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Greeting Visitors,
My name is Jevante and this is my padlet that I'll be using to share my thoughts for this class.

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How Plastic Surgery Became Something to Enhance Humans

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How Plastic Surgery Became Something to Enhance Humans

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Plastic surgery has become synonymous with the quest for youth and beauty, albeit with varying degrees of success. But the field has, for centuries, been driven by medical necessity - and it has nothing to do with plastic.

The discipline derives its name from the Greek word "plastikos" - to mold or give form. And while the idea of perfecting yourself surgically is a relatively recent phenomenon, there is evidence of reconstructive surgery going back to antiquity.

The oldest-known procedures appear in an ancient Egyptian medical text called the "Edwin Smith Papyrus." Thought to be an early trauma surgery textbook (and named after the American Egyptologist who purchased it in 1862), the treatise contains detailed case studies for a variety of injuries and diagnoses.

As well as showing how the Egyptians treated wounds and bone fractures, the papyrus revealed a suggested fix for nasal injuries: manipulating the nose into the desired position before using wooden splints, lint, swabs and linen plugs to hold it in place. The Egyptians occasionally used prosthetics, too: In 2000, an ancient mummy was found to have a prosthetic toe that may have aided the woman's walking, according to researchers who tested replicas of the toe on modern-day volunteers.

Whether these procedures can be considered types of plastic surgery is a matter of historical debate, according to Justin Yousef, whose research on the topic was recently published in the European Journal of Plastic Surgery. It is in India, in fact, that historians have found "the first description of reconstruction proper," he said in a phone interview.

By the 6th century B.C., physicians in India were carrying out procedures not dissimilar to a modern-day cosmetic rhinoplasty. In a detailed compendium called "Sushruta Samhita," the Indian physician Sushruta - who is sometimes called the father of plastic surgery - outlined a remarkably advanced technique for skin grafts.

As in Egypt, the procedure involved repairing noses. But according to Yousef, patients' motives were, in a sense, cosmetic.

"In ancient India, there was a practice of having one's nose removed as punishment for adulterous acts or (other acts that were) against the law at the time," said Yousef, who is also a trainee surgeon at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. "It was a public sign of shame - if you walked around with an absent nose, people knew that you'd done something."

Sushruta's technique involved constructing new noses using skin from elsewhere on patients' faces. "There are two schools of thought," Yousef said. "That the skin was either from the forehead or the cheek. But he basically raised the skin and the underlying fat, before transporting it to the area of the nose."

Elsewhere in antiquity, the first known cleft lip repair is believed to have been successfully carried out by 4th-century Chinese doctors. And in ancient Rome, the encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus documented a procedure whereby excess skin around patients' eyes was surgically removed.

"Celsus described what we today would call blepharoplasty, or eyelid rejuvenation," Yousef said. "It was used when hairs (eyelashes) became inverted and started to affect the patient's ability to see. They were trying to shorten the eyelid so the hairs wouldn't reach the eye."

In the ancient world, patients were usually "seeking to replace something rather than enhance their aesthetic appeal," Yousef said. And given the pain and risks involved, going under the knife was reserved for those most in need. "Wine was the anesthetic," Yousef added.

The needs of war

Progress in the field was slow over the ensuing centuries. Like much of medical science, it was the development of modern germ theory and the 19th-century invention of anesthesia that began shaping the practices seen today.

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From ancient Egypt to Beverly Hills: A brief history of plastic surgery | CNN

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Plastic surgery has become synonymous with the quest for youth and beauty, albeit with varying degrees of success. But the field has, for centuries, been driven by medical necessity - and it has nothing to do with plastic. The discipline derives its name from the Greek word "plastikos" - to mold or give form.

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Bethlam Forsa is CEO of Savvas Learning Company, a global next-generation learning solutions provider for K-12 education.
We live in a world that has been recently reshaped in many ways. Among the areas most impacted by the pandemic is the state of K-12 education. After years of disrupted learning, setbacks in students' academic growth have sparked a national conversation.

The 2022 NAEP test scores displayed a disappointing continuation of decreasing student achievement across the country. This assessment, known as the "Nation's Report Card," has served as a wake-up call to parents, teachers and school administrators who now must determine the best next steps to improve instruction for the sake of our students' futures.

Rather than focusing attention on the past and what should or could have been done differently, it is time to focus on the solutions for accelerating learning and increasing academic achievement. I am confident we can rise to the challenge and help our students recover academically by fully utilizing all of our technological and educational resources.

The Power Of Personalized Instruction

At the core of accelerated learning is personalized instruction delivered effectively by teachers in the classroom. Various studies over the years show that high-quality instructional content, tailored to the specific learning style of individual students, leads to increased engagement and academic achievement. The role of the teacher is essential for supporting students who may find specific lessons challenging, and ensuring all students are mastering necessary skills and concepts. Through personalized learning, teachers have greater power to modify learning experiences to the wants and needs of individual students.

Before any personalized learning experience can be introduced, educators must gain clear insight of where each student in the classroom sits in their learning journey. Without this baseline, teachers cannot accurately prescribe the specific support a student needs.

The Evolution Of Assessments

Student assessment testing is nothing new, and testing is not revolutionary, but the application of how the data is integrated with modern technology in the classroom can radically shift student learning. Today, assessment testing is evolving from the "assessment of learning" to the "assessment for learning," shifting how we think about and utilize these tools across education.

In response to the recent drop in test scores, the U.S. Department of Education specifically recommends the use of diagnostic tests and assessments as a way to inform personalized instruction in the classroom.

High-quality diagnostic and formative assessments, combined with adaptive technology, can help teachers personalize instruction by providing the data-driven insights to meet each student's specific needs. In fact, schools that implement data-driven education have reported boosted retention and graduation rates.

Implementing A Data-Driven Approach

So, how do school and district administrators actually implement a data-driven approach? A best practice is to first identify the data sources they will use to personalize instruction. Once data sources have been identified, school technology and academic leaders should develop a comprehensive plan for how the data will be collected and then analyzed to produce actionable insights.

Data sources can include screeners and diagnostic assessments, which measure, respectively, a student's proficiency in prior year's skills and their level of understanding of key concepts; as well as formative assessments, such as homework assignments, Q&A sessions and in-class activities. Unlike high-stakes summative assessments, such as midterm or final exams, formative assessments provide feedback during the actual instructional process.

Formative assessments that utilize adaptive technology provide quicker feedback by measuring student progress in real time. These assessments, which are completed using digital devices, include online tests, interactive games and simulations that change their difficulty level in response to how well the student performs. The real-time data from adaptive formative assessments can assist teachers in identifying areas where students need more practice, enabling them to modify instruction accordingly.

It is also important to provide teachers the professional development they may need to take advantage of new assessment technologies, as well as training to create high-quality assessments that provide meaningful data. They may also need guidance on how to analyze the results to identify students' strengths and areas for improvement so they can create personalized learning plans.

Moving Learning Forward

Instead of teaching with a one-size-fits-all approach, the insights gleaned from frequent student assessments, paired with high-quality instructional materials, allow educators to identify, much earlier, any student who may be falling behind and offer targeted intervention and customized instructional support to improve student outcomes.

For data to be both reliable and actionable, it needs to be assessed in real time. This is why Jesus Jara, superintendent of the Clark County School District in Nevada, believes education authorities should rely more on frequent assessments to gauge student knowledge rather than on summative, end-of-year tests: "If that end-of-year data is coming back in September like it does for us in Nevada," he told Education Week in November, "at that point I've already made my decisions for the academic year. We should be relying on formative and summative data that is more actionable for principals and for teachers to make instructional changes more real-time, so we can better help our children."

We are fortunate today that our educators have the opportunity to use assessment tools that generate real-time data-driven insights so they can implement more personalized instructional approaches. It is my hope that we can seize the moment by giving educators the necessary resources they need to move learning forward.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?

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Council Post: Data-Driven Instruction Is Key To Accelerating Student Learning

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Bethlam Forsa is CEO of Savvas Learning Company , a global next-generation learning solutions provider for K-12 education. We live in a world that has been recently reshaped in many ways. Among the areas most impacted by the pandemic is the state of K-12 education.

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Brain-Computer Interface Set to Begin Human Trials | VICE on SHOWTIME

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By the Numbers: What’s behind public school enrollment declines?

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Over a third of public school enrollment loss between 2019-20 and 2021-22 is unaccounted for, according to an analysis by AP and Stanford University.