell Huff's
"How to Lie With Statistics" which is about 150 pages, or George Polya's
"How to Solve It") that covers counting, arithmetic, algebra, geometry,
precalculus.  Here are my notes:
http://www.gospelmath.com/Math/DeepIdeas

For example, I teach trigonometry from the deep idea "A Right Triangle
is Half of a Rectangle".  I think that's much more easy and meaningful
to memorize than, say, the formula for the area of a triangle, which
follows directly from this deep idea, yet means nothing of itself.  Now,
this deep idea lets us think of a shape in two ways (it's a map, a
morphism) so that (in the world of right triangles) the shape is given
by one angle, whereas (in the world of rectangles) the shape is given by
the ratio.  So immediately we see that there is a one-to-one
correspondence between an angle and a ratio.  And we see that no formula
is involved!  And that we can calculate, that is, approximate the angle
and the ratio by constructions.  So much learned, so quickly, with
nothing to memorize. (Except that "A Right Triangle is Half of a
Rectangle" is a very deep idea! which we're never taught.)

So I ask myself, what's the main point of the Pythagorean theorem a**2 +
b**2 = c**2.  I have a Ph.D. in math, but I didn't learn how to prove
the Pythagorean theorem until a couple of years ago.  At that time I saw
the picture of the Chinese proof (Alexander's proof #4) and I thought it
through as a principle "Four times a right triangle is the difference of
two squares", which, if you see the picture, makes sense to a small
child, and gives a straightforward algebraic derivation:  4 x 1/2 ab =
(a + b)**2 - c**2.  The diagram also suggests the relationship between
two different coordinate systems.
http://www.gospelmath.com/upload/pythagoreanandrius.jpg
Yet it didn't seem central enough of an idea.

So I found Eli Maor's book from the Chicago Public Library.  It has a
wonderful variety of proofs and insights.  What struck me?  And what
strikes us?

The deepest idea that I found was "A right triangle is two copies of
itself".  Actually, that's a consequence of another deep idea, which is
that "A triangle is two right triangles" which we see by drawing the
altitude, and which yields the formula for the area of a triangle.

So if your initial triangle happens to be a right triangle, then you
draw the altitude and see that it's two right triangles.  Then note that
they all have a right angle.  And each piece shares an acute angle with
the whole.  But then, for each piece, the third angle must be the same
as the third angle of the whole.  So the pieces and the whole must have
the same shape.
http://www.gospelmath.com/upload/pythagoreaneuclid.jpg

Then another deep idea is "Any area with a dimension of length X is
proportional to a square of area X**2".

Then we see, as in Eli Maor's own noteworthy "instantaneous" proof of
the Pythagorean theorem, that the whole right triangle's area equals the
two pieces' area, and so their areas A + B = C relate also as k * a**2 +
k * b**2 = k * c**2 for some proportion k.  That means that a**2 + b**2
= c**2, but much more importantly, that k * a**2 + k * b**2 = k * c**2
and A + B = C for ANY three similar shapes with some dimension a, b, c!

At this point, I start to see, Why are we learning a**2 + b**2 = c**2 ?
Why are we fixating on that?  It's just as meaningless as a*b/2.

Whereas the idea "A right triangle is two copies of itself" is a
beautiful, fractal, self similar idea with great implications.  (And I
never knew this idea!)  It's saying that a right triangle works as a
mechanism that can split anything into two copies of itself and yet
preserve the total area.  That's the point of Euclid's classic theorem
(Alexander's proof #1) except that Euclid, following the Greek
aesthetic, wants to construct it for a square, and so the square gets
split along the altitude into two pieces, two rectangles, then moving
along (as halves, which is to say, two right triangles), preserving
their areas, because their widths don't change, until they are shown to
be halves of the desired squares.

"A right triangle is two copies of itself" is, I suppose, at the heart
of "Four times a right triangle is the difference of two squares"
because if you rotate a right triangle, then after four rotations you
get back to where you started.

But how to truly think about this?  There's something going on here by
which, thanks to the self-similarity of the right triangle, two
dimensions become independent, and yet, I suppose, comparable.  What is
it all about!

Here's another proof that's so simple:
http://www.gospelmath.com/upload/pythagoreanarabia.jpg
which says, look at a tesellation, an infinite tiling of squares of
lengths a and b, and see on the diagonal the squares of length c they
form, and note that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the
squares of lengths a, b and c, and you can mark out a region as large as
you like, and it will be more and more clear that the a**2 and the b**2
must end up covering the same ground as the c**2.

Mark Levi has several proofs of the Pythagorean theorem in his book "The
Mathematical Mechanic" which I have yet to fathom.  They are very simple
but require some physics insights.  He's playing slick with physical
units, setting them equal to 1 as needed, as physicists do.  And then
he's able to show, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem follows
immediately from the fact that a water-filled right triangular fish
tank, free to rotate, won't.  Or that it follows from the areas swept
out by a, b, c if they are rotated around a circle.  Or he proves it
with springs balancing forces.

I think you see how I'm thinking, how I'm trying to find and share the
gist, which I was never taught.  We're given piles of textbooks with
thousands of pages when perhaps fifty problems could communicate all of
basic math.

I hope to write such a book.  I think that's one way I should try to
make a living.  I think it would be honest work.  I'm impressed that Tom
Henderson was so successful raising money at http://www.kickstarter.com
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541803748/punk-mathematics to
write a book "Punk Math".  He certainly presents his math viscerally.
So I thought that "Gospel Math" would represent my aesthetic.

I appreciate thoughts, how do we like such an approach? and what do we
think is at the heart of the Pythagorean theorem?  And also, how might I
try to make a living from creating such books or learning materials in
the Public Domain?  There seems to be a real need and there must be a
way to earn at least a few months pay.

Wow! I really appreciate the great responses to my post from yesterday.
I hope to reply tomorrow.

Thank you,

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
http://www.selflearners.net
ms@...
+1 (773) 306-3807
Twitter: @selflearners

Dear Pam,

Hello and sorry this is happening to you, too, as it has to HH and a few others. This is not Abinel, I don't think...it is a scammer/spammer who has hijacked his name and address.

You might want to put the forum on a fully moderated status for now, which means you will have to moderate each post. I had HH on a status that placed new members on moderation--as some people who join forums just want to post spam--but that's not working here, because email addresses of legitimate members are being hijacked and then spam is being posted.

I'm pretty sure you would be the owner of the LFEO forum, perhaps along with Andrius. That means you are allowed to change the status of the forum to "moderated." You can access your homepage at the bottom of each post to the forum. Before you can change anything (ie exercise ownership), a box will pop up asking you to sign in to Yahoo with your username and password.

Once signed in, click on "Manage" in the lefthand column of the homepage, then on the management page, click onto "Group Settings." You will see an "edit" function in various sections of that page, including the one that designates the status of the forum.

Hope this is helpful! And thanks to all of our members for their understanding! All best wishes, Janet

-----Original Message-----
From: Pamela McLean
Sent: Feb 20, 2011 5:24 PM
To: learningfromeachother@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [learningfromeachother] Greetings!!!



Sorry everyone to see this spam here. Looks like my next learning task is to find how to block some contributors. Sorry Abinel - this is not the kind of content we want in this group.

On 20 February 2011 18:15, Abinel Immanuel <abinelimmanuel@...> wrote:

 

T my friends:I'm never someone to suggest a product unless its really something amazing but I have been taking this stuff that my Dr. recommended for fat loss and I have lost eight lbs in a week. Three of my friends who just began taking it also lost 5 lbs each. p.s. that site sells it for 50% less as much as other sites

It would be great to see some of us from East Africa win these
fellowships.  Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@..., http://www.selflearners.net
-----------------------------------
http://ashoka.org/story/ashoka-fellowship-open-applications-social-entrepreneurs\
-rural-innovation-and-farming-east-afr

Ashoka Fellowship: Open Applications for Social Entrepreneurs in Rural
Innovation and Farming in East Africa
Submitted by Tyler Spalding on Mon, 2011-02-14 11:14.

Calling for nominations!

Ashoka is recognizing outstanding social entrepreneurs in the field of
rural innovation and farming throughout East Africa.

The search is open to all individuals in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda
working to serve small-holder farmers or innovating in rural development.

Benefits of the Ashoka Fellowship include:
Collaboration and learning opportunities within a global network of over
2,500 world class and like-minded social entrepreneurs
Access to technical support and pro bono partnerships to help grow your
organization
A stipend for three years that is meant to allow the entrepreneur to
focus 100% on his/her work
Access to institutional funders and grant makers

Having read the criteria for selection, if you believe you qualify as an
Ashoka Fellow candidate, please apply by 5 March 2011 for the current
selection cycle.

If you think you know a leading social entrepreneur who should be a
candidate, please email this post to him/her.

How to apply:  Download, fill out this form and email it back to us at
eastafrica@....

Application Form (.doc) | Criteria Guideline (.pdf)

We look forward to hearing from you!

And, be sure to share with your friends!

Dear Friends,

It is with a very heavy heart that I am posting the news--just received from
Chris Ouma--of the sudden passing of our beloved friend, Maria Agnese Giraudo.

More details will follow, but I wanted to send this to everyone now. I hope we
can find a way to honor her and keep her memory and legacy alive. She meant so
much to many of us, and was a rare spirit of caring and commitment in today's
world.

May her soul rest in peace, and may we remember her with love and joy always!
Janet

Janet,

I am very sad to hear that Maria Agnese Giraudo has passed away.  This
is so unexpected.

I met Agnese at an Open Content conference in Milan, Italy.  She
attended as a research librarian specialist, but her interests were much
broader than that.  She traveled every year to Tanzania, where she
adopted and mentored a young man, William Wambura, and she supported
many projects as a sponsor and advisor.  She hosted me several times at
her home in Santa Marinella, Italy, and many others as well. She greatly
appreciated our work together with Samwel Kongere in Kenya, so much so
that she visited him, I think more than once, and brought him to
Tanzania to help organize and inspire UYOGA.  She was very active in
including Africans in Italy, and was very concerned about threats to
democracy in Italy by the Berlasconi government.

She was the daughter of a senator, and she had the heart of a senator.

Agnese, Ciao!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.selflearners.net
ms@...
(773) 306-3807


2011.02.23 10:29, Janet Feldman rašė:
> Dear Friends,
>
> It is with a very heavy heart that I am posting the news--just received from
Chris Ouma--of the sudden passing of our beloved friend, Maria Agnese Giraudo.
>
> More details will follow, but I wanted to send this to everyone now. I hope we
can find a way to honor her and keep her memory and legacy alive. She meant so
much to many of us, and was a rare spirit of caring and commitment in today's
world.
>
> May her soul rest in peace, and may we remember her with love and joy always!
Janet
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Each letter sent to Learning From Each Other enters the PUBLIC DOMAIN unless
it explicitly states otherwise http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org  Please be
kind to our authors!Yahoo! Groups Links
>



>
>
>

I have received this sad news and tragic demise of Maria who opened my eyes by
buying me a laptop in 2006 when she came to Kenya for the first time. My visited
at my home in Rusinga island twice 2006 and 2007, i and Maria traveled together,
attending elearning  Africa 2007 in Nairobi, 2008 in Accra Ghana organized a
group of young people in Tanzania and more. I had visited Maria Agnese Giraudo
at house 2009 at Rome- Santa Marinella.... How could death add more injury to my
stressed life? I very grieved! Oh Maria! My children will miss you, i implore
you death!!!. Why now? Chris May you tell more about this unbelievable news of
cruelty crunch!
Samwel.

On Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 4:50 AM Etc/GMT+12 Andrius Kulikauskas wrote:

>Janet,
>
>I am very sad to hear that Maria Agnese Giraudo has passed away.  This
>is so unexpected.
>
>I met Agnese at an Open Content conference in Milan, Italy.  She
>attended as a research librarian specialist, but her interests were much
>broader than that.  She traveled every year to Tanzania, where she
>adopted and mentored a young man, William Wambura, and she supported
>many projects as a sponsor and advisor.  She hosted me several times at
>her home in Santa Marinella, Italy, and many others as well. She greatly
>appreciated our work together with Samwel Kongere in Kenya, so much so
>that she visited him, I think more than once, and brought him to
>Tanzania to help organize and inspire UYOGA.  She was very active in
>including Africans in Italy, and was very concerned about threats to
>democracy in Italy by the Berlasconi government.
>
>She was the daughter of a senator, and she had the heart of a senator.
>
>Agnese, Ciao!
>
>Andrius
>
>Andrius Kulikauskas
>Minciu Sodas
>http://www.selflearners.net
>ms@...
>(773) 306-3807
>
>
>2011.02.23 10:29, Janet Feldman rašė:
>> Dear Friends,
>>
>> It is with a very heavy heart that I am posting the news--just received from
Chris Ouma--of the sudden passing of our beloved friend, Maria Agnese Giraudo.
>>
>> More details will follow, but I wanted to send this to everyone now. I hope
we can find a way to honor her and keep her memory and legacy alive. She meant
so much to many of us, and was a rare spirit of caring and commitment in today's
world.
>>
>> May her soul rest in peace, and may we remember her with love and joy always!
Janet
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Each letter sent to Learning From Each Other enters the PUBLIC DOMAIN unless
it explicitly states otherwise http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org  Please be
kind to our authors!Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>

Dear Pam and All,

Immense and heartfelt thanks for this lovely response and tribute, and to everyone who has written on this subject. I am so sad that my Internet connection has been down, not enabling me to share more and respond sooner, or even know abt her funeral.

But we are all together--and with her--in spirit, and in that way, there is an ever-present connection that can never be broken.

I will be back as soon as I can be to respond to emails and also add to the testimonies. It will be wonderful if we can collaborate in some way to carry on Maria Agnese's invaluable work!!

With greatest appreciation, and love to all! Janet

-----Original Message-----
From: Pamela McLean
Sent: Feb 24, 2011 4:39 PM
To: post@..., learningfromeachother , Mendenyo Men-denyo , Holistic Helping
Subject: [learningfromeachother] Following the sad news of the untimely death of Maria Agnese Giraudo



The sad news of Maria's untimely death circulated through Minciu Sodas on Wednesday, attracting many shocked and sorrowful responses, and testimonies about her life and her work.

Many of us first heard the news from Janet Feldman - leader of the Minciu Sodas group Holistic Helping - who wrote:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Friends,

It is with a very heavy heart that I am posting the news--just received from Chris Ouma--of the sudden passing of our beloved friend, Maria Agnese Giraudo.

More details will follow, but I wanted to send this to everyone now. I hope we can find a way to honor her and keep her memory and legacy alive. She meant so much to many of us, and was a rare spirit of caring and commitment in today's world.

May her soul rest in peace, and may we remember her with love and joy always! Janet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial

As a first step I have opened up a space at Dadamac.net called Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial, where we can gather our tributes together, and see if there is any way we can collaborate in response to Janet's hope expressed above. If you are interested in being involved (perhaps simply by helping me to collect up in one place the testimonies that have been posted in various Minciu Sodas groups) please email me pamela.mclean@... - with Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial in the subject line of your email -  and we will look at next steps together.

Maria's funeral will take place on Friday 25, at 15:00 and another ceremony will be organised later - see email below from Samwel Kongere (leader of Minciu Sodas group Mendenyo)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Samwel Kongere <jambita1@...>
Date: 24 February 2011 13:37

Dear Friends,

 

it is with immense sadness that I am sharing with you the news that our beloved friend Maria Agnese Giraudo has passed away a few days ago.

 

The causes are yet to be ascertained; however, her death is apparently linked with malaria.

 

I wish to inform those of you who could attend it that her funerals will be held tomorrow, Friday 25, at 15:00, at the "Cappella del cimitero di Santa Marinella" (Via dei Cipressi); the cemetery should be located just before S. Marinella coming from Rome.

 

Another ceremony to remember properly Agnese and her passionate activity towards Africa will be organised in the coming months.

 

I apologize for those of you who already knew this bad news.

 

Best regards,

 

Roberto Dati

Forwarded by Samwel.

.

Kennedy,

I think that's wonderful.  It's a great example of "cross-cultural
collaboration" as Pamela wrote.  Agnese truly loved Nafsi Africa Acrobats.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas, http://www.selflearners.net, ms@..., (773) 306-3807

2011.03.02 11:20, Kennedy Owino rašė:
> Dear Pam and All,
> Please add this to the tribute page you have opened at Dadamac.net.
> The family and friends of Maria will be meeting for Maria's memorial
> on Saturday 26th March 2011 to disperse the ashes at the sea and do a
> mass atSt. Pius V (in Rome).
> At 16.30 there will be a commemoration ceremony.
> Please share this and spread it to those who would be interested to
> attend the occassion.
> I will be attending the ocassion together with  Nafsi Africa Acrobats
> who are currently touring Europe between February to September.
> Nafsi Africa Acrobats who had been close acquaintances of Maria will
> be perfoming at the ceremony in honour of their Heroine, Teacher, and
> Mama.
> This is a first step to salute and show respect to the late Maria, who
> loved Perfomance Arts and supported it with her entire heart.
> We are thinking of more tangible ways that we would initiate to keep
> her in our memories and keep her legacy alive.
> Perhaps start an Arts event in Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda that would be
> bringing together her admirers, her dear friends in East Africa and
> probably beyond to remember her.
> For sure, there would be more ways to honour her.
> We are interested in brainstorm with others who are interested in
> setting up an initiative of some sort, Maria's memorial,
> Maria foundation or something.
> Peace,
> Ken Owino
> Nafsi Africa Acrobats
> www.nafsiafrica.org <http://www.nafsiafrica.org>
> - On *Thu, 2/24/11, Pamela McLean /<pam54321@...>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Pamela McLean <pam54321@...>
>     Subject: [learningfromeachother] Following the sad news of the
>     untimely death of Maria Agnese Giraudo
>     To: post@..., "learningfromeachother"
>     <learningfromeachother@yahoogroups.com>, "Mendenyo Men-denyo"
>     <mendenyo@yahoogroups.com>, "Holistic Helping"
>     <holistichelping@yahoogroups.com>
>     Date: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 12:39 PM
>
>     The sad news of Maria
>     <http://www.dadamac.net/network/maria-agnese-giraudo>'s untimely
>     death circulated through Minciu Sodas
>     <http://www.dadamac.net/network/minciu-sodas> on Wednesday,
>     attracting many shocked and sorrowful responses, and testimonies
>     about her life and her work.
>
>     Many of us first heard the news from Janet Feldman
>     <http://www.dadamac.net/network/janet-feldman> - leader of the
>     Minciu Sodas group Holistic Helping - who wrote:
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>     Dear Friends,
>
>     It is with a very heavy heart that I am posting the news--just
>     received from Chris Ouma--of the sudden passing of our beloved
>     friend, Maria Agnese Giraudo.
>
>     More details will follow, but I wanted to send this to everyone
>     now. I hope we can find a way to honor her and keep her memory and
>     legacy alive. She meant so much to many of us, and was a rare
>     spirit of caring and commitment in today's world.
>
>     May her soul rest in peace, and may we remember her with love and
>     joy always! Janet
>     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>     *Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial*
>
>     As a first step I have opened up a space at Dadamac.net called
>     Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial
>    
<http://www.dadamac.net/initiatives/cross-cultural-collaboration/maria-agnese-gi\
raudo-memorial>,
>     where we can gather our tributes together, and see if there is any
>     way we can collaborate in response to Janet's hope expressed
>     above. If you are interested in being involved (perhaps simply by
>     helping me to collect up in one place the testimonies that have
>     been posted in various Minciu Sodas groups) please email me
>     pamela.mclean@...
>     <http://us.mc1616.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=pamela.mclean@dadamac.net>
>     - with Maria Agnese Giraudo Memorial in the subject line of your
>     email -  and we will look at next steps together.
>
>     *Maria's funeral* will take place on *Friday 25, at 15:00 *and
>     another ceremony will be organised later - see email below from
>     Samwel Kongere <http://www.dadamac.net/network/samwel-kongere>
>     (leader of Minciu Sodas group Mendenyo)
>
>     ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>     From: *Samwel Kongere* <jambita1@...
>     <http://us.mc1616.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jambita1@yahoo.com>>
>     Date: 24 February 2011 13:37
>     Dear Friends,
>     it is with immense sadness that I am sharing with you the news
>     that our beloved friend Maria Agnese Giraudo has passed away a few
>     days ago.
>     The causes are yet to be ascertained; however, her death is
>     apparently linked with malaria.
>     I wish to inform those of you who could attend it that her
>     funerals will be held *tomorrow, Friday 25, at 15:00*, at the
>     "Cappella del cimitero di Santa Marinella" (Via dei Cipressi); the
>     cemetery should be located just before S. Marinella coming from Rome.
>     Another ceremony to remember properly Agnese and her
>     passionate activity towards Africa will be organised in the coming
>     months.
>     I apologize for those of you who already knew this bad news.
>     Best regards,
>     Roberto Dati
>
>     Forwarded by Samwel.
>
>
>     .
>
>
>
>
>
>

Janet, Pamela, I share this letter I wrote because it reflects my
educational approach and because nutrition is a practical subject, too.
Andrius, ms@...
--------------------------


Maria Droujkova,

Thank you for your reply to Joaquin Carbonara, which I share below.
Joaquin and I were fellow graduate students at UCSD (in San Diego).
He's now a professor at Buffalo State.  Joaquin's vision of a "language
of angels" is very dear to me, and I'll end with my thoughts on that.

Maria, your letter to me is among the very best I've ever received.
http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/msg/ec0b818ef0ca73af?
I'm very grateful.  I also appreciate how many supportive people you've
attracted here at
http://groups.google.com/group/mathfuture/

Yes, I should think about an hourly service, say.  That's a good thing
to think about and try.  But the next month or so I'm doing what I can
to avoid bankruptcy.  I do happen to know some people of means.  I write
about my goals and my scenarios here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_en/message/7346
For example, I know Stephen Wolfram and he could fund me if he thought
it was worthwhile, but I think especially, if others thought it was
worthwhile.

I'm very encouraged by response here in the Math community.  I've better
organized my notes for my Math book for adult self-learners:
http://www.gospelmath.com/Math/DeepIdeas
I'll keep working on that further and I'd like to link that with my
quest to share "ways of figuring things out".  I'm trying to work
especially in areas where I'm getting response and I can do something
useful.  Maria, I looked at your website: http://www.naturalmath.com and
your vision of math that is "natural" like spoken language:
http://www.naturalmath.com/site-pages/about-us.html
Please keep letting us know how we can support your vision!

I'm sorting through responses and thinking what "formats" are relevant
for presenting math, including games and other activities:
http://www.gospelmath.com/Math/Formats
I think it's fantastic how Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska, Dani Novak, Sue
Van Hattum, Cooper Macbeth and others documented how they solved the
triangle counting problem:
http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2011/02/tin-ceilings-triangles-and-loving-mat\
h.html
It's a beautiful problem and it probably has some deep ideas and
practical relevance (say, in quantum physics).  It's the kind of problem
that Polya might take on. Yet, it still lets one think that math is a
world onto its own, a bit disconnected in the sense of figuring things
out. I'll share a different problem that shows what I'm striving for,
which helps me grasp what is "natural", what is central to life.  I say
this because my math education, looking back, was completely contrived
and tended to destroy intuition.  Maybe you'll know more such problems.

A few days ago I made a breakthrough in my efforts to lose weight.  I'm
6 foot 2 inch (185 cm) and weight 190 lbs. (86 kg).  I'd like to weight
180 lbs.  I was almost there, but the last two months I gained some
weight.  I didn't understand why because I'm not eating all that much.
Over the last 12 years I had gained some weight, up to 225 pounds, and
maybe never seemed overweight, but it wasn't right for me.  Here's some
things I inferred over the years.  Right or wrong, but they are all
mathematical notions.  They all are based on mathematical models.
* If I exercise, say an hour a day, this helps me lose weight.
* Or it doesn't, in which case there must be something wrong with my
eating habits.
* I eat too much because... I live a stressful life; I live an irregular
life; I travel and eat restaurant food; I try to save money and eat free
food when it's available.
* I once convinced myself to be completely disinterested in food, it
tasting good, etc. and that was effective, but not a long term solution.
* I lost a bit of weight by living in the countryside; eating all
natural foods; having less stress; exercising.
* I stopped sweetening my tea.  I lived in a cold, abandoned community
center and was drinking a lot of tea.
* I don't add salt to my food.  There's enough salt in the food that we
eat.
* I stopped consuming white sugar.  Over time, I started thinking of it
as a poison, an addictive substance.  Somebody said that at my friend's
house many years ago and emphasized that foods (like carrots) taste
naturally sweet when you stop using sugar, and that stuck with me.
* As a child, when I learned about vegetarianism, I decided not to have
moral issues about eating meat, because I thought that would be unfair
to humanity as a whole.  About twenty years ago, a friend of mine
started an exotic grain business and it made sense to me that grains
should be the center of a meal, but especially, that I should eat meat
infrequently, say once a week, or as an accent.  About five years ago,
when I saw a video about the factory farm industry, I decided to eat
meat infrequently, not as a staple.
* As a child, I didn't like fruit or vegetables, but I've tried to
expand my food choices and I make a conscious effort to eat fruits and
vegetables.
* I lost weight by reading a book that inspired me to reexamine all my
notions and distinguish strictly between "eating" (as needed) and
"overeating" (all 'eating' that is not for the purpose of eating).  I
had been drinking milk by the liter because it was sold by the liter.  I
had been drinking lots of milk because I thought it was healthy for me.
(Maybe true, but not a good reason if I care about my weight!)  I had
been eating desserts.  Etc.  As my grandmother says, "Better to undereat
than to overeat."
* Last year I lost a lot of weight by living in a house with tens of
thousands of cockroaches, so that everything had to be washed
immediately; there was no room to put anything in the refrigerator, so I
didn't buy much food; I worked at a job without breaks; I was eating
extra "Meals on Wheels" which are portion-sized for seniors; I was in
love; I wasn't measuring my weight, just pinching my side.
* I started to appreciate that oatmeal releases energy evenly and for a
long time, as opposed to pasta, which spikes.
All of these behaviors imply simple (and profound) math models (adding,
subtracting, fractions, proportions...)

But recently I gained more than 5 pounds, despite my efforts.  This
week, for the first time, I used Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com to study the calorie content of foods.  It
really changed my thinking about food.  I had thought, in a primitive
way, that my weight gain or loss each day was based on the "amount" of
food that I eat (say, the "weight") minus any extra that I lost due to
exercise.  My research taught me differently!

I researched the foods I eat and asked, "How many calories in a pound?"
Then I defined "serving size" as 100 calories and asked, "What does one
serving size look like?" And if I burn 2,000 calories per day, that is
20 serving-sizes combined, what does that look like?  Here are the foods
and, in parentheses, what a "interchangeable serving size" looks like.

Lettuce: 1 pound = 68 calories.  (1 serving size = 100 calories = 1 head
of lettuce)
Strawberries: 1 pound = 145 calories. (1 serving size = 20 strawberries)
Carrots: 1 pound = 172 calories (7 carrots)
Brussel sprouts: 195 calories (12 brussel sprouts)
Apples: 227 calories (100 calories = 1 or 2 apples)
Potatoes or Sweet potatoes: 391 calories (1 potato)
Avocado: 676 calories (1/3 of an avocado)
Eggs: 718 calories (2 eggs)
Tortillas: 800 calories (2 small corn tortillas)
Ice cream: 822 calories (1/2 small 1/2 cup scoop)
Beef: 1069 calories (1/2 hamburger patty)
Bagels: 1245 calories (1/2 a plain bagel)
Cheese: 1326 calories (2 slices)
Pasta: 1680 calories (1/4 of what I eat for a meal)
Sugar: 1712 calories (2 tablespoons)
Cheerios: 1740 calories (2/3 cup)
Oatmeal: 1742 calories (1/2 cup)
Parmesan cheese: 1755 calories (5 tablespoons)
Chocolate: 2377 calories 4 plytelës  (1/6 of a 100 gm bar or half a
candy bar)
Bacon: 2420 calories 16 gabalø  (2/3 of a slice)
Peanuts:  2540 calories (16 peanuts)
Peanut butter: 2683 calories (1 tablespoon)
Almonds: 2698 calories (12 almonds)
Butter: 3252 calories (1 tablespoon or 1 tab)
Olive oil: 4010 calories (1 tablespoon)

This information helped me rethink my mathematical model.  From the
point of view of calories, 1 head of lettuce or 1 apple or 1 potato is
the same as 1 tablespoon of butter or olive oil or peanut butter.  I
wasn't eating "much", but I was eating too much of high calorie foods,
in particular, peanut butter, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.  For
example, when I used to go to work, I would take 2 bagels with cheese
and 2 apples and that was my food for the day.  Now, I have 3 hours of
breaks and so I can easily eat 3 bagels on which I put a lot of peanut
butter, maybe 3 tablespoons on each.  That's 9 tablespoons of peanut
butter which is 900 calories!  That one ingredient can throw my whole
diet out of whack!  I then learned from my housemate that prisoners use
peanut butter to build up their body weight.  So I'm eliminating all of
the "dense" foods from my diet, namely, olive oil, peanut butter,
Parmesan cheese.  I'll reintroduce them when I'm at my desired weight.

I also learned that I lose or gain 1 pound of body weight for each 2,500
calories that I "save" or "spend" in my intake budget over time.  My
daily intake budget is 2,000 calories and if I exercise moderately for a
half hour or hour that may be an extra 200 or 400 calories.  This all
makes it clear to me that it's not about the physical "amount" or
"weight" of the food, but it's about the amount of "potential energy"
stored in the food as "calories" that will get stored in my body as
extra fat.

The data helps me retrain my perceptions.  When I eat ice cream with
almonds, I'll realize that the almonds may contribute almost as much as
the ice cream.  Or if I eat a hamburger, I'll realize that the bun may
contribute as much as the meat.  Salad dressing has many more calories
than the salad.  This all goes counter to my instinct that it's the
"weight" or "mass" that matters.  It's not the weight that goes into and
out of my body, but rather, the calories of energy that get stored in my
body and either burned or kept as fat.

This is a modest but practical example of mathematical thinking. It
illustrates many "ways of figuring things out".  It shows that different
mathematical models lead to different kinds of behavior.  Each model is
valid in some way but breaks down.  My new model will break down, too.
It would be great to express these as "games", but I suppose the games
should allow us to "play" different models as different strategies.

I've organized my notes for my math book:
http://www.gospelmath.com/Math/DeepIdeas
and I'm concluding that "counting" is the stitching together of our many
faculties for numeric intuition.  We have very different mental
faculties for grasping 0 or 1 or 2-4 or 7-8 or dozens or hundreds or
thousands or millions, etc.  That is the "natural" way to experience
numbers and is reflected in our language.  What is admirably "contrived"
is to unify, sew together, all of these intuitions into one system, as
if a number 1,286,587 meant anything to us, as opposed to 1,286,588.
What we've done is to map all of these faculties onto one big scale.
And then we can change our units and change how we perceive something.
We can switch faculties by reexpressing in different units, by comparing
and contrasting, by thinking in different scales.  But we should, I'm
concluding, always be a bit suspect of this.  I look forward to studying
the many different "paradoxes" in math, science, economics.  I'm
hypothesizing that they may all relate to these issues that what we've
come to believe is a whole cloth is actually stitched together from
different faculties, so that the discrete and the continuous clash, for
example.  I think back to when I first learned, in differential
geometry, that a sphere is a bunch of local "open neighborhoods" cut and
stitched together in any which way, and that seemed so crazy and
unnatural and uninteresting, and it turned me off the subject.  But
perhaps it's honest, in a sense.

Maria, you see why I think that a short book of essays like this, well
thought out and well-organized, might be profoundly meaningful to adults
(including high school teachers) who've churned through the school
system and have no understand what that was all about, and nobody even
to ask.  I feel that I'm still learning the basics.  I see that
"counting" is extremely sophisticated.  It includes the notion of
"addition" and I think that the "addition rule" is what stitches the
integers together as we "extend the domain" to include dozens, hundreds,
thousands, millions, gazillions, in each case readjusting the number
system in ways we don't make explicit.  Multiplication is an accelerated
addition that is key to that readjustment, to the switching from one
intuitive faculty (say 3 "thousands") to a very different one ("three"
1,000s).  I'm appreciating that division is the opposite of counting
(dividing by 1/2 is "counting by" halves) and that division and
fractions are assuming a "whole" which is not natural to the external
world, but is natural to our internal world.  Thus "division" is
modeling "counting", internalizing it, abstracting it, switching us over
from "counting" external things to "counting by" and so counting our
internal count.  This sounds abstract but with enough good examples I
hope it will become very concrete and we'll say, "Wow! Math used to be
taught in such a crazy way, like teaching children dead languages,
without teaching them any living ones."

Maria, Joaquin, I like the vision of a "language of angels" and I
believe that we can and do experience it.  It's why I focus on "deep
ideas" and the "classic problems" that illustrate them.  I resist
learning anything unless I can incorporate it into my total knowledge,
unless I can understand why I'm learning, why it's interesting and so
on.  I'm in control of my own mind.  I create my own "private language"
which is meaningful.  Joaquin, you know of my quest to "know
everything", but you may not know that I completed it! with my video
summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArN-YbPlf8M  Hopefully, it
sounds like a language of angels, because it's 27 years of work.  It's
how I imagine what everything looks like if God seated me on his lap.  I
see the big picture, but I'm nearsighted and so I don't know all of the
details at once, yet if I wanted to, I could venture out and get the
answer regarding any detail and come back to view the big picture.  I've
found the big picture, I believe.

Partly it's a matter, as Maria writes, of taking the time to learn
everything.  In some sense, there's no short cut to that, but in another
sense, thinking deeply is qualitatively different than thinking
superficially.  I saw a quote today that as we learn we can also think
about our learning.  And so we develop a different relationship with our
thinking and we operate on a different level, qualitatively.

For example, most people aren't able to address a doubt such as "How do
I know I'm not a robot?" and so they ignore such questions and go back
to sleep.  But I learned to respond to them with counterquestions, such
as "Would it make any difference?"  I may or may not be a robot; all of
my knowledge may be suspect; and yet I can rescue myself by turning the
question around and saying: You tell me, what is a robot! And then I'll
tell you whether or not I am one.  Do robots bleed? Do they care? Are
they moral? Maybe then I am a robot.  Maybe it's just semantic.  Or
maybe there's a real difference and we can check.

I found a system of such pairs:
* Do I truly like this? How does it seem to me?
* Do I truly need this? What else should I be doing?
* Is this truly real? Would it make any difference?
* Is this truly problematic? What do I have control over?
* Is this truly reasonable? Am I able to consider the question?
* Is this truly wrong? Is this the way things should be?
* Am I anxious? Am I doing anything about this?
and, standing on its own, What do I truly want?

These counterquestions, to my knowledge, express what it means to be
"intelligent".  They feel to me like a language of angels.

Joaquin, in 1989, after years of work on "divisions of everything", I
experienced a coming together that was like a mental orgasm.  It was
like oxygen bubbles (or hormones) bursting upon my brain.  I realized
that there was a cyclic structure to the 8 divisions, so that operations
+1, +2, +3 made sense as I went around, moving from division to
division, as if on a clock.  So many things made sense.  Too many things
made sense.  It went on for an hour and I felt strange for a few days.
That's not optimal.

Maria notes that knowledge can't be compressed from one form to another
in a way that would be reversible.  But that's a model that can break
down in a few ways.  It assumes that knowledge is like that "weight"
that I thought I was eating and passing, as opposed to a "calorie" that
we accept, then use or store.   Instead:
* It may be that all of our deepest knowledge we already know, so we
simply need to reference it.  For example, when I see a homeless person,
I know from experience that "my help could make things worse", but I
know prior to this that "I should help those who need help" and the
latter can't be learned because there is no way to illustrate "should".
I believe that babies in the womb think abstractly and we turn away from
abstract thinking only because it's not relevant in society.
* Knowledge also leverages context.  I ask, what is 10 + 4 and people
say 14, but I tell them it is 2, because 10 + 4 = 2 on a clock, and I am
right and they are wrong because I know the context.  And it's generally
not possible to write down all of the context because you would have to
know the context for that, too.  Or the same DNA is in your toe and in
your heart but the cells develop very differently because they are in
very different contexts.
* The so-called knowledge may be mostly garbage and best not learned, or
if learned, then from a completely different angle.
* This means that the so-called knowledge may be "best" learned and
stored in a much longer, decompressed form.  I believe it's much more
intelligent and "angelic" to start with "a right triangle is two copies
of itself" and express that by drawing an altitude and, if desired, from
that, deriving a**2 + b**2 = c**2, then elevating the latter to
something overly important.

Angelic knowledge will feel heterogeneous.  Some truths ("love God",
"love your neighbor as yourself") will resonate profoundly across all
knowledge.  Other facts (like a**2 + b**2 = c**2) will feel a bit
obscure.  Some day we'll look at math as a discipline where we
understand its basic idea (I suppose something to do with models of
systems (like real life) and where they hold and where they break
down).  We'll know exactly how many branches of math there are and how
they are related.  We'll know how to generate all of the deep ideas of
math, and how to illustrate them with just the right problems.  We'll
know what is central and peripheral, what is natural and contrived.
We'll know how much beauty or utility there is in a math problem.  And
we'll be able to communicate the essence of that in a slim 150 page
paperback, like Euclid's Elements or "How to Lie With Statistics" or
"How to Solve It".  As things stand, students are punished with
thousands of pages of textbook and school work which is all homogeneous
so that no single page is more or less important than any other.

Maria, Joaquin and all, Thank you for being so supportive!  I appreciate
all manner of response, including:
* What kind of math problems are natural like the dieting problem
* How might we communicate them in useful ways
* How might we relate them to "ways of figuring things out"
* How to support each other's efforts
* Who might be interested in our work together
* How to best engage them so they might support us, including with paid
work or sponsorship

Just as an example, there is a website http://www.sharecare.com where
doctors answer people's questions.  I'm thinking of analyzing and
organizing their answers to note how the doctors (or researchers) figure
things out.  This could relate to math.  If there was some interest in
this or any project, then that would help me ask for funding, which we
could then share, as relevant.

Thank you,

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
http://www.selflearners.net
ms@...
(773) 306-3807
Twitter: @selflearners

------------

There are two known laws of nature that make the answer to this question
"No." One comes from computer science, and another from pedagogy. It is
an excellent question to ask, say, as a group exercise in computer science!

The computer science topic is called "repeated compression" and there is
a lot of theory done on it. Basically, the compressed file must contain
no less information than the original, and the compression function must
be reversible. There are quite a few articles on it.

The pedagogical (or psychological, or biological) reason for this
impossibility is the way knowledge is formed. It involves pathways in
neurons, building up metaphors, making conceptual bridges TO meaning.
Understanding is a path, and it has to be walked in time - lived.

The best explanation for the computer science part that I know, also
quite rude, comes from "Good math, bad math" blog:
http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2009/03/08/i-get-mail-iterative-compression\
/


Cheers,
MariaD

-------------

Hi Andrius,

We have not talked for a long time. I took a look at you MathFuture
page. May be you could be interested in
an idea I had recently. It came to me by happenstance, while talking to
some friends that are science historians.

Consider the amount A(L) of "real" and "important" and "deep" meaning
communicated by a
language L. For instance, there could be a language L_i (may be just
noise) that is really meaningless, so A(L_i) ~ 0.

QUESTION: Is there a "language of angels" L_a such that A(L_a) is so big
that a few minutes of listening
to it communicates more than, say, all that you learn in college in 4
years?

If the model above makes sense we could view Mathematics in a different
way:
Mathematics is not just a meaningless exercise in first predicate
calculus, but rather one step in the search for
and angelic language.

Question: Has Mathematics succeeded in this search (even in a small
way)? What are the limits
of Mathematics in the search for and angelic language?


Best regards and best wishes for all your endeavors,


joaquin

Dear all,
I want also to express my sorrow over the death of mum Maria,
I happen to be championing the East African connection which is focusing on
bringing all African together with there business, letting everyone o what they
are doing.
It was the Idea of Maria and although it had slow moving, From today i wold love
to make it moving and i welcome all your ideas,
one of the thing to do is to create a website which will network all of us and
others


In the honor of Maria i welcome your views,
long live mum maria

Fred Kayiwa
Beyond Youth Sports

B.K.Passi, I don't imagine that I'll be able to afford to go to India
this Fall, but I share news of this conference.  If I did, then I would
talk about documenting and sharing "ways of figuring things out" in
different domains as a learning activity for groups of groups.
http://www.selflearners.net/ways/
Thank you, Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@...

2011.03.03 20:16, B.K.Passi rašė:
>
> dear sir Andrius
> will u like to join the following and guide us
>
>    1. *International Conference On Learning Community For Global
>       Education Reform**, *at**the Institute of Professional Studies,
>       Gwalior Madhya Pradesh, India Nov 18-20, 2011 in association
>       with (AIAER) http://www.ipsresearchgwalior.org
>       <http://www.ipsresearchgwalior.org/>*Contact *Mr. N Rohen Meetei
>       rohan.meetei12@...
>       <http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/compose?To=rohan.meetei12%40gmail.com>
09981232436
>       **
>
> *B.K.Passi*
>
> Unesco Chair [Former]
>
> 139 Inderapuri INDORE 452001
>
>

Mutual exchange of innovative thoughts and activities always gives
qualitative outcomes in any system or process. To achieve our global
educational growth and development, we must have a strong faith on
togetherness while putting efforts towards our aim. On these aspects, a
learning community can play a vital role. A learning community is a
group of people who share common emotions, values and beliefs, and are
actively engaged in learning together from each other, and by
habituation. A learning community supports and inspires the intellectual
and personal development of all members of the community. It fosters an
environment that values diversity, differences, and the rights of all
individuals. It supports and creates new knowledge through research and
scholarly inquiry on the part of teachers, staff and students, and it
shares that knowledge with the broader community. A learning community
is centered on the classroom, but extends throughout the academia and
into the world around it. In such a community, all activities, roles,
and responsibilities are related with its members engaged in a common
enterprise. Community psychologists such as McMillan and Chavis (1986)
state that there are four key factors that defined a sense of community:
(1) membership, (2) influence, (3) fulfillment of individual needs and
(4) shared events and emotional connections. The learning communities
can offer a lot for educational reform: curricular coherence;
integrative, high-quality learning; collaborative
knowledge-construction; and skills and knowledge relevant to living in a
complex, messy, diverse world. Studies show that enrolment in a learning
community has a powerful effect on student learning and achievement. The
learning community approach fundamentally restructures the curriculum,
and the time and space of students. Many different curricular
restructuring models are being used, but all the learning community
models intentionally link together courses or coursework to provide
greater curricular coherence, more opportunities for active teaming, and
interaction between students and faculty.
Objective:

Objective of the conference is to:

Critically observe the significance of need to bring democratic change
in educational system towards more learning outcomes.
Analyze the possible contribution by creating structured and
non-structured learning community in comparison with the traditional
designs.
Group like an orchestra where individually different people come
together to form one entity, and not like a group of packed corals that
is made up of things of the same quality
Exercise the role of learning community in different
disciplines-Engineering, Health and Medical Applied Sciences, Management
Sciences, Education and Movement Education etc.
Share a global perspective of learning community.

Activities during the conference
Special discussion sessions with the experts on the theme.
Paper presentation by delegates in dialogue method.
Experts feedback and critical analysis on the basis of presentations
given by the participating delegates.
Exchanging skills and thoughts among the participating delegates.
Performing relevant activities to understand the concept of learning
community.
Benefits

The conference will help the Academicians /Teacher Educators/Research
Scholars to: -
Improve sense of self worth, confidence and self esteem leading to
professional conduct by creating democratic learning environment.
Reflect and reappraise professional practices and contribution to society.
Contribute to socio-professional development among the colleagues by
sharing the experiences.
Enhance futuristic view on the behavior of democratic learner- centered
approach.
Expected outcomes of the conference

The personal and the professional experience of participating
researchers will be broadened by providing opportunity to understand the
urgent need of global educational reform.
Community will be contributed to by focusing on the initiative of an
innovative education system.
Communication and goodwill among researchers and mentors of the
community will be hence fostered.
Interaction between the intellectual minds will be promoted, thus
resulting into a collective contribution towards the development of the
society.
The commitment and contribution of researchers performing in different
learning communities will be hence acknowledged.


By elevating the role of youth voice, the relationships formed by
youth/adult partnerships are said to combat ephebiphobia and adultism. A
broad number of parties benefit from said partnerships, including the
organizations where the partnerships occur, adults who are involved, and
youth themselves. Actual benefits range from increased commitment to
higher feelings of self-efficacy, as well as increased organizational
effectiveness and civic engagement. Youth/adult partnerships have been
found to be particularly effective in addressing school improvement,
promoting Global Health Initiatives, and integrating technology in the
classroom.
Additional practice has identified significant roles for youth/adult
partnerships in rural civic engagement projects and in creating
effective outreach for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and
questioning youth.

During and after the conference sessions, cultural exchange activities
and tours to the below mentioned historical monuments will be organized
Local
Gwalior Fort
Jai Vilas Palace
Tansen's Tomb
Out Station
Taj Mahal,Agra
Khajuraho Temples etc.

Fine Fred,
Good but save your breath the East African network is in place and the European
connection to commerate Maria Agnese Giraudo is undertaken by Robberto Dati, Ken
Owino, Angie etc let us wait Nafasi Africa acrobats perfomance in Rome to in
memory of Maria and as soon as i get full video episodes we might go on!
Samwel.

On Wed Mar 2nd, 2011 8:34 PM Etc/GMT+12 kayiwa fred wrote:

>Dear all,
>I want also to express my sorrow over the death of mum Maria,
>I happen to be championing the East African connection which is focusing on
>bringing all African together with there business, letting everyone o what they
>are doing.
>It was the Idea of Maria and although it had slow moving, From today i wold
love
>to make it moving and i welcome all your ideas,
>one of the thing to do is to create a website which will network all of us and
>others
>
>
>In the honor of Maria i welcome your views,
>long live mum maria
>
>Fred Kayiwa
>Beyond Youth Sports
>
>
>

• Introduction to Maria        http://www.dadamac.net/network/maria-agnese-giraudo    
• Following the sad news of the untimely death of Maria Agnese Giraudo         http://dadamac.posterous.com/following-the-sad-news-of-the-untimely-death
• Maria's memorial        http://www.dadamac.net/initiatives/cross-cultural-collaboration/maria-agnese-giraudo-memorial