Before ending our English studies this year, please take the time to fill in this feedback form. The information you give will be very valuable for me when planning future courses. THANK YOU!
It was a pleasure working with you. Wishing you all good luck with the last exams, and a carefree and fun summer holiday!
In classroom 85, on Wednesday May 23, starting at 1.10 pm.
It won’t be quite like at the Ritz in London, or in some of the charming countryside tea places but we’ll have a go at making THE PERFECT POT OF TEA.
And, naturally, scones are an essential part of it!
Even if the old-style application letters and written CVs are still the norm, more and more young people are turning into the marvellous online opportunities to create multimedia presentations about themselves and their marketable skills.
My CV in Wordle by climbnh2003 on Flickr
They have even invented new names for these fancy modern CVs – a web resume, a visual vitae or web bio, for example. It’s worth your while checking this article called The Death of CV as We Know It. Also have a look at some of the examples presented through the links in the article. Also check this blog for two innovative examples of YouTube CVs. What do you think about all these examples? Could you imagine yourself creating one of these digital portfolios instead of a written CV one day? One of these would certainly help you stand up from the crowd, don’t you think?
Here is another interesting article from the British newspaper the Guardian called Could your Facebook page ruin your job prospects? Notice that it was written by a student, and so presents a young job applicant’s point of view. What do you think about the ideas there? Does it make you worried and rush to clean up your Facebook account? Are you consciously building an online image or presence to use to market yourself in the job market later on? Should you?
Please, write your ideas in the comment field of this post by Tuesday.
Have you been as amazed as I at how famous the Finnish school system is all around the world? New articles and videos about our schools are posted somewhere in the world almost daily. Reading these articles and watching the videos gave me, as a teacher, new insights into the many clear advantages of the Finnish school system – eg. equal opportunities for all children to get the same high-standard education, teacher autonomy to design the methods they think work best with their students, shorter school days, no mandatory national testing until at the end of senior high school, and the list goes on. We seem to have got a a lot of things just right for our Finnish context but often take all this very much for granted.
Yet, some of the articles gave me good food for thought, too. For example, the Australian educator, Anne Knock, blogged about her recent visit to Finland, and asked very pertinent questions:
Does the work/study culture of Finland mean that young people and their parents expect teaching to be formal?
Are there opportunities for multi-disciplinary project-based learning?
How are schools in Finland addressing the ubiquitous nature of mobile technologies?
Clearly, there is a lot to be improved even in the allegedly “best” school system in the world! A traditional approach has worked well to produce good results in the PISA tests but we live in the 21st century when many other skills should be learned, too. Does the glory of PISA success make us oblivious to the urgency to shift learning in schools to the 21st century?
Another question that the articles and videos raised in my mind is whether it is at all possible to export our school system to other countries. Yet, this is exactly what our government is now busy doing – the latest receiver being the United Arab Emirates. I believe a school system is such an integral part of a society, with the history and values of a nation so intertwined in it that it is impossible to try and replicate it in another setting.
I really look forward to reading your reflections on all the material! I wonder what issues caught your attention. Remember to read the initial guidelines of the project once more! And here are a couple of final reminders:
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR WORK! You will still have tomorrow’s lesson at school to finish it, and ask for any feedback or help.
You have written your application letter and compiled a CV (or ‘resume’ as it’s called in America). Now it’s time to interview the best candidates for the job. In pairs, prepare a good list of questions to ask. Make sure both of you have written the questions down!
Here is a video to give you some tips on possible questions to ask as the interviewer, plus how best to answer them as the interviewee. In each interview, also remember to ask the candidates what THEY would like to ask.
Before you go for your interviews, watch this video and follow the advice closely.
GOOD LUCK! Let’s see which of you will be hired.
Welcome back again! Our third and last EXE course is about to start. Please check the general outline of the course here.
As the course themes will be study and work, we will pay special attention to developing your learning skills. In America, Bloom’s taxonomy has been a widely used classification of learning objectives since the 1950s.
Photo by dkuropatwa on Flickr
This pyramid a revised version of the taxonomy from 2000. From the mere memorization of separate facts, students are expected to move higher and higher in the pyramid, to understand what they memorized, to apply the knowledge in new situations, even to create new knowledge.
This pyramid could also be applied to improving your writing in this course. Start thinking of ways how you could demonstrate deeper understanding in your writing, rather than just stating a list of facts. Aim at more analysis of your topic, avoid plain statements. Why not set your goals high, and try to create some totally novel ideas in your writing!
COURSE 3 PROJECT WORK
In course 3, each of you will do a more extensive project. It’s to do with the Finnish education system that has been the centre of the whole world’s attention in the last few year, thanks to the success of Finnish 15-year-olds in the international PISA student assessments. Thousands of educators from many different countries have visited schools in Finland to learn our secrets, and dozens of articles have been written about our schools in international press.
I have compiled an online “magazine” of links to many of these articles and videos, with the title FINNISH EDUCATION IN SPOTLIGHT. Your job is to gradually go through as many of the articles and videos as possible and collect material for your project. Here are some guidelines.
Your final product will be a carefully written blog post to reflect YOUR VIEW regarding all the information you collected from the different material. Remember Bloom’s taxonomy above! Analyze, evaluate and create! Give your expert’s view, as a student in a Finnish school, to a global audience! Did you think the articles and videos gave an accurate picture of reality in Finnish school, or were there misunderstandings or misinterpretations? What do YOU think, is our school system really as good as it’s hailed to be? The world will be curious to read your views, so make yourselves good Finnish correspondents in this global conversation!
DEADLINE: Friday May 18, 2012 .
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!
Here is the link to the site where you can find the video that we didn’t manage to listen to in class. (I do hope it will work this time! Fingers crossed!) Watch it in your own time, and try to get the answers to these questions:
As exciting and exhilarating as travelling is in itself, almost as fascinating are the stories that are told and remembered after coming home. Being thrown out of your comfort zone while venturing into new destinations is an excellent way to widen your outlook on life, and learn. Let me share one story from my foreign travels.
Among family and friends, I am notorious for being absolutely terrified stiff by any creepy crawlies, with frogs, reptiles and snakes topping my list of the most frightening and yucky creatures on earth. When I first had the chance to visit Asia, some 9 years ago, I must admit I was a little worried about what wildlife I might encounter there. But, of course, the excitement of going somewhere far away, and experiencing brand new things far outweighed any anxiety on my mind.
My destination was Indonesia, where I was to attend an Asia-Europe teachers’ conference. I arrived late at night, jet-lagged and exhausted after the long flight. It was pitch-dark, and I could hardly see anything but huge lit billboards along the roads from Jakarta airport to the conference venue in Bogor. But when I entered the beautiful conference hotel, all the colour around and the unfamiliar jungle sounds from the garden outside woke me up, and I realized that I really was somewhere quite exotic.
But getting into my room, lo and behold, the first thing I see is a little gecko on the ceiling. Just my luck! There was no possible way that I could fall asleep knowing it was there. What if it suddenly fell down on my face when I was fast asleep! Horror of horrors! The gecko must have known what I was thinking as it started making funny sounds. It sounded as if it was making fun of me and my childish fears with its mocking sniggering sounds.
Just look how tiny it was!
I had no other choice than to go back to the reception, and ask somebody to come and take my room pet out into the garden. My apologetic explanations met with many bemused looks from the hotel personnel but they promised that somebody would soon come to help me. Back in my room, I heard a knock on the door. A short guy with funny protruding ears and a wide smile stood there. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. And instead of a net to catch the gecko, which I had expected, he was holding a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. He came in, moved a chair underneath the gecko, and before I could do or say anyting, WHAM! The dead body of the poor creature fell on the floor, right behind my bed. Oh no, what had I done? I never asked them to kill it, just to catch it and take it out of the room. How could I ever sleep now, with the death of an innocent wild animal on my conscience? I was convinced that its tormented soul would come back to haunt me at night. What’s more, I thought I could never tell the story to my daughter, who always cried her eyes out at the death of the tiniest insect, let alone anything bigger!
Well, I did manage to sleep, and enjoy wonderful Indonesia, despite this sad story. And since then, I have even learned to tolerate, if not actually like, geckos. During our holiday on Reunion island this Christmas, we usually had at least three of them on our bedroom ceiling every night. The good thing about them is that they keep mozzies and other bugs away!
I look forward to reading your travel stories!
After reading the short story, and discussing it in class, here is the promised video link. ENJOY!
I hope you have picked up some good vocabulary from the reading, too. For example, it contains lots of descriptive adjectives and verbs, which are always useful to master well – not only by understanding them passively, but especially “colouring” your own writing by actively using varied vocabulary. Some of my favourite picks from this story are, among others: willful, entranced, mesmerizing, frantic, obedient, to squabble, to dawdle, to sulk/sulky.
And greetings from the other side of the world – Réunion island to be precise. Where is that, you may ask. Technically, it’s France – one of its overseas departments. You get by with French, although most of the local speak their own créole, and you pay with euros – strange in such a tropical setting.
The views on this tiny little island (driving round the whole island is only about 200 km!) in the Indian Ocean are breathtaking – from beaches to even 3-km-high mountains and mighty waterfalls! Sometimes it look like a real Jurassic Park setting!
The island also has one of the most active volcanos in the world. Walking on the lava fields makes you feel rather eerie – almost as if you were on Mars.
For us Finns, it’s a good place, as it has no poisonous wildlife on land. The only dangers to humans lurk in the ocean. Last year alone, at least 6 surfers were killed by sharks. The often violent ocean currents also take their toll. Fortunately, their warning systems are efficient, and people are usually quite safe as long as they don’t venture too far out into the ocean.
Réunion has an amazing mix of people and a wonderful variety of delicious fruit and veg.
In short, a paradise island well worth visiting, especially if you are into hiking and water sports.
This leads us to the first theme of the new year – travelling. The New York Times has listed the 45 places to go in 2012. Let’s have a look what they recommend. Guess which place ranks high up in the list, at number 2?
EXPLORE! EXPERIMENT! EXPRESS! 