BC EDUCATION
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

My thoughts about Covid in schools-
Our studies are crap. We haven't put appropriate resources into studying this. Merging "in-person school" v "remote school" across the country makes little sense since there's so much heterogeneity in what "in-person school" looks like. 🧵

 A teacher in Louisiana in an area with high rates of covid & in-person school, has a class with just 2 students in it. The entire school has 37 students and 12 staff, in a building that can hold hundreds.
Should this school's data be merged with a school that's fully open?
How would merging such disparate data, and everything in-between impact our understanding of Covid in schools? What about when we compare it to the rates in children who are in virtual school?
Things often not considered that should be... Are kids in pods? Are kids doing virtual school in community centers/ churches/ other group settings? Are youth sports or other extracurricular school activities (music, etc) happening in-person. Heterogeneity exist in this group too.
What's asymptomatic testing of children in the community like? We know that children are under-tested, how can we say something is safe if we are NOT TESTING children at the same rate as the rest of the population. We can't embrace the "don't ask (test) don't tell" apprach here.
The US has not adequately funding research on this topic so that we can have good data to support policy decisions on this front. Makes me wonder if we really want to have a scientifically sound answer.
Without typing the virus, near complete contact tracing, and routine testing, we won't have the data you all are hoping for.
Until then, we must rely on what we know on where the virus spreads best, and admit that schools have many of those qualities.
Here's places that are looking at the virus spreading and closing schools. We should follow suit. And yes, it is nearly impossible to be a parent and have children in virtual school. I get the stress. Let's work to decrease community spread so we can get back to school.
https://t.co/8XEXxM7bdy
https://t.co/j0e3Xa0L9P
Sorry about the typos, it's after midnight where I am. You don't have to spell correctly or match word tenses after midnight. Isn't that a rule somewhere? 😆

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On teaching without grades.
A long-ish (20-tweet) 🧵. Here goes.

So, you know how you write lots of comments on an essay/exam, and the student looks at the grade and never reads the comments? That's because when grades enter the picture, the learning stops. /1

Instead of focusing on learning, there is a lot of negotiation: can we find one or two points on the midterm as the student is just on the verge of A-?

Everyone is just on the verge of the next grade.

And all the evals are not about the class but about the grading. Really? /2


Is the grade at all informative? If you are just below the A- or just above that, is that giving the student any information about how to improve their knowledge or skills? No. t is just a useless, demoralizing & stressful smoke screen /3


Students' abilities, challenges, and learning are multidimensional. Providing feedback on these many dimensions is much more useful for promoting growth and learning than are quantized unidimensional grades. /3.5

There is an alternative: do away with grades. Keep the feedback -- lots of it (this is not less work for us teachers) but never summarize it in a unidimensional uninformative number (unless you absolutely have to). /4
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Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega
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@raulpacheco
I have news about online teaching and reading workload, friends.

I have experimented with REDUCING the number of readings I assign for a class. This is hard in overview courses because you always feel like they should have "the lay of the land" and master all that there is.

HOWEVER...

My students have performed BETTER with reduced reading workloads.

Undergrads focus on ONE reading per week, while having 3 more available "if they so happen to have the time to read them" (they often do try to read these extra readings).

Masters' level students have appreciated taking a "let's just take things more slowly" approach.

Doctoral level students felt somewhat weirded out that I wasn't assigning three books a week. Though they appreciated it.

What I have drawn from my experiences:
- Workshops work.

Having a section of the class that is "hands-on, let's get writing/analyzing/thinking/reading" as a workshop fulfills two goals, for me:

1) Cements my students' understanding of the method.

2) Helps them have actual time to think and read and write rather than rush through.

Depth and breadth are issues we need to compromise on.

- Do I want them to read more broadly or more deeply?
- Do I want them to become more expert in a few things or become more generalist-type people?

These choices are malleable, as is our context.

What is NOT malleable:
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@societyforepi
Now, what exactly is an applied epidemiologist, and why are they needed? In the late 90s- early 2000's there were a series of articles in AJPH, AJE, JECH, and IJE dedicated to answering these questions. I'll focus on Stephen Thacker's review.

He states, “The applied epidemiologist is by definition an activist, moving rapidly from findings to policy, putting epi knowledge to good use. The 21st century epi must do all these things while maintaining a foundation of high-quality epi research and practice.”

Susser warns the field of what he considers “the black box paradigm… the current international focus on risk factor epidemiology.” He advocates for expanding our academic training to include socializing epis to “keep the improvement of the public’s health as a primary value”

Morabia argued that epidemiology has historically found its balance in the tension between the search for causal relations and the improvement of public health; overemphasis on either perspective puts epidemiology at risk of losing its value.

How does this play out in real life? I’ve been an applied epi for 13 years, working mainly in local, state, and federal health agencies. My work has focused on conducting cool analysis that lead to policy or systemic change.
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Andrew Lee
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Normally I enjoy the high standards of journalism in @guardian . Not today as disappointed with misleading headline that suggest infections are spreading fastest in children. It'll worry parents/teachers & I doubt most readers will unpick the

The latest REACT1 report shows prevalence of infection in ALL age groups has fallen, including children aged 5-12 from 1.59% in Round 8 to 0.86% in Round 9a. The authors of REACT1 report also (wisely) didn't try to interpret the prevalence figures.

If this were a research trial you wouldn't place much weight on the age differences in % prevalence because of the wide confidence intervals, i.e. differences weren't statistically significant.
3/

I've previously tweeted on the challenges (& dangers) of interpreting surveillance data. One would need lots more contextual info to make sense of it & arrive at sound


Undoubtedly some will extrapolate from the prevalence of infection figures in children to other settings i.e. schools based on the headline. I'd advise caution as there is a real risk of over-interpretation through extrapolation of limited data. Association is not causation.
5/
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Antoine FLAHAULT
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@FLAHAULT
1/9 - “In the second wave we acquired much more evidence that schoolchildren are almost equally, if not more infected by SARS-CoV-2 than others.”

2/9 - “The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children,” Mr. Boris Johnson said last week. “The problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”

3/9 - “An antibody survey conducted by researchers in Geneva in May and December, using thousands of random samples, found that children of age 6 to 18 were getting infected as often as young adults. The study has yet to be peer reviewed.”

4/9 - “One reason for this: The Swiss city’s schools have been open since the summer, while restrictions have been placed on adults, meaning schoolchildren played a bigger role in transmitting the virus during the autumn surge.”

5/9 - “In Austria, a nationwide survey by universities and medical institutes found that children under 10 showed a similar rate of infection to those between 11 and 14, and that the children in general were getting infected as often as teachers.”
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