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POPSWaiting To Find Someone Else "Even when she lived in Afghanistan, she did not wear a burka as her mother and sisters do. When she was 12, she said, she broke a cultural taboo by sitting with Afghan men to talk politics, encouraged by her father. She then raised $8,000 in a single night, selling home-cooked Afghan meals to American donors. She used the money to create the 100 Mothers Literacy Program to help educate women in her village. At first, there was resistance in Afghanistan, she said -- from village elders and the women themselves. The women said they were too old to learn and preferred that the money be used to build toilets. She said she feared Taliban insurgents or sympathizers would retaliate against them for teaching women -- considered apostasy by some Afghans. "My dad is one of the best dads ever," she said. "If he was a mean dad, it wouldn't be so hard to say no to him."
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POPSEnglish Lanugage quizzes in my experience, even some native speakers would do well to take some of these quizzes to raise their awareness for the English language! great collection - generally a useful site for English language teaching and learning. loads more at source.
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POPSWhat do teachers make?
I make them apologize and mean it. I make them have Respect and take responsibility for their actions. I teach them to write and then I make them write. Keyboarding isn't everything. I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math. They use their God given brain, not the man-made calculator. I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to know about English while preserving their unique cultural identity. I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe. I make my students stand, placing their hand over their heart to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, One Nation Under God, because we live in the United States of America. Finally, I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life. (Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.) 'Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing money isn't everything, I can hold
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POPSMachines will revolutionize education These education machines will also become the home of future artificial intelligence that will complement the teacher’s ability, guiding students through course work, supplementing the teacher’s knowledge and answering simple queries to liberate teachers to concentrate on individuals without the rest of the class sitting idle. To a larger degree than ever before, students will explore information and educate themselves, calling on teachers when they need extra help or special insight. Computers have infinite patience and time and can easily adapt to the skill and knowledge level of individual children without making them feel backward. Children will fearlessly ask questions of a computer that they wouldn’t dare ask in front of their classmates.
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POPSDid Petraeus contribute to US Colonel's Suicide?
In a March 2005 e-mail, Petraeus told Westhusing that he had “already exceeded the very lofty expectations that all had for you.” His e-mails became less frequent and more ominous. He began having increasingly contentious conflicts with the contractors from USIS. There were ongoing problems with USIS’s expenses, and Westhusing was forced to deal with allegations that USIS had seen or participated in the killing of Iraqis. He received an anonymous letter claiming USIS was cheating the military at every opportunity, that several hundred weapons assigned to the counter-terrorism training program had disappeared, and that a number of radios, each of which cost $4,000, had also disappeared. The letter concluded that USIS was “not providing what you are paying for” and that the entire training operation was “a total failure.” Westhusing was devastated. Even if the charges were accurate, there was little that could be done. Iraq had no functioning judicial system, and there were questi
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POPSBack to Plain English?
Nor is this simply about a neglect of certain types of traditional academic learning. Equally overlooked is the value of practical, hands-on learning or of creativity. Yes, we are about to get new Diplomas in vocation subjects such as engineering, IT, Creative and Media and Health and Beauty. But the government does not describe these as vocational qualifications but prefers to describe them as "academic" qualifications and to stress their A-level equivalence. This may make practical sense in the face of British snobbery towards non-academic qualifications. But it also suggests a lack of confidence in the value of practical education. Professor Pring pointed out, one of the problems with the GNVQs - and a future risk for Diplomas - is that in an attempt to achieve parity with GCSEs and A-levels, students were assessed not so much on what they could ‘do’ but how well they could write about and analyse their ‘doing’. The speaker was Professor Richard Pring, of Oxford University.
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POPSStudent Arrested for Thinking Violent Thoughts
Allen Lee, an 18 year old straight "A" student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested for thinking violent thoughts and charged with two counts of disorderly conduct. Lee's senior English teacher, after reading what Lee wrote in response to a "Free Writing" assignment was disturbed enough to report the incident to the school's principal. The school then notified the Cary police and the decision was made to arrest Lee. In America we do not criminalize thinking. What is criminalized is action. One can think all kinds of evil thoughts so long as one does not act on those thoughts there is no crime. In America we do not arrest authors for writing violent passages, for writing bad poetry, for writing propaganda or any other authorial endeavor. There is no Gestapo, KGB, SS, or Secret Police; no thought police and no book burners. As a teacher of writing and author of a book on teaching writing, I understand the "Free Writing" assignment and advocate two versions of the practice
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POPS Kosovo lives: Between two worlds An interesting story of an English teacher....it is very difficult for outsiders to fathom what (caste/religion notwithstanding) people in the region have been through...
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POPSThis is how Grandpa was traind to kill Nazis/Imperial Japanese More "How Grandpa Learned to Kill" video: Kill Or Be Killed . Grappling is for sports & competition. Soldiers are supposed to Kill The Enemy . Currently, we're training our soldiers to grapple. The fad for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu/grappling has swept military combatives recently. Some active duty service-members think this is a bad idea. They think we are teaching our soldiers how to die rather than kill.
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POPSMuslim teaching assistant gets suspended over veil issue Ms Azmi also told Today that her students - who were 11-year-olds and had "very good English" - had "never complained" that they found it difficult when she was wearing a veil. She insisted she could continue to carry out her duties "perfectly well" wearing the garment.
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POPSWhen Words Fail Thoughts on the importance of being able to communicate effectively with words, and how society can work to prevent violence that results when people haven't been taught to solve conflict with words.
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POPSPhyllis Schlafly: English Dept. to blame for Virginia Tech massacre Phyllis Schlafly does one of those scans through the English department website at Virginia Tech, lists the weirdest stuff she can find, and then asks why we permit this kind of newfangled nonsense to be taught in our schools. Pretty standard stuff, but especially poisonous in the wake of the shootings, which, incredibly, she seems to want to blame on the professors and the readings. Via Right Wing Watch (http://snurl.com/1k9s7)
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POPS1759: From the Warpath to the Plains of Abraham From the teaching guide: "The National Battlefields Commission, in collaboration with the Virtual Museum of Canada, is presenting 1759: From the Warpath to the Plains of Abraham, a new recreational/instructional virtual reality challenge. This exciting interactive adventure sends out net surfers to the year 1759 to let them relive, alongside the French, British, Canadians and Amerindians, the ups and downs of a fight to the finish for the conquest of America, an outstanding episode of the country’s military history. " This is a remarkable and fun way to learn some very important history pertaining to Canada, France, England, and the Amerindians, during a time when the French and British battled for control of America. Explore the site in either English or French!
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POPSWhat Do They Have In Common? They mark a difference....A teacher too different from most today's teachers and a violinist successfully merges two musical genres...hip-hop and classical...Both difficult...Don't you think?
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POPSGreat Tips on Teaching PPT We are in our ppt unit and we have been reworking it every year. Our team leader sent this article over and I thought I would share it. It's great! Hopefully, I will be able to convey this to my students. I'll keep you posted.
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POPSHorray! Nawal el Saadawi Returns to Egypt I haven't seen any of her books at Al Diwan Bookstore since I've returned to Egypt. She is no fan of Pres. Barack Obama. “I’m against the capitalist, patriarchal, racist system that is ruling America and Europe, and is ruling us also, but that doesn’t mean I’m a communist. I’m a critic of the communist thought as well as all religions, as nothing is holy for me, Dr el Saadawi said. Sheikh Youssef el Badri, a radical cleric in Egypt, said that a law office was considering how to pursue Dr el Saadawi legally, now that she is back. “I have to chase her legally because she transgressed God in her books and interviews ... She has insulted Islam, the religion of one-third of the world’s population. “People like her, who are attacking religion, will encourage other people to become daring on God and Islam. We are not trying to take revenge, we’re hoping to lead her back to the right path.".
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POPSWriting in the Digital Age This is a guest post by Alex Reid for the On the Horizon series on distributed learning environments. Alex is an Associate Professor of English and Professional Writing at the State University of New York, College at Cortland. His research focuses on issues of rhetoric, composition, and pedagogy in media networks and emerging media technologies. His recent book, The Two Virtuals: New Media and Composition (Parlor Press, 2007), received honorable mention for the W. Ross Winterowd Award for best book in composition theory in 2007.
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POPSIs English that important China is probably one of the few countries in the world where learning English has almost become a national obsession. However, most people cost much but gain little. Our teaching and test systems have deviated from the initial purpose of English learning in that it teaches and encourages elite English instead of practical one. Beneficiaries are limited to those who intend to study overseas. Yet, to the millions who have little use of the language, it is a great waste of time, energy and resources. What's more outrageous is that the importance of English skills has been exaggerated to the extent that it overweighs almost everything in assessing a person's competency. Learning a language is, in a sense, a study of the culture on which the language is based. In that light, we should put more emphasis on learning Chinese than on English.We're losing somthing traditional and basal.
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POPSChallenges facing K-12 science education A state college is going to set them back about $20,000 per year; a private college is going to be double that, easily. Yet here come these poorly prepared kids who are going to be paying all that money for instruction in basic algebra, remedial English, and with heads full of unscientific garbage that we need to spend a year draining. It's such a waste of time and effort on our part and theirs, and these students are going to struggle and suffer and in many cases fail. Every time a school levy fails, every time some anti-education bozo gets elected to the school board, I want to grab the parents responsible and explain to them that that decision is going to personally cost them tens of thousands of dollars when they send their son or daughter off to a college to teach them the stuff they should have learned in 10th grade - PZ
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