Items to Share: 7 April

Education Focus

• The Practical University - NYTimes.com  (David Brooks) The article itself is pretty useless, but the comments are stimulating. 

• It's a Flipping Revolution - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of Higher Education  'For those who haven't been paying attention, "flipping" is a teaching technique that involves abandoning the traditional lecture (or just not relying on it so much) and replacing it with interactive approaches that experiment with technology and require students to gather information outside of class and be prepared to engage the material in class, rather than sit passively listening to a faculty member talk.' 

• The philistines have taken over the classroom | Frank Furedi | spiked "In recent decades, education has been transformed into an instrument of public policy, a means for achieving objectives that are entirely external to learning. Education is now expected to put right the failures of adult society, to transform apathetic youngsters into responsible citizens. Education is meant to promote social mobility, multiculturalism, responsible sex, sound financial behaviour and emotional wellbeing, and to provide youngsters with a variety of key skills. [...] The teaching of knowledge itself, for its own sake, is frequently dismissed as an old-fashioned custom that is not relevant to the twenty-first century." Frank lays about him with characteristic gusto! 

• 6 Tips for Successful Mobile Video Assignments in the Classroom - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Other Business

• Bank pays for costumed flashmob to recreate Rembrandt's Nightwatch in a mall - Boing Boing

• BBC News - The Great British class calculator: What class are you?  'The BBC teamed up with sociologists from leading universities to analyse the modern British class system. They surveyed more than 161,000 people and came up with a new model made up of seven groups. To find out where you fit in use this calculator below.' Also: The British class system is becoming more polarised between a prosperous elite and a poor ‘precariat’ | British Politics and Policy at LSE   'Mike Savage discusses the results of the largest British class survey ever conducted. It shows that class divisions remain very powerful and are becoming more entrenched. There is a growing gulf between the elite and the lower classes, and what used to be termed the middle and working classes seem to be splintering into social classes with systematically differing amounts of cultural and social capital.' (The tool is actually simplistic and useless--but that seems to be what passes for sociology nowadays.)

• How a differential gear works --and see this follow-up post of Richard Feynman explaining how trains manage the same problem in quite a different way--a model of lucid explanation.

• Is CPR for the victim or the bystanders? : The Last Word On Nothing  'David Newman, director of clinical research in the department of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, says: “It’s crazy talk to believe that everybody should always get this invasive, punishing burdensome procedure when we know that the overwhelming majority — even the people who might be considered the most appropriate — are not going to survive it,” ' 

• Dyslexia Workarounds: How Henry Winkler, Gov. Dan Malloy, Delos Cosgrove Got Creative to Get Ahead - WSJ.com  '"I frankly think dyslexia is a gift. If you are supported in school and your ego remains intact, then you emerge with a strong work ethic and a different view of the world."' 

• Nothing Personal: The questionable Myers-Briggs test | Science | guardian.co.uk