Dear Victoria.

Dear Victoria,

I hope you are all right. How’s your family? Do you still work at the workshop? How are your brothers? I tried to play stickball – wish I could play with them!

I have successfully integrated into a new society. For example, I am accustomed to catching taxi, though I can set out and get away from it all if I’m tired from the megapolis. There are many unspoilt and stunning landscapes in America. Moreover, I use every possibility to go for a wander around any lake or forest I can find, especially if it is out of season.

I was working as a newsy for a long time, and it was almost impossible to go away for the first few months. However, I am delighted that my work requires being in the open air.  I tried my best and it turned out to be a great success! I have more money, so now I can afford myself a trip to Florida. I wish I could sunbathe or go camping with you, but I know that you have no time. Maybe I will stop off not far from your home. Anyway, I must renew my passport and after that plan anything.

We live in a run-down house now and I still can’t enter any school, because I must help my family. We were uprooted and flee from these conflicts in Austria-Hungary, so I have to be grateful. We try our best and want to live in peace with everybody around. I don’t have any desire to return.

I still have feeling of nostalgia, when I think about our conversations. I remember about the discrimination we faced with and a great prejudice I saw when I came to a new world. I am glad you helped me with a budget accommodation, because it was hard to find anything cheap in this vibrant city.

Thank you for your help.

Love,

Rudolf

Dylan O'Brien on Fakebook

My fellow fakebookers, I have some news for you.

After a meteoric rise of “Teen Wolf” serial there was a great problem with a new location for the next season. The survey has showed that most people felt tired of America and wanted a new country to be on the screen. So I decided to tell you the truth, because we don’t need the rumors to spread around.   We didn’t take Ian Bohen with us (sorry, man, we don’t need a scandal!) and arrived to the Ostroh Academy. There are beautiful locations there and not so many people around, and that is good. I think that we might have much more privacy in Ostroh, than we had in the USA. I don’t like people who intrude into my life, but in Ukraine, I hope, there won’t be such a problem.

Needless to say, I’ve never been to Ukraine, and I feel a bit humiliated, but I hope that I’ll improve everything in a few visits. For me it is still quite unusual to be the one in the public eye. I still do not feel like a celebrity and in Ukraine people single others out if anything weird happens.

By the way, there were lots of fans crying “Stiles dumps Lydia!”, what I find quite strange, because Stilinski had never dated Martin even before he met Malia. Nevertheless, there were lots of people who knew about “Teen Wolf” only thanks to tabloids with “WHO THE HELL IS STILES?” on the headlines, but after a few hours together they wanted to celebrate the achievement of our project and told that now we’ll be in the full glare of publicity for a long time.

I can’t reveal all the secrets, but I think you deserve a small piece of information about the plot. There’ll be journalists, who want to detect what is strange in Beacon Hills (except a couple of werewolves, of course) while Derek and Lydia are trying to talk the story up. There’ll be Isaac Lahey and for him his father’s death still will be unpalatable. Well, maybe I’m economical with the truth, but you have to wait a little and watch a new season this summer! Thank you! 

 http://www.classtools.net/FB/1398-muZUps

Education of the Future

Education of our future. How does it look like? Everybody talks about the aim of education, but no one actually does anything. Some people complain that because of formal education people are made to be computers. It takes years of practice to pass the final exam and to become a specialist. It’s common knowledge, that you can’t always obtain a qualification even if you get a diploma. As it is important to know, how to continue further education, I honestly think that it is better to give feedback on what I usually see in every school and university and what has to be done there.

Sugata Mitra gave an interesting view on this problem. He told that our education is obsolete. This man has told one interesting thought, which, I think, might shock a lot of our leading authorities: every exam is understood by our brains as a threat. For us it is only because we’re afraid not to show a remarkable mental agility or not to be among gifted children, but the real thing is that we do not need these exams anymore. The second speaker told the same, and I agree with him. It is a usual thing that people ask each other: How did you do in your exam?

One my suggestion is to look at the student’s work during the whole year, not when he or she sit an exam. I think a lot of students suffer from stressful situations, especially when they fail an exam. I guess it’s important to understand, that every problem needs practice, not testing. I think that practice makes perfect.

Ken Robinson mentioned three principles of human life, which are not actually taken into consideration in schools and universities: people are different and diverse, curiosity moves our life, human life is creative. I like reading and I am a bookworm, but I hate going through all the routine in our studying, especially boring rules and staff like that. So my second suggestion is to give students interesting tasks and to give them A for effort, not only strictly judge every step in their learning.

The third thing we should change is that we should individualize learning and teaching, to take almost nothing from the old school. I know the school “Summerhill”, and children there do not go to school if they don’t want, and they study what they want. There are no teacher’s pets or those who fall behind with geography, chemistry, or any other subject. As one of the speakers told, “Sciences are necessary, but not sufficient”. I don’t know how many children became famous after this school, but I know, that they are happy.

                Finally, I guess, that teachers or professors should ask questions. They shouldn’t be strict or subscribe to the theory that there is a need to make someone learn something. That’s why children do not like studying. Everything is in this way because of those who are not becoming aware of modern possibilities. Not only children, but everybody is a good learner, we only have to ask them. It is my firm conviction that our model of this discussion has to be like this one:

Education = pleasure.

This is a better way to studying.