Let’s face up to it

Facebook in education by … Facebook. This actually is fascinating. I am not sure how applicable I can make it to my own teaching context at the moment but very interested to know if anybody else out there has a comment.

http://facebookforeducators.org/educators-guide

Double Dutch?

A decent article today (Spanish) in El País discussing the current situation of the plans for bilinguilism in the Spanish state school system. The most immediate problems if of course the lack of teachers with a high enough level of English which means that if you are training to be a teacher and have a good level of English you may be in luck and be able to jump the queue for a position. The other positive aspect, long term, is that it is a long term project. Creating a bilingual stream is not something that can be done over night regardless of what politicians promise.

All in all a well-balanced article summarising the situation: http://tinyurl.com/7e8ooat

Adam’s Apple

Here is a fun article from the Economist on how Governments regulate the names parents can give their children. You can’t call a child Lucifer in New Zealand for example but you can give them a name of up to 100 characters whereas in Massachusetts the limit is 40. Kids called Moon Unit or Pilot Inspektor are the result of relatively liberal lawas in America and Britain while in Calafornia it is impossible to call a child José because the accent is not accepted. The article continues to discuss the impact names may have on a child’s future. A large number of American girls called Georgia actually live in that state while Dennis is more likely to become a dentist than Walter. Having a surname beginning with an early letter in the alphabet can be a boost when looking for an academic position or a vote at the ballot box: coming first on the voting list or in bibliographies means you get noticed more! So when naming your child, think GOOGLE … how to get a name that will generate search results. My suggestion is the title of this post … too late for my own kids now …

Original article: http://www.economist.com/node/21542749

Promising

Here is a new blog written by Nik Peachey which will keep us all up to date with tech tools for our classrooms

http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/tech-tools-for-teachers/