»education«

Now, when the Space Shuttle Atlantis is visiting the International Space Station (ISS), swapping crew members and extending hardware by attaching the space lab Columbus, it's time to tell your kids about human space flight, what this people are doing on-board, and what all this fuzz is about.
Thus, cock your head and watch the sky. The space station is visible very good just after sunset as a bright straight moving spot (it takes 91 minutes for one orbit, its altitude is around 340 kilometers).
ESA provides a nice mash-up of ISS's present position on a Google map, although no future advice for a sighting at your home town is available. That's done by a website of NASA, showing the possible sightings for the next days. Click on "Sighting Opportunities" and go ahead for your country and nearest town.

not what you think in the first case - if you take it according to Andrew Abbott of the University of Chicago in his "Welcome to the University of Chicago" address to the freshmen starting college. To give two bits of his speach to provoke further reading:

First, what are not the aims of education:

Let me pull my argument together about what are not the aims of education before turning, in the time remaining, to the question of what those aims are. I have shown first that your general level of worldly success does not depend on your study here -- indeed that success is already pretty much guaranteed. I have shown second that your detailed level of worldly success is a function of occupational choices that will come after your time here and that will be largely unrelated to it. I have shown third that there is no strong evidence that college instruction gives you cognitive skills not available elsewhere and fourth that the much-vaunted basic intellectual skills may not in fact be the most important skills either in professional school or professional life. Nor finally is there any reason to believe in a canon, since said canon is manifestly absent in actual American life. The sole thing I am willing to grant out of this whole discussion is that college instruction may be justifiable as a form of mental gymnastics. But lots of other things might serve that purpose just as well.

And now the result of his argument:

Education is not about content. It is not even about skills. It is a habit or stance of mind. It is not something you have. It is something you are... Education is a way of expanding experience...being educated is your best plan for an uncertain future.

With Drew Gilpin Faust as new-elect president of Harvard university, four out of the eight institutions in the American Ivy League are directed by women, reports Andreas Eckert in FAZ (13.2.2007). Faust follows Lawrence Summers who left in June 2006.

Tobias Beck writes in Die Zeit (16.11.2006) about the EU funded project Cinema and Science, for short Cisci, that is aimed at better science lessons in school: Teachers and pupils unravel the science in blockbuster movies. Hence both, teachers and pupils shall be motivated to engage more in the science curricula. Some 160 teaching units are in the data base, in six languages and ready for download at the project site. First experiences are positive, reports Beck. But critics say that simply showing snippets of Hollywood films won't do good when the rest of the teaching is the old, difficult, boring business as usual science class thing.

For the very best in school, the curriculum is slow and boring. Hence, the Technische Universität Berlin opens the doors for them. In parallel to the last years in school, pupils may attend lectures in maths, physics, chemistry and computer science. The pupils have to be recommended by their teachers, reports Christian Schwägerl in FAZ (1.9.2006). The elite school children may attend university lectures during school-free afternoons, but also instead of school classes. It's assumed that they learn the missed school curriculum easily. Officials think that a hundred pupils may do the scheme. A next step may be a special guide and mentor to the youngsters to prevent them getting lost among several ten thousands of regular students in Berlin.

Tim Gnatek in the NY Times (29.3.2006) about the San Francisco science museum Exploratorium and its Web activities. Actually, the museum has got 600,000 visitors last year, the website counted 20 million. The website is at http://www.exploratorium.edu