Writing a theory

So I'm working on a rather large paper right now - worth 90% of my mark in a class. And needless to say trying my best. I came up with what seems like a good theory. My thesis is: "A teacher along the proposed Herzberg Motivation to Hygiene Continuum is moved along the continuum by choices made in personal disposition, inter-personal relationships and the nature of classroom engagement. This amalgamated theory will provide a tool by which slightly more concrete ideas on how to shift a teacher from hygiene to motivation in their career."... confused? Yeah it's a long paper... and most of it will be dedicated to just explaining the above statement. Oh well... it seems like a good idea, I'll write it up, throw in a few one liners, a bit of backup research, and hope for the best! Okay enough procrastination (my favorite nation - yeah I know lame joke) back to work.

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Cornstarch

So a quick warning regarding my last post... yeah cornstarch gets EVERYWHERE. I don't know how but all the stuff in my backpack is covered in the stuff. I can only imagine what would happen if I did a whole science lab with teenagers and cornstarch!

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The complexities of everyday things

So we did a quick little demo in science today… 3 parts cornstarch to 2 parts water makes this mass that has quite interesting physical characteristics. If left alone, the mass will behave like a viscous fluid, if disturbed the mass will act like a solid. The discussion about why this mass behaved the way it did used a surpizingly large amount of my physical chemistry knowledge. I think that it has something to do with hydrogen bonding between starch and starch, and between starch and water. However, this mass’ behaviour could also be explained via colloids. This stuff almost acts like very fine sand in water. Anyways it’s all very interesting, and it goes to show how indepth one can get with something simple. What I was supposed to have been learning while just playing with the starch… not quite sure.

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Bull on Bullies

Hey there… so we had a large debate about bullying in class today… interesting, but not productive. Not surprising, of course not, this is a very complex issue involving sociological factors… items like this are notoriously hard to hammer down and are virtually always non-black and white. To sum up the debate:
1. We as teachers should watch out for bullying and try to stop it if we can.
2. We as teachers should be aware of how much bullying and what types of bullying are taking place.
3. The act of bullying is the fault of the bully, in that s/he decides to make a conscious choice to bully.
4. The act of bullying is also the fault of the victim, in that SOME people present themselves as potential targets whether by choice or by happenstance.
What I mean here is that… if you are trying not to get your car broken into you don’t leave bundles of cash and a laptop in plain view in your car… and if you do then you will make yourself a more likely candid for a crime. However, if a person is born with a gene that predisposes them to cancer, and they eat right, don’t smoke, don’t drink, exercise… and they still get cancer, then it is no fault of their own, cancer will strike regardless.

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generic update

Sorry folks... really busy. Check out what I'm working on: QianZhang1.googlepages.com/home
Suggestions? Write me back.

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The elasticity of real data

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by my experience with research… but would never have guessed that you can do some really quite scientific things with a really tight budget. I was shown a short demonstration of a science lesson in my Science C&I course today. If you take an elastic band and hang weights from it, then you record the amount of weight and the length of the elastic, you can make a graph and analyze the elastic forces within an elastic. Though this is a far cry from solving the mysteries of Parkinson’s disease or anything like that, it still does provide the student with real-to-the-world data points. The graph that one gets off this thing looks not so perfect… just the way that real data looks. The learning that I’ve had to do in the field is the learning that these students engaging in these types of tasks are doing in the classroom. Cool approach.

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Random thoughts on electronic teaching; my saga with webquests season 2

I like technology. Technology, when working properly, helps us to express ourselves, gain information… in an almost infinite number of ways. I do not however think that technology can ever teach. Let me differentiate this idea really quick: I think that technology can help us teach, and help students learn. I do not however, think that an entire lesson can be taught from technology. Students are biological beings and as such some component of the ‘real’ teacher needs to be there. So the reason for my rant… I have been given yet another Webquest assignment, and readers will remember just how much I enjoyed the last one. I do have quite a bit more freedom to do with it as I want, so I do appreciate this.

I do appreciate the essence of this exercise: to get student-teachers to engage the Alberta education curriculum in a critical fashion and ‘fish out’ what is most important. Then taking these important parts make a lesson that you would teach. But not only make a lesson that you can teach, a lesson that is based online and that would include ICT outcomes as well. These are good and valuable skills for a student teacher to have.

However, I do feel that the approach of using a webquest is not valid based on 2 main reasons. 1) The format of the webquest itself does not allow for the flexability and adaptability that using internet resources really entails. The webquest format itself provides a route which students should take so as to learn, gather resources (from the links provided by the teacher), and ultimately to create something or learn something that they could not have done before. I recognize that this format’s strengths are it’s ‘share-ability’ between teachers teaching the same curriculum. However, the gathered links/resources for the student is where the webquest really falls apart. I think that teachers should teach the topics that they want to teach and then incorporate websearching techniques into the body of their lesson. This allows for a dynamic flow of information, skills, and understandings to the student varying upon search keywords, intentions, and even temporal factors. This also teaches the student about how to run searches effectively and how to limit and crop e-language in such a way as to focus upon the topic at hand. Given that students of earlier grades might not be able to run an effective search on their own, the process should at least be shown to them and the links provided to them. The teacher should sit down with the students and explore the sites with them… outlining such aspects of the webpage that is information, opinion, advertisement etc. Older students can be expected to run searches, collect, organize, analyze and synthesize ideas from the internet by themselves.

2) One of the key factors that contribute to effective classroom teaching is the idea of authenticity. If it’s not authentic then it probably isn’t very good. I agree with this fact completely. I think that using a webquest can create authentic tasks, but it does not create authentic teaching whatsoever. As a student teacher without much experience in the field, I do not know what terminologies the students use on a day to day basis. Even if I did, the terminologies that they use would vary from region to region, from class to class. Should a teacher not teach in the same ‘language’ as his/her students? I appreciate the value of modelling, but when teaching, should a good teacher not get his/her point across in the most crystal clear method and terminologies available? For example, if I’m teaching some stereotypical mid-income students about finances and refer to money as ‘liquid assets’ they probably would understand. However, if I wrote up this lesson for the internet and a teacher from ‘the hood’ took this lesson, he/she would have to revamp my lesson to use the word ‘chedda’. You got to speak the same language. This language that the students use is fluid. The teaching environment is fluid; passing up on teachable moments is horrendous. A webquest does not allow you to incorporate little ‘Jonny’s’ experiences at the bank last week. AHHHHHHHH

So to say the least, I do NOT like webquests. I will only use webquests in the future if I have a substitute teacher and I need to hit the ‘automatic’ button on my students. The internet is a much more powerful tool and can be used much more effectively than a rigours conditions surrounding a webquest can ever offer.

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Turn it down

As you, my reader knows, this psyc. Class I’m taking is focused upon disabilities, one of the stats that my prof. quotes is the rise of deafness in my and subsequent generations. Okay so a bit of ranting here: I went out for a buddy’s birthday last night. The music was so loud I had to yell at the top of my voice for hours just so that we could carry on a conversation. So thanks to my great metabolisum, I’m not hung-over, but my throat feels like sandpaper. The music establishments should just turn down the music a bit, to prevent deafness, and so that I can carry on a conversation.

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Artful follow up...

Just a quick follow up on the criticism on modern art I did yesterday... they took down my signs and put up - abstract art. lol

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Pondering stats…

This social context class is dealing with some interesting facts and figures right now: the rate of new teachers who drop out of the profession, the percentages which are happy, the percentages which find their job rewarding etc. I don’t have too much background into sociological/psychological research however, I do know what looks like good research. The problem with doing such subjective types of research is that the language gets in the way of what you really want to ask. There is absolutely no way that a researcher can ever word a question such as “what are the most rewarding experiences in your work” without including some kind of bias into the question. People will find what they are looking for. It’s cool that most of the researches out there in the field of education like teaching, and are positive about teaching, but how can good empirical, statistically crunchable numbers ever come out of researchers that have a strong bias toward the ‘good side’? I suppose the best researcher is someone who really does not care about education and teaching at all. But such a person does not exist since the person would have to have been taught how to do research. .. Humm, maybe this is not perfect, but there’s got to be some better way of approaching this whole thing… I’ll write it in my Blog when I think of it… lol

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From tiredness and science comes forth…

Okay, I’m super sleep deprived today for some reason. I’m feeling really overly critical today too. So here it is:

1. I had a thought/criticism of modern art. Abstract art seems like a good idea, but it’s not, it only really means something to the painter unless the painter takes time to explain him/herself. I walked by my University’s gallery today and noticed that they had taken down the previous art exhibits. All that were left were nice white pedestals with great lighting. I thought I was going to name the absent art as an abstract piece. So I wrote “The greatest potential; a clean white space” on a piece of paper and dropped it on the pedestals. They want art… they got art.

2. Guys are nasty. Okay I know this is going to sound crude but: when you walk into a guy’s bathroom and you smell that unearthly smell emanating from the toilet…. Well I’m a science person so let’s look at it this way, a) is this smell an aromatic molecule that makes it’s way from the ‘solid refuse’ into my nose? Ie. am I breathing essence of someone else’s ‘solid refuse’? or b) is the smell actually very small suspended particles of ‘solid refuse’ in the air? I could see that if enough pressure was applied to the ‘solid refuse’ that when it hit the water surface it actually stripped and suspended some of the ‘solid refuse’ in the same manner as high velocity bullet hitting water. So am I actually getting small particles of someone else’s ‘solid refuse’ up my nose? Any thoughts people? Am I breathing essence of s*** or just plain old fashioned s***?

3. But I did actually learn two things today: 1) you want to function? You gotta sleep and eat. Sleep and food are good.

4. Second, true and false questions are really hard to write. Semantics, spelling, points of view, disclaimers, wordiness etc. are all very tricky. Eh… so much for naïve thoughts of quick, easy and effective.

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Still ranting about ads

Yeah I know I've done the whole rant on Ads before... but I found yet another one... so readers is this an ad that generates corperate good image, or is Nike genuinely concerned about the state of disabled persons?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obdd31Q9PqA

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The day of great debates

Well we had two interesting debates in two classes today. The morning debate dealt with the inclusion of disabled students within the classroom. Wow, what a topic to be debating. Both sides had such strong arguments and such good points. I can definitely see the advantage of having students integrated into a classroom, and yet at the same time there are such good arguments against. Someone really should design a study to look at the impact of integration upon norm- and disabled-students, their families, their teachers, the administration, the system. The study should be have a large data pool, be cross-cultural, cross-gender, longitudinal and no receive no funding from potentially benefiting industries. I can’t imagine what a study like this would cost, or how it could be executed, but the results would be worth their weight in gold… perhaps more by the time that the results are published.
The afternoon debate dealt with the idea of how much a teacher should help individual students. I think the two extremes that were provided was something to the effect of “… I would stay as long as I needed to, so that the student got the concept” and “… I teach from… to 3:30”. I think that I would fall somewhere between the two. I think that if I was ever confronted with such a situation I would have to ask myself two questions 1) “can I justify spending this time with a student instead of my family?” and 2) “can I justify to myself, my decision not to help this student?”. After all at the end of the day what do we have left if not our own values? I figure that as long as I hold my values of family comes before work and live for the dreams of others then I can say that I did good.

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Take a deep breath and just accept that your a geek

Today we talked about some safety aspects concerning science classes. What my prof. said was true… at the risk of looking like a SUPER geek a teacher has to wear the labcoat and the super attractive safety goggles. I especially will look really nice with my glasses and then googles… I make fun of myself when I wear the googles… lol. Oh well... I’m gonna make my students wear them too – ha.

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cool blog man

Hey I'm currently doing an assignment on looking a blogs/websites and other http set up by people with disabilites... found one that was really, really good. Check it out: http://arthriticyoungthing.blogspot.com/

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short rant on global warming

Okay I don't really know that much about global warming but I do know:
I live in Canada - one of the coldest countries in the world.
It is currently the middle of January - one of the coldest months of the year, in one of the coldest countries in the world.
It is almost 22:00 - when the sun goes down it tends to get colder.

I just went outside and the thermometer said that it was +5oC ! What!? Not that I like the cold, but something is terribly wrong when it is +5oC.

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Continuous Progressions

So we talked about Policy of Continuous Progress today. Wow did that ever bring up a can of worms with the class and me. Just to inform you, my reader I’m gonna cover some of the bigger points. Some of these points are really quite poignant and interesting. When talking about the Policy of Continuous Progress, we ran across the idea that students will self label. Now this idea strikes me hard since I’m currently reading Malcome Gladwell’s Blink right now, and this is the very topic that the book deals with. If the teacher and/or student and/or peers of the student gets the impression of “Jimmy is Stupid” then to what extent will this idea follow Jimmy around? What can we as future educators, and continuing learners, alleviate ourselves of these conceptions? I do believe that we, as a species, are hardwired to make snap judgements about people, judgements that are very powerful and does still serve a limited purpose in today’s society. However, I do feel that this relic of an instinct is more of a hindrance than of value… but I digress. If we do have a preconceived notion of stereotypes and prejudices it might lead us, however much we try to avoid it, to preemptive grading. I promise to you my reader, that if I ever catch myself executing preemptive grading, I will kick myself extremely hard. But even if I kick myself really hard, what is to prevent me from doing it again next time? I think that I will personally try to get students to write not their names but their student IDs on assignments and heavily weighed tests. This subconscious thing bugs me thought, what is to prevent me from over- or under-compensating for a particular student, whether this be in the form of grading assignments or giving assignments. I really don’t want to catch myself thinking… awww little Jimmy is having such a hard time, well if I give the entire class a series of really easy assignments that’ll get little Jimmy’s mark up. I think that I really have to rely upon my previous training as a behavioural tech. to ‘subject-ify’, distance and ‘rat-ify’ my students. I will be gathering data off my students as if they were subjects in classical research. They are a number, and the number scored 45%, the number failed this test… yes, he was having a rough time at home, yes he was distracted by the girl beside him, but none-the-less he failed the test.
I think that I will personally try and teach as much as possible to the norm of my future classes. The norm will be indicated by pretesting upon the initiation of the semester, and via statistical analysis throughout the semester. I will plan for the advanced students to fill their extra time with more enriching information. I will try and break down the idea to a more basic level for students that are below the norm. However, I will upkeep my personal belief that if a person is to succeed, they will need to be challenged. I will maintain high expectations for my students. The resulting marks will be what they will be. I will explain some things via comments to explain, flag, denote, underscore… etc. but marks are marks. However, I do think that variability from primary to secondary education is important as well. Primary education does demand more levels of success so that the students don’t hate school. But I do feel that in secondary education, these young adults, should be more adult and face the real world without the coddling of their teachers.

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21-2=fun

My evaluation professor started off class in quite a different manner than my other profs today. Being in PSII I know that the ‘coddling’ phase is over and expected, as most of my profs did, material right away. However, my evaluation professor spent 2 hours of a 21hour course on introductions alone! Now I think I learned a valuable lesson from this time. I had fun, and now having had fun, I have a good ‘aftertaste’ for this class. And now that the 21hours of work left to be done will have to be compressed into 19 hours, I know that I will work harder for her on a subconscious level. This is one of the things that I will note for my future teaching experiences… teach the students, not the content.

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Score one for XY and visible minorities

A little bit of interesting news came my way today in one of my classes. It seems that the school boards are pushing to hire more men for early childhood education; furthermore they are looking to hire more visible minorities! Score! – sorry all of my XX gene typed, melanin challenged friends. – Yes you can tell, the science course has started… it’s good to be home.
I was also asked a rather strange question today: “If you were to visually present what teaching meant to me [or in this case, to you my reader], what would it look like?” I’m gonna have to think on this one quite a bit.
Side note – just finished one of my first social-critical pieces of art… rather simple painting, but I’m not sure if I really like it or not.

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Long, long road

Hey there folks,

Sorry I have not written anything in such a long time. But I’ll catch us up.
Firstly, I had a great time with the grade 1 students. They take quite a bit of work with respect to classroom management and attention spans but they are so much fun. I would not have considered teaching the beginner grades a few years ago, but I would not turn down a chance at working with them in the future. As many of you with FB can see my profile picture has changed to a picture that was drawn by one of my students. It show me with my ‘science coat’ and ‘potions’… love it. I also got a set of letters from the class as a farewell present. Those kids are so awesome. I really enjoyed working with my TA and I really learned quite a bit from her.
Secondly, I had a pretty good Christmas and New Year’s break. I was house/pet sitting over the holidays and got distracted by the wide assortment of entertainment at the other house and as such did not do nearly as much as I hoped. But I got one commissioned project finished. I will try and remember to post the finished images online when I get access to a digital camera. New Year’s was a blast… Guitar Hero eat your heart out, Rock Band is the name of the game!
Lastly, I’ve dove right into PSII this semester. I only have 4 classes + practicum, but each of the classes are 6 hours/week. I know that this semester like the last I’m going to have to hit the ground running. Work hard, do good work, co-operate, and then hope for the best. I’ll try and keep this blog thing going as much as I can. I feel out of the habit during my last practicum because the school’s server denies access to Blogger… I’ll try and keep this up though,

So see you all soon,

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