so i am shopping for a personnel decontamination station and came across this:

http://decontaminationstation.com/index.htm

can you figure out what the hell is going on on that site?

3/11/2011 11:50:46 AM

oh goddammit, rickrolling is so played out

3/11/2011 11:54:13 AM

FIRETRUCK

GERMS

WAL-MART




























wat

3/11/2011 11:54:19 AM

love it

3/11/2011 11:56:09 AM

go to the about the invetor part and read his CV
dude can't stay put for more than a year or two

3/11/2011 11:56:21 AM

lol. crazy person using fear-based marketing

3/11/2011 11:57:41 AM

well to be fair, most of that was in the Army, so maybe he was rotated...a fuck ton.

3/11/2011 12:00:06 PM

He's a former nurse with Nuclear, Biological and Chemical army training - I don't think it's ridiculous that he came up with this idea, and I don't particularly think his implementation ideas are off.




his presentation is terrible, but his reasoning is sound (if you buy into the fear factor) - you would want to put decontamination units in places where they'd be most effective and obvious.



that being said, at the playing on people's fears shit

3/11/2011 12:03:41 PM

it's a terrible idea because the decon stations would not be adjacent to the hot zone like the need to be. you would have people tracking contamination all over to get to the grocery store. decon stations need to be setup leaving the red zone in the yellow zone placed upwind from the contamination source, that's why mobile stations are important.

secondly, these stations would need to be activated and staffed. if you want to build permanent decon stations then fire, police, or medical stations would be a much better location because they already have trained professionals on site. and fire stations and hospitals are already trained and equipped to respond to wet or dry hazardous emergencies.

and the idea that they should be used to clean shopping carts is laughable. why would homeland security pay to clean shopping carts? additionally, that just subjects them to unnecessary wear and tear and increases the likelihood that they will fail if they are needed.

[Edited on March 11, 2011 at 12:46 PM. Reason : .]

3/11/2011 12:45:08 PM

so i guess you have a rival technology or what

3/11/2011 12:47:24 PM

well i did, but geocities got killed and i lost my site

3/11/2011 12:48:54 PM

apparently decontamination also has something to do with gnomes and WOW

3/11/2011 1:40:12 PM

rbrthwrd, can you talk about the content of that site a little before I devote 20 mintues to it? ... please. I'm sort of letting it play while I eat lunch and type. It looks like he's talking a lot about mastery (nothing new there) and has some sort of courseware product he/his company made.

Courseware solutions are all over the place. Some are good, some suck donkey balls. Some are prescriptive (automatlicly piece together which objectives the student needs to cover based on a pre-assessment). Some are not and require the student to go through the entire course. Some are meant for review, some are meant for students going through the course for the first time.

The other thing, which he mentions specifically, is that traditional classes have to move on. Time is an issue. Using courseware doesn't change the school calendar. It doesn't change what material needs to be covered within a school year. It'd be great if a student could take as much time as they need to learn material --- some people are faster learners than others. It has nothing to do with HOW MUCH you can learn or your ability to master material, simply how quickly you master the material. --- the problem is that taking as much time as they need isn't practical when you're running a school that is being held accountable based on demonstrated profeciency of very specific objectives. If at the end of the year, you have to know X, Y, and Z... and you've only gotten to Y in the self-paced courseware... what then? Right, the student isn't profecient in Z.

As for the profeiciency stuff he's talking about with specific concepts. A lot of school systems look at that type of data for their specific classrooms (as in like every few days). Most of the school systems in NC have some type of system to look at formative assessments and see where students need reinforcement.

Another problem with courseware is it's ability to teach to a variety of learning styles. It's possible, imo (I've developed online edcuation courses), to teach to different learning styles electronically... but it's very very difficult. Some students learn better through discussion or practice, or reading, etc. Courseware solutions may work extremely well for some students, it may be horrible for others.


Another big thing about using courseware is that a lot of it comes down to student motivation. The students who are motivated enough to sit and go through self-paced courseware usually have no trouble in an instructor led classroom... where they don't need to be in front of a PC (funding required).

I've talked to sales reps about three different courseware solutions over the past few months. They all sound like this guy.. to some extent --- the peer tutoring concept is interesting and one I haven't seen integrated like this before. -- But this guy is selling a product. He's giving us data on his product, like any other sales person... he's bias. I've seen their presentations, their "reports" on performance... and I've seen them in action. Are some of them good... absolutely. But... there are plenty of cons to go along with the pros.

Maybe this one product is the meca of eletronic learning solutions... but I'm skeptical.

Until national standards are in place all around the country, you have to be very careful about which courseware solution you use. One may be aligned with California standards. One may be aligned with NC standards and Florida standarsd because that's where their biggest clients are but not be aligned anywhere else. They may claim to be aligned, but not actually be aligned.

You want the kid to be able to try a concept over and over until they get it, great! --- How deep is you item bank? How many times can they be assessed on that same concept before they see the exact same questions? Maybe the product has 1000's of questions for any one objective. Maybe they have 20.



I've been meaning to come back to your original post about using technology, particularly with modern students.

My initial (and unsubstaniated) thoughts are... I don't think students today LEARN any differently than students from the 60's. I think we are TEACHING differently. Learners from the 60's would have benefited (or suffered) the same way "modern" learners will with those methods.

Technology is great. But you have to use it effectively. We probably all remember when the use of powerpoint got really big in our college classes. Some teachers use it much more effectively than those who used it because it was "the thing to do." We've all had instructors who stand in front of a powerpoint and read it verbatim --- That's shitty teaching. Sitting a kid down in front of a computer isn't enough in and of itself. At least not with any of the products I've seen.

3/11/2011 2:37:06 PM