And The Dream goes On

Speaking of college students, Martin Luther King Jr wrote:

Most of the "brethren" think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

And through the rest of The Purpose of Education, which Dr. King wrote to Morehouse College in 1948, he concludes:

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, "brethren!" Be careful, teachers!

The theme of my blog indeed seems to be social reform, and it is hard to speak of this change and not refer to Dr. King. My previous entry had a few responses that prompted me to a few questions.

So my questions are: What are we doing to ensure that we are providing the education that we are responsible to provide? Not simply enough to not get fired or bad marks, but are we living up to the moral standard that a teacher should live up to?

How does this education of morality exist and effect our science classes? What is the role of morality and social consciousness in Engineering? (I am not satisfied with the idea that the Engineer needs to have only enough morality to not deliberately choose a bolt that is too small or weak when designing a bridge) As a highly educated individual what is my responsibility to my community and to my brothers and sisters?

Formative Years...

A new week and a new assignment for the preparing future faculty class. Reading over the Concept of Formative Assessment I am initially intrigued as we open the box...

...assessment encompasses teacher observation, classroom discussion, and analysis of student work, including homework and tests. Assessments become formative when the information is used to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs.

...Secondly...

students who understand the learning objectives and assessment criteria and have opportunities to reflect on their work show greater improvement than those who do not

I have always approached school as a student with the mindset of trying to figure out what the professor wanted us to learn. If I can understand her motivations and why she is asking certain questions, I can then better study what is important within the subject.

Black and William recommend that teachers use formative assessment to better gauge the learning taking place in a classroom and they have a list of possible ways for teachers to gather this information.

* Invite students to discuss their thinking about a question or topic in pairs or small groups, then ask a representative to share the thinking with the larger group (sometimes called think-pair-share).

* Present several possible answers to a question, then ask students to vote on them.

* Ask all students to write down an answer, then read a selected few out loud.

Teachers might also assess students' understanding in the following ways:

* Have students write their understanding of vocabulary or concepts before and after instruction.

* Ask students to summarize the main ideas they've taken away from a lecture, discussion, or assigned reading.

* Have students complete a few problems or questions at the end of instruction and check answers.

* Interview students individually or in groups about their thinking as they solve problems.

* Assign brief, in-class writing assignments (e.g., "Why is this person or event representative of this time period in history?)

The interesting part is that inside this assessment, our students also gain insight into their learning and the learning of their peers. So if students have a better understanding of if they are ahead or behind they will be able to gauge their efforts better and are provided a better chance to learn.

In addition to these classroom techniques, tests and homework can be used formatively if teachers analyze where students are in their learning and provide specific, focused feedback regarding performance and ways to improve it. Black and Wiliam (1998b) make the following recommendations:

* Frequent short tests are better than infrequent long ones.

* New learning should be tested within about a week of first exposure.

It continues to provide links to resources for teachers who seek to introduce Formative Assessment into their curriculum. Most of the research cited in this article is done in high school, but they claim it can be extended to higher learning and general learning.

Having never taught a full class on my own, I want to start keeping a list of things I could try if things start going awry. The Vanderbilt Center for Teaching provides a list of a few possibilities of classroom assessment techniques,

• The Minute Paper tests how students are gaining knowledge, or not. The instructor ends class by asking students to write a brief response to the following questions: "What was the most important thing you learned during this class?" and "What important question remains unanswered?"

• The Muddiest Point is one of the simplest CATs to help assess where students are having difficulties. The technique consists of asking students to jot down a quick response to one question: "What was the muddiest point in [the lecture, discussion, homework assignment, film, etc.]?" The term “muddiest” means “most unclear” or “most confusing.”

• The What’s the Principle? CAT is useful in courses requiring problem-solving. After students figure out what type of problem they are dealing with, they often must decide what principle(s) to apply in order to solve the problem. This CAT provides students with a few problems and asks them to state the principle that best applies to each problem.

• Defining Features Matrix: Prepare a handout with a matrix of three columns and several rows. At the top of the first two columns, list two distinct concepts that have potentially confusing similarities (e.g. hurricanes vs. tornados, Picasso vs. Matisse). In the third column, list the important characteristics of both concepts in no particular order. Give your students the handout and have them use the matrix to identify which characteristics belong to each of the two concepts. Collect their responses, and you’ll quickly find out which characteristics are giving your students the most trouble.

Similarly, FLAG offers a wealth of modules for learning assessment.

WHAT ARE WEEKLY REPORTS?
Weekly Reports are papers written by students each week, in which they address 3 questions:

• What did I learn this week?
• What questions remain unclear?, and
• What questions would you ask your students if you were the professor to find out if they understood the material?

The difficult aspect of doing this is just the investment required by the students. If it is not valuable to the student and they don't invest in it, it won't do them any good. :(

But now we come to the end of our Post. We come to the end of our walk through introspective language. But we are American, so let's end it with a BANG!

What is the difference between teaching and talking?

When you Teach, you learn. When you listen you learn. But it is hard to listen when you're talking.

(2) What can you do in the classroom that you can't do anywhere else?

Either the answer is nothing, or I don't understand the question.

I wonder if that's radical.

-Engineer

Bicycle Apprenticeship

Independent bamboo frame builders are going to be speaking at the upcoming North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS). This concept of giving fish, teaching fish, and the expansions on it are good to hear because we can understand them in this analogy. Similarly we find:

“We’ve all heard the saying , “Give someone a fish and they’ll eat for a day, but teach them to fish and they’ll eat for the rest of their life.” But our friend John Perkins challenges us to go farther. He say, “The problem is that nobody is asking who owns the pond or who polluted it.”

Shane Claiborne - The Irresistable Revolution

Being able to take information and construction techniques that utilize local materials and skillsets is one of my aspirations as an educator, but I do not think that any of this can be separated from the political backdrop of our world. To this extent the small act of teaching someone to build a bicycle from their surroundings is one motivated by goodwill and genuine love for another. I see that as Hope.

The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

The reason I want to be an educator is to help those who struggle with the basic problems of warmth, food, and shelter. The reason I am pursuing training to be a teacher is to have more to offer people in need, meanwhile wrestling the basic problems of a privileged life in a privileged environment. My inclination toward reformation comes not only from my education as a mechanical engineer, but from the rest of my life as well. It comes from the people I meet, from the eyes and hearts of the lost and lonely.

Undergraduate Educators

A general blog to be taken as blog is short for (weblog). So this is more of a log of what I think I learned from this paper, written as I read it...

If beginning teachers are to be successful, they must wrestle simultaneously with issues of pedagogical content (or knowledge) as well as general pedagogy (or generic teaching principles)

There is a list of features of what we want to teach. I'm not sure how this is related to comprehension. In those features are contained,

• To teach students to believe and respect others, to contribute to the well-being of their community
• To give students the opportunity to learn how to inquire and discover new information

I think that these are great ideals, but I would love to hear some ways that we could implement this kind of program in a public school. This is not me being cynical or even skeptical, just feeling like I haven't seen these points spoken of often. These both feel like implicit lessons in our american university setting.

Following the list of interesting points to consider for a teacher (comprehension, transformation, instruction, and evaluation is a statement of logical teaching that falls under reflection:

All teachers must learn to observe outcomes and determine the reasons for success or failure

And this is where we claim no gap between "squishy-hard" sciences. This is teaching, and it is based in reality. If we see something has failed, we try to figure out why it did and we only reenact it in our head. We don't repeat a failed method without good reason.

Moving to our second reading we now consider the shift of paradigms. We wish to observe a shift in our educational system from providing instruction to producing learning. Concerning the differences in how we may rate and quantify our progress we see:

We are so wedded to a definition of quality based on resources that we find it extremely difficult to deal with the results of our work, namely student learning.

I do have a worry about the learning production paradigm that is contained within the next statement:

It supports any learning method and structure that works, where "works" is defined in terms of learning outcomes, not as the degree of conformity to an ideal classroom archetype.

In fact, the Learning Paradigm requires a constant search for new structures and methods that work better for student learning and success, and expects even these to be redesigned continually and to evolve over time.

My worry is that in our attempt to redefine education we will lose some of the qualities that allow for teachers who are less capable to maintain classes. We have introduced a lot of ambiguity into our system by producing learning.. If we talk about it too much we will stray into arbitrary theoretical nonsense. In a sense, we need to be ready to adapt and change our methods, but we must also be willing to choose a method, fail at it, and choose again. We will not be able to provide a structure for some who need it if the class appears to be too floppy or without any structure.

However, I find it hard to argue with the logic in the motivation of our need for change:

"Fractionated instruction maximizes forgetting, inattention, and passivity. Both children and adults acquire knowledge from active participation in holistic, complex, meaningful environments organized around long-term goals. Today's school programs could hardly have been better designed to prevent a child's natural learning system from operating."

I finally come to the point, nearing the end of the article when I find that I need a direction of what needs to happen as opposed to what is wrong with everything. I am pleased to find a clear direction:

We need to work to have state legislatures change the funding formulas of public colleges and universities to give institutions the latitude and incentives to develop new structures for learning.

In reading this article I find that same push of governmental change. But there is still a fine balance between change from the top and the bottom. We need to begin by speaking the language to each other. Wondering what our university can look like, but also speaking the current language of failure to our legislative branch. This feels like a complete and refined thought, I like it.

Engineering Social Reform

Why?

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. - The Bible, NIV, Isaiah 58:12

In the summer after my last semester of classes as an undergraduate engineer I took a writing class that allowed me the opportunity to reflect on the education I had just received. I have attached a paragraph as well as the linked to the entire document below. During my teaching and technology class I was asked what an engineer thinks (or more why an engineer thinks) about social reform (see previous post), and I think this will shed a little bit of the light on the matter.

There is visible a great downfall to this whole progression of business. That downfall is that the upward march of progress in the global market appears to be to the edge of an unsure cliff. We want to compare what it is that we are hoping to accomplish versus what we are actually accomplishing. Therefore we need to stop teaching our students facts and formulas while withholding the dynamic interactions and conflicts within their very education. Can you train a student to solve a local problem within the frame of the bigger global picture by instructing her in how to solve a problem without a bigger picture? This compartmentalization of education has lead to a disenfranchised generation by causing a lack of coherence and purpose in our curriculum.

An Engineering Curriculum

Chlorophytum comosum

The ideal student/teacher relationship: Chlorophytum comosum, or better known as the spider plant. Out of the plant grows a new plant. It branches off and lands on the ground. Still connected to the mother plant, it gains nutrients from the host while developing roots of its own. It is possible for these roots to grow in water without the host plant, but the result will not be as full. Can this be considered an analogy for an ideal student teacher relationship? The teacher can provide a secure structure to work within and students branch out to develop roots of their own. Influenced by the host yet unique to themselves, these students have the capability to flourish on their own and in time play the role of host or teacher to the next generation of students.

This may also help to explain the disparity of how a student becomes a teacher. Thus we respectfully submit our solution to the transient problem of the ideal student/teacher relationship.

Signed,

The Radical and Empirical

fierdeltreempirical.wordpress.com

radicalteachings.blogspot.com

Teaching Perspectives

I attached the TPI results I received when I took this survey. My result was high for Developmental and Social Reform. This seemed to arouse some questions in the class on what an engineer can feel for Social Reform. As a quick view of where mechanical engineering can be used to speak a language of Social reform, we simply look at needs. What needs are there? Who needs it?



04-FEB-10
----------------------
Transmission total: (Tr) 33.00
B=13; I=9; A=11
Apprenticeship total: (Ap) 35.00
B=12; I=12; A=11
Developmental total: (Dv) 37.00
B=11; I=12; A=14
Nurturance total: (Nu) 31.00
B=10; I=10; A=11
Social Reform total: (SR) 37.00
B=11; I=12; A=14
----------------------
Beliefs total: (B) 57.00
Intention total: (I) 55.00
Action total: (A) 61.00
----------------------
Mean: (M) 34.60
Standard Deviation: (SD) 2.33
HiT: (HiT) 37.00
LoT: (LoT) 32.00
----------------------
Overall Total: (T) 173.00


For what it's worth, people have told me that I am not a normal engineer.

- An Ordinary Radical Engineer

Chai Chai Chai

StonyField:recipes:Chai Smoothie

After having a nice cup of Chai this morning and wondering what a home made chai might taste like, I began looking forward to iced chai and the summertime. Then my yogurt company sent me a recipe for a Chai Smoothie. Score!

Modulation in Moderation

The ideal student - teacher relationship is like a brother or a sister.

Expound..

...

Decompressing file...

...

Enter Assumption

People will encounter life and fit what they encounter to what they have experienced.

...

Processing.. Please Wait...

...

Result Found.

/Display/'Result'

Given that the ideal Teacher knows all he needs to teaching and the Ideal student is disciplined and obedient, we infer from these facts that there is a dynamic other than equality between these "siblings." Perhaps these "siblings" are not twins. With an age difference comes a different level of respect.

To Clarify,

The ideal student - teacher relationship is like a younger brother or a sister to an older brother or sister.

The older brother or sister has the respect and commands authority over the younger sibling through a message of "I know what you don't know yet." It can be either an attitude of strong encouragement or limiting intimidation. The role of the teacher is then to promote this idea of strength, trust, and wisdom and then encourage the student to take the steps to be more like the teacher (gain wisdom and confidence).

Teaching a passion (with passion)

Examining the science of art of how people learn, how does this change how you would design or deliver a course?

We will start with a quick review of what we have learned -

Single-loop learning is like a thermostat that learns when it is too hot of too cold and turns the heat on or off. The thermostat can perform this task because it can receive information (the temperature of the room) and take corrective action. Double-looplearning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives.

Single-loop learning seems to be present when goals, values, frameworks and, to a significant extent, strategies are taken for granted. The emphasis is on ‘techniques and making techniques more efficient’ (Usher and Bryant: 1989: 87) Any reflection is directed toward making the strategy more effective. Double-loop learning, in contrast, ‘involves questioning the role of the framing and learning systems which underlie actual goals and strategies’

To flesh this out a little I would like to add to the thermostat analogy since it appears to have dropped a little when then explaining the double loop learning. I would add that the double loop response to a thermostat reading a cold temperature would be to adjust the pitch of the roof and the amount of solar gain that can be achieved, as well as adjusting the R value of the insulation. This changes the governing variables in the problem of heat loss in the room (Change the room!)

Now examining the concept of reflection both in action and on action we find that the name of the idea mostly sums up the concept we are trying to understand. Both ideas stress reflection. Which is the act of processing your surroundings and making connections between them and times gone past. The major difference between these ideas is merely when they happen, (In action, On action). Reflecting in action is a way of processing and adapting while you introduce a new concept. Reflecting on action is the more familiar description of something akin to 'journaling.' However, this reflecting on much can be gleamed from reflection after a matter has occurred.

When looking at a situation we are influenced by, and use, what has gone before, what might come, our repertoire, and our frame of reference. We are able to draw upon certain routines. As we work we can bring fragments of memories into play and begin to build theories and responses that fit the new situation

When I begin thinking of professors who have interested me and motivated me to think, I most often find that I have the strongest connections with Physics professors.

Like Dr. Walter H. G. Lewin

I believe this to be due to the joyful passion they have for their passion. They are constantly striving to understand their field and they simultaneously teach upper level as well as remedial classes. They continue to learn, because like me, they learn best by teaching. In a small interview describing his Electromagnetism lectures at MIT Dr. Lewin gave the introduction to the course saying "I wish to make them see through the equations, to make them see the beauty all around them and by doing that, making them love physics"

Physics | Electricity and Magnetism, Beginning of Course Philosophy

This introduction gives his structure for the course and the teaching method is worthy of notice. He introduces his concepts by prompting with physical reality. His demonstrations are funny, but relevant. He presents himself as the fall guy, not propping himself above the students, but supposing that perhaps he will be wrong this time. Building suspense and letting the students explore the possiblities

"What counts is not what you cover, but what you uncover" - Dr. Lewin

When you plan a lesson there are a host of considerations. Primarily you need to consider how your students learn.

• Have they already seen the material you are presenting?
• How can you present it in such a way that leads them to discover it instead of insisting on knowledge? (double loop)
• Take time to reflect on when did you first learned what you're about to teach. This may help plan escape routes and backup options for unfortunate classroom experiences.
• What cognitive stage of development are your students at? Try to gauge how deep you can go into the subject.
• Be ready to adapt to the level of depth (aim for significance and come up when necessary)
• Find your passion for the material and try to convey your passion both for the material presented and for the student's success in understanding material and acquiring a similar passion
• Have a structured balance of community, lecture, and reflection. Encourage idea generation and creativity to try to solve problems.
• Discover what the passion of the student is.

With that said, if the teacher holds too high an opinion of himself and does not consider himself a student, his students will not understand him. Nor will the lesson be relevant to how any student is developing in her or his education.

Lecture 27: Fluid Mechanics - Pascal's Principle - Hydrostatics - Atmospheric Pressure - Over Pressure in Lungs and Tires

This is a lecture (not short) of the kind of motivation I aspire to impart on others.