Educational Web Tools For Graduate School Application For Sustainability

As graduate student I must equip myself with different web tools to be able to compete with today's generation.I was grateful having Prof. Ava as our  mentor because first and foremost I was already left behind by our so called ICT that is because my world evolves in the four walls of my classroom.And because of our work I never had time to manipulate and explore some gadget anymore.


WEB TOOL LINK

SCHOOPY.COM

Schoopy is a social networking site for schools. Schools can sign up and carefully create a networking site for their school that allows the school to communicate with parents, teachers and students online, as well as create "communities" within the school

Statistics as a Platform in Education for Sustainable Development

What is Sustainable Development?

Environmental, economic and social well-being for today and tomorrow

Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report:^[1]
"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

• the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
  
• the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."
  

All definitions of sustainable development require that we see the world as a system—a system that connects space; and a system that connects time.
When you think of the world as a system over space, you grow to understand that air pollution from North America affects air quality in Asia, and that pesticides sprayed in Argentina could harm fish stocks off the coast of Australia.
And when you think of the world as a system over time, you start to realize that the decisions our grandparents made about how to farm the land continue to affect agricultural practice today; and the economic policies we endorse today will have an impact on urban poverty when our children are adults.
We also understand that quality of life is a system, too. It's good to be physically healthy, but what if you are poor and don't have access to education? It's good to have a secure income, but what if the air in your part of the world is unclean? And it's good to have freedom of religious expression, but what if you can't feed your family?
The concept of sustainable development is rooted in this sort of systems thinking. It helps us understand ourselves and our world. The problems we face are complex and serious—and we can't address them in the same way we created them. But we can address them.

Integration of Statistics with Education for Sustainable Development

Education for Sustainable Development

 ESD encourage people to understand the complexities of, and synergies between, the issues threatening planetary sustainability and understand and assess their own values and those of the society in which they live in the context of sustainability. ESD seeks to engage people in negotiating a sustainable future, making decisions and acting on them. While it is generally agreed on that sustainability education must be customized for individual learners

ESD aims at transformation of social structure and individual lifestyles by establishing a set of values through quality education. ESD centres on the three pillars of society, environment and economics with culture as its underlying dimension. ESD emphasizes "values of respect" ? respect for others including future generations, for diversity and difference, and for environment and resources.

In this manner, ESD is a holistic concept beyond the frameworks of existing Environmental Education and Development Education, with special emphasis on the qualitative aspects of education.

Classtool.net

What is Classtool.net?ClassTools.net is a web-based educational productivity tool. The types of products offered vary widely. Timelines, quizzes, and games are just a few of the products offered free of charge. With a paid subscription, users can access many more features that this website offers.  What Skills or Resources are Needed?  Very little technical skills are needed to get started with this website. Users should be comfortable maneuvering around websites and familiar with how to click on hyperlinks. No email or registration is required for this website.  How Can I Get Started?  Getting started is easy. After arriving at the website, users are presented with a number of tools offered. A menu on the right side of the screen shows a list of the most popular tools. By clicking on any of them, the user is taken directly to the tool. There are also some video tutorials available at the bottom of the home page.  I created a screencast that is a basic overview:  http://screencast.com/t/XSSzifxuIa  Because there are a variety of tools, there is no one way to get started. Depending on what the user needs, there are a variety of template available. A picture of the home page and tool list is below:  classtoolspic  For each tool clicked on, a set of instructions on how to use the tool pops up. There are even some examples of how to use the tool if you roll over certain hyperlinks.  Advantages  The most obvious advantage is that this tool is free. Additionally, no email or registration is required so this allows for anonymity and the possibility of students using it to create templates for their peers. Another advantage of this website is that it does offer a variety of tools and templates that can be saved to their server. When the user is ready to go back and look at their work or play a game previously created, it will be stored for up to 12 months unused or longer than that if it is used continuously.  Disadvantages  There are only a few disadvantages but, unfortunately, they may be sufficient enough to deter users. First, it is a visual mess. There are flashing and zooming graphics all over the homepage. The graphics are old-fashioned and it is probably one of the worst-looking Web 2.0 tools I have ever seen. The website’s homepage is confusing to look at and a turn-off for potential users. There are also many advertisements on the page. A paid subscription offers advertising-free access in addition to other freebees.

Introduction to Statistics

Statistics is a set of tools used to organize and analyze data. Data must either be numeric in origin or transformed by researchers into numbers. For instance, statistics could be used to analyze percentage scores English students receive on a grammar test: the percentage scores ranging from 0 to 100 are already in numeric form. Statistics could also be used to analyze grades on an essay by assigning numeric values to the letter grades, e.g., A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0.
Employing statistics serves two purposes, (1) description and (2) prediction. Statistics are used to describe the characteristics of groups. These characteristics are referred to as variables. Data is gathered and recorded for each variable. Descriptive statistics can then be used to reveal the distribution of the data in each variable.
Statistics is also frequently used for purposes of prediction. Prediction is based on the concept of generalizability: if enough data is compiled about a particular context (e.g., students studying writing in a specific set of classrooms), the patterns revealed through analysis of the data collected about that context can be generalized (or predicted to occur in) similar contexts. The prediction of what will happen in a similar context is probabilistic. That is, the researcher is not certain that the same things will happen in other contexts; instead, the researcher can only reasonably expect that the same things will happen.
Prediction is a method employed by individuals throughout daily life. For instance, if writing students begin class every day for the first half of the semester with a five-minute freewriting exercise, then they will likely come to class the first day of the second half of the semester prepared to again freewrite for the first five minutes of class. The students will have made a prediction about the class content based on their previous experiences in the class: Because they began all previous class sessions with freewriting, it would be probable that their next class session will begin the same way. Statistics is used to perform the same function; the difference is that precise probabilities are determined in terms of the percentage chance that an outcome will occur, complete with a range of error. Prediction is a primary goal of inferential statistics.

Descriptive Statistics

Statistics is a set of tools used to organize and analyze data. Data must either be numeric in origin or transformed by researchers into numbers. For instance, statistics could be used to analyze percentage scores English students receive on a grammar test: the percentage scores ranging from 0 to 100 are already in numeric form. Statistics could also be used to analyze grades on an essay by assigning numeric values to the letter grades, e.g., A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0.
Employing statistics serves two purposes, (1) description and (2) prediction. Statistics are used to describe the characteristics of groups. These characteristics are referred to as variables. Data is gathered and recorded for each variable. Descriptive statistics can then be used to reveal the distribution of the data in each variable.
Statistics is also frequently used for purposes of prediction. Prediction is based on the concept of generalizability: if enough data is compiled about a particular context (e.g., students studying writing in a specific set of classrooms), the patterns revealed through analysis of the data collected about that context can be generalized (or predicted to occur in) similar contexts. The prediction of what will happen in a similar context is probabilistic.

Variables

Statistics are used to explore numerical data (Levin, 1991). Numerical data are observations which are recorded in the form of numbers (Runyon, 1976). Numbers are variable in nature, which means that quantities vary according to certain factors. For examples, when analyzing the grades on student essays, scores will vary for reasons such as the writing ability of the student, the students' knowledge of the subject, and so on. In statistics, these reasons are called variables. Variables are divided into three basic categories:

• Nominal Variables
• Ordinal Variables
• Interval Variables

Measures of Central Tendency

Central tendency is measured in three ways: mean, median and mode. The mean is simply the average score of a distribution. The median is the center, or middle score within a distribution. The mode is the most frequent score within a distribution. In a normal distribution, the mean, median and mode are identical.