Author: Vickie
-
video
Well, it was frustrating because I didn’t have the right camera. The best shots are slightly out of focus. I used them anyway, especially the red sphere shots. They give me the feeling I didn’t know I was hoping for. Funny because I wasn’t really going for beauty with the installation, or expecting it. I…
-
Student-Led Test Prep Lesson Plan
I’m attaching a lesson plan I wrote for a student teacher to think about. It’s a procedure I used with high school science students. This is my response to the paradox of trying to prepare students for standardized tests in ways that are consistent with what we know about how students learn. Please click here…
-
Why STEM Education?
I keep coming back to some fundamental questions: What kind of world do we want to live in? Are we taking the steps to create the world we want? What is the role of STEM education in a world of 7 billion people (and growing). In my opinion, without advance of technology and increase in…
-
Youth are telling us something important
I had occasion to overhear a conversation among some college students. Some sorority girl types were chatting before class. Said one, “I was walking down the hall and Ashley smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. I don’t like her.” My own daughter, now age 23, told me similar stories of people ignoring her in…
-
Why do we have school?
Not for education. At least not for education in reading, thinking, problem solving and reading the world with numbers. As far as I can see, school is for learning to stand in line, coping with incredible boredom, competing with others, sitting still, dealing with being the best or not being the best, and developing subterfuges…
-
Murder and Education
Thinking about the murders in CT. Watching the news–interview with a psychologist, who talked about how "these guys" are always isolated, and blame others for their troubles. Also I note that the kindergarten-teacher mother was really into the gun collecting and shooting. I see a connection, not the obvious one. Troubled people have always been…
-
Co-Teaching Physical Science for Teachers
Last night Rosalie facilitated a lecture-discussion on heat, developing students’ ideas about energy transfer and how to do problems. I noticed a couple of times students gave the "right" answer, but when Rosalie probed further, the students didn’t really understand what they were talking about. It would have been easy to accept the correct answer…
-
“Seeing” forces
This lesson was developed in a Lesson Study Project over three years. The authors are Karen Vanderheyden, Markeeta Clayton, Nikki Grimes and John Graybill. They called this lesson– “Send in the Reinforcements” You can download it here. The lesson is the first in a series of explorations of the way members and joints distribute load…