Education

34 thoughtful graduation gifts under $100 for the class of 2021

If you buy through our links, we may earn money from affiliate partners. Learn more. There are near-universal gifts - all under $100 - that can help students navigate post-grad life. Below, find 30+ options, from cookbooks of everyday recipes to household staples. For more expedient options, Amazon Prime-eligible gifts under $100 are also included here. As soon-to-be-grads experience the complicated feelings of finishing a chapter of their lives, their parents, relatives, and loved ones are r...
Tags: Reviews, Amazon, Gift Guide, New York, College, Disney, Trends, Amazon Prime, Gifts, High School, Ncaa, Birchbox, Gift Ideas, Williams Sonoma, Fujifilm Instax Mini, Hydro

The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge: Part 3

Editor’s Note: MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kaufman has just published The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge, a book that takes a historical look at the powerful forces that have purposely crippled our efforts to share knowledge widely and freely. His new work also maps out what we can do about it. Generously, Peter has made his book available through Open Culture by publishing three short essays along with links to the corresponding freely licensed sections of his book. Today, ...
Tags: Google, New York, Media, Congress, College, Wikipedia, America, Atlanta, History, Mit, Netflix, Johnson, Newton, Cisco Systems, Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation

L.A. County detects more variants, but coronavirus growth continues to decline

Los Angeles County continued its still-decreasing rates of coronavirus growth on Wednesday, March 24, reporting 666 new cases and 92 associated deaths. Among the fatalities was a child aged 12 to 17 with underlying health conditions, however — one of three children to die in L.A. County from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. As of Wednesday, 22,960 L.A. County lives have been lost to the coronavirus. More than 1.2 million people have tested positive. “We do need to continue taking care of each ...
Tags: Health, Business, UK, New York, News, Education, California, Government, US, Sport, Public Health, Soccer, Brazil, Community, Pomona, Los Angeles County

Less than a third of LAUSD families might send their kids back to campus

Less than a third of Los Angeles Unified students might return to the classroom when schools reopen next month, according to preliminary survey results, the district announced on Monday, March 22. Of the families who have responded to a survey thus far — which is about half of all families in the district — 42% indicated they plan to send their children back, Superintendent Austin Beutner said during his weekly address to the community. Families who don’t respond will have their students remain ...
Tags: Health, New York, News, Education, Government, New York City, California News, Sport, Chicago, Soccer, Community, Lausd, Disneyland, Middle, LA County, Los Angeles Unified

How Edward Hopper’s Paintings Inspired the Creepy Suspense of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

Certain directors like to implicate their audience in their onscreen crimes, drawing on decades of expectations created by popular cinematic tropes and playing with the viewer’s innate desires. Filmmaker Michael Haneke takes a Hitchcockian approach in this regard, in nightmarish visions like Benny’s Video, The Piano Player, and Caché. “Haneke uses voyeurism to dismantle the space between the film and audience,” writes Popmatters,” and in doing so, he takes advantage of what might be thought of ...
Tags: Google, Art, New York, Film, College, Kyle Maclachlan, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Haneke, Hopper, Edward Hopper, Tom, Benny, Stewart, Jeff, Facebook Twitter, Lynch

A Search Engine for Finding Free, Public Domain Images from World-Class Museums

Even before the pandemic, museums were putting their art online. Here on Open Culture, we’ve covered such ambitious efforts of digitization and making-available on the part of the Rijksmuseum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other major institutions, some of whom have gone so far as to upload their holdings under Creative Commons licenses or in other free-to-use forms. And now you can call forth artworks from the open online collections and others all at once with the search engine Museo. “M...
Tags: Google, Art, New York, Technology, Wales, College, Mexico, Seoul, New England, Facebook Twitter, Hartford, Automobile Club, Art Institute of Chicago, Museo, Katsushika Hokusai, Colin Marshall

"Many schools have been held back by CDC standards saying that they only permit in-person classrooms if students sit no closer than six feet apart."

"This requirement makes full-time schooling impossible, because schools simply don’t have enough room to teach every student while spacing them so far apart. But that requirement, chosen hastily last year, turns out to be useless. The most important scientific advance is the recent conclusion that the guideline that students must maintain six feet of distance in schools has no value. David Zweig reported for New York last week that 'the CDC’s six-foot guidance and tethering school openings to c...
Tags: New York, Education, Law, Washington Post, Cdc, Wizard Of Oz, Jonathan Chait, Strauss, WaPo, Ann Althouse, Valerie Strauss, David Zweig, Coronavirus, Jonathan Chait NY Magazine Chait, Rachael Gabriel

The Story Behind the Iconic Bass-Smashing Photo on the Clash’s London Calling

Pennie Smith was not a fan. Maybe that’s what made her the perfect photographer for The Clash. “She was never particularly into rock music,” writes Rob Walker at The Guardian; she wasn’t starstruck or overawed by her subjects; and she also wasn’t even particularly in love with the most famous shot of her career — the iconic photo of bassist Paul Simonon raising his Fender Precision at New York’s Palladium, seconds before smashing it to bits. “I said, ‘it’s completely out of focus,’” Smit...
Tags: Google, Music, New York, London, College, The Guardian, Tokyo, Public Enemy, Smith, Elvis, Joe, PAUL, Facebook Twitter, Josh Jones, Chuck D, Mick Jones

Rudy Giuliani will keep his honorary degree after the board of a New York college didn't count enough votes to rescind

Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Thursday Nov. 19, 2020, in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photos Ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani will be able to keep his honorary degree from St. John Fisher College. The school's board of trustees voted to rescind the degree but did not meet a majority requirement. College alums urged the school to revoke the degree after Giuli...
Tags: Twitter, Politics, New York, College, Washington, Trends, Rochester, Giuliani, Donald Trump, Abc News, Republican National Committee, Vermont, Rudy Giuliani, Trump, Capitol, Wagner

Saturday Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in October, 1975

How do you kick off the longest running live sketch comedy show in television history? If you’re in the cast and crew for the first episode of Saturday Night Live, you have no idea you’re doing anything of the kind. Still the pressure’s on, and the newly hired “Not Ready for Primetime Players” had a lot of competition on their own show that night. When Saturday Night, the original title for SNL, made its debut on October 11, 1975, doing live comedy on television was an extremely risky pr...
Tags: Google, Comedy, New York, Television, College, George Carlin, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, Carlin, Lorne Michaels, Facebook Twitter, Michaels, Jim Henson, John Belushi, Andy Kaufman, Howard Cosell

“The Cinematic Universe”: A Video Essay on How Films Cinematize Cities & Places, from Manhattan to Nashville, Rome Open City to Taipei Story

Los Angeles in Chinatown, Rome in Rome Open City, Manhattan in Manhattan: you could say that each of these films’ cities becomes a character in the story. You could say it, but you’d be making a cinematic observation that has, at this point, become severely clichéd. What do we actually mean when we call a setting something more than a setting? This question is at the heart of “The Cinematic Universe,” the new video essay from The Cinema Cartography, a MUBI-sponsored series by Channel Cri...
Tags: Google, Facebook, New York, Film, College, Berlin, America, Los Angeles, Taiwan, United States, Manhattan, Nashville, Taipei, Seoul, Bond, Francois Truffaut

There's a clear, scientific path to safely reopening schools. The real barrier now is politics.

Elementary school students walk to classes in Godley, Texas, on August 5, 2020. LM Otero/AP Imagse Studies suggest that schools can safely resume in-person learning if they rely on masks and social distancing. But a few big political obstacles have made this difficult.  Some school districts don't enforce mask policies, while others lack the funding to ensure a safe environment for teachers and staff. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. By now, research clearly supports...
Tags: New York, Texas, Science, News, Education, Congress, Cdc, US, Trends, Georgia, Joe Biden, Analysis, Chicago, Brooklyn, Iowa, Schools

Anthony Bourdain Talks About the Big Break That Changed His Life–at Age 44

In 1999, Anthony Bourdain’s career seemed to have stalled. While his “principal vocation remained his position as executive chef” at New York’s Les Halles, restless intelligence and wanderlust kept him looking for other opportunities. “He was 43 years old, rode hard and put up wet,” writes Elizabeth Nelson at The Ringer, “a recovering addict with a number of debts and a penchant for finding trouble in failing restaurants across the city.” He had fought for and won an undeniable measure of ...
Tags: Google, Books, New York, Cook, Television, College, Food & Drink, Cia, Fast Company, New Yorker, Cape Cod, New England, Anthony Bourdain, Les Halles, Facebook Twitter, Michael Pollan

The Birth of Hip Hop: How DJ Kool Herc Used Turntables to Change the Musical World (1973)

We all reach an age when the music of our youth becomes “the oldies.” When it comes to music as dynamic, innovative, and far-reaching as hip-hop, that age can feel surprisingly young. Or so it seemed to me, a child of the 90s, when the 21st century dawned. Now, separated from the artists I grew up listening to by a gulf of almost thirty years, I can say they are all certifiably old school, which I suppose makes me certifiably old. But consider this—in 1993, a year I once considered somet...
Tags: Google, Music, New York, College, Bronx, Public Enemy, Blondie, Facebook Twitter, Henry Louis Gates, Josh Jones, South Bronx, DJ Kool Herc, HERC, Durham NC Follow

Democratic lawmakers renew calls for Biden to cancel up to $50,000 of student debt

Caelan Stulken / EyeEm/ Getty Images A group of Democratic lawmakers reintroduced a resolution on Thursday to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt. The Democrats called for President Joe Biden to take executive action on the issue, which he has previously indicated is unlikely. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said canceling student debt is among the quickest ways for Biden to help the economy.  Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. A group of Democratic lawmake...
Tags: New York, Minnesota, Education, Congress, Senate, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Trends, Joe Biden, Democrats, Warren, Biden, North Carolina, Cnbc, Jones, Kamala Harris

LAUSD hands out 100 millionth meal since the pandemic shuttered schools

Food packers, Diana Alcantar, right, and Maria Ibarra, center, hand LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner meals to deliver to commemorate providing its 100 millionth meal to the community through its Grab & Go program at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles on Monday February 1, 2021. (Photo by Keith Durflinger, Contributing Photographer) LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner talks to a neighbor as he helps hand out meals to commemorate providing its 100 millionth meal to the community throug...
Tags: New York, News, Education, La, Los Angeles, Sport, Soccer, Lausd, California Supreme Court, Los Angeles County, East Los Angeles, Garfield High School, Austin Beutner, Beutner, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Paul Garcia

Extra Crunch roundup: Edtech VC survey, 5 founder mistakes, fintech liquidity, more

Edtech is so widespread, we already need more consumer-friendly nomenclature to describe the products, services and tools it encompasses. I know someone who reads stories to their grandchildren on two continents via Zoom each weekend. Is that “edtech?” Similarly, many Netflix subscribers sought out online chess instructors after watching “The Queen’s Gambit,” but I doubt if they all ran searches for “remote learning” first. Edtech needs to reach beyond underfunded public school systems to beco...
Tags: Apple, Startups, TC, Cloud, Europe, New York, Hardware, Enterprise, Media, Education, Entrepreneurship, Boston, Africa, Tech, Netflix, Digital Media

PBS American Masters Archive Releases 1,000+ Hours of Uncut, Never-Before-Seen Interviews: Patti Smith, David Bowie, Neil Young & More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4kUmYoc1rE When we think of American masters, we don’t think of David Bowie, who despite being a master was also the most English rock star ever to live. But an interview with Bowie, never before seen in full, nonetheless appears in the newly opened American Masters archive, having been shot for the long-running PBS series’ 1997 documentary on Lou Reed — if not the most American rock star ever to live, then surely the most New York one. “For me, New Yor...
Tags: Google, New York, Television, College, History, Neil Young, David Bowie, South London, Patti Smith, Smith, Archives, Lou Reed, Dick Cavett, Seoul, Jeff Bridges, Mel Brooks

Prince’s First Television Interview (1985)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BKjSTm2blE By 1985, Prince had made appearances on American Bandstand and Saturday Night Live, toured the world several times, and released seven studio albums, including the groundbreaking Purple Rain and less-than-groundbreaking accompanying film, for which he won an Oscar. He had inadvertently helped launch Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Council after she caught her daughter listening to “Darling Nikki.” He was a bona fide global superstar and on...
Tags: Google, Music, New York, Minneapolis, College, Los Angeles, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Prince, Rolling Stone, Facebook Twitter, Paisley Park, Josh Jones, Dick Clark, Tipper Gore, Durham NC Follow

LAUSD seeks state, county approval to operate as COVID-19 vaccination sites

Continuing to make his case that the nation’s second-largest school district is well-positioned to become COVID-19 vaccination sites, Superintendent Austin Beutner sent a letter to state and county public health officials on Monday, Jan. 18, urging them to “immediately” authorize Los Angeles Unified to administer the shots — a move which the schools chief said will help speed the pandemic recovery and allow students to return to campus for in-person learning sooner. The district is seeking appro...
Tags: New York, News, Education, California, Sport, Chicago, Soccer, United Kingdom, Long Beach, Lausd, Kansas City, Pasadena, Local News, Ventura, Los Angeles County, Anthem Blue Cross

How the Bicycle Helped Usher in the Women’s Rights Movement (Circa 1890)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPLJgkVsXpE The early history of the bicycle did not promise great things—or anything, really—for women at the dawn of the 19th century. A two-wheeled bicycle-like invention, for example, built in 1820, “was more like an agricultural implement in construction than a bicycle,” one bicycle history notes. Made of wood, the “hobby horses” and velocipedes of cycling’s first decades rolled on iron wheels. Their near-total lack of suspension led to the epithet “b...
Tags: Google, New York, Congress, College, France, San Francisco, History, Atlantic, Ohio, Vox, Belle Epoque, Facebook Twitter, Adrienne LaFrance, Josh Jones, Susan B Anthony, London Paris

How the Bicycle Accelerated the Women’s Rights Movement (Circa 1890)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPLJgkVsXpE The early history of the bicycle did not promise great things—or anything, really—for women at the dawn of the 19th century. A two-wheeled bicycle-like invention, for example, built in 1820, “was more like an agricultural implement in construction than a bicycle,” one bicycle history notes. Made of wood, the “hobby horses” and velocipedes of cycling’s first decades rolled on iron wheels. Their near-total lack of suspension led to the epithet “b...
Tags: Google, New York, Congress, College, France, San Francisco, History, Atlantic, Ohio, Vox, Belle Epoque, Facebook Twitter, Adrienne LaFrance, Josh Jones, Susan B Anthony, London Paris

300 Rarely-Seen, Risqué Drawings by Andy Warhol Published in the New Book, Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire. Drawings (1950–1962)

It’s not the ingredients that sell the product. It’s how Warhol makes you feel about the product.  —Young and Rubicam employee, circa early 1950s It did not take Andy Warhol long to find the status he sought as a young man. Shortly after moving to New York City in 1949, he established himself as one of the highest paid freelance illustrators of the period. His whimsical, eye-catching line drawings for various luxury brands appeared in such high profile publications as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar....
Tags: Google, Amazon, Art, New York, College, Life, New York City, Vogue, Andy Warhol, Warhol, Upper East Side, Jean Cocteau, Harper, Stanford University, Andy, Facebook Twitter

L.A. County surpasses 900,000 coronavirus cases and 12,000 deaths

Eclipsing two sad milestones on the same day, Los Angeles County surpassed 900,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 12,000 deaths, public health officials reported Saturday, Jan. 9. The county posted 221 new deaths and 16,982 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday. As the post-holiday surge appeared to be at full strength, health officials confirmed that the county had lost more 1,000 lives to COVID-19 in the past four days and posted more than 100,000 new cases in the last week. With overtaxed local ...
Tags: Health, Business, New York, News, Education, California, Government, Los Angeles, Sport, Hospitals, Public Health, University, Soccer, Pennsylvania, Community, Associated Press

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says GOP leaders who dismiss consequences for Capitol riots 'are opening the door for it to happen again'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Monday, August 24, 2020. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images/Pool Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez excoriated GOP leaders on Saturday, saying that a lack of accountability for the Capitol riots on Jan. 6 would preclude any "healing" from the violent episode, in which five people died. The second-term New York Democrat has asked her Republican colleagues to join the push in removing President Donald Trump from office. "Let's be very clear,"...
Tags: Transportation, Politics, New York, Education, Senate, Trends, Joe Biden, Gop, House, House Of Representatives, Republican Party, Biden, Donald Trump, Trump, White Supremacists, Aoc

Why Student Debt Is So Excessive – And How You Can Avoid It

Student Debt: It's Worse Than We Think We’ve all heard the headlines:  Americans have amassed huge piles of student debt. It’s relatively old news.A recent article by Kevin Carey published in the New York Times (“What About Tackling the Causes of Student Debt?”) digs into the data to demonstrate just how bad it really is.Mr. Carey, who directs the education policy program at New Ame...
Tags: New York, College, US, Netflix, Broadway, Student Loans, College Debt, Financial Aid, Bernie Sanders, Aoc, Juno, New America, Carey, South America Europe, Lake Woebegone, Educational Consulting

"In city after city, from New York to New Orleans, charters have found ways to reach the children who have been most consistently failed by traditional schools."

"The evidence for their success has become overwhelming, with apolitical education researchers pronouncing themselves shocked at the size of the gains. What was ten years ago merely an experiment has become a proven means to develop the potential of children whose minds had been neglected for generations. And yet the second outcome of the charter-school breakthrough has been a bitter backlash within the Democratic Party. The political standing of the idea has moved in the opposite direction of t...
Tags: New York, Education, Law, New Orleans, Biden, New York Magazine, South Carolina, Jonathan Chait, Democratic Party, Race And Education, Ann Althouse, Biden and education

Stream 48 Hours of Vintage Christmas Radio Broadcasts Featuring Orson Welles, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Ida Lupino & More (1930-1959)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLKwFVIZats The Golden Age of American Radio began in the 1930s and lasted well into the 50s. That makes nearly thirty Christmases, not one of which passed without special broadcasts by the major networks. This Christmas, thanks to The World War II News and Old Time Radio Channel on Youtube, you can experience the Golden Age’s three decades through 48 straight hours of holiday broadcasts. Strung like an audio garland in chronological order, these begin wit...
Tags: Google, Facebook, New York, Nbc, Molly, College, Orson Welles, America, History, Radio, Cbs, Seoul, Frank Sinatra, Oscar Wilde, Bob Hope, Facebook Twitter

Why David Sedaris Hates “The Santaland Diaries,” the NPR Piece that Made Him Famous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5XLjG_S6eE This past fall David Sedaris published his first full-fledged anthology, The Best of Me. It includes “Six to Eight Black Men,” his story about bewildering encounters with European Christmas folktales, but not “The Santaland Diaries,” which launched him straight into popular culture when he read it aloud on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in 1992. True to its title, that piece is drawn from entries in his diary (the rigorous keeping of w...
Tags: Google, Facebook, UK, Comedy, New York, College, America, Chicago, Atlantic, Literature, Npr, Santa, Seoul, National Public Radio, Facebook Twitter, Raleigh North Carolina

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heartbreak, “River,” Became a Christmas Classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnuULUvTTxk From Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” to Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” to the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the most honest Christmas songs freely acknowledge the holiday’s dark underbelly. There are always those for whom the holidays are times of heartbreak, which, as we know, makes for better songwriting than tinsel, elves, and stockings. Near the top of any list of miserable Christmas songs sits Joni Mitchell’s holiday c...
Tags: Google, Europe, Music, New York, Minneapolis, Washington Post, College, Nasa, Tom Waits, Ellie Goulding, Joni Mitchell, Elvis, Mitchell, Crete, Facebook Twitter, Graham Nash