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Why Wikipedia Does Belong in the Classroom
ReadWriteWeb: The proper place of social media in the classroom remains a mystery to most people, with Wikipedia standing as the biggest, baddest new media nemesis of them all. In the 80s, Neil Postman wrote, “You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.” To Postman, television was a medium that privileged entertainment, whose decontextualized method of communicating the ephemeral at blazing speeds made linear argument and true learning impossible. Wikipedia remains misunderstood because many educators have yet to recognize the distinction between Wikipedia as a tool for teaching and Wikipedia as a tool for research.
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Feeling Guilty Versus Feeling Angry – Who Can Tell the Difference?
When you rear-end the car in front of you at a stoplight, you may feel a mix of different emotions such as anger, anxiety, and guilt. The person whose car you rear-ended may feel angered and frustrated by your carelessness, but it’s unlikely that he’ll feel much guilt. The ability to identify and distinguish between negative emotions helps us address the problem that led to those emotions in the first place. But while some people can tell the difference between feeling angry and guilty, others may not be able to separate the two. Distinguishing between anger and frustration is even harder.
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For kids, it’s better to give than receive
CNN: There's a good chance you've seen the 7-year-old tragicomic superstar of TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo declare in a jaw-dropping video clip: "A dollar makes me holler." Whether you almost fell off your chair laughing or recoiled in horror at the child's statement, you might be one of the multitudes of parents who, consciously or not, subscribes to the broader principle that spending your dollars does, in fact, make your child holler with joy. But a growing body of research paints a compelling picture that may help us rethink some of our over-the-top spending on children.
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Why Mental Pictures Can Sway Your Moral Judgment
NPR: When we think about morality, many of us think about religion or what our parents taught us when we were young. Those influences are powerful, but many scientists now think of the brain as a more basic source for our moral instincts. The tools scientists use to study how the brain makes moral decisions are often stories, said Joshua Greene, a Harvard psychologist, citing one well-known example: "A trolley is headed toward five people, and the only way you can save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley away from the five and onto a side track, but if you turn it onto the side track, it will run over one person." It's a moral dilemma.
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Accord bancal (Wobbly Agreement)
Le Monde: Le fauteuil du supérieur hiérarchique, ou de celui qui est en position de client potentiel, doit être non seulement plus profond, doté d'un dossier plus imposant, mais aussi d'une assise plus élevée que celle du siège de son interlocuteur. Un tel dispositif met d'emblée celui qui reçoit en position de supériorité. Si l'hôte ne veut pas qu'il en soit ainsi, s'il souhaite plutôt afficher bienveillance et modestie, il désigne d'un geste ample la table ronde, dite de réunion, située non loin, qui met chacun, physiquement, au même niveau. Ou presque. Car les astuces ne s'arrêtent pas là.
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Stress? Verschenken Sie Ihre Zeit! (Stressed? Give your time away)
Sueddeutsche Zeitung: In einer Welt des Überflusses herrscht ein steter Mangel: Niemand hat Zeit. Ständig ist was los, der alltägliche Wahnsinn. Die Terminkalender platzen und eine Verabredung, ein Meeting, eine Besprechung soll immer noch untergebracht werden. Ach, und die Kinder müssen zum Sport und der Keller gehört ausgemistet. Die To-do-Listen wachsen, und ständig bleibt etwas auf der Strecke - Partner, Beruf, Hobbys. Die große Mehrheit der Befragten gab jüngst in der Vorwerk-Familienstudie an, sie würden so gerne mehr Zeit mit ihrer Familie verbringen, aber die Umstände ließen das ja nicht zu. Wie sollen alle die zeitverhungerten Menschen mit dem Mangel umgehen?
