When girls talk, they spend so much time dwelling on problems that:
it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds [and]…makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences.
…In general, talking about problems and getting social support is linked with being healthy. [But it can be] too much of a good thing.
Rose recommends that they, “engage in other activities, like sports, which can help them take their minds off their problems, especially problems that they can’t control.”
The furniture is starting to move. So far it has just been the couch, which also happens to be the heaviest piece of furniture. Yesterday I helped a couple students rotate it 180 degrees to face the wall, to make quieter, less distracting space. Today we rotated it toward the whiteboard and about half a dozen kids piled onto it for a lesson. I’ve always favored giving students as much control of their environment, and allowing the flexibility of movement, so I’m glad to see that they’re starting to take advantage of that freedom.
Rotating couch.
While I’m not quite sure why the couch has been the first thing to move there are probably a couple of reasons. One is that, compared to the rest of the furniture, the couch is relatively informal. This, in and of itself might have lead the students to consider it a good candidate for rearrangement, but I think it’s also that the couch’s informality meant that no one sat on it on the first day of class; everyone was at one of the desks (bright eyed, bushy tailed and eager to learn). As a result, no one specifically “owned” that space, and negotiating its movement did not involve a large group of people.
The couch also has the space around it so it’s easy to move without having to rearrange a lot of other furniture. It’s not the only piece like that though.
Now, with everyone piling on for today’s lesson, the couch-space has a much more communal feel. Students are becoming more attracted to it when they feel the need for a break, but they tend to go back to the desks when they need to work. Its population shifts over the course of the class.
It’s nice to see that, so far, the students are using the space responsibly. We’ll see how it develops.
Excellent video from the EarthScope project, showing the seismic waves from the August 23rd earthquake zipping across the United States. Note that the height of the wave was only 20 micrometers (20 millionths of a meter or 0.02 mm) as it passed through the midwest.
One question that might occur is, why are there so many seismic stations in the middle of the continent? My guess is that it has to do with monitoring of the New Madrid fault zone, which produced
More details about the earthquake can be found on its IRIS page.
While it’s nice to have the math concepts arranged nicely based on their presentation in the textbook. Since my plan is to give just a few overview lessons and let students discover the details I’ll be presenting things a little differently based on my own conceptual organization. So I’ve created a second graphic map, which looks a bit disorganized, but gives links things by concept, at least in the way I see it.
Concept map for an introduction to pre-Algebra based on the first chapter of the textbook, Pre-Algebra an Accelerated Course, by Dolciani et al., (1996).
This morning I presented just the first branch, about equations, expressions and variables. The general discussion covered enough to give the students a good overview of the introduction to Algebra. Tomorrow the pre-Algebra and Algebra topics will start to diverge, but I think today went pretty well.
We’ll see how it goes as we fill in the rest of the map.
Link to live video feed from the ROV ROPOS surveying a cable on the ocean floor at the Juan de Fuca midocean ridge.
Live science. The remotly operated submersible ROV ROPOS is surveying an undersea cable recently laid across the the Juan de Fuca midocean ridge.
This scientific expedition will be going on until the end of August, and there’ll be live feeds every time the rover is deployed (which depends a bit on the weather at the surface).
If you have questions, they’re also answering your tweets.
Right now, the rover’s heading toward the caldera of the axial seamount volcano. It should get there some time tonight (if they don’t have to stop for anything). So far, we’ve seen dumbo octopuses, crabs, weird fish, brainless worms, sponges, deep sea corals, starfish and lots of pillow basalt. The basalts are unsurprising because these are the rocks produced when volcanos erupt under water.
I was trying to figure out how I could create a graphic organizer/mindmap to outline my math class that my students could access online. Even better would be if they could also edit the map online. That way I could set up the outline of my lesson notes and they could fill in definitions for vocabulary words. Mind42 (pronounced mind for two) allows just that. It’s free to use and allows you to link to or embed your mindmaps (e.g. pre-Algebra/Algebra) into other websites:
It’s almost perfect, all it needs is for you to be able to save the state of the map, with certain branches collapsed for example, or with a set zoom level. Right now the best way to explore the above map is to collapse all the nodes (use the second button on the lower left) and gradually expand them out as you go through.
I do think the style of the nodes and lines on the maps are elegant and make it easy to read. It’s also really easy to create the maps.
Apart from putting your maps to other websites, you can also print them out as pdf’s or images (png), or you can save the map itself in a format that other mindmapping software, like Freemind, can use.
I really like this website, and as soon as they add the ability to save zoom levels and collapsed nodes I’m going to try using it for my classes.
Puberty starts somewhere in the age range of 8 to 13 years for girls and 9 to 14 years for boys. However, in Norway, in 1850, girls hit puberty at around seventeen. Over the next 100 years that age decreased to thirteen and a half, where it has stabilized, but a similar trend has been seen in pretty much all the industrialized countries, including the U.S.. No one knows quite why, but there are a number of theories, including:
Better nutrition,
increased stress, and
artificial chemicals in the environment or in the diet.
The trend in the timing of puberty in girls (menarche) for four western countries, from 1850 to 1950. Figure via NIH via INSERM.
It seems clear that this trend has something to do with improving living conditions. Rapidly developing countries like China are experiencing the same trend in earlier puberty right now. Wealthier areas in developing countries have girls starting puberty at the same age as girls in “privileged” countries, while their compatriots in the poorer areas do not. Also, Overweight kids tend to start puberty earlier.
However, explaining the earlier puberty is difficult because no one knows for sure what exactly triggers puberty to begin with. The genetic switch that tells the hypothalamus to start the process probably involves multiple genes that are affected in complicated ways by how and where a person grows up (when the environment affects how genes are expressed it’s called epigenetics; NOVA has a nice little program that explains how epigenetics results in differences in identical twins.).
Increased stress might be another explanation. Girls in Bosnia and Croatia started having puberty later and later during the war in the 1990’s. However, it appears that other types of stress, such as from insecure relationships with parents and adoption, can do the opposite and trigger even earlier puberty (note: really early puberty in kids as young as 9 is called precocious puberty and is a growing problem).
Certain artificial chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system, which is responsible for hormone production, have also come under suspicion, but their effects have been hard to prove.
Whatever the reason, the earlier onset of puberty has lead to an increase in the length of adolescence (which tends to start with puberty and ends somewhere in the mid-twenties). It’s hard to say though, if all the extra time is beneficial, since it does give the developing brain extra time to adjust to a more complex society, or if it just makes for a longer period of trying times.
Here’s a wonderfully serious piece in the magazine Foreign Policy on what the wizarding world should do to recover and reconcile now that Voldemort has finally been vanquished.
… if history teaches us anything (consider the bitter legacy still lingering from the 17th-century Goblin Wars or the recent experience of American Muggles in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is that the defeat of Voldemort by Harry Potter may have been the easy part. Indeed, one might even say it was child’s play. The hard work of postwar stabilization still lies ahead.
It’s a bit long, but it’s worth reading at least through the first section on, “Transitional Justice and Reconciliation”.
This section points out that, sure, Voldemort’s henchmen need to be prosecuted before the law (and not just detained without charge), but it will be a lot more difficult to deal with the thousands who supported Voldemort in greater or lesser ways. After all, some of these only did what they did under threat. The article recommends a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like in South Africa.
Among their other recommendations are:
the breaking the monopoly of the Daily Prophet on the news media,
a Comprehensive Curse Ban Treaty,
more transparency at the Ministry of Magic,
a Charter on the Rights of Witches and Wizards,
“that the Wizengamot, the high council of Magical Great Britain, be split into separate legislative and judicial bodies,”
and closing Azkaban immediately.
You’ll notice that a number of these recommendations focus on expanding the rights of the individual and build in more checks and balances into government and the media. These, and the overall emphasis on building mechanisms to prevent future conflict, align well with the ideas of peace education. It might also be an interesting focus for a class discussion/Socratic dialogue.
I’d be curious to hear from any Harry Potter fans who might come across this post and have the time to read the article (even though school’s restarted and the homework’s being piled on).
