“Selfie” is a word from the 21st century which leaves few people indifferent. For some, including a few of the sharpest social commentators on either side of the Atlantic, it encapsulates what they consider to be the particular individualism, not to say selfishness of young people born circa or since the
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Last June, several educators from the Lycée Français de New York, including myself, attended the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In addition to participating in many sessions related to ISTE’s mission of “advancing excellence in learning and teaching through the innovative and effective uses of
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There is little doubt that any educator would have responded in the same way. Upon reading the following sentence in a New York Times book review, one’s curiosity is piqued and one wants to know more: “In the wrong hands, A Path Appears is a dangerous book: you wouldn’t want
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Elementary students trying to figure out how a salad spinner works. It is not every day that one encounters three aspiring scientists sitting side by side in the school cafeteria, but that is exactly what happened to me the week before vacation. Overhearing a group of sixth graders talking about “sciences de
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Anyone who has ever lived in France will probably have encountered an avenue, a school, a square or some other municipal space that has been named after one of the great French writers of the twentieth century, someone who also served for ten years as the most influential Minister of
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Now that spring has arrived, it is time to speak of love, no? I am not certain that such was the intention of New York Times columnist David Brooks last week when he penned his wonderful article about a 1945 encounter between the British intellectual Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet
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There is some debate as to who coined the terms “digital native”, but I can recall where I myself first came across them. It was some ten years ago, in an article by educational technology thinker Marc Prensky, entitled “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” “Today’s students”, affirmed the author, “have not just
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There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day, beginning with the manner in which our student-run Environmental Task Force (ETF) did so this past Tuesday, April 22. With tireless support from Director of Facilities Terrence Kennedy, the Lycée Français de New York ETF chose this date to launch a brilliantly
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“Why study history?” is a question students ask, not because they lack passion for the subject, but because they seem to be naturally more focused on the present than on the past. The answers I myself would give are myriad, ranging from the importance of building collective memory to that
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Most often, I think back on growing up in Vienna as an extraordinarily happy period. For three years, between the ages of six and nine, my three siblings and I had the pleasure of playing for hours in the gardens around Schönbrunn Palace, taking the tramway, going to the opera, among
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