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 5 May 2006 @ 06:30, by judih. Education
In which life moves from remembering death to celebrating life - to the concept of 'i am' to the realization of 'i am not'.
There's a glorious irony that Israeli Remembrance Day, when we remember fallen soldiers - all friends, relatives, students, colleagues, gives rise to Israeli Independence Day - the 58th year of statehood and the reason for our greatest joy.
That strange second when one ceremony ends and other begins is always a snap of the fingers. Our kibbutz ceremony went from remembering our roots to gazing into the sky, as we enjoyed a 6 minute display of fireworks shot into the dark sky from the roof of our beautiful communal dining room. Sometime during the switch from ground to sky, I caught the flu.
So, with a dubious song in my heart, I excused myself from joining the communal singing in the pub - even though my son was to play guitar after the 'singers' grew hoarse and/or quiet enough to listen. I went home, drank tea and went to sleep. School the next day - had to rest.
The next morning, I gathered my forces to teach, to create magic juice in the hearts of my students to help them digest the particular english structure of 'I am..' In this special, special ed class, the 'I am...' unit has been going on for some length.
We've investigated it from the point of view of name, age, nationality and present moment states such as hunger, boredom and tiredness. We have used the southpark caricature site to build our own self-portraits. We have computered, written and spoke.
And yesterday, the day in question, I brought along Counting Crowes singing 'Colorblind' with the wonderful line, 'I am ready, I am ready, I am ready, I am...fine' More >
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22 Jan 2006 @ 18:44, by paretokid. Education
Keyword Speak, Think is an affliction that not only affects the two Bush Presidents and their thinking, speaking styles, it has infected millions of Americans. As a result many Americans can no longer think is complete thoughts, let alone write of read in complete thoughts or sentences.
It's the result of 20-30 years of teaching to the test and rank as a means to get funding, certified, etc. It is perhaps the greatest unintended consequence to rather lame attempts to reform, improve American education.
Just get this picture in your head and you will understand.
You give students a reading check list. They have not read what was assigned but look at item number one and then look back in the text to find key words, or phrases that relate to the question. Once they find them they write their answer in key words and phrses from the section of the story to which the question directed them. No context, no reading for understanding or enjoyment, just to fill in the check sheet.
The unintended result - many students educated in this manner can no longer read in complete, speak in complete or think in complete sentences or thoughts. Read on or not - if you can. More >
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30 Dec 2005 @ 16:33, by paretokid. Education
The following story and text describes how a Peace Corps member -- Margaret Molinari -- friend of mine, with a little help from me, Got 300 plus Macintosh computers to a rural area of Guatemala (homeland of the Maya). After that bit of history, there is a letter and funding proposal to make the project even better and give many Mayan students access to computers and the internet to further their education. More >
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 8 Aug 2005 @ 14:27, by jerryvest. Education
When positive or joyous feelings and attitudes pass through each organ and circulate throughout our whole system, our physical and chemical energies are transformed and balanced. Tarthang Tulku, Gesture of Balance
This newslog was inspired by Judih [link]in her work with children as a teacher, introducing music and art to teach teamwork, cooperation and interaction. During this past weekend I introduced this project to my grandchildren. We also included photography and writing to describe our project here on NCN. I will invite Ariana and Beau to share their feelings and thoughts about this project. Daeja enjoys her independence and decided she would not share her experience with us right now.
Ariana is 7 and Beau is 5. Daeja, our 3 yr old, had some difficulty sharing her art work with her brother and sister so perhaps she is too young to understand these concepts of adding to each others art work. Ari also had to remind Beau that our goal was to add to each others expression or try to improve it when we can. I think with more practice they will all improve their spirit of cooperation.
Our music, Culture X, [link] was very enthusiastically received and my grandkids would frequently leave the project and begin dancing. I think that these temporary diversions helped them extend their play time and enhance their abilities and creativity. I really appreciate their spontaneity and often dance with them.
This is Ari’s description of our art project:
Well, I love this project because it lets me express myself freely and I think it is a good thing for kids to learn how to cooperate and work together. When I paint, my feelings come out on the paper in a colorful and creative way. I also felt inspired by the game and that showed me I could eventually become a professional artist, writer and photograper.
The music helped me see that art and dance all go together nicely. The music goes through my body and makes me want to dance. When we stopped the music we would change each other’s art work and continue on with the game.
One other activity that we added was photography. I used PaPa’s camera to take pictures of the art project and learned how to load them into the computer. I had lots of fun doing this project. When we taped all our pictures together it looks beautiful like a thousand butterflies. [link]
Beau described his experience like this:
This was fun and it made me happy and I would like to do it again some time. The End.
For me, I couldn’t think of a better way to have fun and be with my grandchildren. I love their creativity and joyful expression. They are really proud of their end result and know that we will frame the pictures and hang them on our wall.
Thank you Judih for the comments, enthusiasm and creativity that you share with us on NCN, on the Delphi Teacher Forum [link]and your own website. What an honor and joy you must be for children in your classroom as you naturally express your love for the arts and for the children you work with. Again, I look forward to continuing these projects with our grandkids, with the incarcerated juveniles, soldiers, and others I work with.
More >
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14 Jul 2005 @ 16:48, by ming. Education
Now I'd kind of like to be able to speak Italian, since I think I'll be coming back. And it seems like it actually would be easier than French. You pronounce it like it is written, the conjugations are more simple, and many of the words are familiar. But learning a whole language is kind of a big thing.
Anyway, besides getting some beginning Italian books and a dictionary, I got a book teaching several Romance languages at the same time. Which kind of makes sense. They all come from Latin, they have many similarities, and it all becomes more clear when one is looking at the systematic differences and similarities between them.
I found an excellent book, "Comprendre les Langues Romanes", which teaches Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian to French speakers. And there's a parallel book in each of those 4 languages doing it the other way.
The book, interestingly, turns out to have been organized by some Danish professors in Romance languages, with the collaboration of colleagues in a number of countries. See, there's an idea that maybe is more likely to occur to somebody from a Scandinavian country. The 3 Scandinavian languages, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, are to a large degree inter-comprehensible to people from those countries. Oh, they're different in many ways, almost as different as the Romance languages are. Certainly not just a matter of a different accent. At least a third of the words are different, and pronunciation has very different rules between them, different phonemes (units of sounds), etc. But the Scandinavians learn the basics about the other languages in school, and they consider each other close. So, in principle, one should be able to speak in one's own language, say Danish, and another person speaks Swedish, and we can understand each other. There will be gaps and little things one doesn't quite get, but generally that works. Even if I can't list the rules for Swedish grammar and pronunciation, I mostly understand it when a Swede speaks it, and he'd understand most of what I say in Danish.
So, the idea is that one could have the same inter-comprehensibility between the Romance languages. There's no big reason a French person shouldn't understand a Spanish or Italian speaker, and they should understand him when he speaks French. Mostly that isn't so at all, but it could be if each of them learned the basic differences and similarities, and a bit about how they've evolved.
For examples, in French the word for the English "full" is "plein". In Italian that is "pieno", in Spanish it is "lleno", "cheio" in Portuguese, and "plin" in Romanian. That at first looks very different. But they all come from the Latin "pleno". It is simply that they've converted it according to different rules. Many words that would start with pl- in French would the same way start with pi- in Italian, ll- in Spanish, ch- in Portuguese and pl- in Romanian. Which suddenly makes it easier to recognize what the words are. There are a lot of situations like that, where the differences are quite systematic, and one can see the similarities through it.
Potentially, many people could be capable of having a basic understanding of quite a few languages, if they went straight to learning how they relate to each other, how they've evolved from common roots, and what the essentially differences are between them. Which would be a very good thing for cross-cultural understanding. Less of a Tower of Babel. Maybe you don't master the languages, but you can understand most of them.
But, hey, maybe there's a conspiracy against it. There is a curious coincidence in this book. Its main author is listed as Paul Teyssier, a Danish language professor. But the foreword is by a different Danish language professor, Jørgen Schmitt Jensen, the project's coordinator,who gives a lively introduction to the book, and ends with the sad note that Mr.Teyssier unfortunately has passed away, so therefore, in his place, he would be writing the introduction to Romance languages. And then, under that, there's another note, from somebody else, that unfortunately, because of Mr.Schmitt Jensen's untimely illness and death, the introduction will not be written by him either, but by so-and-so. Who apparently survived through it. But it is a bit like they all get killed off, because they have the audacity to teach more people to understand each other. Nah, they were probably just old, but one never knows. More >
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 24 May 2005 @ 07:56, by koravya. Education
Monday evening into Tuesday, May twenty-third into the twenty-fourth. Every speaker has his or her turn during presentations week. Tonight the teamworkers of Group Dynamics covered three topics: the HIV-AIDS virus and epidemic and treatment at the state and global levels; history of internet, software, and media piracy in all of its various forms, and how it should be dealt with strategically and ethically; and the troubling issues and situations that many of today’s children have to face and deal with, including divorce of parents and their possible remarriage, abuse by one or both parents, verbal or physical, socialization issues from pre-school to adolescence and what or any concept of the future are they developing? Eighteen presentations altogether, eight minutes each, no more than ten. Shall see many of these same students in their portfolio and professional procedures class next quarter. Guided awareness training in how to develop an effective prospective employee persona. How to write up a one-page definition of where you come from and what you know how to do. Tomorrow evening, there will be a total of seven presentations covering three separate topics. Teams of two, two, and three, covering the effects of three specific U.S. based transnational corporations and the countries they operate in or through, either directly or indirectly. Could be very interesting if done well. Everyone gets a turn to tell the rest of us what he or she has taken some trouble to find out. The fruits of labor are spoken.
Image from: [link]
A rather evocative image.
*/-^/.* More >
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 24 Apr 2005 @ 09:44, by feecor. Education
The original Earthday was on March 21, 1970. The first Proclamation of Earth Day was by San Francisco, the City of Saint Francis, patron saint of ecology. Players at that time were [link] {link:http://www.earthsite.org/john.htm U. N. Secretary General U Thant, Margaret Mead, John Gardner, Robert Muller, ... more.
As the times with the first astronauts was right later many Earth Days were created, but only the original is on Equninox and so in line with the traditions of many other cultures.
This note is written on the US - California Earth Day 2005 to help us see the various approaches to celebrate, honour, and safe Mother Earth - and see how they combined could be stronger, or seperately serve different "clients"?? More >
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 13 Mar 2005 @ 02:26, by nemue. Education
I have long held the view that Drug Companies are the scourge of the corporate world (yes there are others) but Drug and Chemical Companies in my view are the worst.
On reading articles of late on the topics of ADD/ADHD I question how long are we to stand by and watch our children being turned into a nation of ‘zombies’. If you haven’t taken the time to read up on this subject (and think of yourself as a caring individual) I urge you to so. This is frightening stuff. More >
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 12 Dec 2004 @ 09:21, by koravya. Education
Thirteen Moon Natural Time Calendar; Blue Crystal Storm Year, Overtone Moon, Moon of Radiance, Overtone 27, Kin137, Red Resonant Earth, Guided by Universal Water. Night of the New Moon, Saturday, December eleven. [link] More >
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 19 Nov 2004 @ 05:17, by koravya. Education
Thoughts for the Day,
Summary of Events,
Catalog of Occurances,
Synopsis of the Syllogism,
Ruminations on the Ridiculous,
Awe at the Awesome,
Fascination with the Fabulous,
Point of the Motion. More >
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