An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in education on Oct 12th, 2009
From the Beeb: The ‘youngest headmaster in the world’ .
At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He’s a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family’s backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village.[continue]
Posted in education on Aug 14th, 2009
From the Globe and Mail: A new low for cheating students.
Summer may mean slow times on campus, but instructors at Simon Fraser University have already had reason to contemplate slapping students with a new, failing grade: FD, failed for academic dishonesty. (…)
Faculty members must consult with department heads before assigning the grade, which would remain [...]
You should watch this video if you’ve got a dog, if you’re thinking of getting a dog, if you’ve ever trained a dog, or if you ever might train a dog. It’s also perfect for parents, teachers, and pretty much everybody. You’ll see.
Related
Dog Star Daily – Ian Dunbar’s website
A Globe and Mail article explains that Queen’s University has hired conversation cops to interrupt conversations that aren’t up to politically correct standards.
Your friend’s new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don’t call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops. [continue].
The end of the article includes "a sampling of [...]
Posted in education on Oct 20th, 2008
From the New York Times: Reaching an Autistic Teenager.
On a typical Monday morning at an atypical high school, teenage boys yanked open the glass doors to the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga. Half-awake, iPod wires curling from their ears, their backpacks unbuckled and their jeans baggy, the guys headed for the elevator. Arriving at [...]
Posted in education on Sep 16th, 2008
From the New York Times: Training Young Brains to Behave.
But just as biology shapes behavior, so behavior can accelerate biology. And a small group of educational and cognitive scientists now say that mental exercises of a certain kind can teach children to become more self-possessed at earlier ages, reducing stress levels at home and improving [...]
Posted in education on Sep 12th, 2008
From The Guardian: Teach magic lessons in school, says professor.
The trick to making primary school children more confident and sociable is to teach them magic, claims Professor Richard Wiseman, psychologist at the Open University.
At the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Liverpool yesterday, he reported the results of his study of 50 pupils [...]
Posted in education on Mar 21st, 2008
From the New York Times: Idaho Turns to Chess as Education Strategy.
Once a week, Deborah McCoy, a third-grade teacher in Donnelly, Idaho, unpacks chessboards and pieces and spends an hour teaching her 20 students how to play the game.
Mrs. McCoy does not do this because she is passionate about chess; she barely knew how to [...]
Posted in computer stuff, education on Jan 1st, 2008
Michael Tiemann gave his 8-year-old daughter an XO laptop for Christmas, and blogs about how that’s working out: Risks–and rewards–of XO laptop.
…the real fun began after we started to explore the XO’s games. I told her to open Pippy and we played the "guess the number" game. In Pippy, the source code appears on the [...]
Posted in education on Jul 29th, 2007
From the New York Times: The Residential Collage.
On a Monday in April, a dozen or so Cornell students living at the Alice Cook House had dinner with the legendary White House reporter Helen Thomas. They had been invited by Ross Brann, a professor of Judeo-Islamic studies, who also happens to be dean of Cook House, [...]