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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Op Hop/Hop Op by Pierre Hébert
"Ročno izdelan eksperiment z utripajočo animacijo v slogu praskanke na filmski trak. Prikazuje skupino štiriindvajsetih abstrahiranih podob, ki se na zaslonu razporejajo in prerazporejajo v različnih kombinacijah. Rezultat je spreminjajoč se vzorec zvoka in slike, ki ima za oko in uho drugačen ritem.
A hand-made, scratched-on film experiment in intermittent animation. The images are a group of twenty-four visuals, all non-representational, which arrange and rearrange on the screen in many combinations. The result is a changing pattern of sound and image that has its own rhythm for eye and ear. "
(Animateka International Animation Film Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Pierre Hébert (NFB), Kanada/Canada, 1966, 35 mm, 3'30''
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Stephen Downes: the use of online media and services in education
"Stephen Downes is a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council and a leading proponent of the use of online media and services in education. As the author of the widely-read OLDaily online newsletter, Downes has earned international recognition for his leading-edge work in the field of online learning. He developed some of Canada's first online courses at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, Manitoba. He also built a learning management system from scratch and authored the now-classic 'The Future of Online Learning'.
At the University of Alberta he built a learning and research portal for the municipal sector in that province, Munimall, and another for the Engineering and Geology sector, PEGGAsus. He also pioneered the development of learning objects and was one of the first adopters and developers of RSS content syndication in education. Downes introduced the concept of e-learning 2.0 and with George Siemens developed and defined the concept of Connectivism, using the social network approach to deliver open online courses to three thousand participants over two years."
(Stephen Downes)
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Open Space: non-profit artist-run centre in Victoria, British Columbia
"Founded in September 1972, Open Space is non-profit artist-run centre located in Victoria, British Columbia. For over thirty years, Open Space has supported professional artists who utilize hybrid and experimental approaches to media, art, music, and performance. As an exhibition and performance centre, Open Space reflects the wide diversity of contemporary art practices in Victoria, across Canada, and beyond. Our commitment to contemporary artists is an inclusive situation, embracing work by artists of different disciplines, media, generations, cultures, and communities.
Open Space supports experimental artistic practices in all contemporary arts disciplines, acting as a laboratory for engaging art, artists, and audiences."
(Open Space Arts Society Vision Statement, 2010)
Fig.1 "Video as a Cultural Metaphor" Artist: Chris Creighton-Kelly, Date: March 9 and 10, 1979.
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INDIGO: International Indigenous Design Network
"INDIGO, the International Indigenous Design Network, is an open platform that connects designers worldwide in an effort to explore our understanding of indigenous design. It provides an online forum for sharing ideas and information, fostering discourse among participants, and contributing to the furtherance of indigenous and local design.
Through its participants and projects, INDIGO seeks to gain some insight into what makes design distinctive to its home, the connections to the place where it is made and for whom it is made. As more and more designers work within a global context seemingly without borders, INDIGO provides an online medium for design practice as it contributes to the formation of national cultural identities."
(Icograda, 2010)
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