Wild Pedagogy

Preconception: An opinion or conception formed in advance of adequate knowledge or experience, especially a prejudice or bias.

I want to emphasize the difference in language between (1) preconceptions, and (2) misconceptions.  While both of them definitely have a negative connotation to them, a preconception is due to a lack of education, whereas a misconception is due to an improper or unfinished education.

If you don’t know that you don’t know, how would you know?

 MIT Graduates: Trying to Design a Simple Circuit

Harvard Graduates: Trying to Explain the Seasons

Everyone has preconceptions.  We can’t understand everything about anything, obviously.  The slippery slope of this thorny issue however is that our students fail to realize their preconceptions in our education systems because we as teachers also fail to bring these errors in their judgment to light.

As a cooperative effort between VBS.tv and DELL Computers, they’ve been releasing very interesting videos under the internet video channel dubbed “Motherboard“.  Some have been about electronic music, some about astronomy, and some about the beginnings of computer gaming.  

In a mini-series called “Sound Builders” the channel has focused its attention to the people who create and use synths, keyboards, amplifiers, distortion pedals, and other electronic devices to create their new sounds. In a few of these episodes, they focus on a really interesting niche and sub-culture: the circuit benders.

Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children’s toys and small digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators.

The most interesting thing to me about circuit bending is the inherent creativity involved.  When you hear people talk about circuit bending, its appears that its more of an aesthetic appreciation on the level of the Arts rather than our usual interpretation of circuits and electronics; cold, imposing, and out-of-reach from our everyday lives.

Soundbuilders: Reed Gazala

Electric Independence: RJD2

Very interesting blog WhereHereMeetsThere is written by a circuit bender and his quest of music making.  Below is a video of this bloggers circuit bending of a musical toy sword.  The amazing thing about it is how he’s also modified the light sources with the music being produced to add another dimension to his creative work.

I think its interesting to think about how we could incorporate this into our science, electronics, and computer science curriculums. It’s not a stretch to make this possible in a workshop setting, in fact, this has been happening in some areas of the USA already called “Bend Fests”.  Circuit bending could open the door to teach some important life skills: how to solder properly and how to avoid electrocuting oneself in some way or another.

Ever wanted fly like superman?!  Now you can, thanks to science!

Today I learned about Wingedsuit Base Jumping.  It’s a simple but awesome idea: wear a full body suit that enables you to increase your surface area (and lift) as you plummet at terminal velocity towards your doom.  But, wait!  The increased surface area of the suit enables the falling-thing (possibly human) to control their flight to a predetermined exit point, release their parachute, and land happily again on the ground.

As much teachers love to demonstrate the laws and principles of science we discuss in class… I’d have to go out on a limb that this is probably not possible.  Could you even begin to imagine the health insurance fiasco, or even worse: how long would that field trip form have to be?!  We’d have to hire Jim “the Hammer” Shapiro to craft that thing.

Doing some very poor and scantily research it says that roughly 1 in 60 BASE jumpers have a fatal jump.  Ouch.  That’s even with the stringent recommendations that winged base jumpers should have ~200 free-fall skydives under their belt before even thinking about their first solo attempt.  

You would have to admit, these men (and women) have balls.

Happy Chinese New Year!  It’s Year of the Rabbit, and time to eat carrots for a year in review.

I’ve been busy slowly but surely navigating familiar territory during my second year of teaching high school mathematics and physics.  It’s been a lot more manageable, but definately had a few surprises and challenges along the way.  In hindsight (thus far), my most audacious and ambitious challenges this year have been my own making: trying new ideas, throwing them up in the air, and seeing where they land.

Without getting into heady specifics, its been a very positive and encouraging school year thus far.

In physics I’ve managed to connect some good topics with CERN’s LHC experiment, and even managed to take my students to an Einstein exhibit last weekend that was sponsored by the Swiss embassy in China.  It was definately worth the trip — I did not know that Einstein married his cousin!  Scandalous (though, I supposed we are all cousins some way or another).

Mathematics has always been more of a challenge for me, and I blame my lack of interest in “pure maths” compared to my physics brethren.  It’s always been more of a battle of government-mandated curriculum than exercising my creativity… which is getting better.  I definately feel that I could do even better, but there is always next year (a saying that is much more palatable after surviving “year one”).

The school and the student body has been maturing before my eyes in interesting ways.  This year we moved into a new building just a week before classes started in August.  Talk about a rush!  It was a good experience in hindsight to say you’ve done (one of those moments your parents would say is “character building”), but never again I hope!

I just signed up for another year here (next year will be my 3rd year in China, and my 3rd year teaching), and I’m feeling positive of my future career in teaching.

In the meantime, I’ll be getting back to putting my “ear to the grindstone” and continue syphoning all the good ideas I’m “borrowing” from other educators on blogs and through Twitter to help enrich myself and my students.  Who knows, maybe in a few years I can share my own.

Until that time comes, I’ll take a bit of pressure off myself and write/share whatever I think is interesting.  I’m sure my geeky/teacher self will show through the facade of Rubik speedcubing and Feynman praising.

Here we go ladies and gents: the last week of examinations.  I can taste the sunshine and much needed R&R: reflection and relaxation.

Next week students will be going on a once-in-a-lifetime field trip to the Shanghai World Expo.  A group of lucky students will have Mr. Mike has their group leader (aka Team Awesome) and will explore the amazing world pavilions and talk lots and lots about science and why it is the ‘bees knees’.

An (otherwise) extremely positive first year teaching coming to a close, and my eyes set on the next.

“… I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.” – Grandmaster Flash

Melodramatic or not, its pretty awesome knowing that you’ve got through your first year of teaching.  I still have a couple weeks of teaching before exams, but we’re pretty much in the “wrapping up” stages in a lot of ways for my senior classes and starting to shift our gaze to review and end-year projects.

And with an ending, there is a new beginning.

I’m already looking forward to next school year.  Knowing the students, the staff, the administration, and the facilities we have will make an amazing difference to how I adjust my classes for next year… and my overall sanity.  I’m interested in piloting one of my physics classes to be assessed using Standards Based Grading.  If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s basically a method to explicitly assess specific learning outcomes your students have accomplished… rather than giving a meaningless number on an assignment, project, or test.

I’ve had quite a bit of difficulty, personally, as to what is the best method to assess my students.  The idea of assessment is, I believe, one of the most fundamental, important aspects of education.  It’s also the easiest to change.  With that in mind… I might as well give it a try!  Worst-case scenario my old busted marking system that everyone seems to still love to hate will be my backup plan.

I’ve also created a preliminary teacher evaluation for my students to write on their last week of classes (Good resources from McGill University here and here).  It’s a very similar idea to what you’d expect from your university professors because you paid for them to teach you.  My students don’t necessarily pay me to teach them, but I want to get their valued feedback to reflect and adjust my teaching practice for next year.  I’ve left an open-ended comments section at the end, and I’m very curious if students will actually, heartfully, write any personal opinions regarding my teaching.

I hope I haven’t led them on a race to nowhere.

At the moment I’m white-knuckled and getting ready to write my final exams this upcoming weekend.  From scratch, like Mom used to make’em.  We’re also moving into a new building for next year, so you can imagine the chaos… “it’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.”

… “Lisztomania was coined by the German romantic literary figure Heinrich Heine to describe the massive public response to Franz Liszt’s virtuosic piano performances. There were allegedly screaming women at these performances, and the audience was sometimes limited to standing room only” (Wikipedia).

The word is also the hit single for a beautiful French band called Pheonix.  They’re a creative bunch.

You might be wondering why I’m discussing German pianist Franz Liszt, and a French band… and how this all fits into children finding talent.  Well… there is a grade 5 music teacher in New York who created a love and passion for learning ain his students.  It’s a choral group called the PS22 Chorus which “formed in the year 2000. [Consisting of] an ever-changing group of 5th graders from a public elementary school in Staten Island, New York.”

Since these students performed, recorded, and published their rendition of Phoenix’s “Lisztomania” on YouTube over 2 months ago, they have received over 500,000 visitors.  A quick look at their website reveals many accolades and gatherings these young children have already experienced with professional musicians from all over the world.

What an exciting, life-changing thing for these young singers!

My mind is humming right now from a recent #edchat session on Twitter regarding our perception of what makes a 21st century classroom.  A lot of great points where made, though I think the focus should be on immaterial things: passion, assessment, and practice… rather than technology, furniture, and iPads.

I think this teacher has got it right; A perfect blend of passion, practice and technology.

Teaching science is a funny thing.  The better you are at the subject material sometimes the harder it is to relate to your students on the tricks, trips, and pitfalls that await in the underlying conceptual understanding.  In physics students have to wrestle with counter-intuitive ideas all the time.  The problem is we forget those long lost hardships we’ve faced ourselves when we were first introduced.

Lets take Newton’s Third Law of Motion (Action-Reaction), for example.  Students are usually ill-prepared to visualize that any two objects regardless of mass when experiencing a collision will impart equal, but opposite forces on each other.

We need to use a variety of modes of teaching and learning to replace these students faulty foundation.  Some teachers may reach for their chalk/whiteboard, some may begin with an inquiry demonstration/discrepant event, or they might to go their favorite Java applets or “flashlets” (some of my favorites: PheT, CoLoS, and Wolfram Demonstrations Project).

One teacher in particular is using the old method of Socratic questioning in a research-based manner to find out which questions, and which time, cause the most impact on student understanding of conceptual ideas in post-secondary physics.

The following is a fantastic video of a Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur discussing his teaching career from teacher-centered lecture, to student-led constructivist teaching.  His use of conceptual questions at key moments in student learning is a great insight to all levels of inquiry (Early Years -> High School -> University).

It seems this mode of thinking is beginning to catch on; the University of British Columbia has created a database of conceptual questions to use in a variety of science disciplines.  I haven’t had the opportunity to delve into them yet, but I hope to be a bit more conscious of my timely choice of Socratic questions.

Another interesting thing that caught my eye is a concept inventory that is designed for pre/post-testing of students in your classes for misguided preconceptions in high school and university science courses.  North Carolina State University has compiled a list of physics concept inventories that can be used in high school and post-secondary on a variety of topics.

I randomly stumble on to Twitter to realize the world’s biggest physics experiment (CERN’s Large Hadron Collider) we’ve ever known is going underway today.  With thousands of other ‘Tweeters’ online talking about Physics… it’s a great thing.  You can take a look at the replay right now if you so wish, its actually pretty damn interesting for a video stream about a particle accelerator.

One of the interesting experiments I learned today from that live stream is CERN’s LHCb experiment.  It’s one of four experiments at the LHC that will be looking for the CP-violation as to why matter won the big battle over anti-matter.  The enchanting Dr. Tara Shears does a fantastic job explaining this funky wizardy.

The fact that we humans can invest billions of dollars on such a scientific endeavor without the outcome being a new way to kill each other faster, is an amazing thing.  We might just survive on this planet long enough to save ourselves from ourselves.

Feel like I should add a few posts once and a while before I’m gone to China: it’s two months away!

Been substituting off and on for the past month and a half at my practicum school. It’s funny how all of my substitution jobs have been in middle years school. It’s definitely helped my practice my classroom management skills. I doubt I’ll need to worry too much about it this upcoming school year.

I just found out I’ll be teaching Grade 11/12 Physics, Grade 11/12 Applied Math, and Grade 10 Precalculus. The math courses have me on my toes a little bit, but I’m excited and up for a challenge. I’m primarily a Phyiscs/Computer Science teacher, which I guess makes people assume that I’d also love to teach math… not usually the case.

I’m not a fan of “pure math” any more than the next person. To me, I use the least amount of math needed to solve problems: either physical problems, or virtual ones. So to that degree, it will be interesting revisiting high school mathematics from a different perspective. I think I’m a bit scared that I’ll love it and turn into that “Math” teacher stigma. I guess I think, vainly, that Physics and Computer Science is too cool for math.

Another friend and fellow B.Ed. graduate will be joining us to China, I just found out. All very exciting as well. It’s nice knowing I’m joining three others that I know relatively well (to varying degrees). I’m not too concerned about meeting great people overseas though – that’s part of the beauty of traveling if you ask me!

Oh, and I just completed/finished my CTESL (Certificate of Teaching English as a Second Language), which is a huge accomplishment for me. I literally ‘stumbled’ upon the whole EAL/ESL teaching profession by accident and I love it… almost if not more than teaching science in the K-12 system. The beauty of teaching EAL to adults is how appreciative and life changing it is for them. You really feel like your making a positive change in peoples lives.

So… not much really holding me back before China. A few more days of the 2008-2009 school year left to substitute, and then I’m off on a road trip to Toronto/Montreal/Quebec for two weeks starting (aptly enough) on Canada Day. Really lucky and excited to do it with two great friends. Lots to do and think about before China, that’s all for now.