GERMAN IS 4 U !

This video has some really bright spots!



Let us know why you have started learning German!

Report: Teachers Better at Using Tech than Digital Native Students

Surprised?   In agreement?   PLEASE comment here!    -- Found online in  T.H.E. Journal

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/22/14

Science teachers specifically were chosen for their overall pioneering spirits. "They are usually the early adopters to integrate technology in labs and physical experiments, hands-on activities, field trips and data collection," the report stated. "Compared with other subject area teachers, they are more likely to engage in technology-integrated practices."

The report's conclusion: "Today's school-age learners are no more technology savvy than their teachers. The previous assumption used to profile students as digital natives did not apply to the students in this study. In fact, teachers' technology use experiences surpassed students whether it [was] inside or outside of school."

The researchers found that "students used technology outside of school for working on school projects, maintaining social networks and entertainment" — but mostly for playing games and listening to music. Teachers showed similar patterns of usage but with greater frequency. Teachers also tended to depend "much more on using technology to solve daily problems, to improve productivity, and as learning aids."

Wang noted that teacher age had no impact on the kinds of technology skills they have. The gap between them and their students lies with how little opportunity students get to practice technology beyond pursuing their personal interests.

"In many ways," the researchers wrote, "it is determined by the requirements teachers place on their students to make use of new technologies and the ways teachers integrate new technologies in their teaching."

The report recommends that "high-quality training" be provided to teachers to help them learn how to integrate content-specific technology into their lessons and how to teach their students how to use technology more effectively.

"School-age students may be fluent in using entertainment or communication technologies, but they need guidance to learn how to use these technologies to solve sophisticated thinking problems," Wang noted. "The school setting is the only institution that might create the needs to shape and facilitate students' technology experience. Once teachers introduce students to a new technology to support learning, they quickly learn how to use it."

The findings appeared in the journal Educational Technology Research & Development.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com. 

Experience the Power of a Book Book: IKEA

Any part of this ad that you enjoyed?  (Ah!  What an improvement over the scroll!)   Let us know.

(The joy of this experience does remind me a bit of our German classroom... rsb)

Stihl summer camp gives teens cutting-edge training

By Stacy Parker  at  The Virginian-Pilot  © July 18, 2014  VIRGINIA BEACH 

 

Other photos available for purchase -- rsb 

 

 

Summer Sparrow has a steady hand. Her teammates noticed, and so did a Stihl vice president. It helped her master a new skill: soldering.

"I was really excited to learn how to do it," said Summer, 14. "When I tried it, I found out I was pretty good at it."  She stripped wires and soldered them to pins. Then she connected them to a circuit board on the way to creating a wireless speaker.

This is a summer camp of a different kind.

Nearly 40 area high school students attending this fourth annual Stihl Manufacturing Technology Summer Camp have a job to fulfill on an assembly line this week.  Teams will manufacture the speakers out of an array of parts.  Members of the team that creates the best process win $1,000 scholarships to study STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - subjects after high school.

Stihl created the camp to give teens a creative experience in a manufacturing setting, said Christian Koestler, vice president of operations. The German company produces chain saws and other outdoor power tools at its U.S. headquarters off Lynnhaven Parkway.  The company chose campers through written essays and classroom grades.  Each team started the four-day camp with $50,000 in play money.

High school seniors on a "supplier" team hustled in the back corner of the room to assemble kits including batteries and audio receivers for the teams producing the speakers. The fuel tank of Stihl's backpack blowers serves as the container for the components. Orange speaker grills and piston-shaped volume knobs are created on-site with a 3-D printer.

The teens worked together at several stations Thursday. While one used a mill to bore holes in the fuel tank, two others teamed up to solder wires. A timer on one of their phones kept them on task.
"It's interesting to me to make something in a certain amount of time," said Murell Weimar, 17.

It's not just about speed. Teams must budget their money. They have the opportunity to earn more throughout the camp and purchase additional parts. Soldering is the bottleneck of the assembly line because it takes time, but a pre-soldered amp costs 10,000 "dollars."

They will test their skills by building three wireless speakers before Saturday's two-hour competition to see who can produce the most with the best quality in a given time.  "You see the natural leaders arising and you see the worker bees," Koestler said Thursday.  "You see teams focused on the process and teams focused on the product. Those focused on the product try to make it pretty; those focused on the process are figuring out how much time they need for each step. It will show on competition day who comes out ahead."

Members of Team "Amps" smiled and nodded their heads as Smash Mouth's "All Star" blasted from one of their smartphones just before the lunch break Thursday. They had produced the first working wireless speaker in the room and all eyes were on them.

"All the students are engaged," said Andrew Jaeckle, STIHL's manager of talent acquisition.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com

T-Mobile Werbung (ad) mit Humor?! Und wie!

Danke, Valentin Moller ! 

Deutsche-Telecom Firma  (company) heisst jetzt:  T-Mobile. 

German satellites capture Earth in hi-def 3D

Rudiger findet noch mehr und schreibt:  Just another testimony towards German engineering.. That's why I own a Volkswagen !   Danke, Rudiger!  --rsb   

THE LOCAL    "Germany's News, in English"

Alex Evans | 22 May 2014, 08:17

Two German satellites have been orbiting Earth for the last four years mapping the planet's surface to a level 30 times more accurate than anything seen before.

 

The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has released the first elevation scans from the project, which has already attracted over 800 scientists from 31 countries to sign up to use the final data when it is released next year.

The two satellites, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, have scanned every inch of the Earth's surface more than twice each, travelling over 800 million kilometres at a height of 514 kilometres above our planet in the first ever precise formation flight between two satellites.

Both satellites mapped the height of points on the Earth's surface by measuring the time it took for radar signals to travel to the ground and back. They are accurate to within one billionth of a second.

CLICK HERE to see some of the images

Alongside constant radar elevation scans, they captured over 350 smaller initial Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), each covering a patch of 30 by 50 kilometres, totalling over 2500 terabytes of data.

And, since the end of 2013, scientists at the DLR have been weaving these pieces together to form a "new topography of Earth," Alberto Moreira, the project's scientific head and director of the DLR's Microwaves and Radar Institute said.

"Due to the significant improvements in accuracy, I am convinced the elevation model… will represent a new reference for a variety of applications," he said.

Researchers started by scanning the "simpler" regions, mostly large flat continental expanses - which need no more than two passes of the satellite to get a 3D image - before moving on to the "difficult" areas like the Alps and Himalayas.

The last phase of scanning data is now being put together, with the project's complete results due to be released in 2015.

And the DLR are considering a follow-up mission which would launch two satellites to scan the Earth's entire surface twice a week - 100 times faster than TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X – in order to "record the dynamic processes unfolding across Earth".  Such live imaging data would make "an essential contribution to environmental and climate research," according to Moreira.

Rawlemon’s Spherical Solar Energy

Generating Globes Can Even Harvest Energy from Moonlight

by Ayasha Guerin, 09/16/12  STUMBLE's Inhabitat:  ENERGY

The ß.torics system was invented by Barcelona-based German Architect André Broessel. He sought to create a solar system that could be embedded in the walls of buildings so that they may act as both windows and energy generators. But the project isn’t only noteworthy for its solar efficiency capabilities -  the ß.torics  system is designed to generate lunar energy too!
The spheres are able to concentrate diffused moonlight into a steady source of energy. The futuristic ß.torics system is catching a lot of attention for its clean and beautiful design. (Despite solar power’s huge potential, we haven’t seen too many beautiful solar power technologies). We’re excited to see how architects will incorporate these energy generating orbs into alternative energy agendas and future building designs!

Read more: Rawlemon’s Spherical Solar Energy-Generating Globes Can Even Harvest Energy from Moonlight | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Tom Hanks describes the Autobahn

Mit Dave Letterman spricht er ueber seinen (he --Tom Hanks-- speaks about his) Film, Cloud Atlas, sowohl auch (as well as) seinen Besuch (visit) nach Eisenhuettenstadt, die Traumstadt (dream city) der DDR (of the former East Germany, GDR: German Democratic Republic).



Bist du schon auf einer Autobahn wesen?
-- Hat es dir gut gefallen?
-- War es zu anstrengend, --zu stressig?
-- Oder fandest es lieber berauschend (exhilarating), wie Tom Hanks?

Wenn noch nicht, dann moechtest du auf einer Autobahn fahren?

Finally:  How might YOU interpret this traffic sign, that Tom Hanks described so hilariously???  

Kinder aus 1995 im Internet, heute: Viral Video!

Dieser Film ist zweimal so alt wie YOUTUBE (erst 2003 erfunden).

LOS ANGELES TIMES

In 1995, prophetic fifth graders predict Internet of the future       

By Deborah Netburn

August 19, 2012, 6:00 a.m.  -- 

Talk about waiting for a payoff: Back in 1995, a group of fifth graders led by a clearly visionary video teacher named Cindy Gaffney created a PSA to get kids on the Internet. Eighteen years later, it is finally going viral. The video is kind of awkward and stilted, but its message is so ahead of its time, and prophetic, it's kind of mind-boggling.  "By the time we are in college, the Internet will be our telephone, television, shopping center and workplace," the kids say. 

Then they explain all the cool things that can be done on the Internet in 1995.

"In less than an hour you can visit the planet Jupiter, take a tour of the Sistine Chapel, do research on the rain forest, get soccer scores for a team in Italy, chat with a friend in Australia and I even found a recipe for cat food cupcakes."  I mean, they even got cats in there!

The  video was posted to YouTube in 2009 -- 14 years after it was created -- under the title "Prophetic 1995 Student Internet PSA." But up until Tuesday, the video had only collected about 1,000 views. Then it was suddenly discovered by a handful of Internet culture sites and now it has gone viral. The video has been seen close to 1 million times. 

In an email to the Los Angeles Times, YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca writes that while the video provides an interesting and funny look at our technological past, it also says something about what the Web is becoming now -- a vast library of our visual history. "Tens of thousands of science and technology videos are currently uploaded to YouTube each day," he wrote. "How many of those will we find adorably retro in 17 years?"

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Was koennen unsere Schulen tun, um unsere Kinder fuer die Zukunft vorzubereiten?
--What should our schools be doing, to prepare our kids for the future?