The Hell family is not happy. Alex and Sue Hell went to the media this week after St Peter the Apostle primary school, Hoppers Crossing, in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, refused admission to five year old Max on account of his name. They could have changed the boy’s last name to Wembridge, Sue’s maiden name, but decided against it. The school would not budge until the story hit the Australian news headlines. Now the Hells, a Catholic family, are unsure about whether they’ll enrol Max in the local school after all.
Winston Churchill said that if you’re going through hell, keep going.
Hell is a traditional Austrian surname meaning bright. There are six Hell families in Victoria, two in Queensland, one in Northern Territory. There’s a Heck living in Victoria. I wonder if they used to be called Hell and changed because of similar problems.
Have you seen the “Did You Know” “Shift Happens” video presentation - gone viral in the last few months…
This collection of facts and questions was originally put together by Karl Fisch as an eight minute PowerPoint presentation for staff development at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado. Fisch used content from David Warlick, Thomas Friedman, Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil and tied it together with music from Last of The Mohicans.
Scott McLeod adapted the presentation by removing many of the school-specific slides (shortening it to 6 minutes 5 seconds) and reformatting it in a number of formats, including Quicktime, WMV, streaming flash movie, downloadable flash movie, AVI video, YouTube (as above) and PowerPoint with mp3 audio file. Scott has them all online at his Dangerously Irrelevant blog.
Did you know . . .
Sometimes size does matter.
If you’re one in a million in China . . .
There are 1,300 people just like you.
In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.
The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s . . .
Is greater than the total population of North America.
In India, it’s the top 28%.
Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids than we have kids.
Did you know . . .
China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.
If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China . . .
China would still have a labor surplus.
During the course of this 8 minute presentation . . .
60 babies will be born in the U.S.
244 babies will be born in China.
351 babies will be born in India.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . .
By the age of 38.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor . . .
1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year.
More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years.
According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . .
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.
We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . .
Using technologies that haven’t been invented . . .
In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
Name this country . . .
Richest in the World
Largest Military
Center of world business and finance
Strongest education system
World center of innovation and invention
Currency the world standard of value
Highest standard of living
England.
In 1900.
Did you know . . .
The U.S. is 20th in the world in broadband Internet penetration.
(Luxembourg just passed us.)
In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development.
The U.S. Federal Government spent less than half as much on Research and Innovation in Education.
1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.
There are over 106 million registered users of MySpace.(September 2006)
If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)*
The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.
Did you know . . .
We are living in exponential times.
There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.
To whom were these questions addressed B.G.?
(Before Google)
The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.
There are about 540,000 words in the English language . . .
About 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.
More than 3,000 new books are published . . .
Daily.
It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . .
Contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.
It’s estimated that 1.5 exabytes (that’s 1.5 x 1018) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.
That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.
The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
That means for a student starting a four-year technical or college degree . . .
Half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.
Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .
That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.
That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.
It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.
The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the ends. Which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.
Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.
47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.
The $100 laptop project is expecting to ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.
Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .
By 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the capabilities of the Human Brain . . .
First grader Abby will be just 23 years old and beginning her (first) career . . .
And while technical predictions farther out than about 15 years are hard to do . . .
Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.
What does it all mean?
Shift Happens.
Now you know . . .
Michael Madigan, Courier Mail journalist based in Canberra, reported yesterday on the injection of religion into the Australian history syllabus. He says that Julie Bishop, Federal Education Minister, has thrown her support behind a move to incorporate study of religious issues into study of Australian history.
Madigan is reporting on the Federal History Summit held in Canberra on August 17, during which it was agreed that history be made a core subject for Years 9 and 10 throughout Australia.
Professor Geoffrey Blainey told delegates that much of society could not be explained to students without religion. It appears as though discussion was vigorous. Religion was taken out of the syllabus for two key reasons - the Christian churches’ tendency to assume too much influence, and their inability to get on with each other. The introduction of religion back into mainstream syllabus would need to ensure that education was the focus, not proselytization, nor competition between faiths. Clearly not all the stories would be positive. Which would mean that honesty and a non-defensive attitude would be needed. As Tom Stannage said, we’d need to re-inject religion back into the state schools in “a non-controversial, open, inclusive sort of way”.
Religious topics could include the Catholic/Protestant divide and its impact on pre-war Australian society, with particular reference to the conscription referendum of 1916-1917. The examination of religion would not be confined to Western Christianity. Historians in Canberra raised the influence of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, Muslim and Jewish religions.
Yossi Aron asks if it’s time to hold a Jewish history summit. He asks how much we know about the Jews included in the First Fleet, during the gold rushes, and after the 20th Century Holocaust, as well as the significance of Australian troops in the British fight for Palestine in both world wars.
Last Monday I worked with a Jewish Rabbi and Muslim Imam to introduce two Year 11 classes to the cultures and beliefs of the three main Abrahamic faiths. It was refreshing to engage in comparative religion together. The highlight for me was when we took a group of four students each, providing a tour of the exhibition of religious artifacts and photographs. The beauty was that we had the privilege of explaining all three religions to the students. Such collaboration could be useful in the local exploration of Australian identity and its connection with the story of religion.
