Adventures in Modeling
I have decided to chronicle my journey in modeling. I don't know that I'll post every day but I do want to document the journey so that when I repeat it next year I can refer back here.
School started last Wednesday. On the first day, my plan was to get everyone on to their school email accounts, review the syllabus, and generally just get used to them and me. Well, that didn't go as planned. The laptops weren't staying connected to the wifi so that blew that plan. I ended up giving the pre-test that I was going to give this week. Love technology. They finally got my computers fixed So B day classes got to sign in to the email. This has made the classes off from each other, something that drives me crazy. Trying to fix that now.
Actually started the modeling curriculum yesterday, or tried to. The first thing calls for an exploding can demo. After trying all weekend to make that demo work, even talking to the modeling instructor about why it wouldn't work, I finally realized that I have the wrong gas in my room. Methane is needed for this demo and I have propane in my room. So there went that demo. There is an alternative that can be done with hydrogen and I will be doing that tomorrow and Thursday for them. It's a little after the fact but I think it will still work.
Today we watched a video of the exploding can and then did the whiteboard thing. It's interesting and more difficult than I thought. I did it with the first class and things went pretty well. They were a little confused and not sure what to do, but they went along with it. The 2nd class was a little more difficult. One of the students is a smart-ass and tries to make jokes all the time. So I had to shut that down right away. I told them that this was going to be one of the hardest classes they've ever taken and if they weren't up to putting in the effort they were free to leave. I am determined this year to have a serious class that makes students think and work. I'm not going to put up with nonsense.
I found it very difficult to ask good questions. The students had similar drawings of the can exploding and some of the concepts were just crazy. I struggled to come up with questions that would guide them and not just steer them. But I guess this is a learning process for me too. I think it will get better as we progress, at least I hope so.
School started last Wednesday. On the first day, my plan was to get everyone on to their school email accounts, review the syllabus, and generally just get used to them and me. Well, that didn't go as planned. The laptops weren't staying connected to the wifi so that blew that plan. I ended up giving the pre-test that I was going to give this week. Love technology. They finally got my computers fixed So B day classes got to sign in to the email. This has made the classes off from each other, something that drives me crazy. Trying to fix that now.
Actually started the modeling curriculum yesterday, or tried to. The first thing calls for an exploding can demo. After trying all weekend to make that demo work, even talking to the modeling instructor about why it wouldn't work, I finally realized that I have the wrong gas in my room. Methane is needed for this demo and I have propane in my room. So there went that demo. There is an alternative that can be done with hydrogen and I will be doing that tomorrow and Thursday for them. It's a little after the fact but I think it will still work.
Today we watched a video of the exploding can and then did the whiteboard thing. It's interesting and more difficult than I thought. I did it with the first class and things went pretty well. They were a little confused and not sure what to do, but they went along with it. The 2nd class was a little more difficult. One of the students is a smart-ass and tries to make jokes all the time. So I had to shut that down right away. I told them that this was going to be one of the hardest classes they've ever taken and if they weren't up to putting in the effort they were free to leave. I am determined this year to have a serious class that makes students think and work. I'm not going to put up with nonsense.
I found it very difficult to ask good questions. The students had similar drawings of the can exploding and some of the concepts were just crazy. I struggled to come up with questions that would guide them and not just steer them. But I guess this is a learning process for me too. I think it will get better as we progress, at least I hope so.
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