Waves and earthquakes

There are a lot of Earth Science applications that deal with waves. Seismic waves from earthquakes are a major one that is particularly pertinent after the recent Haitian earthquake. There are quite a number of lesson plans dealing with seismic waves at Larry Braile’s website. Most of the lessons are as practical demonstrations pdf’s and some use downloadable software (Windows only unfortunately), but there are some online applications as well.

In terms of online resources, the IRIS network, produces nice maps of recent earthquake locations. It also has a good page with “Teachable Moments” regarding recent earthquakes. These include the above video of why the Haitian earthquake did not produce a tsunami.

Although it’s not directly related to waves, I particularly like the thermal convection experiment on Braile’s website. It provides, with a baking dish, a sterno can, some water and some thyme, a great example of the convection in the Earth’s mantle that drive plate tectonics.

Mind-Mapping software (Free)

VUE mindmap

I recently received a tip about the VUE mind-mapping software. It’s free from Tufts University and it’s open source, though you do have to register to download the software. A quick test that produced the image above shows that it’s pretty easy to use and can easily incorporate images.

Free software. It’s better than coupons.

Publishing: The Blue Pencil

In searching for venues where my more literary-minded students might get a start in publishing their work, I came across The Blue Pencil. It’s student edited and produced, so it fits the Montessori Philosophy very well. My thoughts based on their website based on my own criteria for publishing literary work:

  • The Blue Pencil “is edited and produced by the students in the Writing & Publishing Program at Walnut Hill School for the Arts“. It is aimed at young writers (12–18) around the world. You submit online and your work is evaluated on an ongoing basis during the school year and they say the try to respond within a month. Unfortunately you typically do not get feedback if your work is not accepted. On the plus side, they only have a one month embargo of your work after they’ve published it before you reacquire the publishing rights.

Students publishing their written work

I am constantly amazed by the quality of the writing my students turn in. The honesty of the reflection, the clarity of the writing and the elegant turns of phrase. Certainly better than anything I’ve ever churned out. I sometimes find it difficult to advise them on their pieces because their work is often so good that they’ve gone past issues of mechanics and my comments are purely my subjective opinions (and I’m clearly no expert). I have some serious writers in my class, so I was not too surprised when one of them asked me the other day if there were any venues to publish their work.

Byron (from Wikimedia Commons).

A little online searching turned up a few places that might by worthy venues for the serious writer, however, I have a few biases that narrow down the possible candidates even more. Of course the publication needs to be serious about publishing good work. In the online world anyone can self-publish, but because of the glut of information out there it is pretty hard to find the good stuff. A good, selective editorial staff is your friend there. It certainly makes it harder to publish, but it also helps you create better pieces.

The second key criterion is that the publisher should not retain all (or even most) of the rights to your work. Signing away the rights to something you spent a lot of time and energy creating never sat well with me when I was choosing journals for publication. I’m pleased to see that an increasing number of online scientific journals are rejecting the practice, but it remains to be seen if they will be successful in the long term.

With that in mind, I’ll post a what I find as I find them under the tag “publishing“. At the moment, I’m relying on two key resources, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers Blog and Publish Me a website from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for teens who want to publish.

Video Game Addiction

Boys tent to have more problems with games (From Hauge, Marney R., Gentile, Douglas A., (2003, April)).

While the American Psychiatric Association does not yet include it as a diagnosis (as of 2009) video game and internet addictions are problems I’ve seen first hand, and, given my own plugged-in-idess, are topics I personally think about when I reflect on my own computer use. The web is a powerful tool so it’s not so unusual that we’d spend a lot of time using it. There is a point however when it becomes compulsive and takes so much time that it becomes a detriment to our other work.

There are any number of website and online resources about the topic and even a few commercial sites that offer treatment. For anecdotal descriptions there is the Berkley Parents Network website. which has a few examples from parents dealing with the problem. The National Institute on Media and the Family has a good page describing video game addiction. For adolescents they describe the symptoms as;

  • Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.Falling asleep in school.
  • Not keeping up with assignments.
  • Worsening grades.
  • Not telling the truth about computer or video game use.
  • Choosing to use the computer or play video games, rather than see friends.
  • Dropping out of other social groups (clubs or sports).
  • Irritable when not playing a video game or on the computer.

Interestingly, this tends to be more of a problem for boys. And one solution recommended is wilderness therapy. I think that may be a bit extreme. Another suggestion was:

… the experts … said the best way to cure kids’ video game addiction is to set strict limits. They suggested not allowing kids to have computers, PlayStations, TVs, etc. in their bedrooms if monitoring their behavior is a problem.

The Montessori classroom is a closely knit community and, especially in a small classroom, falling asleep in class and being irritable (especially more so than normal teens) can be very disruptive to the entire class. It is, therefore, essential that the problem be addressed as soon and as quickly as possible.

Silence in the Middle School: The Little Rock Nine

My students watched the video about the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock and they were shocked. Truly shocked. They had already started reading the letters to and from President Eisenhower which are powerful in that they trace the story with the actual presidential records. Then one of the students brought up the video on a laptop and they all gathered around to watch. For 5 minutes afterward there was silence in the classroom.

The ugly, vicious hatred of the mob was powerful, and the one girl, Elizabeth Eckford, just a little older than the middleschoolers, just sitting there with the crowd all round, unable to speak, proud upright, but with a shell shocked look in her eyes. The video is moving, and it brings home the strength and courage of those nine kids in a world that must have seemed to be tipping toward destruction.

iSeismo app

Those who know me know how much I like the iSeismo app for the iPhone. The phone as a built-in accelerometer and the iSeismo app uses it to show the movement of the phone in three dimensions. The app show three graphs (seismographs), the first two show horizontal motions and the third vertical motion. So, if you put the phone on the table and hit the table the third line should jump up and down.

You can also export the data from the phone (or iPod Touch), and since the phones’ times should be synchronized pretty well, there should be a way to use two phones to triangulate the location of an impact, say on the floor in a room, in the same way that seismologists use seismographs to locate earthquakes. That would make a great demo if it was easy enough to do.

Update: iSeismo can also be used as a heartbeat monitor.

Desegregation of Central High School

Troops escort students to school (from Wikimedia Commons).

Recording of Eisenhower’s address to the nation on the situation in Little Rock.

In going over the timeline of human rights today, we realized that it did not have a card for the civil rights struggle of the 1950’s and 60’s. One of the key events that middle school students should be able to relate to is the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. Imagine having to have troops escort you into school. Imagine having to endure racial taunts every day when you were only one of nine African American students in the entire school.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas has a nice outline of the events of 1957 in the context of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. However, the National Park Service’s website is perhaps better targeted to Middle School age range. The video below is also a good primer, and my students found it to be very powerful.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library has some of the primary documents related to the events. They give a vivid account of the events from the perspective of what the president saw.

The Little Rock Nine (in New York, 1958)