Wine Review: Chanteau St. Michelle's 2011 Riesling

Chateau Ste. Michelle shoots for the sky with their 2011 Riesling. Soft, subtle, and semi-sweet are three words that describe this chilled beverage. It is a summer white wine with a touch of class. With an average customer rating of 5 out of 5 stars, it is likely you will not be disappointed. Pick up a bottle at the store on the way home, as restaurant prices are astronomical. 

Located in Washington Chateau Ste. Michelle is not your standard Californian or Italian offering.  Based within its French culture the winery has morphed into offering separate products for red and white wine. The owners attempt to blend old world traditions with new world innovations to maintain the highest quality standards possible. 

Riesling originally comes from the Rhine region of Germany. The white grape variety has spread too many other locations around the world. Considered a popular type of wine for summer and fall it is offered in most restaurant establishments.  It is believed that the wine originally came from 14^th Century peasants and the traditional grapes are rare in modern production. 

For under $10 dollars a bottle, this is a great wine for lying under the Christmas tree or in front of the fire.  If you are from the Midwest you can always site on your porch and watch the leaves change color with the season. It will work well with holiday parties or as token gifts. Try it with your offerings of cheese & crackers, seafood, fruit or other appetizers. 

http://www.ste-michelle.com/

The "Eagle Eye" of Perception in Gifted Students

Gifted college students are sometimes difficult for administrators to understand and develop proper programs. Many gifted students are simply not recognized and move through their careers, lives, and academic work unchallenged.  The authors Gentry & Lackey (2012) discuss the concept of gifted mismatch and how this is even more difficult for misunderstood minorities that already struggling with their own identity.  People with the highest capacity of development are often left unchallenged in academic programs.

The authors discuss a concept called “Eagle Eye” to help explain giftedness. The Eagle has a wider range of perception and six times more focus. Their world is so rich that according to Gardner they can see things, based upon their perceptual strength, others cannot. Matched with their cognitive abilities the world is fundamentally a different place and many of these students are left to their own devices to make meaning out of it. 

Early literature focuses on the description of gifted students as fluent, flexible, elaborate, and original. They are curious about life, sensitive to their environment, have deep values, and can readily see multiple relationships between things. When including Gardner’s Theory of Multiple intelligence we can see that they use multiple intelligences across different spectrums to navigate their environment.  In other words, where the average person may find moderate success in one genre the gifted student may master multiple planes of human development. 

Accordingly, giftedness can be described as the following: 

Cognition: Vivid and rich imagination, learn new things rapidly, fast thinker;

 Perception: Passionate/intense feelings, childlike sense of wonder, open minded;

 Motivation: Very independent/autonomous, curious/desire to know, high drive;

 Activity: Lot of energy, sustained concentration on things of interest, spontaneous; and

 Social Relations: Questions rules or authority, very compassionate (Heylighen, n.d.).

The author contends that it is a failure of our education system to not recognize giftedness in students. When this occurs on a wide scale the country fails to capitalize on its most important resource-the human mind. This phenomenon becomes even more apparent with minority members who are not often viewed with the same academic potential as others. Our bias, false beliefs, and rigid definitions often leave this group out in the cold even though they have abilities that far exceed the average.

Gentry, R. & Lackey, T. (2011). Simply gifted: Their attributes through the eyes of college students. Paper presented at the International Conference "Peace through Understanding" (Jackson, MS, Apr 4-8, 2011). 2011 16 pp. (ED529168)

Heylighen, F. (n.d.). Gifted people and their problems. Retrieved from http://talentdevelop.com/articles/GPATP1.html

Arts & Crafts: Building a Nostalgic Bookshelf

Having interest in arts, crafts and other projects is a wonderful way of spending time constructively. Through the process of engaging in crafts, it is possible to learn new skills to apply in some new way in the future. This project was a simple bookshelf that can be completed even by the youngest of family members. 

No nails, construction, or anything else besides some paint, crates, and paintbrush are needed.  It is always best to do things as cheaply as possible. Looking around grocery stores and other areas that use crates for shipping or holding corn can be beneficial. Some craft stores carry these boxes but they charge a high rate. 

Painting these boxes provides an opportunity to match them within your room or apartment. If you have a little space and a sander, the best route is to stain them with a color that matches your furniture. This will require a high level of sanding to get the grain just right and remove any imperfections in the box. 

The nice thing about these bookshelves is that they can go anywhere including your closet and garage. You can break them up or use them all together. The pattern of their arrangement is completely up to you. Some have made them into a diamond shape with two on the bottom, three in the middle and two on the top. Once they are full of books they will hold. 

Nostalgic furniture seems to be of interest to people. Perhaps it is something we grew up with or have positive feelings with. Most of the major retailers carry nostalgic items from our past that have been re-engineered to fit the modern times. It is easy to build these old fashion bookshelves on a shoestring budget and a little hard work.

4th Annual Connections Conference on Higher Education

If you have not already registered for the 4th Annual Connections Conference on Higher Education Assessment hosted by Virginia Tech and Weave, please do so by December 16th to take advantage of early registration.

About the Conference:

The Connections 2014 Conference aims to add meaning to the metaphor, "Closing the Loop". Too often, the final step of the assessment process gets less attention in the rush to complete one assessment project and move onto another. Connections 2014 will showcase sessions from institutions that have successfully utilized the assessment cycle to make well-informed, strategic decisions designed to improve student learning or the learning environment.

This is a small interactive conference with only 200 registrations, so space is limited. Registration will close once capacity is reached.

Click Here to learn more and to register for Connections 2014!

American High School Students Are Having Difficulty Competing

According to a 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Americans are slipping in readiness. Math is on the decline and they are not doing much better in reading or science. The trend is concerning as American students are not preparing to take over highly skilled, technologically advanced and scientific oriented positions in an increasingly difficult and complex world. As intellectual capital declines so does a nations future opportunities.

 Americans dropped to the 26^th slot in math, 21^st slot in science, and the 17^th slot in reading.  The report indicates that nearly 15% of the variance in U.S. students is due to socio-economic issues that include motivation and interest. Students in the country simply view math and hard science as difficult or uninteresting. They do not choose these fields as their occupational approach.

Asian countries are on the rise. China appears to be doing well. Even though American students have not slipped much they have stayed relatively the same despite the increase in scores of other countries. This means their overall performance has stagnated and could possibly start to decline at some point in the future. Asian countries appear to be picking up the pace and moving ahead.

Some should find the report results frightening and start looking toward the root causes. They are deeper than simply “lazy students” but move into a range of topics that include family, beliefs, internal/external motivation, educational approaches, innovation, leadership, income, and many others. Similar reports on high school education indicate the system isn’t working well for the low performing students or the highest capability students. It functions in part for a percentage of those in the average categories.

Solutions are not as simple as people think but may have something to do with how Americans view themselves and their need to focus again on growing a country with basic root value systems that fosters personal and professional growth.  This is an everyone is invited type of approach regardless of their racial, religious, ethnic, or language background. Perhaps our biggest failure is the failure to free our minds to the possibilities of a brighter tomorrow?

Report

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy