Bursting into the classroom from recess, 15 children take their seats and face the woman they know as Ms. Yang.

    “What day is it today?” she asks, in Mandarin Chinese.

    “Confucius' birthday!” the fifth graders shout in Mandarin.

    “Why do we celebrate Confucius' birthday?”

    “Because he's the greatest teacher in the history of China!” exclaims a brown-haired girl. She is speaking Mandarin.

    English is rarely heard in Lisa Yang's class at the Chinese American International School(CAIS), despite the fact that few students are native speakers of Mandarin.

    The United States is actively trying to increase the group of students in “critical languages” such as Mandarin. The students at CAIS are way ahead in such a trend.

    Founded 25 years ago, this small private school in San Francisco, USA, does what few other American schools do: It produces fully fluent speakers of Mandarin Chinese, by far the most commonly spoken language in the world.

    Mandarin Chinese is suddenly hot in American schools. As China becomes the world's leading economy sometimes this century, schools in the U. S. are scrambling to add Mandarin to their list of foreign languages or expand Chinese programs already in place.

    “It really is almost unprecedented. People are looking at China as a force to be reckoned with… And to ensure that the U. S. has the ability to conduct trade, and to work with the Chinese. Certainly having an understanding of Chinese language and culture is an advantage,” said Marty Abbott of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages(ACTFL).

    To develop Chinese-language programs has not been smooth. A shortage of trained teachers has made it difficult for some schools to join the race. When schools do get teachers, they often hire them straight from China, and the teachers usually suffer culture shock when they come to the U. S.

    Robert Liu remembers his first two years in an American classroom It was not an easy adjustment. “In China, students respect their teachers,” he said. Liu found that American students, however, expect an active teaching style. He had to use games to engage them rather than lectures.

    To avoid many of the problems with foreign teaching styles, the CAIS has been working with the Chinese government to improve training of teachers who are sent to the U. S.

    Last year, when our three-year-old great-granddaughter Kylie was taken to see Santa Claus, she made sure to give him her wish list of toys. A week later, she ran into a different Santa in a mall. He stopped to ask what she wanted for Christmas. Kylie was surprised and let him know: “If you can't remember what I told you last week, how are you going to remember on Christmas Eve?”

    Mary Paul, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    As my son Mike and I drove to the mall, we passed a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell. “Mike,” I said, “there's Santa!” He shook his head. “That's just some guy in a Santa suit,” he said. It saddened me to think that maybe my son no longer believed in Santa, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. At the mall, we spotted another Santa greeting young believers. Suddenly, Mike took off toward him. Turning back to me, he shouted. “Now, there's the real Santa!”

    Michael E. Fahey, Huntley, Illinois

    We immigrated to America from China when I was six. Because I was shy and didn't speak English, I had few friends. My days were spent at home with my brother. Sometimes we'd help our neighbor Mr. Mueller pull weeds. One Christmas Day, there was a knock at the door. Grandma opened it, and there stood a big fellow in red with a snow-white beard, laughing, “Ho, ho, ho!” He handed out presents and made us laugh. I had so much fun. It was years later when I learned that our special Santa was our neighbor Mr. Mueller.

    Joanne Tang, Litchfield Park, Arizona

    Anki has introduced Cozmo, a little robot powered by an advanced artificial intelligence. Cozmo promises to be far more interactive（互动的）than any toy robot.

    Cozmo, which can lie in your hand, has a “brain”—technically its CPU—that can process data amazingly fast. In addition Cozmo has a playful personality. He's designed to react to emotions and even ask users to play with him.

    Cozmo is not the first interactive toy to reach the market nor is it the first robot toy. What sets Cozmo apart from the other “smart toys” is that it has greater play value than those toys, which can become repetitious all too quickly.

    “Every interaction with Cozmo is different, so you do not put up with repetitive patterns and responses typically found with other preprogrammed robots,” explained Anki spokesperson Peter Nguyen. Because it has functionality that is similar to that of video games, Cozmo also can receive regular updates, which could extend its playability. Still, Anki has designed this toy to be just that: a toy. It's not an advanced computerized robot. Its software is app-based.

    Cozmo lacks the “traditional” human-like robot form factor of legs, arms and a head. But Cozmo does have an OLED screen / face with blue eyes, which in fact were designed to help it connect with its user.

    “I'm glad my kids are already raised,” said Roger L. Kay, analyst an Endpoint Technologies Associates. “Otherwise, they might become more antisocial if their relationship with Cozmo is more satisfying than those with real people,” said Kay. “Cozmo might encourage kids to learn more about technology or even inspire them to try programming and similar studies,” said Charles King, analyst at Pund-IT.

    Yet this technology does promise to be more than a toy. “It's a pretty cool invention and might have further applications, for example in elder care,” suggested Kay.

    This year marks the 170th anniversary of Paul Gauguin's birth. He lived for just 54 years but he packed his brief life with activity.

    The French painter spent his early childhood in Peru before returning to France. As an adult, he continued to travel a lot. Most famously, he spent much of the last decade of his life in Tahiti, an island in southern Pacific Ocean. Indeed, Gauguin is best known for his colorful paintings of Tahitians and their culture.

    The restlessness of this great painter has been normal among modern artists since the middle of the 19th century. They're never satisfied for long with a certain style or way of life. Once something becomes conventional, it's turned down.

    The artistic culture that Gauguin developed from was that of Impressionism (印象派). Painters like Claude Monet had wanted to paint how they saw the world, not how their teachers taught them it should be seen. Gauguin, and similar artists like his friend Vincent van Gogh, moved even further away from "respectable" art than the Impressionists. For them, it was not simply a matter of seeing the world differently, but feeling and thinking about it differently, too.

    Gauguin saw, felt and thought differently from most members of European society. He thought that European culture was too fancy and not spontaneous. This is why he turned to the traditions of other parts of the world, like Africa, and, eventually, Tahiti. Artists like Gauguin used the word "primitive" for these cultures, but not as a negative term. For him, Europe, in becoming modem, industrial and scientific, seemed less natural than other parts of the world.

    In truth, Gauguin's paintings may be unconventional but they are certainly not "primitive". They are the work of a painter with great awareness of what he was doing. It was this awareness that made him such an important painter for those that came after, in the 20th century. When we look closely at the works of Gauguin we begin to understand Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse, a little better.

    The TED speaker series features "ideas worth spreading". With over 1,400 to choose from, we've selected a few that are perfect for students.

    ⒈Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career

We humans may have an unfavorable habit of making excuses for ourselves or being too confident about ourselves. Accordingly, Larry Smith, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, tells us why most of us will fail to have a great career. Luckily, as he puts it, there is a way out—follow your heart, as long as it is good for your career.

    ⒉Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

Between dance team, volunteering and –oh, right—lectures, your life's crazy factor(因素)is about to go way up. In this entertaining and informative talk, Mindfulness, expert Andy Puddicombe teaches us how to be "more healthy, more mindful and less distracted" by taking just 10 minutes out of the day to be "more present".

    ⒊Shane Koyczan: To this day…for the bullied(欺凌)and beautiful

    This talk is sure to stay with you. Shane Koyczan's "To This Day" is an affecting spoken-word poem about bullying and being different that gained over 10 million views on YouTube. In this talk, Koyczan gives a live reading of the poem, along with some stories about his background.

    ⒋Susan Cain: The power of introverts(性格内向者)

    Does a cup of tea and a good book sound like a perfect Friday night? In this personal talk, Susan Cain argues that introverts have talents and abilities. Our culture may value being outgoing, but the world needs all kinds.

Advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled authentic-sounding speech synthesis (语音合成) to the point that a person can no longer distinguish whether they are talking to another human or a deepfake (深度伪造). If a person's own voice is "cloned" by a third party without their agreement, bad guys can use it to send any message they want.

Computer scientist and engineer Ning Zhang has developed a new method to prevent unauthorized speech synthesis before it takes place: a tool called AntiFake.

Traditional deepfake detection methods only work after the damage is done. However, AntiFake prevents voice data from being synthesized into an audio deepfake beforehand. This tool turns the tables on cybercriminals (网络罪犯) by using similar voice cloning techniques they employ, but for voice protection. The software complicates voice data extraction and feature identification crucial for voice synthesis. "We're using an opposite AI technique originally used by cybercriminals, but now we're using it against them," Zhang explained. "We slightly change the recorded audio, just enough to make it unusable for voice clone training while still sounding natural to humans."

Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at University of Chicago, says that the software, like all digital security systems, will never provide complete protection. But, he adds that it can raise the bar and limit the attack to a smaller group of individuals with significant resources.

AntiFake can already protect shorter voice recordings against cloning. The creators of the tool believe that it could be extended to protect larger audio documents or music from misuse. But the methods and tools that are developed must be continuously adapted because cybercriminals will learn and grow with them.