I’m just an educator who likes the puzzle of how to teach better.
I became interested in Chinese schools in 2018, invited to see a few schools there. Of course I was aware of diplomatic tensions between the USA and China. Harvard’s grand scholar of international relations, Graham Allison, had published his book just a year prior, the Thucydides Trap:
Continue reading “I’m More Worried About the Fraying US-China Relationship than Corona Virus”
I had breakfast with Phyllis from ClassIn a few months ago. I bet she never expected this:
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), activity on ClassIn multiplied an incredible 40 times to record 1.6 million Daily Active Users (DAU) on February 4-5, marking a critical turning point in the development of online education in China.
Continue reading “40x Increase for this Chinese Online Provider”
Via the wonderful Joanne Jacobs, I discovered this interview with Martha Franks, who has a new book about teaching in China.
It’s called: Books Without Borders: Homer, Aeschylus, Galileo, Melville and Madison Go to China.
The interview is conducted by “Lois Lane.”
Q: What sorts of ancient Western concepts did the Chinese students relate to, and which were mystifying to them?
Screen Time remains a big parent problem in China and USA.
This from EdSurge.
It’s an interview with Lisa Guernsey, director of the teaching, learning and tech program at New America, a nonpartisan think tank.
She even wrote a book that’s called “Screen Time” and a more recent one called “Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of Screens.”
Q: Have you heard of these videos that have gone viral on YouTube for years now where parents are taking away the kids’ XBox or phone and like smashing it with a sledgehammer or throwing them out the window? What do you make of these?
Continue reading “Screen Time: Three C’s”
From the WSJ:
In Hong Kong, the home of schools that are the envy of high-achieving and aspirational parents everywhere, education is making a huge shift.
To the dining room.
Continue reading “Coronavirus Home School”
From SCMP:
Xu and many others have already begun learning full time again – only from home – in what may become the largest online teaching trial the country has seen.
Continue reading “Coronavirus May Turbocharge China’s Online Learning”
A few months ago I wondered:
Are China and USA are very culturally different (when it comes to privacy around tech), or if they’re just a few years ahead of us in accepting things?
Maybe it’s the latter.
A US school district just deployed facial recognition software. Continue reading “China v. US: Privacy Norms For Schools”
From Ming Que at Sixth Tone:
Part 2
My wife and I moved to Huanggang from nearby Qichun County about six months ago. We invested 30,000 yuan and opened a store that sold windows and doors with a few other people. We wanted to change our lives; we never thought something like this would happen.
From Elisabeth Buchwald at Marketwatch:
Universities are ramping up efforts to protect students, faculty and staff from the potentially deadly illness — especially schools that have large populations of students from China.
More international students come to the U.S. from China than from any other country. In the 2018-2019 academic year, there were more than 369,000 students from China studying at U.S. colleges, according to the Institute of International Education.
With large groups of people sharing living spaces, classrooms, libraries and dining halls, colleges face unique challenges in managing contagious illnesses.
“Universities are often the most global and we are often on the front lines of these situations,” said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, the associate vice provost for student health at the University of Southern California. The school has 6,626 students from China, the second-largest population of students from China in the U.S., according to the IIE.
Kids get the flu, worry it’s corona.
Front page of Philadelphia Inquirer, via Geordie:
1. Last week, 18 Chinese kids arrive to Penn Charter School. Exchange program. Two weeks.
2. One kid feels ill. He’s tested for coronavirus.
3. Panic. Other schools cancel sports events with Penn Charter. A bus driver wouldn’t drive Penn Charter students.
4. The school sends the other 17 Chinese kids back to China. The sick kid stays in isolation with a chaperone.
5. Sick kid tests negative for coronavirus.
“We regret that this program has been complicated, and now terminated, because of events that were beyond the control of the people who were excited for all the learning that this cultural exchange had promised,” head of school Darryl J. Ford wrote in an email to Penn Charter parents Monday night.
