Internet findings (5)

maipenquynh on 14. December 2024

💻|👩‍💻 Scratch-Kindergeburtstag (Scratch children's birthday party)
The post from ben_ surprisingly took me back to the time when I worked at a primary school for a while and I was checking out STEM for this age group. Scratch, an ‘educational block-based visual programming language for children and adolescents’ (original source is the german version of the Wikipedia entry „Scratch (Programmiersprache)“was part of the outcome. I was very fascinated by this interface between programming and school. Now I've talked a lot about myself, though I just wanted to say: ben_'s enthusiasm in his text about the Scratch-Kindergeburtstag (Scratch children's birthday party) threw me right back into my own enthusiasm.

💻|📹 BeatUp
Via the text Der lange Marsch zu Dir selbst by ben_ I cam across the project BeatUp . This project is about young people from Hamburg producing professional music videos with experts. I have a soft spot for projects and initiatives in which children are allowed to get involved and create something themselves. It's all about self-efficacy. Even if it's not locally relevant for me, I think something like this should be seen!

💻|📷 Best Film Camera Finder – 5-Question Quiz to Reveal Your Options
Even though eventually everyone does their own research before buying an analogue camera: The 5 parameters of the Best Film Camera Finder by Dmitri help to get a rough orientation. Be it at the very beginning, when you first start looking for a camera, or in between, to check whether the chosen camera is among the suggestions. For me it was the latter and the quiz helped me not to forget my priorities for a new camera (*cough*).

💻| 🔌 Netzgeflüster: Es muss mehr über das Energieproblem von Gen AI (KI) gesprochen werden
Since reading Miss Booleana 's text, I always halt shortly when someone tells me in which situations or for which things ChatGPT is used. The questions and tasks for which ChatGPT is used are so insignificant compared to the energy consumption. Before the holidays, I need to read about the energy problem of Gen AI on Miss Booleana's blog.

🎧|🖊 GAG480: Kein Klecks – die Erfindung des Kugelschreibers
After Miss Booleana introduced me to the podcast Geschichten aus der Geschichte (GAG; Stories from History) months ago, I lost there every now and then. Most recently it was the episode about the invention of the ballpoint pen. This is an object I use every day and have never asked myself how it was invented. That's what GAG is good for!

📱|📚 Bookshop Spotlight
It's no longer a secret that I'm quite fond of book places.This includes bookshops, and through the bookshop in my town, I recently came across this Instagram account: Bookshop Spotlight. German bookshops are put in the spotlight and presented there.

💻|📷 Blogventskalender – Tür 1
Lucky us that I this edition of Internet findings is posted in December. Then you still have a few days of the blog advent calendar from blogventskalender by Fotografierenden Lehrerin. Every day she posts a photo that has received a lot of likes on Twitter/X, in ascending order (you can find more details from her in the post for the first door, see above - german though). It might be helpful to mention she likes to take photos using puddles. My favourites so far are Tür 5, Tür 9 and Tür 11.

Happy 12 euros: library card

maipenquynh on 9. August 2024

Zuerst wollte ich auf ein Foto warten bis ich diesen Text veröffentliche. Dann habe ich gemerkt, dass ich nicht die Geduld habe, um auf dieses eine Foto zu warten. Daher musst du dich für eine Weile mit meiner folgenden Beschreibung zufrieden geben. Das Foto werde ich nachreichen – versprochen (*).

The outside (the photo)

You are standing in front of a shelf in a public library, probably 5 or more rows, all full of books. You can't see the end of the shelf, it extends beyond the left and right edges of the picture. The spines of the books are looking at you. And then there's a girl in front of you, primary school age. She is sitting in a crouch with her back to you. In front of the child is an opened book, half of the book is covered by the child. You're happy because it's nice when people, especially children, leaf through books.

The inside (thought and feeling)

This photo marks a special day. The day I renewed my library card in 2024. And the euphoria I felt when I held my card up to the machine and paid the 12 euro annual fee when asked.

Suddenly I realized what that meant: taking stories home with me, immersing myself in them and finding feelings and thoughts on a scale of 1 to 10 - those of the protagonists and my own.

No book promises me the world but the library promises me a thousand views of the world.

I didn't know how much I missed the world as a library user until I made the payment. Finally being able to spontaneously borrow eBooks again, finally being able to browse again and knowing that I could take the book home with me.

Eventually, I borrowed six books: 1 hiking guide and 5 novels. No way that I will get through all five novels in those four weeks of borrowing. But who doesn't know that happy feeling of taking books home?

So many things for 12 euros: stories, inspiration, perspectives on the world and society, discovering new things and the pleasure of immersing yourself into things. Into a love story, into Arabic cuisine, into the world of physics and languages, into new activities for your hands, into the history of the last twenty years.

Oh, books. Oh, libraries.

~

(*) Edit on 15 September: Herewith, I post the photo 🙂
You find a few words in the post A promise is a promise: The girl in the library of Mainz.

Internet findings (1)

maipenquynh on 17. June 2024

We've all been there: you found something really good on the internet - so good that you want to shout it out into the world immediately and share it, going along with the spirit of sharing is caring!

This time I'm really doing it! I read something good and thought it must be shared! Not that I'm a big multiplicator 😆 But that is not the requirement anyways. The only requirement is my true desire that more people should see what I have seen!

I thought that I should collect a bit more and had scheduled it for a fortnight. But it didn't really add much more. And that's okay.

The driving force behind this post was:

Blogparade #6: Antifaschistische Politik in die Schule? by the german blog halbtagsblog.

I read the article before the elections for the EU but it feels even more important after the elections. I have often asked myself what performance schools can/should/must do these days. What Jan-Martin Klinge describes here is a large and important part of it. It is the attitude and understanding of what function school can (or should) have as an educational institution and also the verbalization of it that left me nodding my head in agreement.

In general, the blog halbtagsblog is one I enjoy reading. I am particularly grateful for the insights into education and how Jan-Martin Klinge understands and lives education. I am left with great impulses and often also a spark of hope as a person who is not (or no longer) active in education.

Coming to the end, more links to two other posts that were stuck in my mind:

The concept of this format, in the case it gets established, is not necessarily a blog presentation. This time it just turned out that way.