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Comment: Re:Stop with the drugs already (Score 0) 595

by oldhack (#30634938) Attached to: How Norway Fought Staph Infections

Vaccination is effective, in public health sense, only when enough people are vaccinated to eradicate the infection - it's a stat game. Vaccination scheme where not enough people gets vaccinated may be worse than no vaccination at all, encouraging the growth of resistant varieties rather than eradicating infection.

Kinda opposite of antibiotic over-prescription problem.

Comment: Re:Article is confusing (Score 1) 595

by geirnord (#30634930) Attached to: How Norway Fought Staph Infections

I think the important part is 1.

When an MRSA infection occurs all staff and visitors that have come into contact with the patient is screened for MRSA. This is again DNA-sequenced to discovery the specific strain. This allows us to control the spread and and also find the originating vector for the infection.

I feel that other countries just prescribe large amounts of antibiotic to stop the singular detected infection, rather that treat the source of the problem.

Comment: Re:As Clifford Stoll Said (Score 1) 290

by Darkness404 (#30634890) Attached to: Is Early Childhood Education Technology Moving Backwards?

Computers in the class room have been around at least 25 years. There was an Apple ][ in every classroom when I was a kid. We used it to die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. Did we learn anything about history? No. We learned to that all that settlers needed was a 99 rounds of ammunition.

But did you learn something about computers? Chances you did learn something if you are now on Slashdot. The role of computers should be to provide a shiny toy for students to want to figure out how it works. To learn reading to play an RPG, to learn history to learn the backstory behind war games, etc.

Computers in the classroom are just the latest incarnation of the whiz-bang technology that would magically make improve education and test scores, without requiring any more work on the child's, parent's, or teacher's part. Just like television, movies, and filmstrips were hailed as an educator's silver bullet generations before. (Stoll wrote about this 14 years ago, and it stills holds true.)

...And how many kids who are have graduated still remember watching The Magic School Bus and Bill Nye the Science Guy? My guess is a lot of them.

Anyone that has attended class in any "e-learning" classroom, can attest that of the regular occurrences of projectors that don't work. Video and audio links that fail. Overly sensitive microphones and the like. The amount of time wasted trying to just set things up before instruction can begin is non-trivial, and easily can accumulate to entire missed days of instruction. No thank you.

...Mostly because teachers and professors are absolutely clueless on technology having long lost the ability to learn after their last degree

If you really want to improve education, how about removing the distractions, and actually teaching out of the book?

...Because that would be removing over half the class and relying on a book that is usually severely out of date?

Many people are secretly interested in life.