Rubénerd :)

I’ve done a similar test to this back in 2008, but I always like to compare my results. In fact I may have done this one before too now that I look at the title!

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Our (albeit government sponsored) university fees at work (or lack thereof). Fortunately all my lecturers from this semester have continued to go above and beyond by answering my emails and returning assignments with detailed and friendly comments. I wonder if others have had less luck?

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Some disturbing news about the state of tertiary education in South Australia being reported by Suzanne Tindal on ZDNet Australia. Flinders University and TAFE SA (similar to a polytechnic for my Singaporean and Malaysian readers) have adopted Microsoft Exchange based Live@Edu for a three year contract. While on the surface the features actually sound cool, the potential ramifications of adopting this expensive system are scary.

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The Aussie government seems to be going ahead with their plans for their MySchool website that will publish school marks and rankings. In an interview on Lateline I just watched, Julia Gillard assured us all league tables would not be generated. Unfortunately, she’s wrong.

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I was asked by a friendly person this afternoon who’s writing a book what I thought of the importance of mentors to young people. In 140 character Twitter goodness:

I’d say mentors are applied educators that take help young people develop. You can’t learn such experience from books or classes.

I can really attest to this. When I left high school in 2005 I got a job a Veritas writing Perl and MySQL code for a friend of my mother here in Singapore. I drew a paycheck, I had a desk in their offices, I worked alongside other people, and I reported to someone who was genuinely interested in my progress and offered patient help and guidance. I learned more from studying and working with Mr Whiting for several months than I have from several long years of university education that are still ongoing. It’s absolutely, 100% true, and I suspect a great number of people who’ve experienced both would agree with me.

Unfortunately the prestige bestowed upon people with a magical piece of paper that says that person completed a university degree is still far higher than those who developed experience and character in the workforce under the watchful eye of a mentor. I think this really needs to change.

Sad news being reported by South Australia’s Greens senator Mark Parnell this month. It’s really sad this kind of discrimination is still legal in this day and age.

I’ve previously blogged about Mark Parnell here. We need more people like him in politics.

clipped from markparnell.org.au

Critical amendments to the Equal Opportunity Act that will allow religious schools to continue to discriminate against gay teachers have passed the SA Upper House with the support of Liberals, Family First and No Pokies.

“The Greens were extremely disappointed that Labor had previously backed down on removing discrimination against teachers on the basis of sexuality. Now, this already compromised Bill has been compromised again.

“An individual’s sexuality or chosen gender has absolutely no impact on their ability to teach well. So why will schools be able to discriminate on that basis?

“Freedom from discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexuality is a basic human right. Our state used to have an enviable reputation for progressive social policy. Not any more” he said.

Ruben’s Monologue (hypothetical situations, useless English classes, economists writing essays, the FTSE), uses for the Rubenerd Show, Rubenerd Skype update, The Top 5 (signs you have a lousy ISP), finding music from TV advertisements (Christchurch Library), Make It Great with Phil Gerbyshak (what real leaders should be doing!), Will It Sink? (a FULL water pistol) pledge for victims of Cyclone Larry, and tomorrow’s weather. Brought to you by Ruben Schade of the Rubenerd Show none the less!

Download MP3 ↓ 23:41 minutes, 10.88MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page. It also originally appeared on Ourmedia but it may no longer be accessible there.