Studies in the Capital of Golf: I never did play
Sep 1 at 3:03pm by ObverseView
I went to school in St. Andrews in Scotland. I majored in Greek of the Classical kind, and while it is true that I wasn’t the most hardworking of the students in class, I learned a profound amount from my experience there.
St. Andrews was famous as the former capital of Scotland for a number of things: oldest university in Scotland, RAF Leuchars nearby, but wherever you went in St. Andrews, you were never far away from its number one export: golf.
There is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the British Open, and at least four more 18 hole golf courses in the town of little more than 14,000 inhabitants and 8,000 students (estimates).
Unfortunately, while I did indulge in a number of the wonderful student activities, including Raisin Monday, pier walks (now not possible), *ahem*, I never did manage to pick up any Nike golf clubs or any other kind of golf club! I will never know why.
It’s not that I didn’t try other sports: aerobics, hill walking, cycling, and so on. It just never appealed to me. Kind of like putting me in front of a pile of delicious food then telling me I have to eat it. I lose my appetite quickly.
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The Future is Yours: Or is it?
Aug 26 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
We were chatting about Post it Notes. That was the reading today. I must confess it was, for the kids in the class, to discuss the importance of problems in the creation and identification of opportunities.
But first the videos:
… there are loads more at Youtube!
The story itself is worth reading but it does identify how problems give rise to solutions and opportunities. That problems themselves need not insoluble at all.
For those who are deciding whether to go to College or pursue Online Schooling instead, this matters because the kinds of problems we face in society today: debt, environment, pace of change, … are all things that may themselves present huge opportunities for our future generations to find fulfilling, profitable and beneficial types of work.
For example, solving one of today’s: CO2. This may involve a range or technologies and ideas that encapsulate energy creation, distribution, storage; but will also include reclamation work, carbon sequestration, and environmental clean up. All of these will require the ingenuity of academic and practical science before we can consider them solved.
Let’s remember, though: in the problems are the seeds of our opportunities, if we are only brave enough to open our eyes!
AN Whitehead: Process Thought’s Challenge for Education and Life
Aug 23 at 3:03pm by ObverseView
Process Thought's Challenge for Education and Life
Change, progress, and stability, who does not support this unlikely triumvirate? The founder of process philosophy Alfred North Whitehead believes in all three. For him, the art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
Whitehead's work, The Aims of Education, starts with its recipients. The students are alive, and the purpose of education is to stimulate and guide their self-development. It follows as a corollary from this premise that the teachers also should be alive with living thoughts. (v) His whole book is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say, against inert ideas. (more)
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A library for ESL learners
Jul 16 at 12:12am by ObverseView
For the school library, we started collecting books when we first opened. Though it took many years, we built up our collection to about 500 books for children to read.
That was when we realized that if we wanted to grow bigger, we needed a barcode scanner to automate the entry of our books into the database.
That’s when the acquisition of books took off really. We worked hard to acquire both new and good quality used books from as many sources as we could find. Truthfully, we couldn’t have done it otherwise.
The new book dealers simply didn’t have the depth of stock to furnish our library, nor did they have a lot of classic books, while the 2nd hand sellers just didn’t have enough good quality books. Somehow, though, we built up our collection to about 1000 books for students.
I’m hoping that we could have about 5000 books or so in our collection, but it’s difficult to see how we could really develop that number of books without trying to monetize our resources. Ideas are lacking at this point!
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Knowledge vs. Skills Tests: Which kind are you taking?
Jul 13 at 11:11pm by ObverseView
The exam preparation industry is huge business: You can take courses in almost every conceivable major testing system there is to get the place you want in University: Whether it’s undergrad (SATs), postgrad (for example, gmat prep), foreign study (IELTS/TOEFL), or doctoral work. Whatever you need, these days you’ll find someone who’s helping you to pass the exam.
Of course, as a course prep teacher, I have to say that such tests are often taken by students without sufficient background in the knowledge sets they are asked to be tested on. For example, I have had IELTS students approach the IELTS test not recognizing that it is a proficiency test rather than a discrete knowledge test, thereby making it impossible to improve fast without doing some serious amounts of practice.
So before you decide to take a test, determine its nature, its purpose and the kind of knowledge or skill set you’re being tested on. Because you may get disappointing results, if you don’t.
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Test Preparation: A big industry in Taiwan
May 25 at 10:10pm by ObverseView
Exams are becoming increasingly common for our students: ESL exams, IQ tests, proficiency tests, knowledge tests, university entrance, … it seems that tests are becoming the determining factor of whether you KNOW something or not.
So, there is a huge industry in test preparation providers, whether you are needing help with your sat prep or passing the TOEFL, in Taipei you are sure to find someone who can help you – for a price.
There are even schools who will help you ace the tests you need, without ‘cheating’. Of course, one wonders why you need to ace tests unless you really have an aptitude/interest in the subject. Otherwise it is meaningless, … but most Taiwanese don’t seem to think so.
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Sir Kenneth J. Dover: Formidable Character of St. Andrews University.
Mar 20 at 10:10pm by ObverseView
From a recent news bulletin from my alma mater, I discovered one of the heroes of modern Classicism had passed away. Sir Kenneth Dover was the Chancellor of the University of St. Andrews while I was a matriculated student of the School of Classics.
I can’t honestly say I ever took any classes with him, but he was a respected (even formidable) member of the institution, so I was a little awe-struck by his eminent position and wit. I shall always remember him… for his personality. I just wish that I hadn’t been so shy at University.
Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the world’s greatest Hellenists, has died at the age of 89. His career of pre-eminent academic distinction included the presidency of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1976-86), the presidency of the British Academy (1978-81), and the Chancellorship of St Andrews University (1981-2005). Dover was a towering, renowned figure in the study of ancient Greek language, literature and thought; very few indeed could approach the range and quality of his scholarship, especially the synthesis of philological, historical and cultural acumen which marked all his work.
The fact that the school is now placed #3 in the University standings owes, in part, much to his scholarship and professional vision. Former, current and future St. Andreans owe much to our teachers, professors, and peers from our days at St. Andrews. Enjoy, study, and take part in life!
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Would you consider doing an online masters degree?
Sep 24 at 7:07am by ObverseView
If it’s legitimate… and we’ve all seen the ads promising MAs and Ph.Ds for just signing your name… when universities start providing online courses, sometimes it’s difficult to separate the pretenders from the real deal. In fact, so few traditional schools do online education because of quality concerns for the students’ education. Many traditionalists feel that face-to-face interaction is what determines the quality of an ‘education’.
However, the Online master degree proves elusive and attractive to those who are interested in returning to school for a professional level qualification. Why? The costs of doing a full-time course for many are prohibitive, while the time and relocation requirements make it almost impossible if the prospective candidates are full-time workers and/or parents. The non-synchronous nature of online educational systems (like Moodle) mean that students can study at their own schedule, join classrooms when they need to, and coordinate their study around their lives.
To that end, universites and colleges like Gonzaga University can and increasingly do offer online equivalent degrees for those willing to stump up the change and time. But how do you know the school you are considering is reputable? How do you know if it’s not just another paper-mill. Take the following test:
- 1. Does the school have a real campus with real students that you can visit in the United States?
- 2. Does the school have accreditation by the same organisations that accredit top universities?
- 3. Does the program you are considering have reputable professors and lecturers who have published in relevant journals and books?
- 4. Is the degree course relevant to your career? Would colleagues or bosses consider a degree (of any mode) from that particular school a bona fide measure of your professionalism?
- 5. How does the university/department/course rank nationally or regionally, both in campus and online mode?
There are other questions you could ask as well, but answers to these might be sufficient to determine whether you can consider a particular school for your subject or not.
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Another Video: Student’s Performance
Jul 16 at 11:11am by ObverseView
Do watch the last kid who starts at the halfway mark. She is funny and does perhaps the best performance I’ve ever seen for these students.
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What Are Your Kids Reading These Days? Tips on Improving Reading Activities
Jul 16 at 11:11am by ObverseView
If children are to learn to love reading, they must have reading material which appeals to them and interests them. Reading material need not just be books. Magazines, newspapers and even comics have reading value and contain enough variety to appeal to all sorts of interests.
Children need to feel that reading is fun in order to want to do so. Whilst adults can appreciate the benefits of their actions, children often need a little motivation in the form of a tangible benefit in order to make an effort. Young children are easily persuaded by the promise of fun, but older children might require a special privilege or even a material reward to motivate them. Give children the opportunity to tell you what would motivate them. What do they feel would make reading worthwhile for them? What sort of literature would they like to read? Their answers may not be what you expect!
Print media is a lot of fun to use and a fabulous tool for encouraging reading. There is a tremendous range of magazines produced for children these days, covering a huge range of interesting topics. Newspapers contain a variety of content, making them suitable reading matter for most age ranges. Almost any child would find something of interest in the huge range of print media available.
An interesting exercise to encourage reading whilst using newspapers is to set each student the task of choosing an article from the newspaper, reading it, and then making an illustration which represents the article. The other students would then try to guess what the newspaper article was about, using the illustration as a guide. A class discussion could then follow, with the student kicking off by offering a summarization of the article.
Enlarging upon this idea further, you could guide students in their choice of article by offering a ‘word of the day’. If you chose the word ‘car’, for example, students might choose articles on road building, the car industry, careers in driving, the ecological impact of cars, and so on. The word of the day could be chosen by yourself or by class vote, or you could even play a vocabulary game where the winner chooses.
The possibilities using magazines are diverse, and limited only by imagination. How about getting kids to choose a magazine article they are interested in, read it, and then prepare a short presentation for the rest of the class, illustrated with pictures from the magazine? For example, if the child was interested in animals he or she may choose an article on endangered species and show in their presentation where in the world those animals are found and their preferred environments. This is an excellent project for home schooled learners as well as classes, and can be adapted to suit a variety of ages. Ask your students to bring old magazines and newspapers into school from home in order to keep costs down and ensure that students have plenty of fresh material to work with. They could ask their friends and neighbours to contribute, and school faculty could also donate.
The key to encouraging children to read is to make it interesting for them. If they are interested they will enjoy it and want to continue reading more. The more they read, the more they will want to read!
Kenneth is a senior teacher, and program director with many years of experience in ESL. The staff at Dickson’s English School practice reading skills from the earliest levels right through to competence. To see how our students are doing, visit the school blog at http://www.nozkidz.com/blog/ to find out more about what students are doing, how important fluency is, and how much fun we’re having. For other advice and help, check out his column at http://www.nozkidz.com/blog/
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