Bulletproof School Uniforms and Whiteboards for Schools
Vor ein paar Monaten bloggte ich über eine Firma, die nach dem Amoklauf in Newtown kugelsichere Rucksäcke mit Disney-Prinzessinnen und Avengers herstellte. Ist anscheinend kein Einzelfall: Eine kolumbianische Firma schneidert kugelsichere Schuluniformen für die USA (Video oben), während man dort bereits ein paar Schulen mit kugelsicheren Whiteboards ausstattet. Fuck yeah, America!
Bulletproof whiteboards are being introduced in some US schools in what is being seen as adding a last-resort layer of safety for teachers and students against shootings. The schools include one where there was an attack a decade ago in which two students were killed.
The 18-by-20in (46-51cms) boards use a material apparently stronger than police-issue bulletproof vests and can be used as a shield in an emergency. Among the places where they are being installed is the Rocori School District in Minnesota which has acquired nearly 200 of them.
Bulletproof Whiteboards: Schools Get ‘Shields’ (via Arbroath)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Bullet-Proof Disney Princess-Backpack for Kids
Kids Hackathon in Berlin:
„HacKIDemia, OpenTechSchool and Toywheel are bringing the hackathon format of working together on technology in interactive workshops to the world of Kids in Berlin with their first Kids Hackathon on Sunday, April 28th 2013.“
Kafkas Metamorphosis transformed thru Youtube Auto-Transcription, reveals Ghost in the Machine
Youtube Direktmorph, via MeFi
Ich liebe das hier: Sean Roberts hat ein Video mit einer Lesung des Anfangs von Kafkas „Metamorphosis“ auf Youtube hochgeladen und durch deren Auto-Transkription gejagt. Das hat er wieder gelesen, hochgeladen und transkribieren lassen. Im Video oben liest er die 1., 2., 5. und 10. Iteration.
Spannend: Man erkennt ein Sprach-Muster, nachdem der YT-Algorithmus die Sprache seinen eigenen „Lern“-Bedürfnissen anpasst. Die Anzahl der Worte nimmt insgesamt ab, die Anzahl einmalig verwendeter Worte nimmt zu, ebenso die Wort-Länge. Gleichzeitig verringert sich die Fehler-Quote, der YT-Algorithmus „lernt“: Ghost in the Machine. Grandios!
this process of iterated learning results in a text which has longer words and more unique words, but at the same time is also more compressible and less prone to error in transmission. In a sense, the texts have become more expressive and more learnable, just like in the human iterated learning experiments.
Of course, it’s increasingly difficult for us humans to make sense of the text, but the process does not include a pressure to maintain semantic meaning. The text has adapted to the constraints of the bottleneck imposed by the YouTube transcription. We can say that the YouTube transcription algorithm has a bias for longer words, fewer total words and better compression.
World of Classcraft: Gamified Education
Shawn Young, ein Lehrer aus Quebec, hat ein Konzept für ‘ne gamifizierte Schulklasse online gestellt, die Bildung als Rollenspiel nach dem Vorbild von World of Warcraft spielbar macht. Fürs Zuspätkommen oder vergessene Hausaufgaben büsst man Healthpoints ein, Experience gewinnt man durch soziales Verhalten oder das Finden von Fehlern in Schulmaterialien. Ich bin bei Gamification eher skeptisch, aber das hier finde ich toll!
World of Classcraft is an educational augmented-reality multiplayer role-playing game. Played in the classroom, students play as one of three classes, gaining awesome powers, while risking a terrible death. […]
Our experience show that students are very motivated (including girls) to perform in the game. The motivation to gain real life powers, the randomness of the events and the risk involved in avoiding death are all factors that make the game motivating. To our knowledge, World of Classcraft, is the the only example of gamification in education to completely transform the classroom into a large-scale game. Moreover, World of Classcraft is subject-agnostic, in the sense that it can be played in any subject. Another advantage of World of Classcraft is that it can be implemented without all the students having to play; students who don’t want to play (something like 10%, generally) don’t have to.
Homosexuality will make a Race of Super-Ducks
Man macht ja keine Witze über kleine Mädchen, aber man darf Witze über „Homeschooling“ machen, wenn dabei sowas wie das da oben rauskommt. Wenn Schwulsein eine Rasse von Super-Enten hervorbringt, dann werde ich mit sofortiger Wirklung ultraschwul. Superduckies FTW!
Homosexuality will lead to race of super-ducks, claims homeschooler in local newspaper (via Hacker News)
[update] Großartig: Die annotierte Version auf Scienceblogs.com:
Homosexuality, including same sex marriage, is not an enlightened idea [But tolerance and acceptance of diversity are]. The Romans practiced homosexuality [Every culture has had homosexual individuals; they differ only in the degree of suppression. The Romans actually regarded homosexuals as effete and inferior, and used accusations of gayness as expressions of contempt, just like modern middle schoolers]. Surely, after 2000 years, our level of intelligence should have evolved somewhat, so that we can truly pride ourselves of being cleverer than our forebears [Two millennia is actually a short span of time for biological evolution. Also, have you ever heard of the Dark Ages? Progress is not inevitable].
If homosexuality spreads, it can cause human evolution to come to a standstill [Nope. Homosexuals reproduce. Homosexuality refers to behavior and social preferences, not to biological limitations. Also, many heterosexuals choose to not reproduce as well, and it does not stop evolution in its tracks — in complex social organisms like ours, there are many ways to contribute to the species that don't involve breeding directly]. It could threaten the human position on the evolutionary ladder [There is no evolutionary "ladder". You have some serious misconceptions about biology, young lady!], and say, ducks, could take over the world [Evolution is not about taking over the world. There is no pinnacle. Every species has a different niche, not a different spot in a hierarchy of dominance]. Ducks always nest in pairs [This is called the naturalistic fallacy. You cannot draw conclusions from how one species behaves and declare that it justifies one specific kind of behavior in another species. I could point to gorillas, and announce that we should live in polygamous harems; I could point to bonobos and say that public homosexual acts ought to be accepted as a matter of course, and that we ought to have casual sex as often as we say hello. If you'd like, I could give you a long list of very kinky sexual behaviors practiced by various species on the planet; shall we decide that because ducks rape, so should we, lest we fall behind evolutionarily?] and if we allow same-sex marriage, then the ducks will have evolved further than we have [Ducks are just as "evolved" as we are, and we're not more evolved than any other species on the planet. Evolution is about branching trees, not climbing ladders]. We will be in danger of all being equal, with ducks more equal than us [That makes no sense].
We should learn from history and not be stuck with copying ancient behavior [Are you, by any chance, a follower of Jesus or Mohammed? Because you know, those faiths are all about imposing ancient rules for behavior on modern society]. The government has no right to bring us back to the stone age [But the Middle Ages are OK, I suppose?]. I don’t want my children to have to compete with ducks [Wait. I'm trying to puzzle this out. Because you think ducks are all heterosexual, and your children will all be heterosexual (brace yourself, you might get a few surprises in 10 or 20 years there), and a policy of tolerance will turn every other human being homosexual, you're afraid your kids will be competing for mates with ducks? Or is it that duck heterosexuality is the only criterion that makes them acceptable for positions of power, so years from now, your children will find themselves in a workplace dominated by duck bosses, who have overcome the handicap of lack of manipulatory appendages and very small brains to be in charge of everything? I don't get it]. I want them to evolve further than I have [But you don't believe in evolution!]. Any self-respecting human would aim for that, too. [Are you aware that the Abrahamic faiths all preach that humanity is in a state of ineluctable decay since the Fall and that human sin corrupts us? I don't think any self-respecting human should be a Christian or a Jew or Muslim, for the same reason]
None of this really bears any weight for be, because I do not believe in evolution [You don't understand it, either]. However, the powers that be believe in evolution, and have made many decisions based on it. They should be consistent: if you believe in evolution, then you can’t be in favour of homosexuality [If you accept evolution, then you recognize that there are diverse successful sexual strategies in the world, and you also have a deeper appreciation of the complexity of biology, so no, you should be much more accepting of reality], or the ducks will get you in the end [You can live your life in fear of ducks, or you can love your fellow human beings and encourage more love in the world. Your choice].
Jasmin H, aged 14 [You have time to grow up!]
Homeschooled [Obviously], Scargill
School-Posters from India
Tolle Sammlung von Postern aus Schulen in Indien auf Imgur (via MeFi), stellenweise ein bisschen bizarr, wie man an der Struwwelpeter-Variante oben sieht: „Many of the posters are from the Indian Book Depot, which was established in 1936 in Lahore, and is now located in Delhi’s Sadar Bazaar. A few are from other publishers such as Sriram, Madurai.“ Ich hab’ die Sammlung mal komplett bei Flickr hochgeladen, nach dem Klick ein paar meiner Favorites.
Nazi-Rock auf der Schulabschlussfeier (Update)
Ich habe mich grade erst in das Thema eingelesen und mir sind dabei zwei Äderchen im linken Auge geplatzt. Im Video auf Vimeo (falls das runtergenommen wird, ich hab’ ne lokale Kopie gezogen) sieht man einen Auftritt der Schulband der Realschule Kirchberg die auf der Aschlussfeier einer 10. Klasse einen Song von Marco Laszcz alias Sleipnir spielen. Sleipnir ist ‘ne Nazi-Band und war auf einigen der NPD-Schulhof-CDs vertreten. Aus „Protest“ haben [edit: laut YT-Kommtar] einige Lehrer den Saal verlassen, die Aufführung war also [edit: anscheinend] bekannt und geplant und wurde von der Schule geduldet. Eine genau Zusammenfassung mit allen Details steht auf Meet in Montauk: Wenn alle mitsingen … – Rechtsrock auf Abschlussfeier. Für eine Bildungseinrichtung ist das ein Skandal.
Es ist eines, ob sich Schüler, vielleicht sogar eine Mehrheit der Schüler, für einen solchen Song auf ihrer Abschlussfeier entscheiden. „Jugendliche Naivität“ (Statement der Stadt Kirchberg) nehme ich denen sogar ab, es gibt halt auch jugendlich naive Arschlöcher. Schlimm genug. Es ist allerdings etwas völlig anderes, als Schule eine solche Aufführung zu dulden. Damit macht man sich die Ansichten und Botschaften der Nazi-Band zu eigen, das ist praktisch eine öffentliche Aussage in Form eines Songs – auch wenn der „nur“ toleriert wird. Das ist für ‘ne Schule indiskutabel.
Die Bildungseinrichtung, die sich bislang zum Thema ausschweigt (!) hat nun nur zwei Optionen: Ein Statement als Entschuldigung und Einräumung eines Fehlers, sowie ein paar Tadel und Verweise, wie man das eben macht. Oder: Ein Statement, dass aussagt, dass man den Song eines Nazis bei den öffentlichen Veranstaltungen auch in Zukunft aufführen wird, aus Gründen der Toleranz und der Meinungsfreiheit. Und da die Stadt und die Politik eine solche Schule nicht dulden könnte, müsste sie geschlossen werden, was natürlich das Problem nicht löst. Aber: Es wäre das einzig richtige Statement.
Wir als Gesellschaft dulden keinerlei Nazi-Aufführungen auf öffentlichen Veranstaltungen von staatlichen Einrichtungen. Punkt.
[update] Statement der Schulleitung auf spOnline:
Der [stellvertretender Schulleiter der KGS] war dabei, als die Schüler das Lied der Nazi-Band sangen, und erinnert sich nicht daran, dass Lehrer aus Protest den Raum verlassen hätten. “Es gab während der Feier keine Diskussionen darüber”, sagte Stoffel SPIEGEL ONLINE. Auch seien ihm persönlich weder das Lied noch die Band Sleipnir bislang bekannt gewesen. Man werde prüfen, wer für den Vorfall verantwortlich ist und versuchen, mit den für die Band verantwortlichen ehemaligen Schülern Kontakt aufzunehmen.
Vizeschulleiter Stoffel betont, die KGS Kirchberg habe bisher keine Probleme mit rechtsextremen Tendenzen unter Schüler gehabt. “Unsere Schule ist vehement gegen rechts, pflegt seit Jahren vielfältige Kontakte zu Partnerschulen im Ausland.”
Fuck Off-Lessons for UK Students
Toller Unterrichtsstoff für 12jährige Schüler einer englischen Schule, die Beschimpfungen nach ihrem Unterhaltungswert Beleidigungs-Wert einstufen sollten. Regen sich jetzt natürlich ein paar Hypokraten drüber auf, ich find’s aber tatsächlich okay.
A school has sparked fury by teaching children as young as 11 highly offensive swear words. Pupils were handed out worksheets asking whether they thought bad language, including the word c*** was appropriate or not. Angry dad Lawrence Sparks said he was “disgusted” when daughter Lauren, 12, brought the paper home.
The 52-year-old added: “It is teaching kids bad language to me. “When they have sex education lessons they ask the parents whether they want their children involved and this should be the same.
That’ll teach you to swear: Pupils aged 11 given lessons in four-letter words (via Arbroath)
Gregory Euclides Wiped Away-Paintings
Gregory Euclide macht Kunst und lehrt an einer High School und während der Mittagspause hat er in 25 Minuten ein bisschen Kunst an Whiteboards gemalt, die er anschließend wieder wegwischte. Aus einem Interview mit mnoriginal:
MNO: These projects were presumably all washed away – what appealed to you about creating a completely impermanent work?
GE: I could make them in 25 minutes, so they were not too incredibly precious to me. Yes, they were all washed away. I was kind of showing students what could be done with 25 minutes of time. They would come in from the previous day and be like… “what happened to that drawing that was up there yesterday?” I would explain that I washed it off and they would just be floored that someone would make something and then destroy it.
Chinese Intravene Exams
Im chinesischen Internetz gehen grade Bilder dieses Klassenzimmers rum, in dem grade ‘ne Arbeit geschrieben wird und in dem Infusionsbeutel von der Decke hängen. Laut einem Herrn Xia, dem “director of Office of Academic Affairs”, werden die Schüler intravenös mit Aminosäuren versorgt. Dystopian Future has arrived, willkommen in der Matrix.
Mr. Xia, director of Office of Academic Affairs, said that what is delivered to the students intravenously is nothing but amino acids to restore their health.
“The state grants a 10-yuan subsidy for amino acids to each graduating senior that will participate in the gao kao (National College Entrance Exam). Any student that feels not well can go to the infirmary and take amino acids on the IV drip,” Mr. Xia explained. He said that some students had been below par recently due to the sudden weather changes in the city of Xiaogan, and the school infirmary had been packed with students. In order to spare students the trouble of running back and forth between the infirmary and the classroom and save their time, the school decided to arrange IV drip sessions right in the classroom.
[...] 成虫爬啊爬：There is one thing more refreshing than amino acids. It’s called cocaine. Fight, dear students! Our motherland’s tomorrow depends on you with IV drip dispensing bottles and syringes!
Photo: An entire class of high school students receive IV drips while cramming for exams (via Boing Boing)
School sans Rules from 1962
YT Direktschool, via Dangerous Minds
Schöner Clip über die antiauthoritäre Burgess Hill School bei London von 1962. Die Kids tun mir tatsächlich ziemlich leid, weil sie nichts haben, wogegen sie wirklich rebellieren könnten und wahrscheinlich wurden aus all denen Bürokraten und Betriebswirtschaftler. Arme Schweine. Aus einem alten Artikel vom Time Magazine:
At Burgess Hill School near London, two seven-year-olds strolled into the recreation room. “Got a match?” asked one. “Sure,” said the other. The boys were puffing away, when suddenly the headmaster appeared. “Hi, Jimmy,” they said with friendly smiles. Waving back with kind disinterest, James East, M.A. (Cantab.), explained to a visitor: “Kids always smoke, and I’d rather know about it than have it done in secret.”
Burgess Hill is the tight little isle’s loosest “freedom” (progressive) school. Shunning all rules, it allows boys and girls aged 7 to 17 to smoke, swear, pet, go barefoot, stay dirty.
Ph.D. in Comics-Form
Nick Sousanis – dessen erstes Wort „Batman“ war, wenn er das nicht erfunden hat – darf seine Doktorarbeit in Comic-Form abgeben. Der Mann macht seinen Doktor über Bildung und Philosophie und seine Dissertation handelt vom Einsatz visueller Medien im Unterricht, was natürlich perfekten Sinn ergibt.
I am doing my dissertation entirely in comics form! And we do think it’s a first. As I said above, I came to Teachers College with the idea that I would be doing my work in educational form. However, over this process, what started out as using comics for their accessible nature has evolved into a broader idea about the medium as an important vehicle/tool for thinking and representing thought.
In part I’m arguing about the educational importance of thinking through more than just the verbal – specifically, obviously, I address visual thinking in a visual medium. And in this way, my form can match my content, walk the talk as it were. As I think more about comics through making them, researching on them, and now teaching them, I see their capacities for multi-layered, tangential, and multimodal narratives as truly unique and distinct from other media. An important concept I’ve been playing with recently is that comics in many ways mirror “the shape of our thoughts” in ways that a lined sheet of paper is quite limited in representing or facilitating. I think an education that embraces the multiple ways we think and that our ideas take shape is one that allows students to more fully explore the possibilities for expression and opens pathways for them to find their own way. Comics and visual thinking more generally, I believe, are an important piece of that.
Interview auf Diamond Bookshelf: A Comics Dissertation, hier sein Blog mit jeder Menge Beispiele in den Links dort, hier ein PDF mit dem Comic zu einem Vortrag zum Thema (via MeFi)
Real Life Fallout Boy
PopSci hat einen sehr unterhaltsamen Artikel über Taylor Wilson, ‘nem hochbegabten Schüler mit ner starken Neigung zu chemie und Radioaktivität, der in der Garage zuhause ein Nuklear-Labor eingerichtet hat. So ein bisschen wie Fallout Boy, der Sidekick aus dem Simpsons-Comic Radioactive Man.
Soon Taylor was getting into more esoteric “naughties”—radium quack cures, depleted uranium, radio-luminescent materials—and collecting mysterious machines, such as the mass spectrometer given to him by a former astronaut in Houston. As visions of Chernobyl haunted his parents, Taylor tried to reassure them. “I’m the responsible radioactive boy scout,” he told them. “I know what I’m doing.”
One afternoon, Tiffany ducked her head out of the door to the garage and spotted Taylor, in his canary yellow nuclear-technician’s coveralls, watching a pool of liquid spreading across the concrete floor. “Tay, it’s time for supper.”
“I think I’m going to have to clean this up first.”
“That’s not the stuff you said would kill us if it broke open, is it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not instantly.”
Space Travel Supply Store
Die Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company verkauft Globen vom Mars, Karten vom bekannten Universum, elektrische Gehirnstimulatoren, Chaos in Dosen, noch viel mehr und ich finde das alles sehr grandios. Und zwar weil, auch wenn die Produkte gut gestalteter Fakeschnickschnack sind, der Shop ist Geldbeschaffer einer Schreib- und Leseschule in Seattle und das ganze basiert auf einer Idee von Dave Eggers, der vor drölf Jahren einen Shop für Piraten eröffnete, der eigentlich eine Schule war, die in den hinteren Räumen des Shops stattfand, hier sein TED Talk von 2008. Leider liefern die ihr Astronautenfutter nur in die USA. Schade.
Why God never received Tenure at the University
Reddit-User Darthfedors Statistik-Prof hat aufgeschrieben, warum Gott ziemlich lausig an der Uni war und nie einen akademischen Grad erhalten hat:
1. Because he had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no cited references.
4. And it wasn’t published in a refereed journal or even submitted for peer review.
5. And some even doubt he wrote it himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world but what has he done since?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate his results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry, he tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
11. When subjects didn’t behave as predicted, he often punished them, or just deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. He had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
