Chunlei's Blog

Yesterday, I went to the Main library of UGA. I had a task to search a journal from 1980 to 1990. It was my first time to be there. To my suprise, nobody stopped me to check my UGA card. So I just went around and check out the journels. It means everybody can come in and take a seat to read. It is great! The frist floor is very big and open. The book and magzines are located in the center, surrounded by many groups of tables, seats and computers. Although many students studying there, it was very quiet. I ask a library staff how to find the journal, he helped me to check it out in his computer and told me it is located at the second floor and it is also available online. So I just came out. It was at the noon, I took a picture of the main library, it is beautiful.

Look at the Slide I made by Prezi:

Prezi is free, and this is my invitation code: http://prezi.com/recommend/uoexcohw4ztz/
上面的连接是我的邀请码，可以免费注册prezi。

Sometimes it is hard to let students collect data to test their ideas about nature. For example to make observations how stars move for a long time, or do experiment about why plant grow to the sunlight. In this case, when oboservation and experiment difficult to carry out in classroom, computer software or interactive simulations can help a lot. There are two examples.

In a middle school biology class, students can play with the following flash game to figure out why plant grow to the sun.

Recently I attended Dr Luft’s class Methods of Science Teaching. I am becoming more and more interested in Modeling activities and I want to make a collection of these activities.

This is the list:
- Candle in the water tube make it go out(Dr Luft’s class)
- Black box(How students learn: science in classroom see Chp 12)
- Timms video JP5 AIR COMPRESSION AND EXPANSION
- Mystery Tube (Dr C’s class)
- Next Generation Science Standards simulation activities in Concord
If you have more good modeling activities, welcome recommandations.

These activities provide lots of practice options for science teachers. We usually only provide standards of what students should master but little practice activites for teachers. Well, the Next Generation Standard is going to change this.

Reflections on Modeling in science teaching
The charm of modeling:
- Naturally need students to make careful observation,recording data,drawing conclusions
- Naturally engage students’ prior ideas for explaination or application
- Naturally put students into the test, debate and revisement of their models or prior ideas
- Naturally let students experience the full process of science inquiry and nature of science

What to focus in the modeling activites as a science teacher?

How to keep the balance between knowledge-centered and student-centered? Individual and Community? Cognition and metacognition?

Welcome to join the discussion of these open questions!

A good teacher just like a good cook. Of course, you can tell a good cook by the taste of his dishes. So students’ perfect performance is a good predictor of competent teacher. But it takes a lot effort to make the dishes OR evaluate the students. In fact, we can also tell a good cook by his preparation and operation of his cooking. Good cook can aways make many dishes in a limited time. Because he don’t stop, when heating the water, he is washing the vegatables or cutting the meat. When the water is ready he is also ready to fry them together. The teacher do the same thing in class expecially in a short class. I found this metaphor visiting Dr C’s class, she give instructions as well as preparing the tools for modeling, at the same time she was also doing demonstration of what the secret tube behaviors.

Sometimes science teacher educators complain that teachers’ beliefs are stubborn and reluctant to change their practices. Well, It is true.

The science teacher is like a swimming player in a swimming poor. The science teacher educator stand beside and tell the player how to swim, which style is good which is bad. But the most important thing for a person in the swimming poor is to keep safty and the most reliable style is his primary style. How can we blame them not trying to change, if their safty is not guaranteed and skills not developed.

As a science teacher educator, you can not stand by but jump into the swimming poor and provide necessary skills and safety.

It is my first time to view a science classroom teaching in Japan. In fact, it supprise me a little. I know the science education in Japan is of high quality. They get much better score than the other counties and teacher are respectable profession. But I never thought the classroom are so interactive and effective. You can click here to view the video.

This eighth-grade science lesson is about the formation of clouds. It is the third lesson in a sequence of 19 lessons on weather. The lesson is 53 minutes in duration. There are 25 students in the class.

https://raw.github.com/lukezhg/Freyja/master/timssvideo.png

Here is my record of the time usage of the class:

00-03 review what learnt
03-07 demistration
07-17 demistration of key skills for today’s experiment
18-36 Student activites(4 experiments and group take turn)
36-50 sumary of experiment result and draw conclusion
50-52 self-evalation

I watched the video twice, first I just got a glance of it very quickly. The second time, I watch it very carefully and make notes of what teacher and students were doing.

First, I found a very interesting thing that the Japenese teacher used about 17 minutes to engage students and make demonstration at the begining. He also used about 17 minutes to sumary the results and conclusions at the end of the class. Acording to psychology studies, people are most likely to remember what happened at begining and at the end. People usually can only concentrate for 15 minutes. So most TED videos will not last more than 17 minutes. I don’t know if the teacher did it popurely. But he did it really well.

Second, the class is very interesting and vigorous. Students really had fun with the activities and record and try to explain.

Third, it keep a good balance of knowledge-centered and student-centered. The most important ideas and inquiry skills were embodied in student activities.

At last, I want to say although the teacher said nothing about modeling. But he raised a question for students to study. Students want to explain but had little idea and experieces. So they did the activities that teacher prepared for them. Before experiments, they make their explannation and predictions, they recorded the result on the handouts, they have to revise their explanation and building a more powerful causal model to explain all the phenomenons. So we do can found the shape of modeling in this class.

One of the most deep impressions I got of US is the pursuing of simple and comfortable life.

First is the bus design.
There is a button out side of the bus that customers can push to kneel the bus. Another design is that there is a string along the windows. You can pull the string to let bus stop. You don’t even need to stand up.

Another interesting thing I discovered the yellow alert along the road. First I though it is to let people wark accross the street. But when I look into it carefully, It said “State law: stop when human on the line”, it is for the car. No wonder evertime when I was on the line, the drive will stop let me pass first. What a nice law!

One day, when I was on my way home from supermarket, I found there is an American Bank ATM special for car drivers near the shops. I have never saw such ATM before in China. You don’t have to get out of your car when you using the ATM In China, when you go to banks, usually you have wait for half an hour to get your turns in Shanghai. Why it is so different! This is a really good question to think about.

The last discovery is kitchen. They have kitchen not only in the apartment where I live but also in the office. There is a special kitchen room for professors and students to heat their lunch or make coffee. So nice!
Oh, I nearly forget. The water purifier. It is so cool and useful, I love it too much.

It is evident that the goal of American people is to pursue a simple and comfortable life. Maybe not very luxurious but comfortable.

How did they achieve that, market and competition may be the driving power. What it doesn’t happen in China? Big question!

Sometimes you want to run away confronting a challenge. Usually, you have your own reasons. It is too hard. It is too boring. I am not good at this. It is so painful. You want to advoid to meet it although it is important and urgent. We all know it but feel so hard to control yourself.

So what to do?

YOU have an imaginary enemy to fight. Game start! Sometimes your enemy is strong and sometimes he is endurable. Mostly, you have exaggerated your enemy and belittled yourself. Imagine you are fighting against an enemy who also have his own weakness. The wise move would be found his weakness and take all the advantage you have to beat him. If you don’t fight, you are doomed to failure. If you fight, there still a hope to win.

In fact, you have no opotions but to fight. Your imaginary enemy would alert you and help you to beat the fearness and win the game!

Recently I found some useful tips to get things done more effectively.

How do you capture your screen when you are watching a vedio without stop it.

• The answer is that you can setup some softwares to do this. One of them is FastStone Caputure. You just set the auto save folder and the hot key in the settings. Then, things get much easier, everytime you want capture your screen, just press the hot key. The picture can be saved in the folder with disturbing your watching. It is so useful.

After type your keyword in the address bar, how do you google it in a new tab with Chorme browser?

• The answer is: press Alt & Enter, then it will show your search results in a new tab.

These days while I live in my apartment, I pay close attention to the daily life of people here. I have drawed a conclusion: Americans are lazy.

In fact, Lazy here is not used in a derogatory sense. You know, only the lazy people can invent and design a comfortable life. Americans are such kind of designers who are persueing simple but comfortable life. Let me give you some examples.

I live in a house department. In China, the parking area is often underground or a little far from the appartment. But in USA, the parking lot is jut in front of the hourse near the door. You can imagine when you get back from work, get out of your car, and then enter your door, it is so convinent.

After you get in, you can find a kitchen, a sitting room, a laundry room and a bath room. If you take a look at the kitchen, you will find a dish washer there and microwave oven. In China, most people just wash by hands, you can hardly found a dish washer, expecially in a student’s department.

As to food, most food can be cooked just by heatting, like milk and bread. If sauces are needed, they are already mixed up and ready for use. You can find all this kind of mixed up sauces or semi-manufactured food everywhere in a food supermaket. Cooking become easy here, athough the taste may becoming a little dull. Most Chinese will not buy the mixed sauces, they may want to make their own although they will spent a lot of time on cooking.

One day, a ceaseless noise of machinery wake me up. I look out through the window, I found a man is using a grass cutter in front of the door. In China, people also use this kind of grass cutter, which is belted to the waist. But lawn mower like a car is hardly found in China. I often saw an american sitting on it and drive it on the lawn, it is fun. I also found people here clean the street in a differnt way, they use a air blower to blow the leaves away and make the road clean. If you walk on street in the early morning in Beijing, you will see a cleaner clean street with broom. You will never found a man with a blowing machine walk here and there.

And almost everyone have a car here. Once I ask a black man for directions, after telling my the way, he said don’t you have a car, I sait not yet. He then added while it will be 20 to 30 minutes’ walk. I follow his directions, after 10 minutes I got there. It is not that far, I said in my mind. May be they drive too much, and then have no idea how long it will take by walking.

So there are so many differences between the two countries. It also stand for different culture. The Americans are taking every advantage of modern science and technology to make their lives simple and comfortable. Labor is much more expensive in USA than in China. The Chinese culture advocate deligent, hard-working and Obedience. The American culture advocate Science & Technolgy, comfortable life and freedom. You can not say which one is better, but they can learn from each other. Athough the American life is easy and comfortable, but it exhausted much more energy. Athough, Chinese food is delicious, but it is time cousuming, I think Chinese really should spend more time on inovation in S&T and social system.

by chunlei 08/02/13 07:30AM