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The world's most difficult books: how many have you read?
'Fantastically convoluted' … Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. Photograph: Oscar White/Corbis Two and a half. I have read two and a half of the 10 most difficult books ever written, as selected by Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg of the Millions after three years' research. The pair started their quest to identify the toughest books out there back in 2009, looking for "books that are hard to read for their length, or their syntax and style, or their structural and generic strangeness, or their odd experimental techniques, or their abstraction". Anyway, they've now picked the most difficult of the most difficult – the 10 "literary Mount Everests waiting out there for you to climb, should you be so bold" – and have laid them out for discussion at Publishers Weekly. The titles? There are a few other books I might include in the list – Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and if I was going to choose Woolf, I'd go for The Waves. How about you?
Plus d’autonomie pour les enseignants
Connexion Érick Falardeau|Suzanne Richard 25 juin 2014 Société / ÉducationPlus d’autonomie pour les enseignants Un avis fort important du Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, publié le 3 juin dernier, concernant le développement professionnel des enseignants a malheureusement été occulté par le budget provincial et d’autres faits divers funestes. Cet avis réaffirme la nécessité de développer une culture de la formation continue et l’importance de chercher à parfaire ses compétences tout au long de sa carrière. Il réitère la volonté de renforcer l’autonomie professionnelle des enseignants, intention qui était au coeur de la réforme de la formation des enseignants en 1995 avec l’instauration du baccalauréat de quatre ans. Vingt ans plus tard, peut-on dire que cette autonomie s’est réalisée ? Les enseignants du primaire et du secondaire sont de moins en moins considérés comme des professionnels. Pour un ordre professionnel Site complet
Unusual, Neglected and/or Lost Literature
[ home ] Major update during Aug.-Oct. 2014. Quite a bit of new material that's of course not marked in any way as the newer stuff so you'll just have to poke around. Major update during Nov. 2008 including reformatting (e.g. what was I thinking using all those HTML lists?), many new entries, and adding new material to old entries (although I've not yet found the motivation to check for all the dead links). Contained herein are links and books in my personal collection (well, a few aren't...yet) in the general category of unusual literature, for which the best definition I can come up with at the moment is: stuff I like that's a little or a lot different than most of the stuff you'll find down at the local Books'R'Us. I've chosen/pinched/pilfered reviews basedly almost entirely on their informational content rather than their opinion of the book, on the theory that the more you know about the author and the book the more you'll be able to appreciate it. Enjoy. Meta, i.e. Meta-Books Authors
Virtual Domicile of Steven K. Baum
Retour sur le 2e Sommet sur l’iPad en éducation : la parole aux élèves!
Retour sur les activités ayant mis en vedette des élèves à l’occasion du 2e Sommet sur l’iPad en éducation. Rafraîchissants à souhait, impliqués et authentiques, ils ont su démontrer que, plus que jamais, ils ont leur place dans les rencontres en éducation. Les 1er et 2 mai derniers se tenait la 2e édition du Sommet de l’iPad en éducation, à Montréal. Enseignants, conseillers pédagogiques et gestionnaires étaient réunis pendant ces deux jours bien remplis afin d’assister à des dizaines de présentations, d’ateliers pratiques et de conférences traitant de l’utilisation des tablettes en classe, des innovations vécues dans diverses écoles et des changements souhaités en éducation. Les élèves étant au coeur de cette rencontre, on leur a, comme l’an dernier, donné la parole lors d’un panel d’élèves utilisant l’iPad ainsi que dans les ateliers « L’iPad et l’iClasse » et « L’utilisation de l’iPad en classe : un speed dating d’applications ». Bien installés aux côtés de M. Pour suivre l'auteur :
Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones
by Maria Popova How to become an “antischolar” in a culture that treats knowledge as “an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order.” “It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning,” Lincoln Steffens wrote in his beautiful 1925 essay. Piercingly true as this may be, we’ve known at least since Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave that “most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.”. Although science is driven by “thoroughly conscious ignorance” and the spiritual path paved with admonitions against the illusion of thorough understanding, we cling to our knowledge — our incomplete, imperfect, infinitesimal-in-absolute-terms knowledge — like we cling to life itself. And yet the contour of what we know is a mere silhouette cast by the infinite light of the unknown against the screen of the knowable. HT Bobulate Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times
Bounderby is a successful capitalist who owns a factory and a bank in Coketown. He brags about having grown up an orphan, and marries Louisa Gradgrind hoping to make her a trophy wife. In the end, she leaves him, his stories about his childhood turn out to be lies, and he dies of a fit in the street. The novel doesn't really beat around the bush with this one. Bounderby is awful. And yet, Bounderby is actually just one giant contradiction. Yes, it turns out that Bounderby actually grew up in a normal, loving, probably over-indulgent family that helped him get a start in life. Josiah Bounderby Timeline
Branching scenario design: How many decision points?
You’ve decided a branching scenario will be part of your project. But how long should it be? First, I’m assuming that we’re talking about an exploratory or “learning” scenario, meaning a story in which learners make decisions without a lot of hand-holding and learn from the consequences of their decisions. Aim for 7 decision points in most paths As a general rule I recommend that each path include at least 7 decision points, meaning even if I make a not-great decision, I continue down a path that includes more decisions, including ones that could lead me to a better path, and when I reach the end of the story, I’ve made about 7 (challenging! Of course, the optimal depth for an exploratory scenario will depend on a lot of factors, including the complexity of the skill you want learners to master, their attention span and tastes, and the amount of development time you have. What about bad decisions? I included some short, 3-decision paths that go quickly to failure. Let them go back
