Being given relief classes can just about trip your day up - unless you've got a good story. And the last week I've been telling the same story for the kids I with whom I have to co-exist for 40 minutes. It goes like this:
My grandma was in Singapore when the Japs invaded in WWII. Singapore, being as about defensible as a sausage counter in the presence of starving kids, was falling and so the civilians fled to Australia on three ships (there were probably more ships which left the harbour but the way I recall the story being told, only three made any meaningful progress).
So, there we have it: Three passenger ships, one of them carrying my grandma and grandpa, racing to the Land Down Under, being pursued by battleships and fighter planes from the Land Rising-Sun.
Three ships. Speeding for safety. Don't even think about taking no pit-stop. Three ships - my grandparents are on the ship in the center. The fighters were coming. Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-KAK! BAM! The left ship goes down.
Now it's two ships fleeing Tojo's death-machines. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-TAK! BOOM! The right ship goes down.
(At this point my students are on the frickin' edge and, frankly, so am I...)
Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ka-ka-ka-ka-BAM!! The center ship surges onwards withstanding the onslaught. Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-BARM!!
The ship arrives safely in Australia where American-revived defenses repel the pursuers. My grandparents make it. And it is in Australia that my aunt is born.
Needless to say, there was EVERY chance that my grandparents could've gone on any one of the other two ships. They could've been shoved left/right. They could've gotten the tickets at the wrong time or just assigned to a different boat.
(And there goes the school bell. Let's tell it to another class...)
Of especially high importance --- if not the highest importance --- would be the ability to scrutinize sources for their depth of research, their reliability, and an overall sense of fairness. Is the source biased, or foolish? Is the medium used for academic dialogue or as a bully pulpit? --- Benjamin Baxter (http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/)
How to include others' ideas in one's own work (without just hitting copy and paste, and then hoping your teacher / professor doesn't know how to use Google, as many students do). Good research is using a variety of sources selectively to support your own purposes, while giving credit to the original sources. This is a skill that needs to be taught.
Students require the ability to annotate web pages and draw information together from many sources (using the likes of Diigo, Fleck, Zotero, or whatever new applications arise). They also need to be able to skim quickly through a vast array of sites, in order to select only the most relevant information.
So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.
"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.
"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.
This song sorta 'kept me going' when I was working in Singapore many years back...away from home, unsure of my vocational coordinates, unfulfilled, wrecked by the late hours.
Seth Godin with 9 tips on how to write like a blogger. His no.2 cuts straight to the point:
Realize that people have choices. With 80 million other blogs to choose from, I know you could leave at any moment (see, there goes someone now). So that makes blog writing shorter and faster and more exciting.
Thinking out loud, what if we were to replace the word 'blog' with 'sermon'?
"As Paul Virilio in one of his more enigmatic, but highly insightful, quips tell us: “The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.”
"At we approach the speed of light time condenses and space contorts. Globalization yields an instantaneity of both communications and relationships, a transcendence of the simply cultural and the merely social...In the postmodern cosmopolis relationships are radically “deterritorialized” (Deleuze). Postmodern Christianity is the “radical relationality” that the postmodern cosmopolis makes possible."
Lisa Gates lists 29 fulfilment-sapping responses in dire need of being wiped off our vocabulary. Of them all, the only I'd propose not eliminating is no.6 as I believe 'having a baby' isn't a "Just Do It" decision.
But as for (most of) the rest, hmm, sound familiar?
1. I don’t have the time. 2. Everything on my to-do list is important and essential. 3. I can’t quit. If I do, everything will fall apart. 4. If I take time off, I’ll lose my game. 5. Nobody will hire me, I’m too old. 6. You’re supposed to get married and then have the baby. 7. Get your diploma, go to college, get a master’s, get married, get a career, have a family, grow old, die. 8. I need an MFA to get published. 9. Art is good, but if you want to make a living, you have to get a real job. 10. I am a complete loser without my [to-do list] [blackberry] [iphone] [rolodex]. 11. You’re a loser if you use a rolodex. 12. I can’t delete all those emails. 13. You have to get a telephone. Everyone has a telephone. 14. Nobody will respect me if I don’t have a Ph.D. 15. I have to know how it ends before I begin. 16. You have to start at the bottom if you want to get to the top. 17. A black man can never be president. 18. My vote doesn’t count. 19. Women over 50 should not have long hair. 20. I’m not creative. 21. Investing is pointless as my age; I should have started years ago. 22. It’s all my mother’s fault. 23. It’s all your mother’s fault. 24. I don’t have any choice. 25. If I don’t make it by 30, I never will. 26. If you’re an artist, you need a career to fall back on. 27. Finding love is just not in the cards for me. 28. I’d rather travel, but I have to get a degree first. 29. There’s nothing I can do about it (the all-time favorite).
These are real pictures - of lenticular clouds. They usually formed in high-altitudes (how's that for a no-brainer? *grin*)...aren't they simply breath-taking?
