student

Showing 20 posts tagged student

Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic a.k.a. the best physics video you’ll watch today.

NOTE: The physics in this might not be 100% correct, but this was more for fun than actual science/calculations. Also we had to give it a rating for how physically correct it was, I only used XP and RP which basically meant physics outside this universe.

Yes, it has happened. “Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” For our project, we had to find three scenes from any movie or TV show and use physics to find out if something was or wasn’t possible. I got 100% on it.

Also because of this:

findandsync calculates: My teacher has given up on teaching me maths. She teaches; I sit at the back and teach when she’s busy. I’m fourteen - this is not a good system. For the past few lessons, a new teacher sits at the back with me. Instead of talking through a new concept in great detail, hoping I’ll understand it, and making me memorise it (as is the normal teaching method), she gives me a fairly basic statement and then sets a task that I will have to figure out by applying my own knowledge. For instance, today (pictured) she told me that the equation for drawing a circle on a graph with a centre on (0, 0) is x^2+y^2=r^2 . Then, she asked me to express it in terms of y, make the origin (3, 3.5), and then put it back into terms of r. She could have told me exactly how to do it, but she didn’t. I had to rely on my own knowledge, so it wasn’t just a memorisation exercise, or repetition. It felt like I was discovering it for the first time in human history - utterly fantastic. It helped that my working can be huge, so we have whiteboard pens on tables (sometimes entire tables and chairs) and special window pens instead of just biros and books. My point: this shouldn’t just be teaching ‘harder’ maths to ‘more-able’ pupils. It’s not an impossible method; I have talked my friends through the working and they can follow it and predict the next moves. This should be available to anyone who wants it, for more simple concepts too. Area? Perimeter? Fractions, ratios, percentages? All become instantly more interesting and memorable. You feel proud for discovering something by yourself or with a little guidance, instead of depressed at the thought of more meaningless equations to memorise. I understand that it would be hard to implement. Some would muck about, and it does need very small groups, if not a one to one basis. However, maths grades and maths-related stress would be so far down. TL;DR: I have great maths lessons, and so should you. High-res

findandsync calculates:

My teacher has given up on teaching me maths. She teaches; I sit at the back and teach when she’s busy. I’m fourteen - this is not a good system.

For the past few lessons, a new teacher sits at the back with me. Instead of talking through a new concept in great detail, hoping I’ll understand it, and making me memorise it (as is the normal teaching method), she gives me a fairly basic statement and then sets a task that I will have to figure out by applying my own knowledge.

For instance, today (pictured) she told me that the equation for drawing a circle on a graph with a centre on (0, 0) is x^2+y^2=r^2 . Then, she asked me to express it in terms of y, make the origin (3, 3.5), and then put it back into terms of r.

She could have told me exactly how to do it, but she didn’t. I had to rely on my own knowledge, so it wasn’t just a memorisation exercise, or repetition. It felt like I was discovering it for the first time in human history - utterly fantastic. It helped that my working can be huge, so we have whiteboard pens on tables (sometimes entire tables and chairs) and special window pens instead of just biros and books.

My point: this shouldn’t just be teaching ‘harder’ maths to ‘more-able’ pupils. It’s not an impossible method; I have talked my friends through the working and they can follow it and predict the next moves. This should be available to anyone who wants it, for more simple concepts too.

Area? Perimeter? Fractions, ratios, percentages? All become instantly more interesting and memorable. You feel proud for discovering something by yourself or with a little guidance, instead of depressed at the thought of more meaningless equations to memorise.

I understand that it would be hard to implement. Some would muck about, and it does need very small groups, if not a one to one basis. However, maths grades and maths-related stress would be so far down.

TL;DR: I have great maths lessons, and so should you.

When Rachel Smith’s older sister was a second-semester high school senior, she and her classmates started to “senior slide.” They had been going to school for 13 years, graduation was on its way, and heck, it was warm outside. So when one of her teachers found her students unprepared for class, and announced: “I know everyone has been giving up on you for your entire life, but I’m not going to give up on you,” the students in the class were offended.

They were being lazy; not hopeless.

According to Rachel, who is the chief poet at Kenwood Academy’s Epic Sound slam poetry team, that kind of thing happens a lot when privileged young people come to teach in what she calls “inner city” schools. So Rachel decided to write a poem about it.

Denver Turnaround Initiative Showing Achievement Gains

One year into an aggressive, expensive school turnaround initiative, some of Denver’s lowest-performing public schools are showing marked academic improvement by providing an education nearly identical to that of the highest-performing charter schools in the country.

All the schools that now make up Denver’s Summit School Network, in an impoverished corner of northeast Denver, are using an approach backed by research from Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer and the university’s Education Innovation Laboratory, or EdLabs. The research identifies five tenets of high-performing charter schools: extended school day and year, strong school leadership, data-driven instruction, increased math tutoring, and a “culture of high expectations.”

The achievement gap: Will my best be good enough? Written by a 17 year old student, getting straight As, Andrea tells her experience attending an SAT prep workshop and coming to the realization of how far behind she was. And how stupid she felt. “I didn’t want anyone in the class to know I was falling behind. I wanted to prove to these kids that I was just as smart as them. And I really wanted to prove to myself that my ethnicity wouldn’t prevent me from doing well in school.”

The achievement gap: Will my best be good enough?

Written by a 17 year old student, getting straight As, Andrea tells her experience attending an SAT prep workshop and coming to the realization of how far behind she was. And how stupid she felt.

“I didn’t want anyone in the class to know I was falling behind. I wanted to prove to these kids that I was just as smart as them. And I really wanted to prove to myself that my ethnicity wouldn’t prevent me from doing well in school.”

Senior denied diploma because of too much cheering

When Anthony walked across the stage at his high school graduation, his family made some noise.

“It was my dream to graduate,” he said.

The excitement proved too much for the administration.

Instead of a diploma, Anthony got a letter from the principal, Marlon Styles, Jr.

“I will be holding your diploma in the main office,” the letter said, “due to the excessive cheering your guests displayed during the roll call.”

Poor Nutrition and Female Athlete Triad Do you remember the food you ate in high school and college? In college, maybe you remember the dining hall food you tried to *avoid*. And in high school, sometimes it’s hard to find time to eat at all between classes and papers and activities. But research is now showing that poor nutrition - especially at the high school level and especially among girls - is having significant health consequences. And many girls are unaware of the risks. The work actually came out of a unique partnership between a researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a student at DSHA - Divine Savior Holy Angels high school, an all-girls school on the northwest side of Milwaukee. Melissa Jonardi is a senior at DSHA who will study biomedical science at Marquette University next fall. Doctor Kate Temme is one of the sports medicine physicians at the Sports Medicine Center at the Medical College, where she and other researchers study a phenomenon known as the female athlete triad. photo via flickr:CC | Susan von Struense

Poor Nutrition and Female Athlete Triad

Do you remember the food you ate in high school and college? In college, maybe you remember the dining hall food you tried to *avoid*. And in high school, sometimes it’s hard to find time to eat at all between classes and papers and activities. But research is now showing that poor nutrition - especially at the high school level and especially among girls - is having significant health consequences. And many girls are unaware of the risks.

The work actually came out of a unique partnership between a researcher at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a student at DSHA - Divine Savior Holy Angels high school, an all-girls school on the northwest side of Milwaukee. Melissa Jonardi is a senior at DSHA who will study biomedical science at Marquette University next fall. Doctor Kate Temme is one of the sports medicine physicians at the Sports Medicine Center at the Medical College, where she and other researchers study a phenomenon known as the female athlete triad.

photo via flickr:CC | Susan von Struense

Tired of grading essays? Have the computer do it!

“The results demonstrated that overall, automated essay scoring was capable of producing scores similar to human scores for extended-response writing items with equal performance for both source-based and traditional writing genre,” says the study, co-authored by Mark Shermis, the dean of the University of Akron’s college of education, and Ben Hammer of Kaggle, a private firm that provides a platform for predictive modeling and analytics competitions.

This is what happens when you tell a high school senior that she’ll never be able to make Link’s Master Sword and Hylian Shield from the Legend of Zelda series. “One of my friends has an obsession for the Zelda game and he believed I could not pull it off.” I think DSHA student Edna boomeranged it right out of the park making this beautiful piece out of ceramic! Zelda Master Sword and Shield are on display at DSHA. High-res

This is what happens when you tell a high school senior that she’ll never be able to make Link’s Master Sword and Hylian Shield from the Legend of Zelda series.

“One of my friends has an obsession for the Zelda game and he believed I could not pull it off.”

I think DSHA student Edna boomeranged it right out of the park making this beautiful piece out of ceramic!

Zelda Master Sword and Shield are on display at DSHA.