What is assertive communication?
What is assertive communication you may be asking yourself, but wht is assertive communication?
Assertiveness is the quality of being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. In the field of psychology and psychotherapy, it is a learnable skill and mode of communication.
Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defines assertiveness as:
- a form of behavior characterized by a confident declaration or affirmation of a statement without need of proof; this affirms the person’s rights or point of view without either aggressively threatening the rights of another (assuming a position of dominance) or submissively permitting another to ignore or deny one’s rights or point of view.
During the second half of the 20th century, assertiveness was increasingly singled out as a behavioral skill taught by many personal development experts, behavior therapists, and cognitive behavioral therapists.
Assertiveness is often linked to self-esteem. The term and concept was popularized to the general public by books such as Your Perfect Right: A Guide to Assertive Behavior (1970) by Robert E. Alberti and Michael L. Emmons and When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: How To Cope Using the Skills of Systematic Assertiveness Therapy (1975) by Manuel J. Smith.
The goals of assertiveness training include:
- increased awareness of personal rights
- differentiation between non-assertiveness and assertiveness
- differentiation between passive–aggressiveness and aggressiveness
- learning both verbal and non-verbal assertiveness skills.
As a communication style and strategy, assertiveness is thus distinguished from both aggression and passivity.
How people deal with personal boundaries, their own and those of other people, helps to distinguish between these three concepts.
Passive communicators do not defend their own personal boundaries and thus allow aggressive people to abuse or manipulate them through fear.
Passive communicators are also typically not likely to risk trying to influence anyone else.
Aggressive people do not respect the personal boundaries of others and thus are liable to harm others while trying to influence them.
A person communicates assertively by overcoming fear of speaking his or her mind or trying to influence others, but doing so in a way that respects the personal boundaries of others.
Assertive people are also willing to defend themselves against aggressive people.
See the full Wiki entry here
Do you know how Learning Happens ?
Do you know how Learning Happens, because many don’t fully appreciate the processes that go into learning, nor the events that actually constitute learning.
Learning is the process of acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences.
The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines, and there is also evidence for some kind of learning in some plants.
Some learning is immediate, induced by a single event (e.g. being burned by something hot), but much skill and knowledge accumulates from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime, and it is hard to distinguish learned material that seems to be “lost” from that which cannot be retrieved.
Human learning begins before birth and continues until death as a consequence of ongoing interactions between person and environment.
Active learning occurs when a person takes control of his/her learning experience, since understanding information is the key aspect of learning, it is important for learners to recognise what they understand and what they do not.
By doing so, they can monitor their own mastery of subjects. Active learning encourages learners to have an internal dialogue in which they verbalize understandings.
This and other meta-cognitive strategies can be taught to a child over time. Studies within metacognition have proven the value in active learning, claiming that the learning is usually at a stronger level as a result.
In addition, learners have more incentive to learn when they have control over not only how they learn but also what they learn.
Active learning is a key characteristic of student-centered learning, conversely, passive learning and direct instruction are characteristics of teacher-centered learning (or traditional education).
Informal, or accidental learning has massive potential to give meaning, relevance and context to the ideas that more formal learning offers.
Many of us confuse learning with an accumulation of knowledge. This video explains in an unconventional way how learning ‘really’ happens.
The discovery of Trappist 1
Astronomers have just identified a nearby solar system hosting seven Earth-sized planets.
Most intriguing: Three planets that orbit its central star — known as TRAPPIST-1 — may even be within a habitable zone.
That means they fall within a region that could support life as we know it.
As such, these newfound worlds are good sites to focus a search for alien life.
TRAPPIST-1’s big planetary family also hints that many more cousins of Earth may exist than astronomers had thought.
“It’s rather stunning that the system has so many Earth-sized planets,” says Drake Deming, astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park.
It seems like every stable spot where a planet could be, there is an Earth-sized one. And that, he adds, “bodes well for finding habitable planets.”
Astrophysicist Michaël Gillon works at the University of Liège in Belgium. He was part of a team that last year announced they had found three Earth-sized planets around TRAPPIST-1. This dwarf star is only about the size of Jupiter. It’s also much cooler than the sun. And it’s a relative neighbor to Earth, a mere 39 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius.
Follow-up observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope and additional telescopes on the ground now show that what first had appeared to be a third planet is actually a quartet of Earth-sized ones. Three of these may be habitable.
from Science for Students
Microadventures Adventures Close to Home – Join us for six minutes of adventure!
You won’t be going far but you’ll discover how adventurer, Alastair Humphreys thinks there’s fun to be had on your doorstep.
Along the way we’ll be exploring the expeditions you could go on and new items of vocabulary to take with you!
Vocabulary:
Wanderlust – a strong desire to travel
A sense of adventure – the feeling of doing a new, exciting and sometimes dangerous activity
To coin – used a word or phrase that no one has used before
Hunch – an idea you have based on feelings but with no proof
Charm – part of the pleasure or enjoyment of something
On your doorstep – close to where you live
Find out more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/…
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For more on Microadventures
The term microadventure was made common by British adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys and is defined as an overnight outdoor adventure that is “small and achievable, for normal people with real lives”.
The New York Times described a microadventure as “short, perspective-shifting bursts of travel closer to home, inspiring followers to pitch a tent in nearby woods, explore their city by moonlight, or hold a family slumber party in the backyard.”
The concept is flexible enough in its definition to allow the individual to choose the location, duration, and overall scope of the adventure.
Microadventures are generally considered affordable in that little to no specialized gear is required, travel costs are trivial or nonexistent, and only a minimal amount of provisions are needed for the outing.
Often participants will sleep out under the stars using a bivvy bag, rather than a tent, and wild swims are actively encouraged. Microadventures have proved popular with people whose lives are busy with work and/or family commitments.
The Collins Dictionary blog recognised ‘microadventure’ as a neologism in April 2014.
Microadventure is popular as an online hashtag, used on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share microadventure experiences.
DuckDuckGo a search engine that puts privacy first
DuckDuckGo a search engine that puts privacy first is an Internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers’ privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results.
Are you concerned about how much data is being tracked when you search on Internet?
Are you fed up with being bombarded by targeted adverts when you open a webpage?
Let’s have a look at these issues and what you can do to combat this.
You may not be surprised to learn that Google, and other search engines have all of your search history stored up.
You can delete it though – If you would prefer not have a huge list of search queries stored up, then connect to Google’s history page, click Menu (the three vertical dots) and then click on Advanced – All Time – Delete.
If you want to stop Google tracking your searches for ever, connect to the activity controls page and toggle tracking off.
That’s it, you are now free from tracking!
Not only do they record your searches, but Google also keeps an eye on your location.
Google’s location history, or timeline page, serves up a Google Map and allows you to select specific dates and times and see where you were.
The accuracy depends largely on whether you were signed into your Google account and if you had a phone or tablet with you.
How you can delete it : When you visit the timeline page you can hit the settings cog in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and select delete all from there.
There’s also the option to pause your location history by clicking the button in the bottom left of the screen.
If you’ve ever wanted to remove your records, virtually [sic] from the internet, a Swedish website Deseat.me makes use of your Google account to do just that.
Deseat.me can show you all your online and social media accounts and lets you delete yourself from them.
How to delete it : Go to Deseat.me and enter your Gmail address.
It will bring up all the online accounts linked to that email address and allow you to delete them.
But for now, let’s look at a way that you can still search the Internet without your data being tracked or being bombarded by targeted advertising from Google or other search engines :
DuckDuckGo distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users and by deliberately showing all users the same search results for a given search term, and emphasizes returning the best results, rather than the most results, generating those results from over 400 individual sources, including crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, and other search engines like Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex.
The company is based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, in Greater Philadelphia.
Some of DuckDuckGo’s source code is free software hosted at GitHub under the Apache 2.0 License, but the core is proprietary. The company registered a shortened URL redirect at ddg.co on 20 September 2013. On 21 May 2014, DuckDuckGo launched a redesigned version that focused on smarter answers and a more refined look. The new version added often requested features such as images, local search, auto-suggest and more.
On 18 September 2014, Apple included DuckDuckGo in its Safari browser as an optional search engine. On 10 November 2014, Mozilla added DuckDuckGo as a search option to Firefox 33.1. On 30 May 2016, The Tor Project, Inc made DuckDuckGo the default search engine for Tor Browser 6.0.
History
DuckDuckGo was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg, an entrepreneur who previously launched Names Database, a now-defunct social network. Initially self-funded by Weinberg, DuckDuckGo is now advertising-supported but the user has the option to disable ads.
The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx, FreeBSD and Linux. DuckDuckGo is built primarily upon search APIs from various vendors. Because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a “hybrid” search engine. At the same time, it produces its own content pages, and thus is similar to Mahalo, Kosmix and SearchMe.
We didn’t invest in it because we thought it would beat Google. We invested in it because there is a need for a private search engine. We did it for the Internet anarchists, people that hang out on Reddit and Hacker News.
Fred Wilson, 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in New York
In a lengthy profile in November 2012, the Washington Post indicated that searches on DuckDuckGo numbered up to 45,000,000 per month in October 2012. The article concluded “Weinberg’s non-ambitious goals make him a particularly odd and dangerous competitor online. He can do almost everything that Google or Bing can’t because it could damage their business models, and if users figure out that they like the DuckDuckGo way better, Weinberg could damage the big boys without even really trying. It’s asymmetrical digital warfare, and his backers at Union Square Ventures say Google is vulnerable.”
At its keynote speech at WWDC 2014, Apple announced that DuckDuckGo would be included as an option for search on both iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.
On 21 May 2014, DuckDuckGo officially released the redesigned version that focused on smarter answers and a more refined look. The new version added many new features such as images, local search, auto-suggest, weather, recipes and more.
in July 2016, DuckDuckGo officially announced the extension of its partnership with Yahoo! that brought new features to all users of the search engine, including date filtering of results and additional site links. It also partners with Bing, Yandex and Wikipedia to produce results or make use of features offered. The company also confirmed that it does not share user information with partner companies, as has always been its policy.
Overview
DuckDuckGo’s results are a compilation of “over 400” sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS; Wikipedia; Wolfram Alpha; Bing; its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); and others. It also uses data from crowdsourcedsites, including Wikipedia, to populate “Zero-click Info” boxes – grey boxes above the results that display topic summaries and related topics.
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information and uses cookies only when needed. Weinberg states “By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell.” However, they do maintain logs of all search terms used.
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media’s eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg says is, “…low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google’s search index.” DuckDuckGo also filters pages with substantial advertising.
Instant Answers
In addition to the indexed search results, DuckDuckGo displays relevant results, called Instant Answers, on top of the search page. These Instant Answers are collected from either 3rd party APIs or static data sources like text files. The Instant Answers are called zeroclickinfo because the intention behind these is to provide what the user is searching for on the search result page itself so that the user does not have to click any results to find what they are looking for. As of August 20, 2016, there are 989 Instant Answers active.
The Instant Answers are open source. They are maintained on Github and anyone can build or work on them.
Tor hidden service
In August 2010, DuckDuckGo introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor network and enabling access through a Tor hidden service. This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays.
Weinberg stated: “I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy. Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end to end anonymous with your searching. And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end to end encrypted as well.”
Voice search
In 2011, DuckDuckGo introduced voice search for users of the Google Chrome voice search extension.
Bangs
DuckDuckGo includes “!Bang” keywords, which give users the ability to search on specific third-party websites – using the site’s own search engine if applicable. As of 2017, approx. 10,000 “bangs” for a diverse range of Internet sites are available.
Privacy browser
DuckDuckGo has a mobile app available for iOS and Android which forces websites to use HTTPS, blocks web trackers, and rates sites based on their privacy practices.The service, released in January 2018, is also available as a browser extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.
Business model
DuckDuckGo earns revenue by serving ads from the Yahoo–Bing search alliance network, and through affiliate relationships with Amazon and eBay.
Reception
In a June 2011 article, Harry McCracken of Time magazine commended DuckDuckGo, comparing it to his favorite hamburger restaurant, In-N-Out Burger:
It feels a lot like early Google, with a stripped-down home page. Just as In-N-Out doesn’t have lattes or Asian salads or sundaes or scrambled eggs, DDG doesn’t try to do news or blogs or books or images. There’s no auto-completion or instant results. It just offers core Web search—mostly the “ten blue links” approach that’s still really useful, no matter what its critics say…As for the quality, I’m not saying that Weinberg has figured out a way to return more relevant results than Google’s mighty search team. But DuckDuckGo…is really good at bringing back useful sites. It all feels meaty and straightforward and filler-free…
The barebones approach cited in his quote have since changed; DuckDuckGo now has auto-completion and instant results for example. McCracken included the site in Time’s list of “50 Best Websites of 2011”.
Thom Holwerda, who reviewed the search engine for OSNews, praised its privacy features and shortcuts to site-specific searches as well as criticizing Google for “tracking pretty much everything you do”, particularly because of the risk of such information being subject to a U.S. government subpoena.
In 2012, in response to accusations that it was a monopoly, Google identified DuckDuckGo as a competitor.
Weinberg was reportedly “pleased and entertained” by that acknowledgment.
