Month: May 2014

Austria – Vienna / Wien – Spanish Riding School

We visited a classical performances at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna

In front of the Hofburg, Josefsplatz with a monument of Emperor Joseph II

Entering the baroque hall of the Winter Riding School arena is very impressive

Looking towards the Emperor’s seats, the Royal Box.

The other way, towards the entrance.

Leilani took a good photo of me and Jutta

I took a bad photo of Leilani and Oma (not posted)
It was not allowed to photograph the horses and I didn’t, but I got the following 2 from Wikimedia:
hrs-1
That was during the morning work, the performance is much more impressive
hrs-2

Afterwards we went to the coffee shop of the Hofreitschule and got nice coffee, and a huge portion of vanilla ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream.

Austria – Vienna / Wien – Hofburg and Treasury

After we visited the Spanish Riding School we visited other sights at and around the Hofburg Palace

Hofburg Vienna plan (from Wikimedia, vectorized by: Gothika, thanks!)
hofburg
1) Schweizertrakt 2a) Augustinerkirche 2b) Augustinerkloster 3) Stallburg 4) Amalienburg 5) Leopoldinischer Trakt 6) Redoutensaaltrakt 7) Winterreitschule 8) Hofbibliothek 9) Augustinertrakt 10) Palais Erzherzog Albrecht 11) Reichskanzleitrakt 12) Festsaaltrakt 13) Michaelertrakt 14) Neue Burg 15) Corps de Logis 16) Palmenhaus A) In der Burg B) Ballhausplatz C) Michaelerplatz D) Schweizerhof E) Josefsplatz F) Albertinaplatz G) Burggarten H) Heldenplatz

Right in front of the Michaelertrakt of the Hofburg they unearthed roman ruins, Trude, Jutta and Leilani looking down




Then we went into the Burg, this photo looks at the Emperor / Kaiser Franz I monument, Leopoldinischer Trakt & Amalienburg

Looking back towards the Reichskanzleitrakt




Wappen or Coat of Arms of later Ferdinand I Holy Roman Emperor as King of the Romans 1536

coa
(Above from Wikimedia, thanks Jebulon)
Below the Schweizerdoor (Swiss Gate) One can see the CoA of Archduke Ferdinand, later Emperor Ferdinand I, as King of the Romans, with the Golden Fleece order collar, and the date 1552.


We then went into the Schatzkammer, the Imperial Treasury Museum, and spent the next 2 hours there until Leilani’s stomach started to growl.



We ate at the excellent Italian Restaurant “Zum Lachenden Esel”, afterwards Jutta and Leilani were having fun while Sonja had to search her purse for phone and camera and other important stuff.

Austria – Vienna / Wien – Stefansdom and Citywalk

The Saint Stephen’s Cathedral was on Leilani’s must-see-again list…




We took the elevator up into one tower and enjoyed great views of the cathedral and Vienna below




We then took the scenic tour back to the car, and saw many more great city views.






Freyung

Austria – Lilith, Kiron and Inge’s Visit


Leilani’s and Lilith’s garden photos (taken with Leilani’s iPhone)




















US ‘in denial’ over poor maths standards

I read an interesting article on BBC news today, by Sean Coughlan, BBC News education correspondent

Here a shortened version:

The maths skills of teenagers in parts of the deep south of the United States are worse than in countries such as Turkey and barely above countries such as Chile and Mexico.

An international study of maths ability in the US shows how individual states would have performed if they were ranked against other countries, using the OECD’s Pisa results as a benchmark.

The study also shows that privileged youngsters in the US, with highly-educated parents, are lagging behind similar youngsters in other developed countries.

This analysis, from academics at Harvard and Stanford in the US and Munich University in Germany, punctures the idea that middle-class US pupils are high achievers.

New York and California are similar in ability to countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, well below the averages for the US and OECD industrialised countries.

The study also overturns the idea that middle-class children in the US are as good as their international counterparts.

It shows that in the US, as in other countries, children from better educated, wealthier families will achieve better results than poorer children.

Among children of parents with a low level of education, only 17% were proficient in maths, compared with 43% of children from well-educated families.

But this standard of maths among well-educated families in US is well below their counterparts in other countries.

In Poland, 71% of children from well-educated families were likely to be proficient in maths. In Germany, 64% of better-off children were proficient at maths and 55% in France.

Report authors, Prof Peterson, Eric Hanushek at Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann at the University of Munich, wrote in Education Next magazine: “Lacking good information, it has been easy even for sophisticated Americans to be seduced by apologists who would have the public believe the problems are simply those of poor kids in central city schools. ”

“Our results point in quite the opposite direction,” .

South Korea
Japan
Switzerland
Netherlands
Finland
Estonia
Massachusetts
Canada
Belgium
Germany
Poland
Minnesota
New Jersey
Austria
Vermont
Montana
Australia
Czech Republic
Ireland
New Hampshire
Colorado
New Zealand
Slovenia
Denmark
North Dakota
France
South Dakota
United Kingdom
Wisconsin
Kansas
Iceland
Washington
Maryland
Luxembourg
Texas
Virginia
Norway
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Portugal
Maine
Wyoming
Italy
Slovak Republic
North Carolina
Spain
Idaho
Alaska
Utah
United States
Sweden
Indiana
Rhode Island
Iowa
Israel
Hungary
Illinois
Nebraska
Oregon
Delaware
South Carolina
Missouri
Arizona
Michigan
Kentucky
New York
Hawaii
Arkansas
Nevada
Georgia
Florida
Oklahoma
California
Greece
Tennessee
New Mexico
Turkey
Louisiana
West Virginia
Alabama
Mississippi
Chile
Mexico

I did find the comments more interesting than the article

Many of these lists are a complete nonsense. What we need is transparency regarding the measures that were used for assessment and how much variance there is in determining these measures. 
In other words there may be no discernable differences between the first 10 in the rank list because they overlap regarding these measures. Ranking then gives the illusion of difference where there is none.

…Exams and schooling in Japan is mostly based upon memory rather than true knowledge and competence.
The universities are a bit of joke, most students simply have to attend and they’ll be handed a degree…

…My daughter, who is 18, works infinitely harder than I did at school and the pressure to perform academically is huge – in fact too much, in my opinion. We don’t want to go down the Korean route, as inspiration is as important as perspiration…

if you teach kids to add, pretty soon they’ll start wanting to think for themselves and only bad things can come of that.

That last one came from slashdot, so it’s ironical, but the previous ones are serious.

Another interesting slashdot comment:

Don’t worry, we seem to be on it. We now have “Common Core” math which is so insanely difficult and confusing that kids will hate math and will never want to do it in their lives. Don’t believe me? Try this Common Core math problem: “What is 32 – 12?” Now wait just a second… I’m guessing you’re trying to subtract 12 from 32. That’s the wrong way to do it according to Common Core. No, instead you need to do this:

32 – 12 = ?
12 + 3 = 15
15 + 5 = 20
20 + 10 = 30
30 + 2 = 32

Now you draw a box around the 3, 5, 10, and 2 that you added in and then add those numbers up. 3 + 5 = 8 + 10 = 18 + 2 = 20. So the answer is 20. If a child just does:

32
-12
—-
20

They will be marked as wrong because they got the right answer, but in the wrong way.

The sad part? This isn’t even as insane as it gets. My son was given the problem: 1.62 / 0.27. Instead of actually dividing, he was told to draw 162 “tenths segments” Then he had to redraw them, but in groupings of 27. The number of groupings was his answer. Does this work? Yes, but it doesn’t teach kids to work with numbers. What if the number he needed to divide was 1.625? Would he need to draw 1,625 segments? What if the number was 492.572? Would he need to draw nearly half a million segments? The method doesn’t scale at all and yet kids are being taught that THIS is how you solve math problems and doing it any other way is WRONG (even if it works and gives you the right answer).

I actually don’t think the subtraction example is as bad or hard to understand as the commenter thinks, and when counting money or making change this might be a useful way of doing math, but I’ll test this on Leilani and see if I am alone in my opinion.
A division through a fraction or decimal smaller than one is hard to understand, and Leilani is a year or 2 away, but I think I’d let Leilani draw a few of them, although 162 segments seem excessive. We also drew lots of multiplication rectangles (and did areas at the same time)

And just because we are talking about weird math…


and writing step-by-step…

I let Leilani do math whichever way she feels works, as long as the result is right (this is why engineers should probably not be teachers in a regular school). It sometimes takes me a minute to understand what she is doing. She often is faster her way though, and I make sure she knows the “regular” way too. Singapore math encourages finding different ways. They do not encourage just writing down the result, but I think I don’t need to add frustration (which comes with handwriting) to math. It’s better to spend the time on math rather than on documenting the process, I suppose the intense fixation of the school system with the documentation of all steps to the result stems from fear of cheating, but it is an empty ritual in the age of the ever-present calculator. (Leilani knows how to use a calculator to check results, and I am 100% certain she does not cheat)