DictationThe following videos last about  1 or 2 minutes each. Write down the words you hear. There will be one listening task for each week. Please note the deadline for each video.

Video 7: Digital Education

Dictation of Video 7 must be finished by Nov. 21. Upload the photo of you dictation.

30 years ago, students did all their learning inside of a classroom and got all of their information from encyclopedias, dictionaries and libraries. Today students can download an e-book in less than a minute, search for anything in seconds and find any topic on WIKIPEDIA instantly. Technology is opening up the world of education, but there is a problem. Today in the US, a student drops out of high school every 26 seconds, 30% of students in the US fail out of high school and of all US college students 46% will not graduate. Currently education is a “one size fits all’ model. Visual learners, audio learners and hands-on learners are required to learn in ways that don’t always best fit their needs. We need a system that adapts to our students not the other way around. Today technology allows for a customizable system that can be tailored to individual students. In what used to be a world confined to a classroom students are now able to learn anywhere whether that is a home, at a local coffee shop , half way around the world or anywhere that suits their needs. With the future of digital education, we can also expect more blended learning with courses that incorporate online teaching into a classroom environment. There will be more textbooks available in digital formats. In fact it’s estimated that by 2016, 35% of textbooks will be bought in a digital format. And there will be more collaboration between people from many parts of the world. US colleges educate 19 million students every year and 96% of those colleges offer at least one online class. The future of digital education is now.   

Video 8: Meaningful work

Dictation of Video 8 must be finished by Nov. 28. Upload the photo of you dictation.

The first requirement of any job is that it should pay, but almost as important yet much less commonly recognized is that a job should feel full of meaning, yet how does a job get to feel meaningful? What even does it mean to say a job has meaning? There seems to be three things that in-build work with meaning. Firstly a meaningful job taps into the deepest ,most sincere and talented parts of us, so different people would necessarily find different sorts of work meaningful according to what’s inside their deepest self. For some , meaning might emerge from baking bread, others will feel that deep self engaged by computer science. For others still they will feel mostly themselves mostly alive when investing money or teaching kids a foreign language. Secondly, a meaningful job is one which to some extent helps others which fixes a problem that humans have, a job which in ways large or small serves humanity. Meaningful work provides a service to others. And thirdly a job feels meaningful when the person doing it can fiercely sense day to day the impact of their work upon an audience. Not only is the job theoretically meaningful , it actually feels meaningful as one does it in the course of an average day. 

Video 9: Work for free

Dictation of Video 9  must be finished by Dec.5 . Upload the photo of you dictation.

W:I'm Sam.

M:And I'm Rob.

W: Before you got your first job, Rob, did you do any work experience?

M：I think I may have done a day or two at some companies, just shadowing, watching how they did things – but nothing much more than that.

W: Some companies offer students or recent graduates what they call internships.

These are extended periods of work experience where someone can be working full-time without an actual contract and in many cases without even being paid.

M: Ah – yes. This is a bit of a problem, isn't it? Some companies are being accused of using students and graduates as cheap or free labour.

W: Yes, although the counter argument is that internships are valuable experience for people who need it before they can get a 'real' job.Well, we'll look at this topic a little more after this week's quiz question. On the topic of business and companies, which is the oldest stock exchange in the world?  Is it: A:Bombay, B: New York, or C: Amsterdam?What do you think, Rob?

M: Tricky, because I was expecting London on that list.I'm going to take a guess then at Amsterdam.

W: OK. Well, I will reveal the answer later in the programme.