Education

Evernote for Educators #1 – Online Physics Agenda

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Since the school I currently teach at has not yet employed a Learning Management System (LMS) [1] or  a School / Student Information System [2] that involves students (eg; in regard to assignments, worksheets, announcements, & grade book, etc…) and the students are expected to depend on their physical agenda which was not effective with some students, and since most students have a smartphone or access to a computer and an internet connection I started thinking of a way to solve this issue using technology.

Surely, I had to keep all students on equal footsteps especially for students who might be behind the class due to being slow writers or simply late because of being distracted. Continue reading

How should I best teach them? – Richard Feynman

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In “The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out” Richard Feynman is asked the question of how should you best teach them?
All those students are in the class: Now you ask me how should I best teach them? Should I teach them from the point of view of the history of science, from the applications? My theory is that the best way to teach is to have no philosophy, [it] is to be chaotic and [to] confuse it in the sense that you use every possible way of doing it. That’s the only way I can see to answer it, so as to catch this guy or that guy on different hooks as you go along, [so] that during the time when the fellow who’s interested in history’s being bored by the abstract mathematics, on the other hand the fellow who likes the abstractions is being bored another time by the history—if you can do it so you don’t bore them all, all the time, perhaps you’re better off. I really don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to answer this question of different kinds of minds with different kinds of interests—what hooks them on, what makes them interested, how you direct them to become interested. One way is by a kind of force, you have to pass this course, you have to take this examination. It’s a very effective way. Many people go through schools that way and it may be a more effective way. I’m sorry, after many, many years of trying to teach and trying all different kinds of methods, I really don’t know how to do it.

Spaced repetition

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Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition_system

Installing Promethean ActivInspire Software On Ubuntu 12.04 or 13.04

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To install the Promethean Activboard Driver and ActivInspire Software On Ubuntu 12.04 or 13.04 follow the steps below:
Note: Please note that Promethean supports only 32 bit Ubuntu systems. I have not tested it for 64 bit systems.

sudo apt-get install libjpeg62

From the Ubuntu Software Center add the following repository in “Other Sources”:

deb http://activsoftware.co.uk/linux/repos/ubuntu precise oss non-oss

Back in a terminal run:

wget http://www.activsoftware.co.uk/linux/repos/Promethean.asc && sudo apt-key add Promethean.asc

then

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install activinspire activtools activdriver

Now logout and login again and try running Activinspire.

Classroom physics: free body diagram of Ariane 5

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I’ve been recently teaching Physics to 8th graders. We have finished the chapters on motion, forces, and friction, and just covered gravity. As part of this chapter, though not included in the curriculum or book, I introduced the concept of the free body diagram [1]. In the first session introducing this concept, most students didn’t really grab what it is or why it is important.

For the last session before the vacation, I started the class by playing a video of the Ariane 5 [2] launch that occurred on 29 August 2013 of the French Guiana:

Note: if can’t see the video click here.

Continue reading