Items to share: 21 April

Education focus:

• How Standards are like Brick Walls to Teaching and Learning & How to Tear Them Down and  The Social Emotional Consequences of the Authoritarian Standards & High-Stakes Testing Sham: These two passionate posts address issues arising from the US No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy and its accompanying high-stakes testing strategy, which write large similar issues to those in the UK.
  

• Robots Are Grading Your Papers! The Chronicle of Higher Education A long piece, which pursues a related argument to the two items above, in the HE context. (US)

• Two very practical pieces: Making Online PowerPoint Content Engaging: Writing a Narration Script (Faculty Focus) and  Asking Questions: John Merrow on how to run a "Question Time"-style panel—much more difficult than it looks!

• Happy Birthday John Holt; "Patron Saint" of Unschooling (Lefty Parent): An enthusiastic celebration of John (How Children Fail) Holt on his birthday. For some reason he doesn't yet appear on www.infed.org so even something as hagiographic as this is welcome.

• Thoughts on Art and Teaching: Ambiguity: A typically thoughtful piece from Jim...
  

Other Items:

• Celestial Lights: Spectacular Auroras Move Across the Scandinavian Skies (Open Culture) Stunning video.

• Another defeat for pedantry: AP's approval of 'hopefully' symbolizes larger debate over language (The Washington Post) (Hopefully?)

• The social cell (New Statesman): Daniel Dennett explores analogies between small-scale institutions and cells. Most interesting for the case-studies and the unmentioned element of cognitive dissonance perpetuating membership.
  
  
• CultureLab: The noble pursuit of ignorance: New Scientist book review

• Isaac Asimov Imagines Digital Learning in the Electronic Age... and Gets It Quite Right (1989) (Open Culture)
  
  
• The Geometry of God: The Striking Kaleidoscopic Patterns of European Cathedral Ceilings (Brain Pickings)
  
  
• Rereading: Le Grand Meaulnes revisited (The Guardian) If you've not read it, it's still not too late.
  
  
• Technology in America (The American Magazine) How N. American culture gives rise to its technology, which then shapes culture in turn... An accessible illustration of Berger and Luckmann's opening chapters (1966/7)
  
  
• Physicists Create Their Own Doctor Who-styled Sonic Screwdriver (SciTechDaily)

• And it's her (real) birthday today: Ma'amite is Jubilee Marmite (Boing Boing)