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Javier E

News: Decline of 'Western Civ'? - Inside Higher Ed - 25 views

  • Fifty years ago, 10 of the 50 "top" colleges mandated a Western Civ course, while students at 31 of them could choose a "Western Civilization" course from among a group of courses that would fulfill general education requirements. The situation is different today, according to the report. None of those "top 50" colleges and only one of the 75 public universities, the University of South Carolina, mandates one semester of "Western Civ." The association did not count Columbia University and Colgate University as offering the traditional "Western Civ" course, even though those institutions require two-semester courses on Western thought, because those courses include non-Western texts. Sixteen of the "Top 50" list Western Civ among several choices for a general education curriculum, as do 44 of the 75 large public institutions.
  • The "traditional Western Civ course," he said, was especially well suited for the student population of the 1960s. But he said today's student body is radically different and might not be as interested in such courses. He also attributed the change to an increasing specialization among professors, which affects how well they can teach broad survey courses and how much they enjoy doing so.
  • Whereas many colleges in the 1960s had standard core curriculums, more and more universities have moved to a model where students select from a broad range of courses in thematic areas.
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  • "The notion that the cultural traditions of our population reside in Western Civilization is belied by the demographic changes in the American population," Grossman said. He said it is knowledge of world history, a perspective that encompasses Western Civilization, that students are going to need in order to be successful in business, nonprofit, and government jobs.
Dallas McPheeters

Resource: The Western Tradition Video Lectures - 52 views

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    52 free online videos professionally produced to teach Western Civilization history. Super resource.
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    I went to the site and the quality of the videos is good. THX ;) I may watch the series just for my own education, too.
Kevin Leinbach

Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning : Shots - Health ... - 48 views

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    Let students struggle a bit and focus on the effort exerted
drmaddin

Western culture after World War II | myHistro - 10 views

    • drmaddin
       
      This is a great storytelling tool for social studies.
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    This is an example of a digital story created in myHistro.  What a cool way to capture a period of time for a project in social studies.
Roland Gesthuizen

The Black Plague: A LEGO® creation by Dane Brick : MOCpages.com - 6 views

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    "One of the most well known plagues of all time was the black plague. It terrorized globally throughout the coarse of the Medieval ages. Reaching western Europe around the start of the 100 years' war (early 1300's) Here is a demonstration, in Lego!"
Roland Gesthuizen

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com - 60 views

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    Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
Justin Medved

Are you a planner, problem solver or a pinball? - Page 1 - IT Workplace - 47 views

  • “The idea that learning happens via training is questionable and we knew that going in and we supported that with our findings,” she said.
  • The study also identified six types of learners: purposive planners, explorers, visionaries, problem solvers, reluctant learners and pinballs. The January 2010 issue of Impact published by the Ivey Business School defines the categories as follows:
  • “Visionaries are people who find out about new technologies and think about what these could do for them personally and in their organizations. Visionaries are sometimes explorers. They tend to be lateral thinkers, and look at technology from a very strategic perspective.”
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    "A new study from the University of Western Ontario identifies six types of IT learners. Richard Ivey professor and co-author of the study Deborah Compeau reveals some surprises about how people learn technology in organizations. "
Martin Burrett

Stop teaching kids how to be happy, says education expert - 9 views

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    "A leading educational psychologist is urging schools to stop thinking of wellbeing as another subject to be taught. Instead, she is urging them to create healthier schools where students naturally develop wellbeing and a love of learning. Dr. Helen Street, an Honorary Research Fellow with The University of Western Australia's Graduate School of Education, has released a new book, Contextual Wellbeing: creating positive schools from the inside out, which offers a practical framework for building a healthy, equitable social context in schools."
Jeff Andersen

Colorado Gets Another Hub for Outdoor Industry Businesses * - 1 views

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    Montrose, Colorado, population 19,000, located in the western part of the state, is about to become a case study in work/life balance theory. Colorado Outdoors, a planned development designed specifically to attract outdoor industry businesses is set to host a welcoming/coming out party in December. And unlike any other outdoor business campuses, this one includes hundreds of housing units too, a small, pre-fab town for outdoor enthusiasts.
Martin Burrett

Study finds popular 'growth mindset' educational interventions aren't very effective - 29 views

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    "A new study co-authored by researchers at Michigan State University and Case Western Reserve University found that "growth mindset interventions," or programmes that teach students they can improve their intelligence with effort - and therefore improve grades and test scores - don't work for students in most circumstances."
meghankelly492

Culture of East Africa | USA Today - 1 views

  • Up until the 15th century, the cultures of Eastern Africa lived in relative isolation, building up kingdoms and empires, spreading agriculture and civilization throughout the region.
  • n the 15th century, the Portuguese began exploring the coast of East Africa, seeking to seize control of the spice trade from the Muslim presence in the Middle East. Islamic resistance to this led to a large-scale Arab colonization of the coast, which lasted until European colonialism began in earnest in the 19th century.
  • There are hundreds of languages spoken throughout East Africa, ranging from those spoken by only a few thousand to those spoken by millions. The most widely-spoken language, by far, is Swahili, with more than 5 million native speakers, and millions more who speak it as a secondary trade language. The island nations of East Africa, such as Madagascar, do not speak Swahili, instead speaking their own native languages, such as Malagasy.
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  • Clothes are brightly colored and consist of simple wraps, covering either only the lower body or both the lower body and upper body. In Islamic regions, covering is more substantial, and daily wear includes a head wrap
  • The legacy of Islamic rule along the coast of East Africa remains strong, and the majority of those on the coast and in North-East Africa are practicing Muslims
  • East African music consists of simpler instrumentation than Central Africa or West Africa, with a heavy reliance on percussion and basic horns, and less in the way of complex bowing. Since the 1980s East Africa has produced a great deal of fusion music, incorporating elements from Western music to create mash-ups of traditional and modern. Many countries in North-East Africa draw on Arabic influence in their music as well, incorporating elements such as religious poetry into the songs.
Martin Burrett

The Power of Repetition by @MrPatelsawesome - 34 views

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    "Rote learning defined as trying to learn something by repeating over and over has, in recent years, fallen out of fashion with western educationalists. However, I believe that fundamentally, repetition can underpin learning."
Martin Burrett

Schools key to successful integration of child refugees - 5 views

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    "Schools can provide the ideal environment to improve integration and reduce the difficulties faced by refugee children in Western asylum countries, according to a new study from psychologists at City, University of London. The research, which involved speaking to refugees who had arrived in England and Denmark as children, highlights that schools can provide safe and stable setting where refugee children can develop meaningful and constructive connections to peers, teachers and other professionals, as well as being a place in which discrimination, racism and stigmatisation can be actively countered."
Nigel Coutts

A New Renaissance - The Future of Education — The Learner's Way - 1 views

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    This week I am in Florence having spent two days at "The Future of Education" conference. Visiting this city, which has played such a significant role in western history, is inspiring. It encourages one to not only look back at what was, but also to look ahead at what might be, especially when the t
meghankelly492

Project MUSE - Learning from Masters of Music Creativity: Shaping Compositional Experie... - 7 views

  • n contrast to others who are not as prone to divulge their feelings about their creative process
  • "Variation in style may have historical explanation but [End Page 94] no philosophical justification, for philosophy cannot discriminate between style and style."3
  • The testimonies of the composers concerned bear on questions about (a) the role of the conscious and the unconscious in music creativity, (b) how the compositional process gets started, and (c) how the compositional process moves forward
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  • It is hoped that the themes that emerge by setting twentieth and twenty-first century professional composers' accounts of certain compositional experiences or phases of their creative processes against one another will provide a philosophical framework for teaching composition.
  • Furthermore, the knowledge of how professional composers compose offers the potential of finding the missing link in music education; that is, the writing of music by students within the school curriculum
  • Such involvement may deepen their understanding of musical relationships and how one articulates feelings through sounds beyond rudimentary improvisational and creative activities currently available
  • raw philosophical implications for music composition in schools from recognized composers' voices about their individual composing realities
  • It is hoped that the direct access to these composers' thoughts about the subjective experience of composing Western art music in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century may also promote the image of a fragmented culture whose ghettoization in music education is a serious impediment to the development of a comprehensive aesthetic education.
  • n other words, there is a striking unanimity among composers that the role of the unconscious is vital in order to start and/or to complete a work to their own satisfaction.
  • I need . . . to become involved, to come into a state where I do something without knowing why I do i
  • This is a complex problem and difficult to explain: all that one can say is that the unconscious plays an incalculable rol
  • Nonetheless, these self-observations about the complementary roles of the unconscious and conscious aspects of musical creativity do not cover the wide range of claims in psychological research on creativity
  • I strongly believe that, if we cannot explain this process, then we must acknowledge it as a mystery.25 Mysteries are not solved by encouraging us not to declare them to be mysteries
  • When Ligeti was commissioned to write a companion piece for Brahms' Horn Trio, he declared, "When the sound of an instrument or a group of instruments or the human voice finds an echo in me, in the musical idea within me, then I can sit down and compose. [O]therwise I canno
  • Extra-musical images may also provide the composer with ideas and material and contribute to musical creativity.
  • ome composers need to have something for it to react against.38 Xenakis, however, asserted that "all truly creative people escape this foolish side of work, the exaltation of sentiments. They are to be discarded like the fat surrounding meat before it is cooked."
  • as, as these examples show, dreams can also solve certain problems of the creative process.
  • In other words, to compose does not mean to merely carry out an initial idea. The composer reserves the right to change his or her mind after the conception of an idea.
  • n sum, self-imposed restrictions or "boundary conditions"55 seem to provide composers with a kind of pretext to choose from an otherwise chaotic multitude of compositional possibilities that, however, gradually disappears and gets absorbed into the process of composition which is characterized by the composers' aesthetic perceptions and choices.
  • Therefore, it is not surprising that influences from the musical world in which the composer lives play an important role in the creative process
  • Thereby the past is seen as being comprised by a static system of rules and techniques that needs to be innovated and emancipated during the composers' search for their own musical identity.
  • I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed; in other words: how the artist made it his own.
  • Nothing I found was based on the "masterpiece," on the closed cycle, on passive contemplation or narrowly aesthetic pleasure.61
  • Furthermore, for some composers the musical influence can emerge from the development of computer technology.
  • In sum, the compositional process proceeds in a kind of personal and social tension. In many cases, composers are faced with the tensive conflict between staying with tradition and breaking new ground at each step in the process. Thus, one might conclude that the creative process springs from a systematic viewpoint determined by a number of choices in which certain beliefs, ideas, and influences—by no means isolated from the rest of the composer's life—play a dominant role in the search for new possibilities of expression.
  • If a general educational approach is to emerge from the alloy of composers' experiences of their music creativity, it rests on the realization that the creative process involves a diversity of idiosyncratic conscious and unconscious traits.
  • After all, the creative process is an elusive cultural activity with no recipes for making it happen.
  • n this light, the common thread of composers' idiosyncratic concerns and practices that captures the overall aura of their music creativity pertains to (a) the intangibility of the unconscious throughout the compositional process,68 (b) the development of musical individuality,69 and (c) the desire to transgress existing rules and codes, due to their personal and social conflict between tradition and innovation.70
  • In turn, by making student composers in different classroom settings grasp the essence of influential professional composers' creative concerns, even if they do not intend to become professional composers, we can help them immerse in learning experiences that respect the mysteries of their intuitions, liberate their own practices of critical thinking in music, and dare to create innovative music that expresses against-the-prevailing-grain musical beliefs and ideas.
  • Therefore, it is critical that the music teacher be seen as the facilitator of students' compositional processes helping students explore and continuously discover their own creative personalities and, thus, empowering their personal involvement with music. Any creative work needs individual attention and encouragement for each vision and personal experience are different.
  • After all, the quality of mystery is a common theme in nearly every composer's accoun
  • Failing this, musical creativity remains a predictable academic exercise
  • Music teachers need to possess the generosity to refuse to deny student composers the freedom to reflect their own insights back to them and, in turn, influence the teachers' musical reality
  • Indeed, it is important that music teachers try to establish students gradually as original, independent personalities who try to internalize sounds and, thus, unite themselves with their environment in a continuous creative process.
  • Music teachers, therefore, wishing student composers to express and exercise all their ideas, should grant them ample time to work on their compositions,
  • n sum, music knowledge or techniques and the activation of the student composers' desire for discovery and innovation should evolve together through balanced stimulation.
  • While music creativity has been a component of music education research for decades, some of the themes arising from professional composers' experiences of their creativity, such as the significance of the unconscious, the apprehension towards discovering ones' own musical language, or the personal and social tension between tradition and innovation, among others, have not been adequately recognized in the literature of music education
  • By doing this, I strongly believe that musical creativity in general and composing in particular run the risk of becoming a predictable academic exercise
  • which merely demands problem-solving skills on the part of the student composers (or alleged "critical thinkers").
  • . On the other hand, only few music educators appear to draw their composer students' attention to the importance of the personal and social conflict between staying within a tradition or code, even if it is the Western popular music tradition, and breaking new ground at each step in the creative process and, possibly, shaping new traditions or codes.
  • Culture is a precious human undertaking, and the host of musics, arts, languages, religions, myths, and rituals that comprise it need to be carefully transmitted to the young and transformed in the process."85
  • Nevertheless, further research is needed in which women's voices can be heard that may offer an emancipatory perspective for the instruction of composition in education which will "challenge the political domination of men."
Martin Burrett

Study finds cash and coins help engage primary maths students - 9 views

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    "Primary school students are more likely to understand and engage with maths if classes use real money and real-life projects, according to a Western Sydney University pilot study. The findings come as Australian students lag behind other countries in maths, with Year 4 students dropping from 18th to 28th out of 49 countries in year 4 maths in the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science study."
Mr. Mohan

Iraq Holding First Election since U.S. Troop Withdrawal | United States Institute of Peace - 5 views

  • s itself a triumph of sorts
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      Why is this a triumph and is this a sign of hope?
  • The process does, however, face some challenges.
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      Be alert for the challenges
  • three provinces forming the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) hold their elections separately.
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      Why are the Kurdish regions different?
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  • Kirkuk
  • parties representing the ethnic and religious diversity of the province have not been able to agree to hold elections
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      Is this a positive/negative?
  • Baghdad decided to postpone elections in the Sunni-majority western provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for security reasons
    • Mr. Mohan
       
      What do the two areas not holding elections have in common?
  • harbinger
  • In terms of a national identity, it might imply that certain provinces are less important than others
  • Given the toxic political environment, the rivalries and electoral history in Iraq, the integrity of elections will come into question by some.
  • Political and other differences are normal, but it is important that they are dealt with peacefully through a process of dialogue and problem-solving
Steve Ransom

Wikipedia:FAQ/Schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Students should never use information in Wikipedia (or any other online encyclopedia) for formal purposes (such as school essays) until they have verified and evaluated the information based on external sources. For this reason, Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a great starting place for research but not always a great ending place.
  • It is possible for a given Wikipedia article to be biased, outdated, or factually incorrect. This is true of any resource. One should always double-check the accuracy of important facts, regardless of the source. In general, popular Wikipedia articles are more accurate than ones that receive little traffic, because they are read more often and therefore any errors are corrected in a more timely fashion. Wikipedia articles may also suffer from issues such as Western bias, but hopefully this will also improve with time. For more information
  • Although the majority of edits attempt to improve the encyclopedia, vandalism is frequent.
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  • If an anonymous or relatively new user changes a statistic or date by even a little bit, without justifying their edit, they are particularly likely to raise a red flag. If an individual continues to vandalize after being warned, then they may even be blocked from further editing.
  • keeps a full history of every change to every article
  • It is for this reason that readers must be particularly diligent in verifying Wikipedia against its external sources, as discussed above. It is also a good idea, if you feel uncomfortable about an article, to check its history for recent "bad-faith" edits. If you find a piece of uncorrected vandalism, you might even decide to help future users by correcting it yourself. That's a great feature of Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia can be an excellent starting place for further research.
  • Students can compare information in Wikipedia with information in other encyclopedias or books in the library. As a general rule, contributors to Wikipedia are encouraged to cite their sources, but, of course, not all do. For the sake of verifiability, it is advisable to cite an article that has listed its sources. Most of our better articles have sections such as "References," "Sources," "Notes," "Further reading," or "External links," which generally contain such information.
  • The 2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for Schools is a selection of 5,500 articles deemed suitable for school children and has been checked and edited for this audience and protected against editing or vandalism. It contains about the equivalent content to a 20 volume encyclopaedia organized around school curriculum subjects, and is available online and as a free download for use by schools.
  • Educators can use Wikipedia as a way of teaching students to develop hierarchies of credibility that are essential for navigating and conducting research on the Internet.
  • Wikipedia's objective is to become a compendium of published knowledge about notable subjects.
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