Music - The Garden Within by Richard Maddock The Best of the Spoken Word The Best of the Spoken Word Poet and writer Kate Dempsey speaks to the legend that is Stephen James Smith about his journey to poetry and the importance of spoken word. Stephen James Smith is a Dublin poet. He has a collection called ‘Pretending to be Happy?’ Hello Stephen, welcome to writing.ie. Hello Writing.ie / Kate, thanks for asking me to take part! As for introducing myself, well I guess or hope I am a relatively simple man. How did you get into poetry? Largely by accident, I didn’t have the same affection for it in school as I do now. Next I heard of Rite & Recite which Gerry McNamara ran and I found friendship with guys the same age as me who were into the same things – and poetry wasn’t frowned upon the way it might have been if I chatted to other mates about it. What do you consider have been the highlights so far? Poetry has taken me to Slovenia, Poland, all across Ireland and I have just recently been invited to go to New York, so the travel is really cool. Other links:
The 8 Elements Project-Based Learning Must Have If you’re contemplating using Project-Based Learning or are already trying out the latest craze to hit the modern classroom, you should know about this checklist. It details if you’re actually doing it correctly. For example, does your project focus on significant content, develop 21st century skills, and engage students in in-depth inquirty (just to name a few)? If not, you might want to reconsider your PBL approach. See Also: What Is Project-Based Learning? The checklist is by the PBL masters over at BIE and they’ve outlined 8 different ‘essential elements’ that must be present in a project in order for it to be considered PBL. These elements are actually useful for even more than PBL. What do you think about this PBL Checklist? Via TeachBytes and BIE.org
Top 10 Shocking Documentaries - Listverse Movies and TV As a visual medium, documentaries frequently succeed in portraying the unimaginable far better then any book alone could do. Beaming everything from the consequences of child abuse to the horrors of nuclear warfare into the homes of millions, the following infamous documentaries shock the viewer and challenge perceptions. Please note: Almost all the videos featured contain graphic and disturbing content, relevant to the topic at hand. Warning: some of these documentaries contain disturbing footage. High on Crack Street Following the struggle of three crack addicts, ‘High on Crack Street’ digs deep into the complex daily lives of individuals striving to obtain their next fix. Aokigahara / Suicide Forest Lying at the base of Mount Fuji, Aokigahara Forest has a rather unsettling reputation as a suicide hotspot . Nuit et Brouillard The Killing of America Interview with a Cannibal What drives a man to kill and cannibalize an innocent woman? Bulgaria’s Abandoned Children
Why Adele's 'Someone Like You' Makes Everyone Cry The 7 Powerful Idea Shifts In Learning Today by Terry Heick, TeachThought.com : Shift_Learning: The 7 Most Powerful Idea Shifts In Learning Today So we’re taking a stand here. This is all incredibly subjective, but so are the VH1 Top 100 Hair Bands Videos and those are fun, am I right? So subjective it is. Let’s make a list. Utopian visions of learning are tempting, if for no other reason than they absolve us of accountability to create itright now, leading to nebulous romanticizing about how powerful learning could be if we just did more of X and Y. But therein lies the rub: Tomorrow’s learning is already available, and below are 7 of the most compelling and powerful trends, concepts, and resources that represent its promise. The Challenge of Implementation It’s challenging enough to manage a traditional learning environment where the curriculum is handed to you, and meetings are set, and you’re simply there to manage; adding more ingredients to the mix seems like asking for trouble. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Girls’ Generation adds second night in S’pore | Singapore Showbiz Girls Generation will be performing in Singapore on 9 December. (Photo courtesy of Running Into the Sun) UPDATE (1 Nov) After tickets for their first Singapore concert sold out in less than four hours, organisers have added a second date for the K-pop supergroup Girls' Generation Tour. The second gig will take place on December 10, one day after their original concert date, also at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. [SLIDESHOW: Girls' Generation sizzle on stage] Organisers Running Into the Sun said they were responding to the overwhelming response by fans and several requests for a second night to be added. 5,500 tickets for the first night were snapped up in less than 4 hours on Saturday by preferred priority customers, even before tickets were supposed to go on sale for the public today, 1st November. The upcoming concert of Girls' Generation, who are also known as SNSD, will cost an estimated S$1.8 million, the most expensive production among all K-Pop concerts held in Singapore.
Western Philosophy 18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently This list has been expanded into the new book, “Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind,” by Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman. Creativity works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. And psychologically speaking, creative personality types are difficult to pin down, largely because they’re complex, paradoxical and tend to avoid habit or routine. “It’s actually hard for creative people to know themselves because the creative self is more complex than the non-creative self,” Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity, told The Huffington Post. While there’s no “typical” creative type, there are some tell-tale characteristics and behaviors of highly creative people. They daydream. They observe everything.
Technology and Education | Box of Tricks Can Schools Create a Culture of Learning By Doing? - Education What if we had a culture of "do" instead of a culture of "know" in our schools? That was the question posed by sixth-grade language arts teacher Bill Ferriter and three other educators at last weekend’s EduCon, an education innovation conference held in Philadelphia. Ferriter writes on his blog, The Tempered Radical, that the group came up with the question during a session designed to push educators to dream big and develop ambitious solutions for the problems facing schools. Although knowing academic content is foundational, he writes, students often complain about feeling disconnected from what they’re learning because they’re never given the chance to apply their knowledge in meaningful ways. Models like service learning are proven to boost student engagement and reduce the dropout rate, yet the test-heavy school culture has created an environment where teachers simply cover the curriculum and students regurgitate facts onto a test. Photo via (cc) Flickr user Mark Gstohl
3 Things That Have Slowed the Change Process Down in Education (And What We Can Do About It) There has been a lot of talk on the idea that education as a whole takes a long time to change. As an educator, this is a challenging notion, since we are seeing many people doing some amazing things that did not exist when I was a student. Change is happening but sometimes it is hard to see when you are in the middle of the process. Some things are out of the hands of schools. Here are some of the challenges we have had in the past and how we can tackle them 1. Education has traditionally been an isolating profession where we get some time together, but not nearly enough. How so many educators have shifted this “norm” is by using social media spaces to connect and learn from educators all over the world, and making a significant difference in their own classrooms, and creating much more engaging and empowering learning spaces. We need to make this happen and create transparency in our own classrooms. Make it go viral. 2. 3. Wow.