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Virtual Teacher Newsletter No. 111 July 24th 2005 – EINSTEIN THE FREE ONLINE FORTNIGHTLY IT TEACHERS' NEWSLETTER 8,153 Subscribers ============================================== CONTENTS 1. Welcome 2. Mind Candy 3. WWWinfo arXiv 4. New Printables - Quantum theory 5. Technical Stuff – CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY 6. Web Site Focus – ALBERT EINSTEIN 7. HARNESS THE POWER 8. Great Sites 9. Readers' Requests/Comments 10 Next Issue 11. Code of 'Netizens' 12. Tips ============================================== 1. WELCOME EVERYONE. Last Friday night, my daughter, 15 years old, and I went to the first in a series of 4 lectures on ‘Einstein Explained’ at Sydney Uni. Being the 100th anniversary of the famous E= MC(2) equation, and the International Year of Physics, there are a number of such events occurring this year. The first lecture given by Professor Raymond Volkas, was filled with metaphor, illustration and aimed at a general audience, a few in jokes and some knock out old footage of Einstein et al at the Copenhagen Convention. My daughters comment – I didn’t know physics was ALL about questions. On reflection this had truly been the essence of the lecture. Professor Volkas focused on the questions Einstein and others had asked. Their Physics was all about questions. It was the questions that motivated the discoveries. Maybe there are no great theories at all only great questions and great thinking. There are 3 more lectures to go – if your in Sydney they are worth checking out at http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/IYOP_lectures/ ============================================== 2. MIND CANDY A Brief History of Gravity by Bruce Elliot
It filled Galileo with mirth To watch his two rocks fall to Earth. He gladly proclaimed, "Their rates are the same, And quite independent of girth!"
Then Newton announced in due course His own law of gravity's force: "It goes, I declare, As the inverted square Of the distance from object to source."
But remarkably, Einstein's equation Succeeds to describe gravitation As spacetime that's curved, And it's this that will serve As the planets' unique motivation.
Yet the end of the story's not written; By a new way of thinking we're smitten. We twist and we turn, Attempting to learn The Superstring Theory of Witten! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This universe is our home, and it is our birthright to understand it and our place within it, but our science has completely failed us in this quest, leading us into an abyss of unending mysteries and unsolvable puzzles.
Our Scientists Don't Have The Answers In our search for answers and understanding it is crucial that we question our scientists and their beliefs. It is a fact that most of what they believe and profess is still based on the same concepts that we were all taught as correct in school .. centuries-old beliefs from a much simpler time. http://www.thefinaltheory.com/pages/1/index.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) [German physicist] ============================================== 3. WWWinfo arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, and quantitative biology. The contents of arXiv conform to Cornell University academic standards. arXiv is owned, operated and funded by Cornell University, a private not-for-profit educational institution. arXiv is also partially funded by the National Science Foundation. ===================================== 4. NEW PRINTABLES Quantum Theory Looks at Time Travel Authors: Daniel M. Greenberger, Karl Svozil Comments: This paper contains minor changes to our paper published as Chapter 4 of Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics?, ed. by A. Elitzur, S. Dolev and N. Kolenda, Springer Verlag, Berlin (2005). It is an expanded version of D.M. Greenberger and K. Svozil, in: Between Chance and Choice, ed. by H. Atmanspacher and R. Bishop, Imprint Academic, Thorverton England (2002), pp. 293-308. Two references added
We introduce a quantum mechanical model of time travel which includes two figurative beam splitters in order to induce feedback to earlier times. Thisleads to a unique solution to the paradox where one could kill one's grandfather in that once the future has unfolded, it cannot change the past, and so the past becomes deterministic. On the other hand, looking forwards towards the future is completely probabilistic. This resolves the classical paradox in a philosophically satisfying manner. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0506027
============================================== 5. TECHNICAL STUFF Since its launch on July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy, taking its place in the fleet of "Great Observatories." http://chandra.harvard.edu/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Cathy, I am from the Australian Children's Television Foundation, attached is a media release regarding our Software which is in over 2000 Australian schools. I thought that this may be of interest to Virtual Teacher.
Kind Regards, Carolena Helderman New Media Production Manager Australian Children's Television Foundation email: carolena.helderman@actf.com.au ============================================== 6. WEBSITE FOCUS Albert Einstein Detailed Hyperlinked site on everything Einstein http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Einstein.html Einstein Image and Impact Einstein Archives online http://www.alberteinstein.info/ PBS – NOVA Einstein the big idea includes a 4 min video promo of up and coming TV program – its great. Shows a great deal of questioning and the video is available to purchase from the site. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/ Einstein Image and Impact http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/ Wikipedia on Quantum Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_physics Albert Einstein Org http://www.albert-einstein.org/ ============================================== 7. HARNESS THE POWER Listen to the 4 minute promo of Einstein’s Big Idea, and you will see keen enthusiastic young folk excited by the ideas and thoughts they are challenging - ‘Young bohemian experimentists’ asking questions proposing ideas bring back this excitement into high school physics, using the enthusiasm and radicalism of youth and channel it into areas of intellectual thought. Kids are excited about thinking, questioning, working on their own interests and ideas, and it is at this time, that some of the greatest thinking takes place. Some how we need to harness this time and turn into a positive, not negative antisocial, difficult, drug taking, drinking period. If we can harness this teenage early adult period and give it the right environment there won’t just be one Einstein. At school our challenge is to give students the best view we can of how the world works, it is not a complete, unalterable view. In 10 years in 200 years our understanding will have changes, at best our current view in all areas falls into Debono’s thinking category of “the Stepping Stone Method” – where we use our current ideas for there ‘move through value’. Giving students the opportunity to challenge, question, and hypothesis be radical about the current state of thinking: is exactly what teenagers are good at. ============================================== 8. GREAT SITES HOT SITES Visible Human http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_gallery.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beyond Tomorrow Instead of banning technology, Duke University makes it compulsory. Every student is handed a free ipod on day one, and must use it in class. They also are given a ‘Personal Response System’ - a remote controller used to assess a class’s progress during lectures. http://www.beyondtomorrow.com.au/stories/ep6/futureschool.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visible Embryo http://www.visembryo.com/baby/hp.html ============================================== 9. READERS COMMENTS/REQUESTS
Hi, Cathy, I do have a question, which I'm sure you will be able to answer. This coming year, my PIP [personal improvement project] is on learner-centered instruction using technology as a base. I have a few websites bookmarked and a bit of information, but I'd love to get more. Do you have any suggestions or direction for me? To be more specific, I need to research what type of technology can be used in a learner-centered approach and discover the classroom teacher's role in the process of applying it. Any suggestions you may be able to offer will be greatly appreciated and no need to rush in the response. I'll be doing my own research in the meantime.
Thanks again for all of your sage advice and our continued friendship! .... Nancy
P.S. I again went to the Midwest and took a hiatus to visit my friend, Tracy, who I met from using your site. We've become very close and have shared tons of gardening ideas, seed-exchanges and more. All because of you and Virtual Teacher! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Nancy, I wrote a paper on this a while ago it is at:- http://www.virtualteacher.com.au/ies.html There are lots of links in this paper. Now I would add DeBono's thinking hats as well. I guess you could say we are currently mid adventure - looking for the next exciting thing to do - a couple of ideas but nothing has stuck. Most of us are between things, and happily checking out what is available. Hope the article helps. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Cathy, Just dropping you a short note to tell you how useful this newsletter has been to me. The scope of content is excellent and presents both positive and negative aspects. I received March, April and May newsletters. I hope I haven't been dropped off the mailing. If I have been overlooked could I please be reinstated as a recipient. I look forward to my next mail from virtual teacher! Kind regards, Helena Kinnear Yr6 teacher and A.P. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do take a break over school holidays. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Cathy,
I loved this week's VT newsletter. You really are amazing – love the concept "Liquid Learning". I totally agree that learning within the 'zone' and having a 4-D experience should be our aim as teachers. By the way, I was flabbergasted when I read the '8th grade exam'. Six hours long! I don't think any 8th grader I know could do it. I definitely would fail. Send me to the bottom of the class ... Thanks again, Shanti ------------------------------------------ Hi Cathy My name is Sue Hall and I am teaching computer technology to Kindergarten (Age 5) through to Year 6 (Age 11 - 12). This is my second year at doing this and I am enjoying your newsletter for ideas and useful Web addresses. Being in Australia we are now beginning the second half of our school year and I am planning to teach Excel next Term. Last year I taught Excel and got the students to create a spreadsheet for purchasing sports equipment for a new school and gave them a budget that they could spend. The other group planned a end of year party again with a budget that they could not go over. Both these exercises went down really well but now I am trying to think of something else that they could create a spreadsheet for. Have you got any ideas??? Thanks. from Sue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love simply doing spelling test results over a period of say 10 weeks. and then using the chart tool to make 5 or so, different sorts of graphs, using different backgrounds and colours or images, then discuss which type of graph best represents the results. also add functions for averages and total scores.
Another great idea is to set up a multiplication table using functions, this can be just using a line of numbers and then the multiplication function. Different numbers used and different results will be recorded. Or you can make an entire multiplication table.
The database on the "Moons of Jupiter "was great and the spelling results activity, are both on http://www.virtualteacher.com.au/teachtool.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Cathy Thank you so much for your help. I have just spent the last hour looking through some of the info and have had some great ideas to tie lessons in for next term. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Sue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Cathy, I look forward to the VT every two weeks - love it. I was wondering if any of your readers are early childhood educators who maybe interested in the topic of Assessing and reporting on kindergarten students‚ social and emotional development through a digital format. I am carrying out a study on this topic and am interested in what K teachers are doing in this area. Keeping authenticity and relevance in the accumulation of evidence in the assessment process is the major objective. Interested teachers can email. Ta Jaisa -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does anyone have any feedback for Jaisa??? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Cathy, Here's a suggestion combining marks with useful feedback for students (and parents) in a rubric style which is explicit in its criticism. It also makes it easy for the same piece of work t o be marked by more than one person and the marks compared - try asking the students to mark their own against a sample. 1. Learn to use a database Appleworks (Clarisworks) has a free template for assessment of science reports. I've attached a mock assessment of a unit from the polymer science website (www.pslc.ws which you must showcase in the newsletter if you haven't already) as a pdf for you to look at. After setting up the rubric you just enter the project title, student name, tick a box and a mark is recorded and tallied. Reports can be generated from the rubric in various layouts with one click - list view, averages, total. Every bit of text, the scores, the checkboxes, layouts are database fields and therefore fully customisable and searchable.
all rubrics - the maths ones in particular would be a welcome effort at authentic assessment in a subject usually noted for a cut and dried marking style. cheers, Carolyn -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Cathy, I have a dilemma and I am wondering if you can help me please?!?!! I have just tried to transfer my reports off the memory stick to a PC and the Mac files cannot open! AAGGHH! Do you have any ideas? Thank you Rachel ------------------------------------------ Hi Rachel, Make sure you saved them including the file extensions. ie all files need to end with .doc If not you can resave them on the mac and tick the include extension check box in the save window. You can even try to add .doc to your files on the PC it usually works. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- also from Gary
when files are transferred from mac to PC (windows not linux) a resource file is also transferred as well as the data file. This is a "dot-dash" file and usually only about 4k in size. it is also known as a junk file. It is of no use to a PC-windows user as the icon is a generic and not an icon of the application. MAC files carry information about the application which created it. Windows relies on the file extension to tell what to use to open the file. So, if you transfer twenty files, there are really forty files transferred and the first twenty will be the 'dot dash' files. In a hurry you will double click on the first file, instead of scrolling halfway down the list to open the 'real' file. Just delete the junk files. this is not well known and is the most common reason for the "mac and PC are not compatible" comment. a similar event occurs with email, two files are sometimes transferred from a MAC regards gary -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The web site that Helen Young was looking for (Linda's links to literature) doesn't appear to be on that server anymore, although the Richmond Public Schools website still has a huge selection of literature based links, found at: http://richmond.k12.va.us/readamillion/readingresources.htm Linda Bendall's website is now found at http://www.lindaslinkstoliterature.com (a nice easy URL...) There is sooo much stuff on the Internet about books and literature and their use in the classroom... Ciao Deon Scanlon Sacred Heart School Geeveston Tasmania ============================================== 10. NEXT ISSUE - Feedback on the year of Physics and Einstein as well as curriculum delivery that changes. ciao Cathy - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Code of the 'Netizens' This Newsletter is not free, despite the misleading advertising above. The Fee is now due. Each week you must help one colleague on the Internet who has less knowledge than you. Help that person even if you have to visit their classroom or do a little research and get back to them. Trust me, this will help a lot of people get their computer classrooms running better. OK I'm trusting you!!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. TIPS 1. Double click on highlighted URLS to open in browser. 2. Send in your Questions, Questions will be published with Answers, send in your Answers, if you have expertise to share. 3. Nominate a brilliant site for review and inclusion in this newsletter. 4. Nominate a fantastic school site for review and inclusion in this newsletter. 5. Make contact with other schools using fantastic programs. 6. Prepare and innovative article for this newsletter. 7. Tell 2 colleagues about this newsletter. ============================================== The opinions expressed here are purely those of the editor, Cathy Brown. All other small print clauses apply. Such as: Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is guaranteed. If it doesn't work for you send me an email. Editor: cathy brown mailto:cathy@virtualteacher.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Delivered FREE to your e-mail box every fortnight. Online Lesson Plans, Great Sites, Free Stuff, Tips, Time savers, and templates. Computer Solutions for Teachers. Subscribe today! It's totally Free! Just type subscribe in the subject and send it to me. cathy@virtualteacher.com.au ============================================== Reach a growing audience of teachers, by advertising in the Virtual Teacher Newsletter or on the Virtual Teacher site. For more information contact, cathy@virtualteacher.com.au For information about inservice and training contact me at cathy@virtualteacher.com.au
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