Category Archives: Education

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In languages like Spanish, French and Italian people, objects, adjectives, and articles are either male or female. In English, the discussion around “gender neutral” language focuses on pronouns; in Romance languages it is more complicated, says poet, translator and academic Prof. Deborah J. Bennett. Prof. …

“Romance languages are rooted in a binary vision of the world: this poses challenges for educators seeking to create a more inclusive environment in the classroom”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Edutopia Online” is produced by the George Lucas Education Foundation (GLEF), a nonprofit organization that documents and disseminates stories about best practices in K-12 public education. Edutopia has reviewed hundreds of educational studies carried out in 2020 and singled out 10 to be the most …

“Edutopia’s review of top 10 education studies in 2020 covers topics from virtual learning and racial bias in grading to impact of air pollution”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village   Researchers and practitioners in the “Social and Emotional Learning” (SEL) field refer to intrapersonal and interpersonal characteristics as “social and emotional skills” (SE skills), while those in the personality psychology field refer to these as “personality traits.” These terms are often used interchangeably by …

“Are “social and emotional skills” and “personality traits” completely distinct, distinct yet similar, or one and the same?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, turned 20 on January 15. With its 55 milion articles in 300 languages it is the 13th most visited page on the web. Wikipedia entries are generally in the forefront of preliminary web research on almost any topic. The very feature …

“Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary revives debate about its reliability and the need for critical thinking skills in students”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The COVID-19 pandemic has caused widespread disruption to schooling and it seems that it will be there for an undetermined period of time, at least pending availability of a vaccine. In the mean time online distance learning has become the “new normal” for many, posing …

“How to create an inclusive and engaged virtual classroom in the COVID-19 era”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The debate about the gender gap in STEM education has come back to the forefront recently with the nomination of Emmanuelle Charpentier (France) and Jennifer Doudna (USA), for the 2020 Nobel prize in Chemistry, and Andrea Gehz (USA) for Physics. Three out of eight laureates …

“Can Nobel Prizes and other scientific awards further women’s progress in STEM fields?”

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has to be credited with pioneering international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) and with setting the bar very high in terms of methodology. The IEA also shares data and information with education stakeholders, policy-makers, researchers and field practitioners. In this spirit, the new volume edited by Dr …

“IEA involves top researchers and time-served field practitioners in new open access publication on ILSAs”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village We will probably remember 2020 as the time when “distance education” exploded. But its history goes back at least three centuries, starting in the early 18th century with the first correspondance courses in Boston. September 15 marked “National Online Learning Day”, which is celebrated annually …

““Distance education” is not a new concept, it is actually much older than Zoom, Google Classroom, or even the internet”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Planet Word”, opening up in Washington DC on October 22, 2020, will be an interactive center dedicated to language arts. Its mission is to inspire a love of words and language and the project is grounded in the belief that language and literacy are the …

““Planet Word”, an interactive museum dedicated to language, opening up soon in Washington DC”

by Steve Dept, cApStAn CEO When I used to run a small translation agency in the nineties, the majority of my clients were universities. Researchers wrote papers, reports and questionnaires (in elegant French, accurate German, factual Dutch or in rather poor English) and needed them translated. They received documents relevant to their work, written in …

“Chez cApStAn — where great minds come together and share”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Academic institutions worldwide are embracing “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education and related curricula, supported in many cases by government funding. The STEM acronym was officially coined in 2001 by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the STEM movement developed in response to growing …

“Trends in learning: STEM, STEAM, STREAM… A battle of acronyms?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A group of major names in UK entertainment, politics and technology has launched a campaign called “Turn On The Subtitles” calling on broadcasters and technology companies to include same language subtitles in all programming. If English-language subtitles were to be run along the bottom of the …

“Same language subtitling in programming could improve reading literacy in children, claims UK campaign “Turn On The Subtitles””