Showing all posts tagged: education
Your time machine breaks down at the worst times in history
24 April 2025
Despite what you might think, the worst possible time for your time machine to breakdown is not 2025. Instead, in this Kurzgesagt imagining, you are variously trapped in three periods of time, some several million years after three separate mass extinction events.
The time machine taking you to the early Triassic Period (two-hundred-and fifty million years ago), the late Carboniferous Period (three-hundred-and_twenty million years ago), and finally, the early Devonian Period (four-hundred million years ago) is not so much broken down, as it acting with a mind of its own. Why else hone in on some of the worst times in the far distant past to visit?
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animation, education, history, science
Mirrors, not smartphones, driving students to distraction
7 March 2025
An English school principal has had all mirrors removed from school bathrooms, after students took to lingering in large groups in school toilets, to look at their reflections.
Anywhere else, it might be smartphones being blacklisted, but not at the William Farr Church of England Comprehensive School, a high school in the English county of Lincolnshire.
Students were frequently arriving late for classes because they were spending an excess of time gazing into the mirrors. They were also gathering in large numbers, which was making other of their classmates, who only wished to use toilets, uncomfortable.
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Could these extraterrestrials build and pilot flying saucers?
7 February 2025
Kurzgesagt speculates on what extraterrestrial life might look like on planets elsewhere in the galaxy. But this may not be quite what we were expecting…
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A school in Iceland shows us what a smartphone ban looks like
22 October 2024
There has been a ban on the use of smartphones at a school in Iceland since 2019. No prizes for guessing what the result was.
A phone ban has been in place at Öldutún School since the beginning of 2019, and according to the principal, it has worked well. The school’s atmosphere and culture have changed for the better, and there is more peace in the classroom.
Hardly surprising. Students are able to bring their phones with them, but in the normal course of events, they must not be used during school hours. Smartphones weren’t around when I was at school, and for that I am thankful… it seemed like there was plenty else to worry as it was.
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education, smartphones, technology, trends
NSWEduChat, an AI tool for Australian teachers in NSW
27 September 2024
Australian teachers in NSW, now have access to NSWEduChat, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, intended to help educators get a grip on AI tools:
The tool aims to provide additional support to staff in developing and delivering teaching experiences, easing workload demands, and empowering users to advance their AI skills in a safe environment.
The NSW Department of Education however urges caution while using the tool, reminding teachers the bot may not always be accurate, a government health warning, if ever there were one:
NSWEduChat can simulate many tasks that a human might perform but may not always be accurate. School leaders, teachers and trained, experienced employees in non-teaching positions should apply professional judgment when using NSWEduChat.
It sounds like NSWEduChat will eventually be available for students to use, something that is currently being trialled. A student roll-out will only happen once safety and privacy matters have been worked through.
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artificial intelligence, education, technology, trends
Australian high school allows students to study from home one day a week
19 September 2024
Chevalier College, an Australian high-school near the NSW town of Bowral, about a ninety-minute drive south of Sydney, will allow some senior students to study from home one day a week. The decision follows a year-long trial of the scheme.
The school argues the traditional five-day face-to-face learning model fails to adequately prepare students for the future. It said: “The world has changed, and education needs to move with it. This requires a more flexible, adaptable and personalised approach to education”.
It’s a smart move, given students may eventually find themselves working from home once they leave school. It’s also a great primer for university, where much study is self-directed, and the learning environment is structured a little differently. I wonder if other schools will follow suit, or are perhaps already doing something like this.
And bonus points for choosing Monday as the study from day (though that is of course the day most public/bank holidays fall).
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Your fixed calorie budget stops weight loss through exercise
23 July 2024
This news, via Kurzgesagt, may not be what some people want to hear. Exercising is useful, necessary in fact, but not so much when it comes to trying to lose weight it seems.
Active people who work out regularly do burn more than inactive people. But only very little, often as low as 100 calories, the equivalent of a single apple. For some strange reason, the amount of calories you burn is pretty much unrelated to your lifestyle. Per kilo of body weight, your body has a fixed calorie budget it wants to burn per day.
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Everything good and bad, but mostly very bad, about smoking
10 May 2024
A Screen cap of Kurzgesagt’s Smoking is Awesome YouTube video.
This month Kurzgesagt takes on smoking. If you’re a non-smoker, this may help you understand why people like to have a puff:
Smoking helps you focus at work and is an excuse to take regular breaks, which is good for you mentally. It’s a tool against boredom, it suppresses your appetite, it makes bad moments feel less bad and good moments better. It’s social, fun together and a good way to make friends as smokers always group up. Your lips are one of the most sensitive parts of your body and putting something between them is deeply satisfying.
But smoking is a double-edged sword; the longer you partake, the greater your risk of suffering from heart disease, cancers, and all sorts of other maladies.
This should be a classroom educational resource.
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education, health, science, video
The time may be now for you, but not someone else
31 January 2024
Well, here we are, the first month of 2024 is at an end. Time is certainly passing by. Or is it? Does time even really exist? In their latest video, Kurzgesagt takes a closer at the idea of time. Spoiler: time may not quite be what you think…
When you move through space, you are also moving through the block. This means time passes differently for different people, depending on how they move through space relative to each other. And this also means that what someone perceives as “now” is a certain cut along the block — a cut that will depend on how fast they are moving. So what you think is “now” is really only your now — there are many different “nows” in the universe and all of them are equally real. This also means there is no universal past or future.
This is heavy…
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Reality is an illusion, we are the dream of a dead universe
14 September 2023
The latest Kurzgesagt video may — like a number of their recent offerings — still have an end of days theme, but at least the subject matter is a little more fanciful. Even if we’re talking about the eventual heat death of the universe, or as Kurzgesagt posits, the already happened heat death of the universe.
Bizarre right? But our (apparent) existence may in fact be a random manifestation of a dark, cold, universe. The night sky, the awesome images of the James Webb Space Telescope, and everything else that we seem to perceive and experience, is but a figment of our imagination. Life, the universe, and everything. It might as well be the name of science fiction book.
I guess then it was a waste of time booking a table at the restaurant at the end of the universe, being the title of late British author Douglas Adams’ 1980 novel. It would seem that event’s been and gone.
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