Top lists are lecturing people on everything from “100 places to visit” to “100 books to read”. Aren't you just tired of being told what to do with your time?
Now you have a list to end all lists!
Take a look at the following two examples from the list of “101 thins not to do”:
Swim with Dolphins?
Swimming with dolphins is one of the world's most profitable tourist activities. However, every dolphin will welcome having their busy, tiring day interrupted by tourists screaming pushing around them in the water. Worse yet, when dolphins get too near to the boats loaded tourists, they could get caught up in ropes and killed by propellers(螺旋桨).
Here's a little secret. Dolphins look like smiling at you, but actually they're just opening mouths.
Go to see the Mona Lisa?
There must be something about the mysterious smile. The 6 million people who visit the lady in the Louvre every year can't all be wrong, after all. But they can be quite annoying, standing in front of you, holding up their cameras to prevent you from seeing anything. In fact, it is hard for you to see the painting clearly because you have to stay away from it for security reasons. After queuing for hours, many tourists can remain in front of the painting only for 15 seconds most.
If the mysterious lady in the picture knew her fate, she wouldn't just be smiling, she'd be laughing.
So, still long to see the Mona Lisa? If you want to find out more about the list, read 101 Things NOT to Do Before You Die. Visit www. not2dobeforeidie. co. uk and buy the book at a 20% discount.
One of the greatest gifts one generation can give to other generations is the wisdom it has gained from experience. This idea has inspired the award-winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman. He interviewed and took photos of fifty oversixty-fiveyearsold all over the world. His project explores various aspects of their lives. The photos and interviews are now available on our website. Click on the introductions to read the complete interviews.
Let us now have a culture of peace.——Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Spain Federico Mayor Zaragoza obtained a doctorate in pharmacy (药学) from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1958. After many years spent in politics, he became Director General of UNESCO in 1987. In 1999, he created the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, of which he is now the president. In addition to many scientific publications, he has published four collections of poems and several books of essays.
Writing is a discovery.——Nadine Gordimer, South AfricaDue to a weak heart, Nadine Gordimer attended school and university briefly. She read widely and began writing at an early age. She published her first short story at the age of fifteen, and has completed a large number of works, which have been translated into forty languages. In 1991, Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Jazz is about the only form of art today.——Dave Brubeck, USADave Brubeck studied music at the University of the Pacific and graduated in 1942. After World War Ⅱ he was encouraged to play jazz. In 1951, he recorded his first album(专辑). Brubeck's 1959 album has become a jazz standard. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.For more figures CLICK HERE.
One of the latest trends（趋势） in American Childcare is Chinese au pairs. Au Pair in Stamford, Conn, for example, has got increasing numbers of request for Chinese au pairs from aero to around 4, 000 since 2004. And that's true all across the country.
“I thought it would be useful for him to learn Chinese at an early age” Joseph Stocke, the managing director of a company, says of his 2-year old son. “I would at least like to give him the chance to use the language in the future, ” After only six months of being cared by 25-year-old woman from China, the boy can already understand basic Chinese daily expressions, his dad says.
Li Drake, a Chinese native raising two children in Minnesota with an American husband, had another reason for looking for an au pair from China. She didn't want her children to miss out on their roots. ” Because I am Chinese, my husband and I wanted the children to keep exposed to(接触) the language and culture. ” she says.
“Staying with a native speaker is better for children than simply sitting in a classroom,” says Suzanne Flynn, a professor in language education of Children. ”But parents must understand that just one year with au pair is unlikely to produce wonders. Complete mastery demands continued learning until the age of 10 or 12. ”
The popularity if au pairs from China has been strengthened by the increasing numbers of American parents who want their children who want their children to learn Chinese. It is expected that American demand for au pairs will continue to rise in the next few years.
Most Chinese people these days know what it is like to have an "English teacher",since almost all pupils study English from their third year.Usually that first English teacher will be a young and lovely lady in primary school.But my first English teacher is no other than my father.Looking back,I can see that,when I was only a little girl,he created an English environment by providing me with flashcards（识字卡）,fun English-language toys and even dolls which can sing English songs!My interest in English had certainly been awakened（唤起）when I began to learn English at school.Just imagine,he went a step further and asked me to learn New Concept English by myself!I was confused（迷惑不解）and had much anger.I could not understand why a father could be so strict with his little girl.All the same,he never gave up and he gently insisted that I follow through with his ideas.At first,I read stories with tears in my eyes and I actually hated them because they were too difficult for me.In the end,I came.to love the funny stories and,to be honest,my father was always there with a helping hand.I am sure that my English would never have got so far without his support.And that's why my father is not only my first English teacher but also my lifelong teacher.He is the one who awoke my interest,who gave me confidence and who offered me much needed help.
It is quite apparent that competition surrounds every aspect of human life whether in the United States or the Amazon Rain Forest. Without it we would not have grown into primates(灵长类动物). Or we would probably still be struggling to sharpen a bronze tool while crawling around on four legs in search of meat. Without competition, Columbus wouldn't have discovered America and Edison would never have invented the light bulb.
Friendship, like all relationship between two people, involves competition. It isn't competition in a traditional sense because there are no goals to be scored and no prize. Perhaps the ecological definition—the simultaneous (同时的)demand by two or more organisms for limited environmental resources, such as nutrients， living space, or light- better explain it.
As in nature, high school life is governed by a set of laws, similar to a shortened version of Darwin's theory of evolution, overpopulation, and competition. There is an abundance of high school students and to distinguish them, ranking and categorizing(分类)take place. In high school, friendships learn to co-exist with competition even though at times the relationship is rough. In fact, in some circumstances, competition is too much of a burden for a friendship to bear, causing it to fall apart. College admission is the final high school objective. Four years of hard work is to achieve good grades, and a student's fate is determined not only by these achievements, but by the records of thousands of other seniors trying to achieve a similar recognition.
Nevertheless, by necessity, competition between students exists in all aspects of high school life. It sets and improves the standards in everything from sports to school work. A healthy, friendly competition can have only benefits, but when it becomes too fierce, jealousy can tear friendships apart. Yet, despite all this, without competition, we would be lost.
When was the last time you told someone they inspire you to go to work each morning?
Teachers at Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri, did just that this September, when they pulled individual students out of class to tell them just how much they appreciated them.
The students' reactions, which were captured (捕捉) on video and shared on YouTube in a now-viral video, ranged from shy thanks to hugs and tears.
“I have been challenged to find a student who makes me want to come to school every day,” says one teacher in the video, “and that's you.”
Jamie McSparin, a teacher in charge of the school's academy program for at-risk sophomores （二年级学生）and juniors, posed the challenge, writes ABC News.
“Initially when we pulled the kids out, they all thought they were in trouble,” McSparin told ABC News. “Any teacher-student interaction always seems to be negative (消极的), and that was something that bothered me, too. No matter if they're a good kid or a trouble maker or anything, they always thought they were in trouble,” she says.
McSparin says she got the idea for the project after attending a professional development workshop this summer called the power of positivity.
“I like the idea of letting students know they are appreciated, because we do appreciate them, I just don't think we say it enough,” she told local news outlet WDAF-TV.
It's safe to say the challenge was effective.
“I feel special,” said one of the boys in the video. “You should,” said his teacher. “You are special.”
Every day I see advertisements in the newspapers and on the buses claiming that it is easy and quick to learn English. There is even a reference to William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens to encourage learners even more. When I see advertisements like this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But many people must believe these ridiculous claims, or else the advertisements would not appear.
Of course it is clear that students who go to England to learn English have a great advantage over others, but too many cannot afford to do so. Some go to the opposite extreme and think they can teach themselves at home with dictionaries. But it is wrong to assume that each word in English has a precise equivalent in another language, let alone produces good pronunciation and intonation.
Most teaching is still based on behaviorist psychology. Behaviorists are fond of making students repeat phrases and making sentences. If we were parrots or chimpanzees, these methods might be successful. A large number of theorists seem to think it is a pity we aren't, because it would make it easier to use their methods.
In my personal opinion, no one can ever learn to speak English or any other language unless he is interested in it. Human beings, unlike parrots and chimpanzees, do not like making noises unless they understand what the noises mean and can relate them to their own lives. It is worth remembering that language is a means of communication. What they listen to and read cannot be a formula. It must be real.
There is another relevant point worth mentioning here. We need other people to talk to and listen to when we communicate. They can work with us and practice the unfamiliar forms with us in real situations, talking to each other about real life language.
The kids in this village wear dirty, ragged clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts made of sticks and mud. They have no school. Yet they all can chant the English alphabet, and some can make words.
The key to their success: 20 tablet computers(平板电脑) dropped off in their Ethiopian village in February by a U.S. group called One Laptop Per Child.
The goal is to find out whether kids using today's new technology can teach themselves to read in places where no schools or teachers exist. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers analyzing the project data say they're already amazed. “What I think has already happened is that the kids have already learned more than they would have in one year of kindergarten,” said Matt Keller, who runs the Ethiopia program.
The fastest learner—and the first to turn on one of the tablets—is 8-year-old Kelbesa Negusse. The device's camera was disabled to save memory, yet within weeks Kelbesa had figured out its workings and made the camera work. He called himself a lion, a marker of accompli shment in Ethiopia.
With his tablet, Kelbasa rearranged the letters HSROE into one of the many English animal names he knows. Then he spelled words on his own. “Seven months ago he didn't know any English. That's unbelievable,” said Keller.
The project aims to get kids to a stage called “deep reading,” where they can read to learn. It won't be in Amharic, Ethiopia's first language, but in English, which is widely seen as the ticket to higher paying jobs.
Some people learn a second language easily. Others have trouble learning a new language. How can you help yourself learn a new language, such as English? There are several ways to make learning English a little easier and more interesting.
The first step is to feel positive about learning English. If you believe that you can learn, you will learn. Be patient. You do not have to understand everything all at once. It is natural to make mistakes when you learn something new. We can learn from our mistakes. In other words, do not worry about taking risks.
The second step is to practice your English. For example, write a diary every day. You will get used to writing it in English, and you will feel comfortable expressing your ideas in English. Several weeks later, you will see that your writing is improving. In addition, you must speak English every day. You can practice with your classmates outside class. You will all make mistakes, but gradually you will become comfortable communicating in English.
The third step is to keep a record of your language learning. You can write this in your journal. After each class, think about what you did. Did you answer a question correctly? Did you understand something the teacher explained? Perhaps the lesson was difficult, but you tried to understand it.
You must be positive about learning English and believe that you can do it. It is important to practice every day and make a record of your achievements. You will enjoy learning English, and you will feel more confident in yourself.
Sure it's good to get along with your teacher because it makes the time you spend in the classroom more pleasant.
And yes, it's good to get along with your teacher because in general it's smart to learn how to understand the different types of people you'll meet throughout your life.
"But really there's one super-important reason why you should get along with your teacher. When you do learning bursts right open " says Evelyn Vuko a longtime teacher who writes an education column(专栏) called "Teacher Says" for the Washington Post newspaper.
In fact, kids, who get along with their teachers not only learn more but they're more comfortable asking questions and getting extra help. This makes it easier to understand new material and do your best on tests. When you have this kind of relationship with a teacher he or she can be someone to turn to with problems such as problems with learning or school life such as bullying.
As a kid in a primary or middle school you're at a wonderful stage in your life. You're like a sponge (海绵) able to absorb lots of new and exciting information. On top of that you're able to think about all this information in new ways. Your teacher knows that in most cases is very excited to be the person who's giving you all that material and helping you make it. Remember teachers are people too and they feel great if you're open to what they're teaching you. That's why they wanted to be teachers in the first place-to teach!
Some kids may be able to learn in any situation whether they like the teacher or not. But most kids are sensitive to the way they get along with the teacher and if things aren't going well they won't learn as well and won't enjoy being in class.
Some people dream about becoming engineers. Luckily, the new IMAX film Dream Big shows how engineering can improve people's lives. It teaches viewers how engineers use high-tech to help the world. The film hits IMAX theaters nationwide on February 17 to celebrate Engineers Week.
The film, taking place in locations like China, Dubai and Africa, tells the stories of engineers who try to come up with creative ideas to save energy and help people.
Dream Big was directed by Greg MacGillivray who has 38 films under his belt, including some of the most successful films ever shown in IMAX theaters.
How did MacGillivray get into the moviemaking business? “I grew up at the beach. My first movies were about surfing and the ocean. As time went on, I saw the changes in the ocean including polluting and overfishing. So I started making films about conservation of nature.” He told TFK. Now, his films cover a variety of topics, from the natural world to human creation.
One of the engineers in Dream Big is Angelica Hernandez. In high school, she was on a team that best MIT, a university, in an underwater robotics competition. Today, the engineering work she does focuses on helping people use less energy and save money and resources. “I work with companies to promote energy efficiency with their commercial customers, so it's really trying to push forward all the measures that customers and high-energy users can apply, she explains.
Engineering is such a good job-you make good money, travel around the world, solve amazing problems and help people.” She says.
The mission of Dream Big is to show people the good that engineers can do to the world. “That was the impulse of making this movie”, MacGillivray explains, “We want to explain engineering in a way that will get the kids very excited about it.” “Whoever and wherever you are, you can become an engineer,” he adds, “All you need is the creative spirit.”
As a Fulbright（富布莱特法案基金）scholar at Yale, I wanted very much to get some individual help from some famous professors, but their office-hours were only once a week and there were always students waiting outside. At first, I was too polite to get their help. Then I realized that Chinese politeness does not work in this society. I needed to be aggressive to get what I wanted. I also noticed that Chinese students or Asian students were very polite in class while American students often interrupted the professor, asking questions and dominating the discussion. The Chinese students were not as aggressive as American students.
I was impressed by the role of the professor in the class. The professor didn't act as an authority, giving final conclusions, but as a researcher looking for answers to questions together with the students. One linguistic feature of his interacting with his students was that he used many modal verbs-far more than I did in Beiwai. When answering questions, he usually said: "this is my personal opinion and it could be wrong. It would be a good idea if you could read the book I mentioned the other day." Or," You may find the book I recommended helpful." Or, "You could be right, but you might find this point of view also interesting." When making comments on students' performances, the professor usually said:" It might have been much clearer if you had taken in some of the ideas we discussed earlier this semester."
In China, authorities are always supposed to give wise decisions and correct directions. Therefore students always expect the professor to give an answer to the question. I still remember how annoyed they were when foreign teachers did not provide such an answer. Their expectations from authorities are much higher than those of American students. Once the Chinese students got the answer, they were sure about it. That is why they make far more certain statement than American students. That is why Chinese students find it difficult to use modal verbs because the function of modal verbs is to provide room for negotiation and different ideas.
Stepinac has become one of the first high schools in the country to drop all textbooks and replace them with a "digital library". When students started classes on Monday, they were zipping to an app on their tablets or laptops and bad instant access to all 40 texts in the Stepinac curriculum (课程).
Dennis Lauro, director of an information center which provides technical support to public schools in New York, said neither he nor his colleagues were aware of a similar digital effort in a public school setting. "This is the wave of the future." Lauro said. "I'm not surprised that a private school would beat the public schools to it. They have the ability to just do it. There is so much politics involved in public schools, when it comes to a move like that, needing approval from boards and committees."
For Tom Collins, Stepinac's president, the commitment to digital source material was not so difficult a decision. In the past, students' families had to spend up to $ 700 a year on textbooks. This year — after the one-time purchase of a tablet or laptop — families only need to pay $ 150. Using the digital library is almost as easy as opening a new book. A student can instantly lap into a digital book and open a map of Egypt or a speech by President John F. Kennedy. A teacher can show a page from a digital book on a whiteboard at the front of the class or send students a link to a particular math problem with notes added in.
The first few weeks may bring some challenges. Stepinac officials expect some parental discomfort over dropping concrete books. They recognize there may be technical faults at first. And they will have to encourage students to leave space-eating photos and music off their tablets — and to keep their tablets charged.
For years, I have advocated the importance of hard work, determination, persistence, and practice as key ingredients of success. Malcolm Gladwell, who has written The Story of Success, seems to support my theory. He says it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to attain true expertise.
"The people at the very top don't just work harder than everyone else," Gladwell writes. "They work much, much harder." Achievement, he says, is talent plus preparation. Preparation seems to play a bigger role.
For example, he describes the Beatles: They had been together seven years before their famous arrival in America. They spent a lot of time playing in clubs, sometimes for as long as eight hours a night. Overnight success? Not exactly. Estimates are that the band performed 1,200 times before their big success in 1964. By comparison, most bands don't perform 1,200 times in their careers.
Neurologist Daniel Levitin has studied the formula for success extensively and shares this finding: "The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain a long time to digest all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."
Two computer giants, Bill Joy, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, also were proof of the 10,000-hour theory.
The abilities these people possessed were far-ranging, yet the formula for success was the same: hard work and lots of it. Some people just make it look easy. Of course, you probably didn't see the first 9,999 hours of hard work.
What will the future school look like is difficult to make clear, but most experts agree that the school will be electronic in the future.
"Present-day schools will no longer exist in the next century," says a report in The Age. "At that time, future schools will become community-style centers, which run seven days a week, 24 hours a day." At the same time, computers will surely become a central part of the school in the future.
According to The Age, the distant learning will be popular and students will listen to teachers on computers. Going into classrooms on their computers, students will study at any time, which is very easy for them. However, it is necessary for students to go to the actual school in order to develop some social skills.
The Seashore Primary School is an imaginary school in the future created by the Education Department of Australia. At this school, all the teachers and students have laptop computers. Teachers check messages and call students back on a special telephone system and students use telephones to search for information or speak to their experts who teach their lessons. Besides, all the lessons are related to all sorts of subjects and all the students have their own learning plans created by teachers.
As one headmaster says, a laptop computer is students5 library, data storage (数据存储) as well as the bridge to a wider world. Technology has changed the emphasis of future learning. Thus, well pay more attention to the learning of kids rather than the teaching.
What will the future school look like is difficult to make clear, but most experts(专家) agree that the school will be electronic in the future.
"Present-day schools will no longer exist in the next century," says a report in The Age. "At that time, future schools will become community-style centers, which run seven days a week, 24 hours a day." At the same time, computers will surely become a central part of the school in the future.
According to The Age, the distant learning will be popular and students will listen to teachers on computers. Going into classrooms on their computers, students will study at any time, which is very easy for them. However, it is necessary for students to go to the actual school in order to develop some social skills.
The Seashore Primary School is an imaginary school in the future created by the Education Department of Australia. At this school, all the teachers and students have laptop computers. Teachers check messages and call students back on a special telephone system and students use telephones to search for information or speak to their experts who teach their lessons. Besides, all the lessons are related to all sorts of subjects and all the students have their own learning plans created by teachers.
As one headmaster says, a laptop computer is students' library, data storage(数据存储)as well as the bridge to a wider world. Technology has changed the emphasis of future learning. Thus, we'll pay more attention to the learning of kids rather than the teaching.
Who is a genius? This question has greatly interested humankind for centuries.
Let's state clearly: Einstein was a genius. His face is almost the international symbol for genius. But we want to go beyond one man and explore the nature of genius itself. Why is it that some people are so much more intelligent or creative than the rest of us? And who are they?
In the sciences and arts, those praised as geniuses were most often white men, of European origin. Perhaps this is not a surprise. It's said that history is written by the victors, and those victors set the standards for admission to the genius club. When contributions were made by geniuses outside the club—women, or people of a different color or belief—they were unacknowledged and rejected by others.
A study recently published by Science found that as young as age six, girls are less likely than boys to say that members of their gender（性别）are "really, really smart." Even worse, the study found that girls act on that belief Around age six they start to avoid activities said to be for children who are "really, really smart." Can our planet afford to have any great thinkers become discouraged and give up? It doesn't take a genius to know the answer: absolutely not.
Here's the good news. In a wired world with constant global communication, we're all positioned to see flashes of genius wherever they appear. And the more we look, the more we will see that social factors（因素）like gender, race, and class do not determine the appearance of genius. As a writer says, future geniuses come from those with "intelligence, creativity, perseverance（毅力）, and simple good fortune, who are able to change the world."
You are on your way to a concert. At a crossroad, you see a group of people, all staring at the sky. Without even thinking about it, you stare upward, too. Why? In the middle of the concert, someone begins to clap and suddenly the whole room joins in. You do, too. Why?
Social proof determines that people feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a certain idea, the better or truer we consider the idea to be. An experiment carried out by the psychologist(心理学家) Solomon Asch shows how peer pressure can influence common sense. A subject is showed a line, and next to it three lines - one shorter, one longer and one of the same length as the original one. He must show which of the three lines similar to the original one. If the person is alone, he gives a correct answer. Now, five unknown actors enter the room. One after another, they give wrong answers. And in one third of cases, the subject will answer incorrectly to match the other people's responses.
Why do we act like this? Well, in the past, following others was a survival method. Suppose that one day 5, 000 years ago, you were travelling with your hunter friends. Suddenly, they all ran away. What would you have done? Would you have stood still, weighing up whether what you were looking at was a lion or something that just looked like a lion? No, you would have run, too. We are generations of those who copied others' behaviors. This is so deeply rooted in us that we still use it, though it offers few survival advantages today.
Social proof is the evil behind many things. The advertising industry, for example, often makes use of it. Therefore, be doubtful whenever a company says its product is "the most popular". Remember British novelist W. Somerset Maugham's words, "If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish. "So should we always follow the crowd?
We're often reminded of the importance of preserving the planet as we see it for future generations—and children at St Oswald's Primary School in Chester certainly agree.
Nine-year-old Isobel Kelleher from the school's Hummingbirds class thinks adults need to take notes. "Sometimes they can be busy and I don't think they think they can make a difference, but if everyone does a little bit, it all adds up," she tells Huff Post UK. "We started looking at plastic pollution in our oceans and the things like plastic bags and broken down pieces of plastic that are polluting them, "she says. "Fish can eat the plastic and they can die, or we might even eat the fish ourselves. "
Mr. Timms, Isobel's teacher, has been spearheading a new project at the school which lets children loose creatively to raise awareness of the need to be more environmentally friendly. The entire Hummingbirds class, which is made up of 9-and 10-year-old pupils, has been busy writing poems and creating online video adverts to warn adults about the serious situation of our oceans and wildlife.
Mr. Timms thinks children have an important role to play in teaching us how to take care of the things around us. "We sometimes overlook how much we can really learn from children, ""he says. "It has been really hard to believe having parents come in saying that their children have been asking them to stop using plastic, and to recycle more, and even stopping them using plastic straws."
Mr. Timms is proud of his Hummingbirds class. "The message that they would like to send to the world is simple; Stopping this isn't someone else's job, and it won't be OK if we just leave it."
A scientist turns out to be able to see the future by offering each of four-year-olds a piece of candy and watching how he or she deals with it. Some children reach eagerly for the candy they see. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait until the last moment.
By the time the children reach high school, something amazing has happened. A survey found that those who as four-year-olds had enough self-control to hold out generally and grew up to be more popular, adventurous, confident and dependable. The children who gave in to temptation early were more likely to be lonely, easily upset in time of difficulties and inflexible.
Actually, the ability to delay reward is a sign of emotional intelligence which doesn't show up on an IQ test.
The hardware of the brain and the software of the mind have long been scientists' concerns. But brain theory can't explain what we wonder about most, like the question why some people remain upbeat in the face of troubles that would defeat a less resistant (有抵抗力的) person.
Here comes the theory of Daniel Goleman, writer of Emotional Intelligence: when it comes to predicting people's success, brain ability measured by IQ may actually matter less than the qualities of mind once thought of as "character".
EQ is not the opposite of IQ. What researchers have been trying to understand is how they work together, how one's ability handles stress, for instance, affecting the ability to concentrate and putting intelligence to use. Among the ingredients for success, researchers now generally agree that IQ counts for about 20%, the rest depends on everything from social class to luck.
While many researchers in this relatively new field are glad to see emotional issues finally taken seriously, some few fear EQ invites misuse.
