The Metric System and “How to Change the World”

Coursera offers free online classes on lots of topics by big-name institutions.

A number of weeks ago I started a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) through Coursera. Its title was “How to Change the World” and was taught by the president of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth.

Briefly, for this class each week you had to watch several videos that included Roth both addressing the camera with the material he wanted to impart as well as interviews he had with people at Wesleyan and elsewhere. There were also readings for each week provided through links from the course’s webpages. (There was quite a lot of reading for this course and each week you also needed to write and submit a 500-word (max) essay on the current topic (poverty, economic development, world health, etc.).

Peer review   

Given that Roth had (as he indicated) more than 20,000 people around the world enrolled in the class, grading papers might be a huge burden. The way around that: peer review. Each week three other students in the class reviewed and graded your work using some clearly spelled out requirements. In turn, you graded the work of three other students.

Given the word limitation, it was a little tough to build cogent responses to one of the two topics offered to write about each week. The only time I received full points was when I mentioned this documentary project. The assignment that week was on “Global disease and health.” Given the medical implications of metric system use, including the misuse of using eating utensils for dosing liquid medicine, it made sense to me to mention it.

While peer reviewers can just assign just a numerical grade they also have the opportunity to include comments.

Interestingly, one reviewer commented on my essay regarding metric adoption:

Thank you for including information about the work you are doing. You are right about dosages not being accurate using teaspoons from your silverware drawer. I remember our doctor making a big point of that fact when our children were young. I had forgotten and now you reminded me how important that is.

People should not use “silverware” as substitutes for measuring spoons for medicine if they want to avoid dosing errors. This is particularly important for small children.

All in all, the class was very time consuming but valuable. Maybe less in terms of supporting my attempt to change my part of the world but by broadening my understanding the of problems we face globally and to help me become more sensitive to the fact that suffering anywhere in the world impacts us all.

New Coursera courses

There was no way I was going to be able to follow this level of detail on image processing!

As I mentioned last time, I just started a new class on video and image processing. Having finished watching the third set of videos, I can say that monitoring this class is going to be the best I’m going to be able to do. When the instructor started talking about logarithms and cosines, I realized my most of it was going to be incomprehensible given my background.

I’ve also started another course called “Time to Reorganize! Understand Organizations, Act, and Build a Meaningful World.” I’m taking it in connection with this project since it looks like it might contain some helpful information. The description says, in part,

It explains that organizations can act strategically to protect and renew the sense of membership and attachment of individuals. So doing, organizations that survive and thrive impose their logics of action onto society, thereby influencing what is legitimate or not.

Metric adoption, not to mention the documentary I’m working on, will need the support of multiple organizations to succeed. If I have a better understanding of how organizations operate on an elemental level it could help with my outreach.

I’ll keep you informed. Thanks for reading to the end.

Linda

Fundraising for the Metric System

(Sorry for the lapse in posting. I’ve been very busy. See below.)

My campaign results. Thanks!

As you may be aware, I was recently involved in a class which required that several projects (mine included) raise a small amount of money through crowdfunding. (You can watch the short intro I made here.) Having heard that Internet fundraising is difficult, I thought I was mentally prepared. Besides, my “ask” was small: $1,500. Since longer campaigns aren’t more successful, all our efforts were capped at about four weeks.

Initially, everyone in the class pledged to everyone so there wasn’t a net gain but these efforts helped “seed” each of our projects.

For me everything pretty much came to a standstill after that.

After a couple of weeks of no activity, I started to wonder if I was trying to sell something that no one wanted to buy. I remembered reading many years ago that Thomas Edison had invented things he thought the world needed but those weren’t always successful. He ultimately changed his philosophy to:

I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.

Was I trying to sell something that the rest of the world realized it needed but United States wasn’t ready for? If the campaign failed, what then?

After some soul searching, I made a decision that I would not abandon my metric adoption campaign altogether. Sure, making a documentary is terribly expensive but writing isn’t. And while writing can be very time consuming, it’s not expensive if you do it right.

If the campaign did fail, I decided, I’d pull my blogs together and form them into a book and try to sell that. Granted one on the subject just came out (I’ll review it shortly) but I had a very different story to tell. Another possibility would be to go ahead and write the script and spend my money shopping that around. The Westdoc Conference provides one such opportunity.

Then, right before Thanksgiving, I started to get additional pledges. One lovely gentleman (who I didn’t know at the time) even encouraged others on the Reddit metric pages to contribute.

The heartening news was that, in the end, pledges totaled 110% of the goal. And as it turns out, more than a third of those who donated were people who didn’t know me!

I’ve since written to all of them personally to thank them since they cared enough to help fund the project. I’d also love meet more of these sorts of people (regardless of contributions) since they’re the ones who will help spread the word about how our population needs to become aware of this important topic. Ultimately, the documentary is just about raising awareness. Knowledge of our situation needs to happen before any further attempts at political reform can take place. After all, you can’t solve a problem you don’t know you have.

And now for something (almost) completely different

Is WordPress making a projection for 2015? Here’s hoping the estimate is low.

I recently received my yearly statistics report and I’d like to share it with you. (The full report is here.) It’s amazing to me that people from 151 different countries have viewed this blog to date!

Total pageviews to date is 86,727 which is an increase of 47% over the 2013 numbers.

The most popular post has been “Top 10 Reasons the United States Should Use the Metric System (of SI)” with 32,951 pageviews. The fact that people continue to search for information on this topic and find these posts also helps me to feel I’m not out in left field somewhere.

Getting “more class”

Coursera offers free online classes on lots of topics by big-name institutions.

I started a new Coursera course today that should continue to build my knowledge base for the project: Image and video processing: From Mars to Hollywood with a stop at the hospital.

Becoming more conversant on image processing could only be a good thing for me. Technology in this area is changing all the time.

Lots more coming in future. Thanks for staying tuned.

Linda

P.S. If you want to help on the metric adoption issue, I’d love to hear from you. Optimally, I’d like to locate contacts in different states/regions to help built support locally. If you’re interested, let me know by writing to me at milebehind@gmail.com. Thanks!

Staying the “Coursera” with the Metric System

Coursera offers free online classes on lots of topics by major educational institutions

Being the masochist I am (at least if you ask some people) by working at a demanding full-time job, spending my “spare time” on this documentary project and  finishing up a class on funding entrepreneurial ventures, I also recently took on another obligation.

A couple of Sundays ago, I was having a cup of tea at about 11 a.m. and glanced at one of my email accounts noticing that Coursera had a new class called How to Change the World. Glancing at the course’s contents, it looked interesting and included a section titled “Women, Education and Social Change.” Hey, I’m a woman, I consider our teaching two measurement system to our children a real waste of time in schools and it’s all about social change for me—even if I’m not trying to change the whole world—just one thing in my country.

What the heck is Coursera?

I had loaded the Coursera app on my phone several months ago (don’t remember how I first came across it) and, while it looked interesting, I wasn’t sure how I’d find the time for anything else right now. It must have looked interesting enough for me to install the app though.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, Coursera says of itself:

Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free.

We envision a future where everyone has access to a world-class education. We aim to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in.

That’s pretty high-minded and admirable. It’s also a nonprofit organization.

The course in question was being given by the president of Wesleyan University no less. Impressive.

“Okay,” I decided, “I’ll bite.” It was difficult to know exactly how it might help with the project but it was worth a try as far as I was concerned. I immediately realized that I was behind since the course had started several days earlier. For the rest of the day I hunkered down, finished the considerable amount of reading, watched almost three hours of video lectures and prepared my first 500-word paper that I had to submit before I went to bed as the deadline was 8 a.m. the following morning. As a professional writer, I figured I had a slight advantage with writing the essay and could generate it pretty quickly. At least I had that going for me.

Took a survey about my Coursera interests. This question near the end really got my attention. Hope 37% of people were kidding and good to know the Coursera folks have a sense of humor.

Coursera correction

I had realized that the essays would be graded by my peers, and I’d need to review some as well, but for some reason I thought I’d get an email letting me know when they were available. Wrong. By the time I figured out I hadn’t been notified I had “papers to grade,” I’d missed the deadline and lost 20% from my score for that week. Drats. I’m being much more careful about all the deadlines now.

Not only am I writing about this since you might be interested in this resource but I noticed something in the course itself that bothered me a bit since it relates to the metric system.

In viewing the videos on climate change, in one instance Michael S. Roth, Wesleyan’s president, mentioned the predicted range of increased global temperature in Celsius with no mention of Fahrenheit. That made immediate sense to me since he had said previously that more than 30,000 people worldwide were taking the course. Most of them would use the metric measure for heat, after all. I myself had graded papers from people who wouldn’t use the Fahrenheit scale, as they had mentioned they were from Croatia and India.

That pleasure turned to disappointment when, during the next video, he mentioned how much sea level was predicted to rise in feet with no mention of metric measures.

He’s probably never thought about which units he should use consistently but I’d prefer he use SI units (how the rest of the world refers to the metric system) exclusively.

Maybe if Americans are exposed to metric units enough (with no translation) and have to go “Huh, what does that mean?” they’ll realize that it’s time to join with the rest of the world.

A girl can hope…

I need to go finish this week’s homework now.

Linda