Sunday, October 19, 2014

Night Cruise

A great way to end the trip.
A boat on the Seine
A view of Notre Dame

The Louvre
Pont des Arts may be one of the most romantic bridges in Paris, at least to judge by the thousands of couples from around the world who have clamped padlocks to the railings as tokens of their desire to be “locked in love forever.”




Musee d'Orsay







Food in Paris



Flammkueche - like pizza or flatbread



Flammekueche tarte flambée formule à volonté
Served on boards

Inside Flam's - originally a 15th Century Chapel

Crepe!

In Montmartre

In the Latin Quarter



Secondary School - Lycee Rabelais

Lycee Rabelais provides a Lycee education.  It is also a technical school for nursing education post baccalaureate and for adults retraining for a new career.  
In France secondary education is in two stages:
  • collèges cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15
  • lycées provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between the ages of 15 and 18. Pupils are prepared for the baccalaureate. The baccalauréat can lead to higher education studies or directly to professional life.

The entrance to the school.
A classroom - these student will be visiting Chicago in the spring as part of an exchange with the Chicago High School.



A view of the Sorbonne University from the 3rd floor.


A lab


Elementary School Visit - Rampal Ecole Elementaire

In France you can send children to school starting at age 3 "Maternelle". The elementary school is called "École élémentaire", middle school is the "collège" and high school is "lycée".


View of the building


Classroom

1st Grade Reading Book

1st Grade Journal Notebook

1st Grade Reading Workbook

Cafeteria

The Principal, a teacher and official

The Library

Playground

School Entrance

French Ministry of Education

The Ministry's headquarters is located in the 18th century Hôtel de Rochechouart on the rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. National Education is France's largest employer, and employs more than half of the French state civil servants. Once accepted as a teacher, they have a job for life.  There is a national curriculum and some national tests.We learned some interesting facts  about French Education.  Until 2011, all students were given tests in primary school.  The tests were given up because "they were thought not reliable enough."  We heard a lot about "freedom of teaching."  France is working on the recruitment and training of French teachers and increasing the entrance and training requirements, including requiring a master's degree.
The speakers summarized the following challenges and how the ministry is responding:
* Fighting against the school drop out
* Fighting against discrimination and social inequalities
* Modernizing the vocational training
* Engaging school in the digital era


Ministry Building

Officials
Meeting room - with simultaneous translation. This is the room where the Minister of Education meets with the 30 Rectors that govern regions of French schools.  
                    

OECD Visit

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

"The mission of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.
The OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems. We work with governments to understand what drives economic, social and environmental change. We measure productivity and global flows of trade and investment. We analyse and compare data to predict future trends. We set international standards on a wide range of things, from agriculture and tax to the safety of chemicals.

We also look at issues that directly affect everyone’s daily life, like how much people pay in taxes and social security, and how much leisure time they can take. We compare how different countries’ school systems are readying their young people for modern life, and how different countries’ pension systems will look after their citizens in old age.

Drawing on facts and real-life experience, we recommend policies designed to improve the quality of people's lives. We work with business, through the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD, and with labour, through the Trade Union Advisory Committee. We have active contacts as well with other civil society organisations. The common thread of our work is a shared commitment to market economies backed by democratic institutions and focused on the well being of all citizens. Along the way, we also set out to make life harder for the terrorists, tax dodgers, crooked businessmen and others whose actions undermine a fair and open society."

We had a very interesting presentation from Italian and Japanese OECD staff members about the PISA test results and TALIS

About PISA

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. To date, students representing more than 70 economies have participated in the assessment.
The most recently published results are from the assessment in 2012.
Around 510,000 students in 65 economies took part in the PISA 2012 assessment of reading, mathematics and science representing about 28 million 15-year-olds globally. Of those economies, 44 took part in an assessment of creative problem solving and 18 in an assessment of financial literacy.
Consult all PISA  2012 results here.
More than 70 economies have signed up to take part in the assessment in 2015 which will focus on science.

You can try the test at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/


TALIS - The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey  http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/talis.htm


Meeting room


The countries participating in PISA (dark color)


Interior of the building


Eiffel Tower


When Gustave Eiffel’s company built Paris’ most recognizable monument for the 1889 World’s Fair, many regarded the massive iron structure with skepticism. Today, the Eiffel Tower is considered an architectural wonder and attracts more visitors than any other paid tourist attraction in the world.

In 1889, Paris hosted an Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) to mark the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution.  More than 100 artists submitted competing plans for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars, located in central Paris, and serve as the exposition’s entrance. The commission was granted to Eiffel et Compagnie, a consulting and construction firm owned by the acclaimed bridge builder, architect and metals expert Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel. While Eiffel himself often receives full credit for the monument that bears his name, it was one of his employees—a structural engineer named Maurice Koechlin—who came up with and fine-tuned the concept. Several years earlier, the pair had collaborated on the Statue of Liberty’s metal armature.
Eiffel reportedly rejected Koechlin’s original plan for the tower, instructing him to add more ornate flourishes. The final design called for more than 18,000 pieces of puddle iron, a type of wrought iron used in construction, and 2.5 million rivets. Several hundred workers spent two years assembling the framework of the iconic lattice tower, which at its inauguration in March 1889 stood nearly 10,000 feet high and was the tallest structure in the world—a distinction it held until the completion of New York City’s Chrysler Building in 1930.


The tower at night
The lights twinkle at five minutes to the hour

Looking at the structure

View from the tower




A view from the ground looking up to the top of the tower