youtube

Internet Safety competition

I’m not tech guru, and I’m still at the bottom of a very steep learning curve when it comes to incorporating ICT into my lessons, but I can’t help feeling a little dismayed whenever I hear people who should know better warn about the dangers of internet usage to the point where you imagine they would prefer if the damn thing had never been invented.

So it was nice to come across details of a video competetion from the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner

“This competition should get entrants thinking about their privacy by considering :·        Advantages / disadvantages of the growing use of technology as a means to recording personal information including the use of Biometrics·        The security that CCTV brings Vs possible invasion of privacy·        Use of RFID (radio frequency identification tags) on products ·        Social networking and the electronic footprints we leave behind·        Are we evolving into a ‘Big Brother’ environment as depicted in George Orwells ‘1984’?  

·        What is the line between legitimate gathering of information and a surveillance society? “

Maybe I’m biased but it seems to be slanted slightly towards the “Beware the hooded monster” side of the argument.

It’s not going to change public opinion or anything, but it’s a nice start, particulary if it engages students. Nice prizes too.

Privacy in the 21st century competition

On youtube

Why Ozymandias?

I have this poem on the door of my lab.

Why Ozymandias?
Obviously it’s one of my favourite poems. I am always reminded of the final scene from Planet of the Apes where Taylor comes across the upper half of the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand.

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!

 

No matter how important I think I am,
No matter how important we think this civilisation is,
No matter how important we think the human species is,
No matter how important we think the planet Earth is,
In the grand scheme of things we are only here for a very short time.
Let’s make the most of it.

The central theme of Ozymandias is mankind’s hubris. In fourteen short lines, Shelley condenses the history of not only Ozymandias’ rise, peak, and fall, but also that of an entire civilization. Without directly stating it, Shelley shows that all works of humankind – including power structures and governments -eventually must pass into history, no matter how permanent they may seem at the apex of their influence. Ozymandias’ short-sighted pride seems amusing at first – until the reader realizes that the lessons conveyed are equally applicable today. All things must pass.
From Wikipedia

I like this website for poetry because it includes readers’ comments which are educational in themselves. I’m sure there are other such sites out there – if you know of any you would recommend please let us know.

youtube again

It’s not just me

Some reasons to unblock Youtube:

  1. Free. Purchasing school videos is an expensive business. Channel 4learning is one of the better resources.
  2. Short. Lord knows students don’t have a great attention span, and Youtube’s policy of keeping videos to ten minutess or less works well.
  3. Being short means you are straight in to the relevant concept, no long-winded introductions.
  4. Videos can be critiqued and rated, although the language can be a little choice.
  5. Easy access. No fast-forwarding or rewinding  to find the start, and no last minute realisation that your colleague is using the same DVD just when you need it most.
  6. Sharing of resources. Favourites can be saved online using del.icio.us tagged for future referencing and sharing with colleagues.
  7. No valuable storage-space required, as would be the case with tapes or DVDs.
  8. The collection is extensive, and only getting bigger.
  9. Many are both highly entertaining and educational – not like the old ‘Open University’ titles which were a turn-off to all but the most dedicated.
  10. Safe. Youtube knows that its reputation is on the line and  as a result it is one of the most regulated video sites out there, although there are no absolute guarantees. 
  11. Rewards. While the educationalists mightn’t appreciate this one, a promise of 5 minutes on Youtube if the rest of the class goes well is a very nice incentive for students.

For some strange reason the numbers appear correctly (10, 11 etc) when writing this, but not when it gets published. Strange . . .

Seaghan Moriarty has written recently about the negative reaction towards ICT in Irish education and cites an anticle which “. . . is a much more balanced view of social networking, and a welcome counter to the defensive and reactive positions heard from Irish education and media.”
Seaghan Moriarty: Pedablogy.com

He has also spotted a newspaper report of a school which is using Youtube constructively in their classrooms.
Youtube course is a class act

My del.ic.ious links are here

Youtube – is it just me?

I have had access to youtube in my classroom since last September and it is by a country-mile the geatest ICT resource I have in my arsenal.

You could take away the Interactive Whiteboard, the dataloggers and the DVD player, but I would cry if I lost youtube.

The irony is that I bought a VHS-to-DVD converter last year and it has taken me a full year to convert all my library. At the time I had probably 75 programmes, many on the same VHS cassette, and I was excited at copying each program on to a seperate DVD for easy access.

The big advantage of DVD was that I could scroll straight through to whatever part of the program I wanted – no more rewinding and fast-forwarding. I was also considering putting everything from there onto a large external hard-drive, for even easier access. All of this would take an inordinate amount of time, but would at least encourage me to use the resource more, where previously I would use it sparingly because of the hassle.

I think that for many students a video of anything more than ten minutes would lose their attention.
Hence my fascination with youtube.

This resource is available to everyone, there doesn’t seem to be anything too dodgy on it, or at least if there is it isn’t thrown at you; you would have to go looking for it.

All clips are under ten minutes. My favourites are Quantum Physics clips, because this stuff is not on any leaving cert syllabus (except maybe Religion) and the comments themselves are often revealing.

I wish I had this resource when I was growing up. If nothing else it allows me to see there are so many people out there who are as fascinated by science as I am, and unlike text-books and teacher conferences these people are all only too happy to express their wonder. It really is inspiring.

There are also wondeful demonstrations which can I can incorporate into my own lessons, and the videos usually include all those small but vital bits which text-books and demonstration-books often omit.
I feel like crying when I realise this resource is blocked in most schools.

I have spent quite a while loading up my favourite clips onto the online favourite program delicious.

CESI (Coputer Education Society of Ireland) are having their conference next month so my homework over the next week is to put together ten top reasons for unblocking this site.

Or is it just me?

del.icio.us site tagged with my youtube links are here
CESI homepage

Apology to Students: Matlab from Hell

To every student who ever gave up Physics – especially those who left my own class over the years; I feel your pain. My very last class in 2007 was involved an experience just like this with Alex and his calculator trying to use the formula for geostationary satellites.

I’m not so old that I don’t remember what this feels like, in my case it was accounting.

Had a happy 2007.
The highlight was getting to see three of biggest living heroes; Steve Earle (Midlands Music Festival), Guy Clark (Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival) and John Prine (NCH), all within six months of each other.

I am only allowed to say that now because in two days I am getting married.

Have a happy 2008
 

Guy Clark:

John Prine

Steve Earle:

The Stanford Prison Experiment

There are some things which are worth knowing which are outside the realm of Physics.

I have often thought it questionable to brand a specific generation of Germans as morally (and by implication genetically) inferior because of their role in the holocaust. It’s not to excuse what happened, but rather to acknowledge that if you or I were living in those circumstances in that period, chances are we wouldn’t have acted any differently, and we need address what that says about us.

The Stanford Prison Experiment carried out in 1971 illustrates this better than anything else I can think of.  I have been showing it to my senior classes over the last day or two of term. Hopefully it will encourage some of them to ask questions.

Initial feedback was very positive.
One more reason why it’s crazy not to have youtube in schools.

The clips get taken down and others post them back up from time to time, so do a search for “Stanford Prison Experiment” on youtube.

This is a variation on the above; it’s a talk from Dr Philip Zombardo, who co-ordinated the experiment in 1971.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. In this book, Philip Zimbardo summarizes more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a “perfect storm” which leads good people to engage in evil actions. This transformation of human character is what I call the “Lucifer Effect,” named after God’s favorite angel, Lucifer, who fell from grace and ultimately became Satan.
From Youtube

Pressure and Boiling Point

I’m in the middle of writing of up reports (who isn’t?) and don’t have a lot of free time, but a couple of times this week I have tried to get the Pressure and Boiling Point demonstration up and running. I figure that as a so-called experienced teacher I should be able to work this without too much trouble. After all it is in all Junior Cert text-books and presumably is on the syllabus – the implication is that every teacher does this.

 I set it up with a partial vacuum caused by running water (how many people use this as a wonderful way of teaching about particle motion?).
Nothing

I set it up with an electric vacuum pump.
Nada.

I have put hours into this.

If water could laugh mine would be wearing a smile from cheek to cheek. I imagine I am not forming a sufficient seal, but don’t know how to improve it.

So I resort to youtube. Don’t tell me using the internet to show demonstrations is the lazy option. I try, I really do. I just don’t have green fingers when it comes to this sort of thing.
The worst part of all this is that I now have to go back to Mr O’ Boyle and ask him to show me again how he does it.
And he’s a Chemistry teacher – oh the shame!

Now while checking that this link still works I came across this beauty – off to try it again tomorrow.