Former Teach For America high school computer science and math teacher here. (I also taught at a school funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's High Tech High initiative noted in the summary.)
First, some positive comments. It's great to see studies like those mentioned in the Newsweek article attracting eyeballs in academia and the popular press. The conclusions may seem to border on the tautological for most of us (great teachers are great at teaching!), but such ideas are largely verboten in the public school system. If you haven't already RTFA, I'd suggest The Atlantic's treatment of the same material.
Anecdotally, I can fully corroborate Teach For America's data. Both in my school as well as those of my TFA colleagues, teachers that continually pushed themselves to excel and improve in their craft were able to consistently produce jaw-dropping results in their students' test scores. It really is amazing. As an example, I co-taught a summer school pre-calculus class with another TFAer in Watts a few years ago. We somehow managed to march through three years worth of material in those two months; our students went from being on average two grade levels behind to slightly above grade level. I attribute this success to Teach For America's philosophy of teacher excellence (which is similar to 'kaizen' in many regards).
The summary asks "What makes a good teacher?" This is the wrong question. There is no one thing that will make a teacher great (vibrant personality, deep subject knowledge, an M.S. Ed., etc.). Rather, it is an attitude that is willing to try anything (and, conversely, promptly reject the ineffective) to make students succeed. To use a math analogy, it is the second derivative that matters, not the current value or even the slope.
Disclaimer: this post does not necessarily reflect the views of my former employers.
I'm a developer for one of the larger US banks and am currently in the pilot for the mobile personal banking rollout. I don't actually work on the mobile team, but I do have access to most of the internal security reports, and I can assure you that at least our company has thoroughly reviewed the many security concerns. Is it perfectly secure? No, and pretty much no system is. But from what I've read, the security risks are on par with (although different than) connecting to the bank through a personal computer.
One interesting thing to note, is this is actually my employer's second rollout of personal mobile banking. They were the first major bank to offer mobile services (over a decade ago) but canceled the program because of lack of interest. Perhaps features looming on the horizon like "contact-less payments" will draw more attention, but the response amongst most my coworkers on the pilot has been pretty ho-hum: kind of neat, but I don't think I'd use it very often.
While the data does travel over an Internet connection, it is securely wrapped in an impenetrable 448-bit encrypted envelope to prevent any chance of unauthorized access.
When companies make claims like "impenetrable encryption" on their front page, it makes me a little bit worried. When they say "448-bit" encryption, it makes me a bit more worried. When that information is the only thing on their site about what type of security/encryption they are using, I don't think I would ever trust my data with them.
He keeps differentiating, flying off on a tangent.
