Job interview with a millennial

We talked about job interviews in today's lesson and also watched two examples (from the Context21 DVD).
Now this job interview is similar in some ways, but has a different focus. Describe the similarities and differences.


A Millennial job interview from @TheDanielBrea on Vimeo.

Oprah Winfrey - a possible candidate for the US presidency?

You may have heard of Oprah Winfrey's speech at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony. Here is an article about it, focusing on what it may mean for the political landscape of the next few years.


Oprah Winfrey's Golden Globe speech inspires speculation ...

If you want to practice your listening skills, go to the PBS podcast site, where you can listen to full programs or segments of programs via iTunes.

PBS podcasts

In the picture: President Barack Obama awards the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey.


Source: 
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/11/20/president-obama-honors-presidential-medal-freedom-recipients

Happy new year - and no worries

A Happy New Year to all of you. And if you remember the advice given in this videoclip - you should be able to forget about your worries. That is: IF you come to grips with the question "Can you do something about it?" if the answer is "yes". If you stop there (without doing anything about it), you should start worrying.
But have a look for yourselves. And: Happy New Year.

St George and the Dragon

There is a fairly old painting by Paolo Uccello called "Saint George and the Dragon"; it was probably painted around 1470. The interesting thing about it - apart from the fact that it deserves a second and a third look - is that it has inspired a number of poets to write a poem about it.

The most famous of these poems is "Not My Best Side" by U A. Fanthorpe. But here is the picture:

By Paolo Uccello - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=159874

And here is the poem:
UA Fanthorpe, "Not My Best Side"

If you'd like to hear it read - here's a recording (American English):

For more information about the poet, read her obituary in the Guardian (2009):

UA Fanthorpe Obituary

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And finally, another interesting link:

Poems inspired by paintings

Hour of Code

It's the #HourOfCode this week. In our age of digitisation, knowing at least some basic things about computer programming has become a cultural technique that everyone should have acquired at some point.

One of the basic rules is: Computing proceeds step by step, and in order to save time, repetitive steps can be designed as loops - you can tell the computer to do certain steps again and again, until a certain condition is fulfilled (either a certain number of runs has been completed, or the computer runs out of data, or it has found what it was supposed to look for).

In today's Google Doodle, you can practice computer programming in a very easy way. By clicking symbols, you can combine certain steps and even loops to guide a little bunny towards all the tasty carrots. Try it, and have fun!

"Coding for Carrots:" 50 years of kids coding (a Google doodle)

Actually, it's a 50-year anniversary:

Kids Coding Languages (time.com)

Below you can see my results: I started out all right, but later I didn't reach the optimal solutions. Oh well, at least my bunny got its carrots in the end. ;-)

POETRY! ... or: poetry

Here are some sites where you can find great poems for our poetry book project.

Have a look at all of them, please. Maybe you'll like the third one better than the first one. Or the other way round. But who knows ... :-)

1 Poetry Daily

2 The Top 40 poems at "American Poems"

3 The "Poem of the Day" at "American Poems"

4 The Poetry Archive

5 "Freedom Poems" (National Poetry Day 2017)

6 The Favourite Poem Project

7 Poem of the month


Have you ever thought about what poetry is for? Here you can see how poets react when this question is put to them.  -->  What is poetry for?

The 6 C's for the 21st century

Somebody with the username "smarterteacher" has published an infographic called "The 6 C's of

Education for the 21st Century". You can access the whole think here, and if you scroll down you'll get a short text on each of the C's:

The 6 C's of Education for the 21st Century

The 6 C's are:

1. Think critically
2. Communicate clearly
3. Work collaboratively
4. Embrace culture
5. Develop creativity
6. Utilize connectivity

Are you getting enough "c" training at school? What could we do to improve the current situation?