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 Roses Student Awards: UK UG graphic design competition
"The Roses Student Awards is a platform for students to get agencies attention! The awards recognise fresh and original work representative of the next design generation. Roses Student provides the opportunity to get undergraduate work infront a first class judging panel. Is there a diamond among the rough? 10 agencies, 10 judges, 10 chances. Who will make the cut!? ...
The Roses Student Awards deadline 15th Feb 2013. The work will be judged 14th March with the winners being revealed on the night in a networking party at Islington Mill, Salford."
(Roses Student Awards)
Fig.1 2012 winner Abigail Burch (Nottingham Trent University) Brief 1. "Alternative Therapy: Tayburn".
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Monsters University: Pixar parody of college recruitment ads
"This is delightful: a campaign by Pixar for its upcoming film Monsters University that spoofs those wonderfully cheesy college-recruitment ads that air during NCAA sporting events. The spot below, which ran during this week's Rose Bowl telecast, promotes the movie's eponymous institution and imitates the source material perfectly, from the tagline ('Image you at MU') to the awkwardly saccharine student testimonials. The whole spot is nicely paced ahead of the amusing reveal halfway through. (The realism of the animation helps a ton, too, and is its own best marketing for the film.) The website, monstersuniversity.com/edu, is quite brilliantly done as well. The 'Student Policies' section is particularly inspired. On the issue of 'Basic Monster Respect,' it offers this advice: 'All monsters are unique - by heritage, number of appendages, or simply number of eyes - and all monsters deserve respect.' Pets, it should be noted, are not allowed on campus, 'with the exception of seeing-eye snakes.'"
(Tim Nudd, 03 January 2013, Adweek)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Notts TV: new local television for Nottingham
"Notts TV Ltd is a consortium led by Confetti Media Group, Nottingham Post Media Group, Nottingham Trent University and Inclusive Digital Ltd. Together the group has the skills and experience needed to run a TV station for Nottingham - including expertise in TV news, launching and managing TV channels, local journalism and programme production, technical and engineering issues, advertising and marketing, education and training.
Notts TV provides Confetti students with a great opportunity to work in a real TV environment, providing content and programming for news, sport, business, politics and a range of issues that matter to local residents.
The station will utilise the news reporting expertise of the Nottingham Post Group and involve students from both Nottingham Trent Universities' Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism and Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies."
(Confetti Media Group, 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Hyper Island: designing learning experiences to stay creative and competitive in an increasingly digitised world
"For over 15 years Hyper Island has been designing learning experiences for students and industry professionals alike. It all started with three men, a few beers, and one vision. The year was 1994, and multimedia pioneers Lars Lundh, Jonathan Briggs, and David Erixon converged in bar in Stockholm to discuss an upcoming CD-ROM project.
Together they realized their new digital world demanded a new kind of learning: industry-based learning. They envisioned a new institution that could prepare people for the lightening-fast pace of the modern workplace. A place where students could grow, not only as professionals, but also as human beings. ...
Hyper Island is now a thriving global presence, with two main areas of focus. Student Programs immerse young talent in intensive learning experiences from digital art direction to e-Commerce to data strategy. Executive Programs boost understanding of how digital changes societies and consumer behavior -- and how organizations need to change to stay creative and competitive in an increasingly digitized world. Hyper Island is now worldwide, located in Stockholm, Karlskrona, New York, London, and soon, Singapore. And Executive Programs teams can travel around the world designing and executing learning experiences for Fortune 500 companies and start-ups alike.
As the digital world shifts and evolves, Hyper Island continues to react and expand, creating an agile, forward-looking learning environment for students and industry leaders. What began as a bold experiment on a windswept island has become a revolutionary way to learn, reflect, collaborate, and above all, innovate."
(Charlotte Sundåker)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
