Alice Somer Herz

Listen to her wise words:

Alice Herz-Sommer, also known as Alice Sommer-Hertz and Alice Sommer, (born 26 November 1903) is a Czech pianist, music teacher and survivor of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Herz-Sommer has lived in North London, United Kingdom since 1986, and is the world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor.[1] Herz-Sommer was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary, along with her twin sister Mariana, to Friedrich and Sofie Herz; he was a merchant and her mother was highly educated and moved in circles of well-known writers. Herz-Sommer's older sister Irma taught her how to play piano, which she studied diligently. She also studied under Vaclav Stepan, and at the Prague German Conservatory of Music. She had begun giving concerts and making a name for herself before the Germans took over her city. She married businessman and amateur musician Leopold Sommer in 1931 and they had a son, Raphael ("Rafi") (1937-2001).[2] After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, most of her family and friends emigrated to Palestine via Romania, including Max Brod and brother-in-law Felix Weltsch, but Herz-Sommer stayed in Prague to care for her ill mother, who was one of the first to be sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. In July 1943, Herz-Sommer, her husband Leopold, and their six-year-old son were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp. Herz-Sommer played at over 100 concerts in the camp along with other musicians. Leopold was later sent to Auschwitz and though he survived the camp, died at Dachau in 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Theresienstadt in 1945, Herz-Sommer and Rafi returned to Prague and in March 1949 emigrated to Israel to be reunited with her family. She lived in Israel and worked as a music teacher in Jerusalem until emigrating to London, United Kingdom with her son, an accomplished cellist, in 1986. Herz-Sommer was the subject of a bestselling book A Garden of Eden in Hell recalling the events of the concentration camps. In 2010, a television programme was aired on BBC4 to recognise her life story. Herz-Sommer attributes her longevity to her optimism. "A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor" by Caroline Stoessinger, was published March 2012. The book has a foreword by Vaclav Havel, Czech's first free president and a friend of both the author and Herz-Sommer. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Herz-Sommer Picture source: http://miskaparatecreativo.blogspot.com.es/

THE DIGITAL STORY OF THE NATIVITY

THE DIGITAL STORY OF THE NATIVITY
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Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY


Ken Robinson: Author/educator
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
Why you should listen to him:
Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.

"Ken's vision and expertise is sought by public and commercial organizations throughout the world."

BBC Radio 4

http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html

2010: Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I&feature=related

Changing Education Paradigms



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DIA INTERNACIONAL DEL LIBRO INFANTIL Y JUVENIL 02- 04-2011

servetbiblio.blogspot.com


Celebramos el día internacional del Libro infantil y juvenil

Todos los años, el 2 de abril, el IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) celebra el Día Internacional del Libro Infantil y Juvenil, con el fin de conmemorar el nacimiento del escritor danés Hans Christian Andersen. Cada año es un país miembro de dicha organización Internacional el encargado de editar el cartel anunciador y el mensaje dirigido a todos los niños del mundo. Este año 2011 se ha encargado Estonia. El cartel ha sido realizado por Jüri Mildeberg y Jüri Dubov. El mensaje es de Aino Pervik.
http://www.sol-e.com/

“Cuando Arno llegó a la escuela con su padre, las clases ya habían comenzado.”
En mi país, Estonia, casi todo el mundo conoce esta frase de memoria. Así comienza un libro. El título del libro es “Primavera”, que se publicó en 1912 y fue escrito por el escritor estonio Oskar Luts (1887 – 1953).
“Primavera” narra la vida de los niños de una escuela rural de un pueblo de finales del siglo XIX en Estonia. Oskar Luts escribió de sus años escolares. Arno es en realidad el mismo Oskar Luts en su niñez.
Los investigadores estudian documentos antiguos y escriben libros de historia según éstos. Los libros de historia hablan de sucesos que han tenido lugar alguna vez. En los libros de historia uno no entiende bien cómo era la vida de la gente corriente de aquella época.
Sin embargo, los libros históricos costumbristas recuerdan hechos que no hallamos en los documentos históricos, como por ejemplo lo que pensaba un chiquillo como Arno cuando hace cien años iba a la escuela. El libro recuerda los sueños de los niños, sus dudas, sus gustos y sus aficiones. También recuerda a los padres de los niños, cómo ellos hubieran querido ser y lo que deseaban para el futuro de sus hijos.
Por supuesto que hoy en día también se puede escribir libros de tiempos pasados y éstos son a menudo apasionantes. Pero en realidad, un autor de ahora no siente los olores, los sabores, los temores y los gustos de los tiempos remotos. Él sabe ya lo que ha sucedido, lo que el porvenir tenía velado a la gente de entonces.
Los libros recuerdan la época en la que han sido escritos.
Con las novelas de Charles Dickens sabemos qué le parecía a un niño la veda en las calles de Londres a mediados del siglo XIX, cuando Oliver Twist se paseaba por ellas. A través de los ojos de David Copperfield –que eran los mismos ojos de Dickens- también nosotros vemos toda clase de tipos que vivían en la Inglaterra de mediados del siglo XIX, cuáles eran las relaciones entre ellos y cuáles eran las ideas y emociones en las que se fundamentaban. Como David Copperfield es en gran medida Charles Dickens, éste no ha tenido que inventar nada; él simplemente sabía.
Los libros nos dan a conocer lo que realmente sentían Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn y su amigo Jim al navegar a lo largo del Mississippi a finales del siglo XIX en el momento en el que Mark Twain narraba sus aventuras: él conocía profundamente lo que la gente de su época pensaba de los demás, porque él mismo vivía entre ellos. Él era uno de ellos.
Las obras literarias que han sido escritas en su misma época, cuando la gente de entonces aún vivía, son las que hablan de manera más auténtica de la gente del pasado.


Aino Pervik
Traducido al castellano por
Teresa Peña Díaz-Varela


http://www.oepli.org/pag/cas/dia.phpa.php

Rita Levi-Montalcini

 
Rita Levi-Montalcini (born 22 April 1909), Knight Grand Cross is an Italian neurologist who, together with colleague Stanley Cohen, received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of Nerve growth factor (NGF). Since 2001, she has also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life.
Today she is the oldest living Nobel laureate and the first ever to reach a 101th birthday.

Born in Turin to a Jewish family, together with her twin sister Paola she was the youngest of four children. Her parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a painter.
Levi-Montalcini decided to attend medical school after seeing a close family friend die of cancer,^[overcoming the objections of her father who believed that "a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother". She enrolled in the Turin medical school in 1930. After graduating in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers.

During World War II, she conducted experiments from a home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos which laid the groundwork for much of her later research. Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home. In 1943, her family fled south to Florence, and she set up a laboratory there also. Her family returned to Turin in 1945.
In September 1946, Levi-Montalcini accepted an invitation to Washington University in St. Louis, under the supervision of Professor Viktor Hamburger. Although the initial invitation was for one semester, she stayed for thirty years. It was there that she did her most important work: isolating the nerve growth factor (NGF) from observations of certain cancerous tissues that cause extremely rapid growth of nerve cells in 1952. She was made a Full Professor in 1958, and in 1962, established a research unit in Rome, dividing the rest of her time between there and St. Louis.
From 1961 to 1969 she directed the Research Center of Neurobiology of the CNR (Rome), and from 1969 to 1978 the Laboratory of Cellular Biology.
Rita Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute, covering the appointment of president. Her role in this institute was at the center of some critics from part of scientific community in 2010
Controversies were raised by the collaboration of Prof. Montalcini with the Italian Pharmaceutical Factory Fidia. Since 1975 the scientist promoted the drug Cronassial produced by Fidia from bovine brain. The drug turned out some years later to be able to cause a severe neurological syndrome (Guillain-Barré syndrome). For this reason Germany banned Cronassial in 1983, followed by other countries. Italy prohibited the drug only in 1993. This episode raised serious critics to Rita Levi-Montalcini.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini


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Inspiring people: Rosa Parks

ROSA PARKS

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African American civil rights activist and seamstress whom the U.S. Congress dubbed the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement".

Parks is famous for her refusal on December 1, 1955 to obey bus driver James Blake's demand that she relinquish her seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest and trial for this act of civil disobedience triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history, and launched Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the organizers of the boycott, to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Her role in American history earned her an iconic status in American culture, and her actions have left an enduring legacy for civil rights movements around the world.

http://www.biographyonline.net/humanitarian/rosa-parks.html




BiographyChannel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8A9gvb5Fh0&NR=1&feature=fvwp



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sarawahedi

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

How social media, web and mobile tell the story of the Nativity.
Christmas story told through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, GMail, Foursquare, Amazon...





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