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ICT and education news

Facebook

We know we are the product and we can stop using it if we really want to. Would we be willing to pay for added privacy options? Zuckerberg believes that regulation of Facebook is ‘inevitable’. In the meantime, why not try confusing Facebook by making posts with random words added and also liking weird things eg. We loved our holiday at Merimbula slipper spaceship oxygen teeth. Did Zuckerberg apologise enough? Some say his apology was just like saying “Sh*t happens”….and his own data was in fact shared in the current controversy.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-04-12/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-congress-regulation-inevitable/9636536

https://bit.ly/2IMf5jo

It’s 2021 and Facebook is banned: here’s how you’ll survive:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-07/how-to-survive-in-the-post-facebook-world/9626762

 

Do later school start times improve learning?

17 studies in the US and other countries examined academic outcomes, amount and quality of sleep, mental health indicators, attendance and student alertness and found starting the school day later could benefit students both academically and psychosocially. Most of the studies found that delaying a school’s start time resulted in students getting more sleep. One study found ‘significant positive associations between later start times and student maths scores and reading scores’. At Alice Miller School in Macedon, Victoria, school begins at 10am and ends at 4.30pm. Most students and staff like the late start.

https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/do-later-school-start-times-improve-learning?utm_source=CM&utm_medium=bulletin&utm_content=April10

 

Teacher quality the priority for parents

The Global Parents’ Survey 2018 asked nearly 30 000 parents in 29 countries for their views. Parents in Australia say teacher quality is the most important factor when choosing a school for their child, and if their school had extra cash the majority would choose to spend it on more teachers or better pay for existing teachers, followed by more support staff. These factors were also important to Australian parents:  location or distance from home; a happy environment for children at the school; school ethos; academic record/exam results of the school and the quality of facilities. Australian parents were optimistic about the future – 68% said schooling is preparing them well for 2030 and beyond.

https://www.teachermagazine.com.au/articles/teacher-quality-the-priority-for-parents

 

Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg in Australia

The acclaimed Finnish educator and reformer is now Professor of Education Policy at UNSW Gonski Institute for Education. Sahlberg helped implement elements of the Finnish education system, which has fewer teaching hours, no standardised tests and an emphasis on outdoor play. Formal schooling begins at age 7 and is grounded on equity, with no ability streaming, and all schools are publicly funded. Children with special needs are identified as soon as they start school and far more Finnish children receive special support than in Australia or any other country. Teachers are better prepared to deal with socially mixed classrooms and schools create learning environments and curriculum. Sahlberg hopes to investigate how to enhance equity in education in rural and remote Australia, as he believes Australia has a good education system, but lacks equity.

Interview: https://view.joomag.com/education-review-issue-2-march-2018/0853889001521066927?short

 

9 lessons from brain science

Melina Uncapher is head of the Institute for Applied Neuroscience at UCSF. There are 3 stages of learning – encoding, storage and retrieval. These 9 lessons are based on brain science research – and they are mostly things we already knew by instinct and experience:

  1. Paying undivided attention helps encode new learning into a stronger memory, making information meaningful and relevant.
  2. Making learning socially or self-relevant helps boost the signal and encodes a stronger memory.
  3. Learning at the edge of mastery provides challenge and boosts encoding.
  4. Sleep helps storage- it solidifies and consolidates memory.
  5. Blue light from our screens interferes with sleep. Avoid reading on a screen before bed.
  6. Aerobic exercise can make the brain more plastic and ready to learn.
  7. Stress and adversity can hinder the expression of executive function.
  8. Practice brings knowledge out of long-term memory, and reshapes and restores it.
  9. Activities that build agency (factors under learner control) boosts attention.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2018/04/06/nine-lessons-from-brain-science-from-dr-melina-uncapher/#146b4cb91c66

 

Categories
films literature popular culture TV

Female-focused Shakespeare series for ABC

Margot Robbie to produce female-focused Shakespeare series for ABC

Robbie’s production company has partnered with the ABC and others to create a 10 episode series that will tackle the works of Shakespeare from a female perspective. The themes of various Shakespearean works will be used to create episodes set in current times or the future, updated to comment upon our society. The project will share diverse points of view, from writers representing different cultures and areas within Australia. The goal is for the production and creative teams to also be predominantly female. Filming begins late 2018.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/mar/23/margot-robbie-to-bring-female-focused-shakespeare-to-abc

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/margot-robbie-throws-star-power-behind-new-australian-tv-series-20180323-p4z5z1.html

 

Rethinking Shakespeare’s women

‘Find a Shakespearean woman who is clever, strong and powerful and inevitably she will end up mad, silenced or dead. Even when she is shown to have integrity, more often than not she is killed off by the final act. ’ (Kean). The new ABC series will be a challenge, considering the characters and what happens to them in the plays. Some say Shakespeare wrote no soliloquies of note for women and that he relied on 7 stock female characters – from bawdy women to  witty unmarriageable women to tragic faithful lovers.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/27/margot-robbie-shakespeare-women-characters-tv-series

 

Shakespeare and gender: the ‘woman’s part’

Although boys played female roles in early performances of Shakespeare, women have been performing female roles in Shakespearean plays since 1660, when Anne Marshall played Desdemona from Othello. Other female performers were also on stage during Shakespearean times.

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-gender-the-womans-part

 

Shakespeare’s evolving attitudes towards women

Shakespeare’s views of women changed over time – he didn’t understand them at the beginning of his career.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32379759

 

Good resources for studying Shakespeare

Includes No fear Shakespeare; Shakespeare’s summaries; Shakespeare: the app; Lectures on Shakespeare; The playwright game; Interactive folios.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-13-informative-resources-studying-shakespeare/