T. Strange's Blog, page 73
October 22, 2013
goodstuffhappenedtoday:
hempura:
dionnesyl:
So I came home...
So I came home from school to see my 7 year old sister putting skittles with my antidepressants, I went up to her and asked “Hey what you doing?” She looked at me, smiled and said “Skittles make me happy so I put them with your medicine that makes you happy so you can be extra happy.” That was the cutest thing i’ve ever heard.
that almost made me cry aw
Submitted ita said: this is sweet, but lock up your meds, kids!
My wife has a body pillow named Rivig that she pretty much can’t sleep without, so I...
My wife has a body pillow named Rivig that she pretty much can’t sleep without, so I don’t get him very often (she tucks him in beside me when she leaves for work, and we have a running joke that I’ll never know the difference).
But last night, in her sleep, she gave him to me. (She said something funny, too, but I don’t remember what it was.)
When she woke up, she was like, Rivig thief! But I told her she’d given him to me. (She took him back once she woke up.)
in here: assholedisney: my preschoolers have been playing Lion King a lot...
my preschoolers have been playing Lion King a lot lately, and none of them want to be Scar so they literally all are Mufasa or Simba
which, you know, severely limits their scenarios and so the scenes they do enact are becoming more and more dramatic and elaborate
case in…
odditiesoflife:
Finding Gold in Nature
Beautiful macro photos...
Finding Gold in Nature
Beautiful macro photos by Emerald Wake with some post-production techniques involved.
I hide tragedy in every image. You need to look in a very delicate way to see this.
October 21, 2013
So, some of you may have noticed that I’ve been posting colours on my blog. Maybe you’ve...
So, some of you may have noticed that I’ve been posting colours on my blog. Maybe you’ve wondered why. Well, your wondering is at an end!
I just signed the contract for Amber, my first novelette with Torquere Press. It will be part of their Color Box line. Without saying too much, I can tell you that colour is a very important part of the story.
Stay tuned!
tehri:
boggletheowl:
Thanks for bearing with me while I was...
Thanks for bearing with me while I was sick, you guys! I’ll post an additional Long Letter sometime this week to make up for the one I missed on Friday.
Listen to the owl.
It tells the truth.
thinkmexican:
Paloma Noyola: The Face of Mexico’s Unleashed...
Paloma Noyola: The Face of Mexico’s Unleashed Potential
When a report emerged in September 2012 that a girl from one of Matamoros’ poorest neighborhoods had attained the highest math score in Mexico, some doubted its veracity. It must be fake, they said.
But it wasn’t fake. Her name is Paloma Noyola, and what most reports failed to mention is that almost all of her classmates also scored very high on the national math test. 10 scored in 99.99% percentile.
Paloma and her classmates also scored in the top percentile in language. Something special was happening at José Urbina López primary school in Matamoros, and Wired went to take a look.
The high test scores turned out to be the work of a young teacher who also came from humble beginnings. Sergio Juárez Correa was tired of the monotony of teaching out of a book and wanted to try something new to help engage his students when he came across the work of Sugata Mitra, a UK university professor who had innovated a new pedagogy he called SOLE, or self organized learning environments. The new approach paid off.
Although SOLE usually relies on unfettered Internet access for research, Juárez and his students had very limited access. Somehow, he still found a way to apply Mitra’s teachings and unleash their potential.
From the beginning, Paloma’s exceptional abilities were evident:
One day Juárez Correa went to his whiteboard and wrote “1 = 1.00.” Normally, at this point, he would start explaining the concept of fractions and decimals. Instead he just wrote “½ = ?” and “¼ = ?”
“Think about that for a second,” he said, and walked out of the room.
While the kids murmured, Juárez Correa went to the school cafeteria, where children could buy breakfast and lunch for small change. He borrowed about 10 pesos in coins, worth about 75 cents, and walked back to his classroom, where he distributed a peso’s worth of coins to each table. He noticed that Paloma had already written .50 and .25 on a piece of paper.
As Mr. Juárez implemented more of Mitra’s teachings in his classroom, Paloma continued to stand out as an exceptionally gifted student:
Juárez Correa was impressed. But he was even more intrigued by Paloma. During these experiments, he noticed that she almost always came up with the answer immediately. Sometimes she explained things to her tablemates, other times she kept the answer to herself. Nobody had told him that she had an unusual gift. Yet even when he gave the class difficult questions, she quickly jotted down the answers. To test her limits, he challenged the class with a problem he was sure would stump her. He told the story of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the famous German mathematician, who was born in 1777.
When Gauss was a schoolboy, one of his teachers asked the class to add up every number between 1 and 100. It was supposed to take an hour, but Gauss had the answer almost instantly.
“Does anyone know how he did this?” Juárez Correa asked.
A few students started trying to add up the numbers and soon realized it would take a long time. Paloma, working with her group, carefully wrote out a few sequences and looked at them for a moment. Then she raised her hand.
“The answer is 5,050,” she said. “There are 50 pairs of 101.”
Juárez Correa felt a chill. He’d never encountered a student with so much innate ability. He squatted next to her and asked why she hadn’t expressed much interest in math in the past, since she was clearly good at it.
“Because no one made it this interesting,” she said.
Although this Wired piece focuses mostly on Sugata Mitra, it does once again highlight the story of Paloma Noyola. Unfortunately, after a brief spurt of media attention, little on Paloma was ever mentioned and, as was pointed out by Wired, nothing was ever said of Mr. Juárez.
As with most stories in the Mexican press — and with in the middle-class — things suddenly become very important once it’s featured in a gringo publication. Which is a very sad commentary. We hope, however, that this story pushes those in the press, state and federal government to look not to the United States for validation but to Mexicans like Sergio Juárez doing good work in places like Matamoros.
The clear message in this story is that there are thousands of Paloma Noyolas going to school in Mexico who, just like her at one time, are not being challenged and therefore aren’t very interested in school. This story can, if we want it to, raise enough awareness to shift the discussion from poverty to opportunity.
Paloma truly personifies both Mexico’s challenges and unleashed potential.
Read the entire Wired story here: How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses
Editor’s note: As an addendum, Wired provided information on helping support Sugata Mitra and his School in the Clouds project, and although they donated school supplies and equipment to José Urbina López School, we’re interested in seeing if we can help set up a similar fund for Sergio Juárez, the teacher featured in this story.
Also, $9,300 was raised to help fund Paloma’s education last year. We going to follow with the economist who led the fundraising campaign to see how she’s doing. Stay tuned for updates.
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grimangelkuro:
castiel-priestly:
dirtballs:
themostcrazyawesom...
You came to the wrong neighborhood
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metal af
The strongest among us has risen. He shall be our champion in the battles to come. Do not fear, for he shall be our herald in our darkest hour.
