Posts by Yamis
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Ross Mason,
Reminds me of the preachers who get their own TV shows, or form break away churches.
-
Hard News: Higgs Live!, in reply to Steve Parks,
Sorry to be pedantic, but the correct spelling is Higgs boson. Capital ‘H’ for the ‘Higgs’ of Peter Higgs, one of the first to suggest its existence. Small ‘b’ for boson, which is just a type of particle.
Don't tell the Indians that. Boson is named after Satyendra Nath Bose.
http://io9.com/5890884/10-weird-stories-about-the-higgs-boson
6. The term "boson" comes from the name of Indian physicist and mathematician Satyendra Nath Bose
Particles come in two varieties: bosons and fermions. The Higgs particle falls into the category of bosons, named for a physicist best known for his collaborations in the 1920s with Albert Einstein. Some of the pair's work resulted in the invention of Bose-Einstein statistics, a way to describe the behavior of a class of particles that now shares Bose's name. Two bosons with identical properties can be in the same place at the same time, but two fermions cannot. This is why photons, which are bosons, can travel together in concentrated laser beams. But electrons, which are fermions, must stay away from each other, which explains why electrons must reside in separate orbits in atoms. Bose never received a doctorate, nor was he awarded a Nobel Prize for his work, though the Nobel committee recognized other scientists for research related to the concepts he developed. -
Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Lilith __,
Can teenagers really know what fits them, career-wise? I think it’s great for them to have a look at the options (and particularly if they can go out and talk to people who do them), but don’t most people blunder around a bit before they find the right thing?
Well the answer to that question from my experience is that no, many teenagers don't really know exactly, or even vaguely in some cases what they want to do when they near the end of school but unfortunately they have to leave and do something other than sit on the couch and play Playstation until they work it out. Unless their parents are feakin awesome! :)
But it is vital that schools discuss with students what they're interested in, what they're good at, what some options are, or else we end up with kids with unemployed parents defaulting to that option, or following their family into low paid unskilled work when they don't need to go that way, or going to university because their mum or dad went there.
-
Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think the focus was this one was how well they did at university. And -- surprise! -- the kids from the liberal high school with a great pastoral culture and no uniforms (or even a really a discernable dress code) did very well in comparisons.
That's useful but of course it depends on how many go to university (it might only be 5%, 10% at many schools). I heard several years ago that a certain school in Auckland had the highest proportional dropout rate from the University of Auckland BUT of course that can change year to year, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't preparing students well for university. It could be that large numbers of students from that school are expected to go to university when it isn't for them, and quickly they and their parents find this out.
At my school I'd say there's a bit more realism (from the students and parents) about who is cut out for uni and keen on it, so those that I know who have gone there have all done well.
One area that schools really do need to work their arses off these days is in careers so that every kid has got an idea of what their options are and can choose ones that fit for them. Rather than just telling them all "you're going to uni", "you're going to be a plumber like your dad", "you're going to work for your auntie grooming pets", or whatever.
-
Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Russell Brown,
A few years ago when Western Springs College was losing students to certain other schools -- causing it to consider the known success strategy of imposing a school uniform -- one of the things that turned it around was research showing that its students did far better than many others after they'd left school and had to think for and motivate themselves.
As you say, you can't test for that.Our school careers dept. calls every single student who has left school a few months later and asks them what they're up to in terms of employment, studying or unemployed so we at least track that information but yeah, we can't keep calling thousands of students every few years to make sure they're not in the slammer, living under a bridge or running for mayor somewhere. If they're beating their partner, volunteer at the SPCA, or have 500+ facebook friends.
As somebody else said upthread at the end of the day you just have to trust yourself as a professional and the public and government need to trust us as professionals that we are largely getting it right.
The principal at Western Springs is an old family friend of my family's. He's a good man. Stems from his rugby league playing past :)
-
Hard News: Who'd have thought?, in reply to Scott Chris,
Could be part of the problem. I like the idea because it is compatible with my philosophy of education which is, in a nutshell, setting clear educational aims and expectations and measuring the level of attainment relative to those stated aims and expectations. Makes assessment and evaluation of performance so much easier on a broad scale as well as an individual scale.
Many of a schools educational aims are not about assessment results and therefore virtually impossible to measure. If a school wants it's students to learn to respect one another, or respect diversity, or relate well to others, or become life long learners, or develop self responsibility, or get involved in co-curricular activities etc etc you can't really measure them aside from rudimentary, unreliable ways. You can work out ways you might 'teach' those things or facilitate them but at the end of the day you'd have to go back and interview every single student a few years after they left and get their opinion about how well you did.
The way the debate is going in the media and with the government we'll just end up telling the kids to beat the living crap out of each other, wag school as much as you like, deal drugs, abuse your teachers and classmates, and here's the answers for the test, copy them into the blank spaces and wow, we've got the highest pass rates in the schools history!!!!!! I won't be getting fired this month phew!
-
What the hell! I'm watching the Tour de France on TV now and the commentator has just said he's heard about a 6.5 Earthquake in Wellington and hopes everybody is alright. Talk about the information age.
-
6.5 Eathquake felt across the North Island. "Heavily felt in Wellington". Everyone OK????? Didn't feel anything in the Auckland west side.
-
Umm, last few lines a tribute to Radio Sport which does actually run ads for all those things.... all day.
Kinda depressing that it's my go to station when I can't recall being interested in a single thing it advertises in about a decade. And I'm probably starting to fall into their target age market as well. :(
-
The thing is for Simon who says in one of his post replies
In my view, schools that fail their kids through academic under-achievement find it easier to get away with that when there is no media spotlight on them. And showing relative achievement is one way of turning on that spotlight.
We’re not toxic to public education. On the contrary: the best way to strengthen public education is to make it better – to bring the standards of the underperforming schools up as high as they can go. In our small way, I’m confident we contribute to that.Actually Simon you might be shocked but at our school we have annual staff meetings where all our pass rates at year 11, 12 and 13 are data crunched, compared to the national figures and we look at where we are going well, where we aren't and what possible improvements we can make and within departments this is a never ending issue. It is a CONSTANT ongoing process.
Magazines with glossy covers and BS 'motives' are about one degree off being completely useless to this 'problem'. In fact they're probably contributing to the difficulty many schools face.
Next week we lead with "Good Magazines and Bad Ones", what subscription you should buy your dad for Christmas. Stocked full of articles on bee pollen, magnetic underlays, girlie websites and getting hard for the ladies.