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Post by 3piggles on May 8, 2020 18:53:41 GMT
I wonder if education was ever any good,or if it's always been geared for those who learn easily, in one way(lecture, blackboard, homework). Learning disabilities weren't even recognized until the late 80s, early 90s in the US. Deafness and blindness were recognized because they were physically obvious while dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, autism and many others still aren't recognized without testing, special education plans, etc. Even now I hear people comment that a child is a complete brat, even if someone explains that the child is autistic. A lot of people think being diagnosed with a learning disability is just being coddled, so kids can get away with not trying 😢
It's worse when government funding hinges on students getting good grades/test scores, rather than the funding going to schools where students are struggling.
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Post by bazookagoof on May 8, 2020 22:00:52 GMT
It is unfortunate that students are often passed on to the next grade without getting what they needed from the last one. I don't know if that happens in other countries, but I know it happens in the US This is exactly what happened to my boss' son. He started failing his classes around sophomore year in high school, and every year they just passed him on until graduation. Back when I was in high school, if you failed to make a certain level of grades or missed enough days, you stayed back a year.
In one particular case, one of my classmates ended up repeating his senior year for 4 additional years, and was booted out when he turned 21.
My boss thinks a little humility would have done wonders for his son. Why bother trying when you know they'll just move you onward anyway?
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Post by Bean on May 9, 2020 6:08:52 GMT
I've never really heard of kids in schools here being held back, even when they've had bad grades. Although from 13+ there are more vocational routes in schools, which suit a lot of kids who aren't academic. They'll be encouraged onto those and some of the more challenging workload pathways will be closed, presumably because they'd be expected to do badly and would mess the school's results table up.
I never really thought of it as being demotivating to get moved on regardless of attainment, I think I've always been more aware of the social problems you can create by keeping kids back with younger peers. But having a minimum baseline to work towards might make some demotivated kids pull their finger out!
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Post by 3piggles on May 10, 2020 11:22:32 GMT
Daughter said kids aren't made to repeat a year they failed, at least not in her town, so I guess they're back to passing on students who fail, and leaving the problem to the next teacher. They have tutoring help, which I think granddaughter was getting for math for a while, and I'm sure there's more being done for students with learning disabilities. The problem with teaching students with learning disabilities is that they're singled out, tested, given special tests in the classroom, etc. That means they go on to the next grade with the other kids, but can't get into college, as they never took the same level of classes the other kids took. My daughter was tested for ADD/ADHD, and had an Individual Education Plan. She wanted it dropped when she got to high school, so she could qualify for college. I didn't see that it made much difference, anyway. The whole idea of the plan seemed to be to not expect anywhere nearly as much from the students with learning disabilities, as from the rest.
Also, she learned that quickly, and didn't try as hard as she would have had to had she stayed in the mainstream. If anything, she tried even less hard than she had before the IEP went into effect. What we both wanted from the testing was an acknowledgement from the teachers that she needed a different approach to certain things. She never managed to copy down the homework assignment on the board, tended to forget about deadlines, not read all the instructions about how to do a project, and things like that. That's about taking the time to give her the assignment written on paper, to remind her of deadlines, and to go through the instructions with her to make sure she understood. They didn't bother to do those things, and I thought they were, so took her word for it that they had. Often it was stupid things like she didn't have a title page for a report, so she got a bad grade. I didn't know she needed a title page, or I would have made sure she had one. Send the instructions home to me, not home with her. She'd always say there weren't any instructions, then have a total meltdown when I went through her backpack looking for the instructions. She learned to hide things so I wouldn't find them, rather than bothering to look at them and make sure she did everything she was supposed to do. That's why I say the IEPs don't work.
Baz, I'm sure your boss will tell you it's hard enough to make them do what they're supposed to do to learn, when you're home with them, and even harder when you're working. We can't afford to not work, just to get our kids through school, so it's up to the schools to figure out how to teach ALL the students, not just some of them. Having a standard of 10-20% doing good to really good work, 80-90% getting by, and 10-20% failing is not good. Schools should try for 80-90% doing good or really good work, period, and they don't. Teachers aren't ever taught to teach to all students, regardless of what format they need to learn. We are way passed decent teaching, and really need to make teaching to all modes of learning a mainstream thing, and not a remedial thing.
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Post by Bean on May 11, 2020 8:38:03 GMT
I'm sorry your daughter's school didn't work for her. I'd definitely say things have improved for conditions like ADHD over the last few decades - rates of it have increased massively so it's more accepted and understood rather than just being considered another way of saying naughty.
Overall, communication seems to be much better between school and home now too, thanks to email and mobile phones. School doesn't have to wait for a parent to get home to call, by which time they'd hope to be home with their family too! That must have been frustrating having the school rely on your daughter to tell you what you needed to get her to do - of course she wasn't motivated to share that with you, and you already had enough battles getting her to help out around the house etc.
We have EHC's over here (Education and Health Care Plans) which sound similar, and often involve extra staff as well as different procedures and techniques in class. We have friends whose kids have them and sometimes they turn things around right away, other times it's still a struggle. But I've seen how hard many schools work to try to cater their curriculum to all students, with a wide variety of physical, mental and behavioural conditions to tailor it to with limited resources. It's a real challenge for them and some schools/ teachers definitely rise better to it than others.
Meanwhile, many parents are more demanding than ever, constantly contacting teachers to complain about the work their kids have been given, something that happened in class or to ask for different treatment for their kid instead of encouraging their kids to take initiative and responsibility, and also just to suck it up sometimes. I told you before of parents asking for compulsory after school activities to stop their kids going on screens as soon as they get home because they can't control them (the clubs are already running, but are optional). I'm sure all those parents pretty much expecting schools to raise their kids completely and extract different (more positive) behaviours than they can ever manage to do at home, aren't helping concentrate the potential teaching resources where they're needed.
I always think of raising kids as a team effort with family, friends, teachers etc. Sometimes you might have someone dodgy on the team but you try to manage it to bring the best out of them where possible! There seems to be more of a blame game going on nowadays, on both sides - I guess it's easiest of all just to say it's a rubbish school or the kid has crap parents who can't control their kid.
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Post by 3piggles on May 11, 2020 21:09:36 GMT
I don't know how much schools have changed in the US, simply because it's up to every municipality to pay for schools through tax money, and some have very little to spend. Back when daughter was in school, it seemed as if some schools did what was required to say they'd taken action, while others did as much as they could to help the students. It's unfortunately that education costs are so hard for some to meet, so easy for others, and most are just somewhere in the middle trying to make the best of a bad situation.
From what daughter has said, there is a lot more communication, though I have no idea of parents are abusing that option, or not. Back when I was in school, it was even worse. Parents usually had no idea what their kids were doing until report cards, parent/teacher conferences, or the teacher sent a note home to the parents. Of course, it helped if the student actually gave the parents the note the teacher sent home. Daughter wouldn't have bothered. The teachers expect a response, so she would have told the teacher her mom had the note. I found out that had happened a few times, too, when I attended parent/teacher conferences, and was asked why I never responded to the note sent home with daughter. Imagine my surprise!
If schools are getting better, I applaud that, but wish there were a better way to fund education than we have in NH.
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Post by Bean on May 12, 2020 6:36:23 GMT
I bet your daughter hated parents' evening for ruining all her techniques for work avoidance! You'd think the school would have only had to be told that she'd done that once before finding a way to come directly to you though.
When I was at school, if you had the odd skive, it'd only catch up with you when your report came out and showed the number of absences (and the reports covered such a long time span, many parents wouldn't think much of it if the figure was a bit higher than they might have expected). If my kids don't show up to school without me having rung in, I'd get a call within about 10 minutes of the register being taken! Much less freedom haha!
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Post by 3piggles on May 12, 2020 11:58:29 GMT
By the time daughter went to school, the school called as soon as the attendance lists were in from each classroom. They didn't do that when I was in school. I don't know if teachers sent home notes to parents when students were absent, as my mother always sent in a note when we returned to school after an absence.
She didn't learn. She kept doing it, just finding ways around everything I tried to do to make sure I got the notes, instructions, etc. The only way I could guarantee getting the notes was to have the school send them directly to me, not through her, and they didn't do that. They figured it was the parents job to make sure they got notes and instructions, not theirs.
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Post by bazookagoof on May 27, 2020 20:48:11 GMT
I don't think everyone will find this as fascinating as I do, but I'm sharing it here- while on lockdown, a Foley artist recreated the majority of the sounds for an iconic scene from Evil Dead 2!
(This is the movie where one of my Halloween costumes comes from!)
(Also, there's no objectionable material in this particular clip.)
(For those unfamiliar with Foley, it's the art of replacing sound in a scene where the original audio is unusable. A Foley artist will replace footsteps, clothing rustle and other assorted minor sounds, but not gunshots or other more specific effects.)
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Post by Bean on May 28, 2020 6:30:13 GMT
I haven't got time to watch the whole thing now, but watched a couple of bits and it is really interesting. The only times I can think of noticing sounds not quite fitting are things like martial arts films where it's supposed to be OTT. I'd be interested to watch a scene where it's just been done badly to see how obvious it is!
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Post by 3piggles on May 28, 2020 13:11:41 GMT
Wow! Cool! I remember when I first learned how the sounds were made, and how little they had to do with the actual sound, clumping coconut halves to make horse hoof sounds, etc. Slamming doors was actually made by slamming doors, lol. Sounds, as with all aspects of filmmaking, have come a long way!
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Post by bazookagoof on May 28, 2020 22:57:02 GMT
It's funny how I read comments from people (not here, obviously) asking why don't they simply just use the real sounds? For one, the sound recorded in production is often low quality, and second, real life sounds boring compared to the magic of film sound. A knife really doesn't make a "Shing" sound every time you pull it from a sheath, but it's so more dramatic when it does!
I forget if I posted this before (I think I did) but this runs along similar lines, except they also cover the complete reworking of a scene, including dialogue and music:
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Post by 3piggles on May 29, 2020 23:44:24 GMT
Years ago, when I watched the special on making the sounds, they compared the real sound to the fake sound, and on the sound track, the real sound didn't sound right. Even the slamming door was slammed much more loudly the we would normally shut a door. Knowing how a sound actually sounds on a soundtrack makes a huge difference. I think it's really cool, and not something I would have thought to consider when making a film.
Do you think the fake sounds were added as movies went from silent to talkie, and the process was spotty, and just stayed, or there was another progression?
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Post by bazookagoof on May 30, 2020 1:31:00 GMT
Do you think the fake sounds were added as movies went from silent to talkie, and the process was spotty, and just stayed, or there was another progression? I have no idea, but I'd love to find out more about it. Personally, when I really started to get into film making, I always went for larger-than-life sound. In the heat of the moment, no one really questioned my choices- during a chase in one of my earlier shorts, two heroes dive and roll under a garage door as it shuts... and I elected to use the sound effect of a castle drawbridge being lowered instead of an actual garage door, because the former had more dramatic "oomph" behind it!
I do know that animated films started with replicating sound effects first, since there were no sets or actors, naturally. I think things just went from there.
I just realized there's an excellent 19 minute documentary about sound design that explains things better than I could featuring Ben Burtt, the sound designer for Star Wars!
Specifically, the area you might be interested in starts around the 3:30 mark, although if you have time the whole thing is fun to watch.
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Post by Bean on Jun 7, 2020 5:49:37 GMT
Ah the things you don't realise have gone into a soundtrack when it's done well. I love the energy of the people creating the storm noises at around 3:46!
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Post by bazookagoof on Jun 7, 2020 17:07:34 GMT
Ah the things you don't realise have gone into a soundtrack when it's done well. Something that sound designer (Ben Burtt) mentioned in a different interview was that he tends to look at sounds as having syllables; whereas a typical Hollywood gunshot just goes "bang", a Ben Burtt gunshot sounds more like "Ka-pow!" Ever since he's brought that up, I can now see (hear) the difference when he creates a sound. He is of course, also the creator of that famous "Indiana Jones" punch sound effect as well.
In fact, I used his philosophy when I was trying to create some new sounds for some of my recent efforts; one example was Farmer Terry and his detonator for that Half & Half short I did. All you really needed was some sort of simple metallic click for the detonator, but I wanted a two-syllable sound, so I blended two sounds together to get a more customized effect.
It's a little thing, and 99% of people aren't even going to notice or pay attention. But, this is what I love do, and it makes a difference to me.
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Post by 3piggles on Jun 7, 2020 23:49:39 GMT
I'll watch it first chance I get. Sounds interesting!
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Post by bazookagoof on Jul 29, 2020 1:20:06 GMT
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Post by Bean on Jul 29, 2020 6:47:42 GMT
Blimey, what a sight! Imagine all of them running toward you!
I read the comments (wondering what the set up was - sorry Baz, I just find it impossible to react to a clip without wondering what went into getting it!) and see they're all male too? They house the sexes separately (although they do breed as well as rescue). I do wonder how long they all get on that well once the food's gone?!
Although reading on, the owners mention there is fighting and even in that short clip you can definitely hear that pigs are constantly having a bit of a go at others on the audio. But they do look healthy and well cared for in that clip, and maybe a lot happier with all that space than a lot of domestic guinea pigs are.
I'm picking up that the owners have some history with numbers having got out of control, and also that they get a lot of grief online. There's always a story!
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Post by 3piggles on Jul 29, 2020 15:11:37 GMT
Wonderful 🤗 I'm reacting strictly reacting to all those pigs, which I would love to experience.
As for the rest of it, the pigs look healthy and happy. Fighting is normal, even among sows. While the owners may not have a perfect setup, they are providing homes for large numbers of Guinea pigs who might otherwise live in horrible conditions, or be executed.
Any large number of animals, even humans, will have negative interactions, even when they have plenty of space, food and shelter. Before passing judgment on the owners, I'd want to know a whole lot more about their setup.
I do not approve of breeding, and having that many pigs should prove the 'we don't need any more' rule. If they breed, I'm extremely disappointed in them and their hypocrisy.
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