Dissection of a Purse

I can never find anything in my purse. It's not a big purse, it's not a small purse, and it's not overfilled (as it was during the days of babies and toddlers). I read a facebook status today that said, "So I was just digging through my purse to find my eye liner...and i found a beer...i think my purse might be too big if its hiding beers on me now." So what is in mine? No beer, but:

Hairbrush, pocket notebook, pilot log, checkbook, valentine from my son, camera, tape measure, folding botanical magnifier, ipod, tube of Archipelago Botanicals Oat Creme Milk handcream, eyeliner, dental floss, mini box of wooden waterproof matches (I don't smoke), liquid-filled compass, two pair of reader glasses (one purple & green, the other black with red flowers), two small smooth stones (one green, the other black with grey stripes), six lipsticks/lip glosses, copper bookmark, two clicker pencils, felt tip pen, ball point pen, mini-sharpie, debit card, license, medical card, work id, bandaid, multivitamin package, cough drop, file card listing lab supplies to buy, bobby pin, cell phone, spare camera battery, and $45.61.

So if you had to create the person who owned this collection, what would you infer?

Now if you read this far, you have got to check out great purses here and here; wish I had a couple of them!

Web Tools for Education

Steve Dembo put together this great presentation on Using Technology: Practical Applications for the NICE miniconference in Illinois. Here it is, the top ten Web 2.0 tools for education:

Using Technology: Practical Applications on Prezi

Vernier Labs

This year I have been learning how to use the science department Vernier probes and their LabPro software for labs in my biology and chemistry classes. They make it easier for the students to collect data, allowing more time for analysis. They are also great for giving students a feel for what scientists use in the field. I have now done three labs using the Verniers and LabPro software: a cellular respiration lab measuring CO2, a pair of endothermic and exothermic lab measuring temperature changes, and a heat of fusion of water lab, again measuring temperature. The software and tools were easy to set up for the students and running the labs went quite smoothly. Problems occurred in the usual areas for the usual students: they did not read the entire procedure before beginning the lab and re-do's were necessary for them. The software creates beautiful graphs for student analysis. As a teacher, though, I want the student to be able to understand how the graphs are made and create their own graphs. In this regard, I want the students to download the actual data and use Excell or other spreadsheet tools for graphing. The software does not provide a straightforward means for accomplishing this. In addition, the software-generated graphs can only be saved in a format that can only be read by the LabPro software, rather than providing an option of saving as a jpeg or gif for insertion into a lab report.  Because of this, the student must create a copy of the graph and insert it into a document file immediately upon completion of the lab. These problems could be me not understanding the software.

Another thing I was wondering about is how much of the slickness of the program removes the student from truly understanding the concepts. It is one thing to push a plastic syringe and feel the pressure, and quite another to simply read a series of kPa numerical data. Creating hot packs and cold packs, which is what I normally do for endothermic and exothermic labs and which I did not do this year, could have helped the students connect better with the the endothermic and exothermic labs. With these thoughts in mind, in the future I will try to schedule an inquiry lab prior to the Vernier probe lab. It's a matter of timing and scheduling.

Chemistry Animations Links

PhET: Free
online physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math simulations Simulations and teacher-generated lesson plans.

Chemistry
animations index Chemistry Experiment Simulations, Tutorials and Conceptual
Computer Animations. Flashplayer.

Chemistry animations Links
to movies and animations. May not be up-to-date.

McGraw-Hill
Chemistry Flash Animations Narrated animations go with Chemistry Essentials
textbook.

KScience
Simple flash animations free to use for teaching.

Chemistry : Home: The Science in Context Developed
specifically for Chemistry: The Science in Context by a team.

Nature vs. Nurture

Biology class yesterday and today was about genetics, genetic disorders, and Why Genes Aren't Our Destiny. The article they read, from a January 2010 Times magazine, explored the field of epigenics and presented how the choices a person makes in lifestyle can influence how genes are expressed, both in the person making the choice and in their offspring.  Even though the text was a bit dense for my freshmen students, they were great about reading it and highlighting information that supported the premise (title) of the article, words that they didn't know, and ideas they found intriguing or confusing. Conversations varied quite a bit between classes depending on their make-up and abilities. Some focussd on the health aspects of exercise and the food we eat. Others picked up on the historical context of Darwin and Lamarck, and considered the possibilities of future drugs. In all cases I let the students lead the direction of the conversation and the conversations were, in my opinion, valuable to them. They were engaged, thinking, and participating.

Today we followed up with TED Talks videos, or excerpts of them, interspersed with discussion about the key points of the talks. Again, conversations took many directions, and again I let the students lead the direction of the discussion. We had to watch the Dean Ornish twice because he spoke so quickly. One student said "I'd hate to have to do a 500 by 500 punnett square" and there were some titters at some points, but the ensuing discussion was productive. These are the TED videos we watched, the first one in it's entirety and the others I chose excerpts from:

• Gene's Are Not Your Fate, by Dean Ornish.
• School Lunches, by Ann Cooper.
• Teach Every Child About Food, by Jamie Oliver.

I felt a bit preachy, and wondered about imparting my values on the students when I trashed the big agribusiness and the overuse of pesticides, herbicides, and hormones on the food that we eat. Then a colleague pointed out that as teachers we do this every, we model for learners how to think, how to evaluate, how to approach a problem, and how to take keen note of what lies in the world around them. This is our job as teachers. Hopefully we present information that is balanced and well-supported, and allow disagreements to occur. Itis part of the education of us all.

My hope is that they are haunted by these ideas and explore them more, make even small changes in their diet and exercise habits. At the end of one class a student came to me and asked where you get organic beef because he had not seen any at the market his family used; I was able to tell him about a local farm that raised and sold their own beef.

One step at a time. Pitch, power, trim, patience.
I can't wait to share an article from Popular Science (November 2009) called "Toxic Avengers".

Patience

I've been giving a young man the opportunity to learn how to drive a stick shift with my five-speed Honda Civic. He is a quick learner and really just needs practice time to get the shifting to be smoother. He gets so frustrated and embarrassed when he stalls or jolts the car, even though it does not bother me at all. I tell him not to worry, cars behind him will wait, and he's not doing anything that others have not done before him. Always when someone first tries to drive a stick they want a precise answer about when to shift; I always say "listen to the engine." The last time he drove he said to me "it sounds like it wants to shift" which means he is not relying on the tachometer for direction.  Now I am pointing out "anticipate what is coming up" in terms of a hill, turn or stop sign with regard to his speed and shifting transitions.  Because he can only drive my car occasionally he is not getting consistent practice to make him feel confident.

Pitch, Power, Trim Patience.

Since I have started flying, everytime I let this young man drive my car I can hear my flight instructor in the back of my head saying: "listen to the engine", and I can feel my flight instructor's patience with me as I struggle to make my transitions smooth. I keep telling him that he is exceptionally patient to deal with students bouncing the plane around. When transitioning the plane in altitude or direction, he has given me these four words to remember: pitch, power, trim, patience. This sequence can be used in other teaching situations as well: pitch the concept, power the lesson, tweak the details, give the student time to absorb.

Patience is the mark of a good teacher. A teacher can not expect that every student will reach the same endpoint at the same time and following the same path. Give the student the time he or she needs, provide patience, guidance, and understanding, and the student will succeed. I have a very good flight instructor.

A Dozen or so Charts of Elements

Please note that this post has been updated in a new post here.

The Periodic Table of Elements is the chemists main toolbox. There are numerous tables online that can be used by the teacher and the student for learning about the elements of the earth. Here is a bakers dozen of beautiful and useful favorites:

• Dynamic Interactive Table of Elements. A multi-layered interactive table with tabs that provide a wealth of information about properties, orbitals, isotopes, and just about anything else the student would need.
• Another Interactive Table of Elements. The benefit of this chart is that you scroll over the element and the information appears, rather than having to click and move through to another page. Contains all the essential data plus visuals of electron configuration and orbital configuration.
• Printable Periodic Tables. If you want to print out a copy of a table for your students, this is the place to go. There are six versions to choose from. Another site that promises printable charts is ScienceGeek; I've not had time to check each link but it looked pretty interesting and should be explored.
• Visual Periodic Table.  This table would make a nice poster. Its different contribution is an identification of what the element is its appearance in nature and its use in industry.
• Periodic Table of Videos. A whole set of videos by the University of Nottingham demonstrating properties of the elements and describing them. Quite a lot of fun.
• Interactive Periodic Table Game. A module in the form of a game that can help the student with understanding trends and patterns in the periodic table. It also includes a link to a printable version of the table.
• Los Alamos Lab Periodic Table of Elements. Colorful with interesting information.
• These tables are great for the elementary or high school student. WebElements Periodic Table. Chemical Elements. Jefferson Labs Table of Elements. Easy to use, click on an element and you are brought to a whole page of interesting and useful information on that element.
• ChemiCool Periodic Table. Lots of great information plus videos and links.
• Wooden Periodic Table Table. An actual table shaped like the periodic table of elements and containing samples of the elements. Very cool.
• The Photographic Periodic Table of Elements. Another site from the maker of the wooden periodic table table, this site contains pictures, stories, text, data, detailed technical data about every element, great pictures, information about radioactive decay chains, and more.

And then are the charts of non-chemistry elements that take the form of the periodic table of chemical elements:

• Periodic Table of the Internet. Fun assembly of urls and ranks of search engines, blogs, tools, social networking, and more.
• The Periodic Table of Comic Books. Fun links to comic book pages involving chemical elements.
• Twitter friend @WillyB shared the Periodic Table of Beer Styles.
• Twitter friend @BlessedBees shared the Periodic Table of Visualizations.

Now I am thinking about all the projects a teacher could assign to organize information (history, art, math) in an organized chart of elements.

Post post addition: Ben Wildeboer shares the additional site Chemogenesis Database of Periodic Tables. If you have the time to explore, and there are hundreds of periodic tables, there is a great amount of chemistry history contained in these tables as well as a huge variety.