Compelling Talks

Panel Discussion on ‘#Teaching with #AI Possibilities, Puzzles, and Perils’ youtu.be/NXkTcEgkqeg?si… via @YouTube I enjoyed this lively #conversation. Let’s dwell in the possibilities created by AI to recenter individual learning and cultivate curiosity. Thank you for inviting me.

Why did past societies build so much "useless" beauty everywhere — and why did we stop? It might be a measure of a culture's health... (thread) 🧵

Read the educational writings of Augustine. In his work "De Magistro" (On the Teacher), he argues that education is not merely the transfer of information. The teacher's role is to guide the student toward truth, while recognizing that genuine understanding ultimately comes from within. Perhaps that's why Augustine believed a teacher's character mattered just as much as a teacher's knowledge.

The best argument for classical education is simple: If an idea has survived for 2,000 years, it's probably worth understanding before dismissing it.

UK Officially Proscribes Iran’s IRGC as a Terrorist Organisation share.tousi.tv/uk-officially-…

"Only two kinds of people oppose free speech: snowflakes and totalitarians"

George Orwell, reviewing The Road to Serfdom in 1944: “Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty. By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.”

@Willow1b5gwj That’s clearly false. Look at how thousands of Muslims Iranian theocrats have killed this year! How many Muslims also died at the hands of other Muslims this year in Sudan? Libya? Ethiopia? Gaza? How many Muslims killed fellow Muslims this last decade in Syria, Iraq, & Nigeria?

@compellingtalks Muslims can’t kill Muslims.

Why don’t Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Saudi Arabia directly respond to Iran’s missile attacks? Why doesn’t the strong Saudi Air Force take out targets in Iran? Can’t they do more offensively against the theocratic thugs misruling Iran and attacking all its neighbors?

What the hell is an ampersand and why does it look like that?! The first thing you need to know is that "&" used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet... But there are three parts to this story. And the first begins over two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome with a single word: et. It's the Latin for "and". At some point Roman scribes started combining the two letters of et into a single symbol, which was the ancestor of our modern &. The earliest example of the "et" symbol is actually from graffiti in Pompeii. In any case, it did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire. Latin survived as the language of the Catholic Church and of scholarship in Medieval Europe. Scribes during the Dark Ages continued to use the & symbol. It evolved down the centuries, in places losing any semblance of the letters e and t whatsoever. The second part of the story is that during the 18th and 19th centuries, as education and the teaching of literacy spread, & was added to the end of the alphabet as a sort of 27th letter. On a related note, although "et cetera" is now usually just abbreviated as etc., for a long time it was instead abbreviated as "&c". The & was for et and the c for cetera. The third and final part of the story is about how the alphabet was taught to children — and how it was read out loud. As this 1822 Glossary of Words and Phrases explains, it had been normal during the Renaissance, when speaking the alphabet, to add "per se" before any letter which could also be a word on its own — "per se" means "by itself" in Latin. Take the letter A, which can also be a word of its own. When reading out the alphabet people would say "A, per se A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, per se I..." and so on. O was also considered a word of its own. Which means, when people got to the end of the alphabet, with & being the 27th letter, they would say: "S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and per se &." When this old way of reading the alphabet was taught to children in the 18th century and they were reciting it aloud, they would garble "and per se " into what eventually became... ampersand. A Dic­tion­ary of Slang and Col­lo­quial Eng­lish from 1905 relates some of the many other pronunciations school children apparently came up with: "Am­persand. The sign &; am­persand. Vari­ants: Ann Passy Ann; an­pasty; an­dpassy; an­parse; aper­sie; per-se; am­passy; am-passy-ana; am­pene-and; am­pus-and; ampsyand; am­pazad; am­siam; am­pus-end; ap­perse-and; em­per­siand; am­perzed; and zumzy-zan." Well, of all the many pronunciations that might have stuck, it was "ampersand" which came to be accepted and is now the official name for &... rather than zumzy-zan. So, from hurried Roman scribes to unruly school children, that's where "&" came from.

“Nobody has the right to live their lives being protected from offense or from insults or from hurt feelings. It is an occupational hazard of living in society.” — Ann Widdecombe

Shortly before her tragic death, Ann Widdecombe launched a scathing attack on woke diversity quotas, arguing that prioritising identity over merit has significantly degraded the competence of politicians. "They give priority to women, to people of ethnic origin, to gays, to whatever it might be. They're interested in quotas." "That, to my mind, is a complete nonsense, and it's what guarantees low quality."

One reason conversation activities succeed is that learners are not searching for a correct answer, open-ended questions encourage longer responses, personal stories, follow-up questions, and authentic communication. Instead of asking students to recall information, invite them to share experiences, opinions, and observations. Teachers can use the materials in Compelling Conversations in many ways. We’ve written no direction or suggestion in stone. We hope the materials stimulate interest and creativity in teachers as well as in students. Always Remember: “Only the educated are free.” ~Epictetus (55-135 CE), Ancient Greek philosopher Additional discussion topics can be found at compellingconversations.com/teacher-tips/ #ESLTeacher #ConversationClass #LanguageTeaching #AdultESL #EnglishTeacher #TeachingTips #SpeakingActivities #ESLResources #ClassroomDiscussion #CompellingConversations

Upgrade your English vocabulary 📚✨🇬🇧 #English #LearnEnglish

"If you told me 80 years after the end of WWII, there would be a power on the planet...that openly avows the destruction of the Jewish people, that the world would wonder what to do. The answer is simple. Stop them. Stop them now!" - Lindsey Graham

As a former major fund-raiser for Amnesty - I produced the first five 'Secret Policeman's Balls' - I renounce the mob who have taken over Amnesty Amnesty used to be about trying to do something about TORTURE

@CahillCarla @SecRubio @GovTimWalz @ICEgov And both federal laws and minimum standards of decency exist.

@SecRubio @compellingtalks @GovTimWalz @ICEgov More than 20 years had passed since the conviction. * He had completed his sentence and probation. * He had no new criminal convictions. * The victim (now 30 yrs old) wrote a letter saying she had forgiven him and supported the pardon.

Laotian national Tou Lue Vang was convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota.  He was set to be deported until @GovTimWalz issued him a pardon. Then, I revoked his legal status. @ICEgov has removed him from the U.S. and he will never endanger another American.

Science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke famously foresaw the digital age. On the 1964 BBC Horizon show, he accurately predicted the internet, global communication satellites, remote work, and the evolution of artificial intelligence. He was unmatched and inspiring!

Nobody talks what READING actually does to your brain: > Books train deep focus and imagination unlike Social media which trains quick dopamine and short attention. > University of Sussex research found that reading reduces stress by 68% in just 6 minutes. faster than listening to music (61%), having tea (54%), or taking a walk (42%). your heart rate slows, muscle tension eases. > the average person learns 5000-8000 words per year if they read regularly. that's roughly 15-20 words per day that you'll actually retain and use. over 10 years that's 50000-80000 words. most native English speakers only actively use 20000-35000 words. readers can literally double their linguistic range. Reading will improve your vocabulary, grammar, speaking, writing. Basically all things do with communication.

Say it louder “Who are the real colonizers” (Muslims) Without Arab imperialism: - Egyptians would be Coptic - Moroccans would be Berber - Libya and Algeria would be Amazigh - Syria and Lebanon would be Aramaic speaking and partly Phoenician - Iraq would be Mesopotamian - Assyrian, Babylonian - Sudan would be Nubian - Tunisia would be Carthaginian Punic or Amazigh - Iran would be Persian, Zoroastrian - Kurdistan would be Median, Zoroastrian - Somalia would be Kosherik “The Arab conquests erased civilizations and destroyed many cultures. Without Arab imperialism, the Middle East would still remember its own name. They are the colonizers.”