Education

Fun with the Van der Graff and Animoto

A study of concentration

We had the usual fun with the Van der Graff today. The weather was rather accommodating, and it tallied nicely with the last class before the long weekend.

I have never got a student’s hair to stand up dramatically, but i was drying the canvas belt with a hairdryer when I realised I could help things along a little by aiming it upwards into Fania’s hair. It loosened up the hair very nicely and the show was much more impressive as a result. I also got a student to hold up a mirror so Fania could see for herself what everyone else was laughing at.

I have seen a few examples of Animoto and how it does a pretty cool job of presenting photos, so I thought I’d head on over and check it out.

It really is pretty impressive, and very user-friendly. There might be a couple of thinks I would change, but then again that may just be me not familiar with the program.

It allows for automatic uploading to youtube, which was a pleasant surprise. The free version limits the clip to 30 seconds, so I might just invest in the longer version to check it out.

This is a clip I uploaded last year

 

When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

Many physics students will be familiar with the fact that the prototype kilogram is kept in a high-security vault in Paris. What I didn’t realise was that the mass of this specimen is changing, albeit very slightly.

So here’s the question; if this is the one and only true version of the kilogram, and it loses mass, doesn’t it still stay a kilogram?

And doesn’t that mean that other copies, which would have been correct originally, are now wrong?
(I think in fact that they may all be losing mass slightly.)

Something very unscientific about all this . . ., no wonder physicists are embarassed about it.

Seems a bit like when kids make up the rules of a game, and when it turns out that these don’t suit the leader of the gang, he just changes them.

Which seems as good an excuse as I am likely to get to show Eddie Izzard – Do you have a flag?
 

 

More youtube and some Flickr

Decided it was time to see what I could do with Flickr, so I spent the day taking photos of Junior Cert Science demo apparatus. The plan is that I will show this to students and they will have to name the demonstration. Hopefully it will help the second-years revise for Summer exams. It must be rather daunting to have to go from a year of short class tests, to a set of formal exams which require knowledge  taken in over the whole year.

Students can hopefully access this themselves if they wish, although I may  print it off for those who don’t have the facilities.

Bloody nice spectrum though innit?

Thanks Conor!

Of course there’s still the bread ‘n butter leaving cert material:

 

Excellent resource for Power points

I don’t tend to use Power-Point much. ‘Not sure why; guess I can never stay still long enough to give a formal-type lesson. I did however use Education Using PowerPoint a few years back and was very impressed. It’s a very extensive set of resources, put together and managed by Will Richards. A complete set (including resources for Junior Cert) will set you back £50 sterling (€75?). And naturally, having been designed for the British GCSE and A level system, may have to be adapted somewhat.

Still, if Power Point is your thing, this does seem like a useful resource.

If you do end up purchasing, please get in touch and let me know what you think.

Do you teach a modern language? If so subscribe to Joe Dale now!

 

 

There are a whole lot of education blogs out there, but one of the very best has to be Joe Dale’s “Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom“. He gave a presentation at the CESI conference this year and people had to be turned away at the door.

Every subject needs to have a Joe Dale; someone to keep us up to date on best practice in relation to ICT issues, and who you know is a full-time teacher who practices what he preaches.

Here’s my contibution to the ‘Modern Language’ database:
Eddie Izzard – Learning French

‘Course you can’t show this wonderful clip unless you have Youtube.
Don’t mention the war

Is there an equivalent Science / Physics Teacher blog out there?
Patricia Donaghy has done her part; http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com/ is a registration page for educational blogs where you can go and search by topic.

I guess over time more teachers will get the hang of this sharing lark.

 

Queerer than you can suppose: Dawkins on ted.com

 

I’m not RIchard Dawkins biggest fan (I know; like he’s worried); for someone who holds the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science he seems to take enormous delight on slighting those he disagrees with – particularly in relation to Creationism.

However it is in relation to extolling the wonder of science that he excels. Consider the following as part of the job description:

The goal is for the public to appreciate the order and beauty of the abstract and natural worlds which is there, hidden, layer-upon-layer. To share the excitement and awe that scientists feel when confronting the greatest of riddles. To have empathy for the scientists who are humbled by the grandeur of it all.

Take any of the wonderful ideas Dawkins speaks about in the clip above and have fun looking for it in a Science syllabus.

Thanks to Peter Kinvara for pointing me in the right direction to find this in a comment on a related posting

The clip is obviously from youtube because for some reason ted.com doesn’t allow video embedding.

Who needs school anyway?

Just read about these boys on Damien Mulley’s blog

John Collision is in fifth year in Castletroy College in Limerick. During transition year (and into his holidays) he and his brother Patrick set up an IT company. They later merged with two similar-minded colleagues from the UK.

Their company – Auctomatic – was recently acquired “in a multi million-dollar deal” by a Canadian multinational:

The Auctomatic mission is making selling online easy. We think it should be simple to take your stuff and list it on marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Overstock. But it shouldn’t end there. Auctomatic does more than just let you list your items and manage your sales – it teaches how you can maximize your profits and to increase the success of your business. With Auctomatic you can be running your own successful online business in no time.

Must be kinda hard as a teacher to give out to someone who has earned more in a couple of years than the teacher has made over their whole career.

“Now John, one of these days you will be coming back to us for a reference . . .” 🙂

John studies Physics and Applied Maths as part of his Leaving Cert course. It would be interesting to hear his views on what -if anything – he has learned from his formal education.

John’s blog

auctomatic.com

YouTube – A Vision of Students Today

Came across this before but was reminded of it by Ian Yorstan’s del.icio.us favourites.
As Ian writes:

A short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.

To which I would like to add: ‘and how out of date our education system is’.

Here’s another nice resource for an ethics class. It’s about the death penalty:

Youtube in schools (again)

youtube 

As every teacher knows, Youtube is blocked in schools in Ireland.

The problem, as I understand it, is that the NCTE have two levels for rating sites; Conservative and Very Conservative.

It’s no that youtube does not qualify for either category and so schools don’t have the option of whether to allow it or not.

It may be possible that with lobbying on our part we can change this.

I hope to contact the Irish Science Teachers’ Association soon and hopefully have something included in their journal to this effect.

Step one would probably involve persuading teachers of Youtube’s potential as a teaching resource. This shouldn’t be too hard – a link to relevant clips on del.icio.us perhaps?

Step two would be building up a list of interested teachers and/or subject areas.
I guess this is as good a place to start as any?

If interested please leave a comment and perhaps a link to a favourite youtube teaching clip.