Finland's school system accomplishes some impressive feats: so what makes Finnish students so successful?
"Students get plenty of teacher interaction: Finland and New York City have the same number of teachers. But Finland has nearly half the number of students. Standardized testing is kept to a minimum: before a New York student reaches high school, he or she will have taken 10 standardized tests. Collectively, US students take 100 million standardized tests a year. Finland's only standardized test is taken when students are 16 years old. Kids have more time to be kids: an average us 5th grader has 50 minimum of homework per day. Finnish students rarely do homework until their teens. And while us elementary students average 27 minutes of recess students in Finland get about 75 minutes a day). Finland knows good teachers are essential: teachers in Finland are all required to have a Master's degree (which is fully subsidized by the state)."
(OnlineClasses.org, 21 January 2013)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Value of Culture: Two Cultures
"Melvyn Bragg considers the 150-year history of the Two Cultures debate. In 1959 the novelist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture in Cambridge suggesting that intellectual life had become divided into two separate cultures: the arts and the humanities. The lecture is still celebrated for the furore it provoked - but Snow was returning to a battleground almost a century old. Melvyn Bragg visits the old Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, scene of many of modern science's greatest triumphs, to put the Two Cultures debate in its historical context - and Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, reveals the influence the Two Cultures debate had on his development as a scientist."
(Melvyn Bragg, 2013)
"The Value of Culture: Two Cultures", Radio broadcast, Episode 3 of 5, Duration: 42 minutes, First broadcast: Wednesday 02 January 2013, Presenter/Melvyn Bragg, Producer/Thomas Morris for the BBC Radio 4, UK.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ken Robinson: human ability and talent is highly diverse
"Yes you know there’s this view that only special people are creative and it's not me. It's not it's not anybody I really know. It's a very isolated sort of genius you know to be really creative. And you know people doubt their own strengths and their own capacities. So I meet all kind of people who don't really get much fulfilment from the work they do. You know they just get through it and wait for the weekend. But I also meet people who love what they do. And couldn't imagine doing anything else. You know if you set and don't this anymore they wouldn’t' know what you were talking about because this is who they are. You know I mean like I don’t know what else I would do. They are so to speak in their element. And so the book is about that. It's about the journeys people took to discover their own talents and what difference it made in their lives. And I talk to all kinds of people. It's not just interviews. But the book is seasoned as you know with interviews with people in science in business in the arts in sports in technology all kinds of different fields and what's interesting to me is of course it's different for everybody and this is really a key point you know that human ability and talent is highly diverse. You know what turns somebody on might totally turn somebody else off. What excites some propel does not excite other people and I know when I am signing the book these days I always ask people what they do. And when they tell me I ask them if they like it. And I always think it's great when people say I love it. Because you just never [inaudible].'"
(Ken Robinson, Conversations from Penn State)
Fig.1 Conversations from Penn State Episode 207: Sir Ken Robinson, Uploaded by WPSU TV/FM/Online on 6 Nov 2010, YouTube.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Keeping Britain's special effects dream alive
"The country's reputation as the go-to Hollywood alternative was underlined at this year's Academy Awards when London-based Double Negative picked up the visual effects Oscar for its work on Inception.
The company, which has also been involved in the Harry Potter and Batman series, employs around 950 people at its headquarters in Soho.
Across the UK, approximately 5,000 people work in SFX post-production, according to the UK Screen Association.
But while business is currently booming, there are dark, computer-generated, clouds on the horizon.
A report, commissioned by the government and published earlier this year, delivered a worrying prognosis.
It warned that, while special effects was enjoying a rapid growth, the sector was also 'having to source talent from overseas because of skills shortages at home'.
The study, entitled Next Gen, concluded: 'That is mainly a failing of our education system - from schools to universities and it needs to be tackled urgently if we are to remain globally competitive.'
Part of the problem is the lack of awareness of the profession among young people, according to Paul Franklin, a visual effects supervisor and part of Double Negative's Oscar-winning team.
'There is not a huge amount of information available to them,' he told BBC News.
'Typically you tend to find that students who are seeking out courses in visual effects and film-making are the self motivated types who have gone out and found the information themselves.'
'It is something we work very hard at, but schools and colleges could be more aware about how a creative art education can be applied in the world of high-end modern digital media,' he said."
(BBC News, 14 May 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms
"In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers."
(RSA Animate, Filmed October 2010)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
