To supplement the Excel program to graph a line, I’m also posting a simple program to graph a parabola.
Parabolas
Author: Lensyl Urbano
Blood Falls: Life in Extreme Environments
For millions of years, cut off from the atmosphere and the sun by an immense continental glacier, microbes survived in a lake of salty water under the ice. No air and no sunlight means no oxygen, so the water became anoxic and able to dissolve iron out of the rocks and sediment beneath the lake. But sometimes the lake breaches and the iron rich water comes to the surface where it is exposed to the air once again and the iron reacts with the oxygen to form a red mineral, hematite (rust). A template for life on Europa? Maybe. Blood Falls, Antarctica.
[googleMap name=”Taylor Glacier” width=”490″ height=”490″ mapzoom=”2″ mousewheel=”false” directions_to=”false”]-77.773, 163.37[/googleMap]
Co-opting the iPod: Flashcards
iPod Touches are quite convenient little PDA’s. Beautifully tactile, they are a pleasure to use. A few of my students have them and I’ve had to think long and hard about allowing iPods in the classroom because, for a little while there, students were using them under the table for all sorts of illicit applications (games). I was tempted to ban them outright, and I have not yet made a final decision but I thought I’d try co-opting the devices first.
So I now have a few students using the iPod Calendar, taking notes, and now one has found a nice little flashcard app called Cramberry. Apparently, the major selling point was its catch-phrase, “Studying doesn’t have to be painful.” The app costs $4.99 for the full version (the Lite version is useless). I’ve also tested Flashcard Touch myself, which is free this month (March), and it seems to work well (see the screen capture).
PDA’s are still on probation; they can be very useful. The outstanding question is one of trust. Will students use them appropriately, or are they too much of a temptation. A key Montessori principle is that students should take responsibility for their learning and trust is an essential component. I am cautiously optimistic.
Dealing with test anxiety
In the middle school our students have to take tests. While it’s not quite as bad as the Afghan college entrance exam, there’s the annual standardized test, and then there are the cycle tests every six weeks. Even with the cycle tests, some students have test anxiety. They see a math test with almost identical questions to the ones they have been doing perfectly for weeks and they freeze. I asked Ms. P. to look into strategies for dealing with test anxiety, and as usual, she came up with an excellent list of links.
Her favorite, which I also like, is Penn State’s University Learning Center’s Test Taking and Test Anxiety website. They, however, appear to have gone missing, but Effective Study’s How To Overcome Test Anxiety seems a good alternative. TeensHealth’s page is also good and aimed at a younger audience, although there is not much difference in the level of the writing for a middle schooler. If you need a clear list of things to do before and during the test, Study Guides and Strategies has an excellent page.
These sites tend to recommend preparing well and using relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, during the test.
Other resources:
- E. Scott’s About.com page
- C. Sorensen’s page at the Gallaudet University
- The University of Alabama’s Center for Teaching and Learning’s “What causes test anxiety and Dealing with test anxiety pages.”
- Virginia Tech’s Cook Counseling Center’s page.
Peace project gets into the news
The Examiner, last week, had an article on a Montessori Peace Project in Uganda. US support is run by Carolyn Kambich for the Victoria Montessori School in Entebbe. A few of our students, who are fundraising for the project as a part of their cycle project, got a mention in the article by Ms. Kambich.
Mercenaries on the playing field
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.– A.E. Housman
Three themes converged on the playing field today; poetry, competitive sports and video war games. We’d used Alfred Houseman’s “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries” for a lesson on OULIPO yesterday because it’s short and one of my small groups had presented a week ago so we were all familiar with the poem. We’d been trying post-games discussions after frizbee (and soccer) to learn sportsmanship. We’d been having issues with video games and the definition of the word “duty“. I’ve long suspected (and would love to find a study that looks into this) that video game players are more likely to give up when the odds are against them because they are so used to just restarting the game (or respawning).
Today at the end of our post game discussion, I recited Epitaph to highlight the strength of character shown by some of the players who put up a great comeback despite part of their team stopping playing. It was a serendipitous convergence of three themes we’ve been dealing with this entire cycle (if not the whole year). It was a moment when I really appreciated being able to be so engaged with all parts of the curriculum.
Effect of racial and gender discrimination today
The legacy of racial and gender discrimination persists (like segregated proms in Mississippi). Attitudes are, slowly changing over the course of generations, but it’s a really slow change. Even today, men make more than women for doing the same jobs. Mariko Chang’s recent paper on the wealth gap between black women and everyone else, has some fascinating statistics and graphs showing the current disparities in income (how much money people make) and wealth (how much stuff they have (assets minus their debts)).
An interesting question for students to consider after looking at the graph is why exactly are there these disparities. This may also be a good focus for a Socratic Dialogue.
Federal Reserve’s economic data
The St. Louis Federal Reserve has a Summer School program for teachers. Two of the sessions deal with current events (banking crisis and jobs) but the third covers the data and primary source documents that bank makes available online (for free). These include the FRED and GeoFred websites.
GeoFred produces graphs like the one above showing economic statistics across the country. It can do it on a state by state basis, by county (as above), or by even more refined areas.
FRED plots graphs and even provides the data for economic statistics over time. The graph above shows GDP since they started collecting data in the 1940’s. It also has the times of recessions shaded in. The data in the graph can also be downloaded if you want to do your own analysis.
These seem to be handy little tools for teaching and for research projects, and are pretty easy to use.
The teachers’ training sessions are free though you have to get your own housing. They do provide breakfast and lunch. If you want graduate credit for them however, each three day session will cost around $306 and garner one credit.