Read: The Leavers by Lisa Ko ★★★★★ great read that grew and grew on me. Chinese illegal immigrants in New York and back in China. Great characters and story.📚
Reads
It is not unusual for immigrant children to perform better than a country’s majority population children in STEM subjects. Yet, the fact that they are able to perform so well in Scotland might offer some insights into why native Scottish children are not doing equally well. One of the reasons could be a lack of interest and motivation, indicating an important area for the policy development.
@MarkRPriestley , cutting through a pile of hype around Scotland’s PISA results. The success of immigrants ask a question, IMO, about the importance of extra-school influence on success in school.
The discussions around PISA, success of cfe and the like are well above my blogger brain grade but fascinating and important.
Another interesting thread from @mrmcenaney
the improvement in reading, it is FAR more likely a consequence of what was happening in primary school 10 years ago, when the current PISA cohort started school, than 3 years ago, when they went to secondary.
It is really hard for humans and especially politicians it seems to look to the long term. We worry about possible bear attacks as opposed to glacier melting.
Podcasting refreshes the parts that radio cannot reach – but for how much longer? great article by John Naughtiness in today’s Observer.
Read: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Read: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett ★★★★☆ good fun modern fairy tale, with some unlikely happenings.
A Swansea University study has revealed how as little as an hour a week of outdoor learning has tremendous benefits for children and also boosts teachers’ job satisfaction.
the pupils felt a sense of freedom when outside the restricting walls of the classroom. They felt more able to express themselves, and enjoyed being able to move about more too.
Read: Calypso by David Sedaris ★★★☆☆ I think I prefer David Sedaris on the radio in small doses. I did laugh out loud a few times 📚
Read: Snail Habitats For Mrs. Nations Class
Snail Habitats For Mrs. Nations Class
These are student created snail habitats. Each habitat has a Raspberry Pi computer with a mini camera attached to it, which is programmed to take a snapshot photo every hour. This will allow students to see where the snails are hanging out the most and improve their habitats over time.
This looks like a great project. I wish we has seen it when we had our mud snails in class.
I don’t think we could have used Raspberry PIs on the school network but I am sure this could have been adapted to see the photos locally in the way we use our @naturewatch camera.
It also reminds me of my Raspberry Pi Gif Cam
Sweeping education reforms have done very little to change the fact that in the UK, being born well is by far the surest route to prosperity. Since the 1980s, the degree of social fluidity in Britain has plummeted with more people experiencing descent than ascent.
Not particularly surprising, but worth keeping in mind.
Read: John Crow’s Devil by Marlon James ★★★☆☆ my least favourite Marlon James so far. Got a bit too “magic realist” for me around the middle. 📚
Read:Creating your own scoop.it-esque content curation community in WordPress
Recently I’ve been experimenting with a content curation site for the Google Apps Script community… …In this post I want to share some of the things I learned setting this site up and resources I’ve created along the way…
Martin outlines how he put together a site for a open ended group to collate links and information from the web. A really interesting list of plugins and how they are used. I’d not heard of scoop.it.