Chinese tourists detained in Paris over one-euro coins

Two Chinese tourists have been briefly held in France on suspicion of forgery after trying to settle their hotel bill with one-euro coins.

Police were called in after a hotel owner in Paris became suspicious about the two men, and 3,700 one-euro coins were then found in their room.

But the coins were not counterfeit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24524699 

Is 25 the new cut-off point for adulthood?

New guidance for psychologists will acknowledge that adolescence now effectively runs up until the age of 25 for the purposes of treating young people. So is this the new cut-off point for adulthood?

"The idea that suddenly at 18 you're an adult just doesn't quite ring true," says child psychologist Laverne Antrobus, who works at London's Tavistock Clinic.

"My experience of young people is that they still need quite a considerable amount of support and help beyond that age."

Child psychologists are being given a new directive which is that the age range they work with is increasing from 0-18 to 0-25. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24173194 

Say It Aint So: The Movement to Kill the Apostrophe

Today is the 10th annual National Punctuation Day, a high holiday on nerd calendars across these great United States. Its stated purpose is to be a celebration of underappreciated, misused marks like the semicolon and “the ever mysterious ellipsis.” But a better-known piece of punctuation has been getting some apocalyptic press and deserves attention on this day of celebration: the apostrophe.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/say-it-aint-so-the-movement-to-kill-the-apostrophe/ 

MIT’s President: Better, More Affordable Colleges Start Online

Everyone would like a solution to the problem of rising college costs. While students worry that they cannot afford a college education, U.S. colleges and universities know they cannot really afford to educate them either. At a technology-intensive research university like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it now costs three times as much to educate an undergraduate as we receive in net tuition—that is, the tuition MIT receives after providing for financial aid. To push the research frontier and educate innovators in science and engineering demands costly instrumentation and unique facilities. Even for institutions with substantial endowments, subsidizing a deficit driven by these and other costs is, in the long run, unsustainable.

http://nation.time.com/2013/09/26/online-learning-will-make-college-cheaper-it-will-also-make-it-better/ 

Behavior Blame Game: Why We Hate to Feel Guilty Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/03/blame-game-why-we-hate-to-feel-guilty/#ixzz2i5TCJw4k

When things go south and we’re to blame, we’re supposed to feel guilty. Right? Not necessarily.

It turns out that when we do something that causes negative consequences, we actually feel less responsible for our actions. Not only that, but we see the entire interaction differently than we would if our actions had yielded a more positive result.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/03/blame-game-why-we-hate-to-feel-guilty/ 

Business Soon You Can Pay Employees at This Wisconsin Business to Snuggle With You

A new business is opening in Madison, Wisconsin that will allow customers to cuddle with employees for a small fee. It’s called Snuggle House, and it’s not a brothel, okay?

The soon-to-launch establishment has run into a number of snags in advance of its opening day, which was originally slated for Tuesday. According to ABC affiliate WKOW, the cuddle castle still needs to pass a fire inspection as well as file a business plan with the city.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/16/soon-you-can-pay-employees-at-this-wisconsin-business-to-snuggle-with-you/ 

Sleep 'cleans' the brain of toxins

The brain uses sleep to wash away the waste toxins built up during a hard day's thinking, researchers have shown.

The US team believe the "waste removal system" is one of the fundamental reasons for sleep.

Their study, in the journal Science, showed brain cells shrink during sleep to open up the gaps between neurons and allow fluid to wash the brain clean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24567412 

Smart Strategies That Help Students Learn How to Learn

What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know.

To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about how learning works. Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting the first kind of knowledge. We’re comfortable talking about concrete information: names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on the act of learning itself—the “metacognitive” aspects of learning—is more hit-or-miss, and it shows.

In our schools, “the emphasis is on what students need to learn, whereas little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students how they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky, professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an article just published in American Educator. However, he continues, “teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promoting lifelong learning.”

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/smart-strategies-that-help-students-learn-how-to-learn/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29 

Four Tips to Keep Students on Track When Using Devices in Class

Bringing technology into the classroom comes with a unique set of challenges, some of which could make classroom  management more difficult if teachers don’t think out strategies beforehand. It’s hard for teachers to keep students focused on their work when they’ve got the internet at their fingertips. Early adopters of one-to-one device programs discovered with trial and error what works and what doesn’t. Now those teachers have a lot to share with others. Liana Heitin’s Education Week article does a good job of spelling out the biggest challenges and the solutions teachers are using to deal with them.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/four-tips-to-keep-students-on-track-when-using-devices-in-class/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29 

What Can We Learn From the Global Effort Around Mobile Learning?

Closing the achievement gap and giving all students access to a world of learning online remains one of the strongest allures of education technology. In the U.S., that conversation is often centered on the newest shiny device, slickest software or free app, but internationally mobile technology is revolutionizing learning too, often without fancy gadgets. Recognizing the creative learning strategies being implemented in developing countries could help expand thinking in the U.S and inform the ongoing discussion about how to use technology to deepen learning.

“In developing countries, mobile has leap-frogged fixed-line connectivity,” said Steve Vosloo, a program specialist, in mobile learning at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “People who were never connected before have access.”

Africa is the fastest growing mobile market and the second largest after Asia. Vosloo says there are more mobile phone subscriptions than people in Africa, meaning some people have more than one. Many people in developing countries have only accessed the internet through a mobile phone and mobile connectivity far surpasses desktop connections.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/10/what-can-we-learn-from-the-global-effort-around-mobile-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29