Quote

In the age of Google, if you don't know something for more than ten minutes it's your own fault. - Unknown

Science resources

Cassiopeia Project are videos available for science teachers which anyone can use for free.

Dome construction

This can be a very good science/mathematics project

Reflection - Peer Instruction

It has been a few days since I watched the Peer Instuction. The lessons learnt can be summarized below:

1. We should start advocating evidence-based instruction design. This is NOT news, but have educators been serious about evaluating the effectiveness of the learning design based on measurable student achievements?

2. The key to success of the peer instruction is to get the students to discuss with their peers about the answer to questions the lecturer put on. Obviously, the number of questions used per lecture is limited by time and hence directly limit on the coverage of the course.
- The choice is between cover with no understand and small cover but with deep understand.
- The quality of the learning depends on the challenges provided to the students by the questions. This is reflected in the formulation of the questions. Two inputs were used in the question formulation:current students and from previous cohorts' examination answers.

3. In the video, Mazur did not explain the effectiveness of the model answer he gave after the student discussion. I would guess it may be the assuring part for the students, its effect would be more like a re-inforcement than learning.

Areas for online compliment:
I am thinking of making this online in order to scale up and remove the limitation of time which in terms limited the coverage. For discussion, it is best to be done face to face among the students. Here is what I suggest.

Students are asked to form study groups. Study groups will be required to meet regularly with or without the supervision within set time intervals. I suggest initially it is better done in a lecture hall setting for the first meeting - similar or the same as peer instruction as described by Mazur, then the study groups will meet under supervision for the next few times. After that the students should be able to organise a mutually convenient time on their own but within the set time interval.

At a fixed time, the students are asked to read a prescribed text and post questions which they found they have problems. These will be used to formulate the questions to be used in the meetings.

Based on the input from the students and from previous cohorts, questions are formulated and put online at the beginning of the meeting time intervals.

During meetings, all the questions will be presented to the study group (via online web page) and each group can decide on the priority of the questions. This can be done within the first 5 minutes. Then the questions will be presented one by one according to the study group's priority. When a question is presented, each member of the study group must put in an answer independent - via the web page. If all the answers are the same - there is not a lot of disagreement among the member. A model answer is shown for them to check if their reasoning is in line with the expectation. If the answers for the questions are different, there is a valuable learning opportunity. It would be better to let the students spend more time on this question. Again, they are asked to discuss face to face. They should try to arrive at a mutually agreed answer. The agreed answer is then put into the web page. If the agreed answer is correct, the students should be congratulated. If not, the students are given another chance to discuss and find another mutually agreed answer. After the second mutually agreed answer is keyed in, the model answer is shown.

This structure will enable the students to focus on areas which they have problems. The articulation among the students is in accord with Laurillard's conversation model. Time is saved if the problem presented is not a problem for this group of students and allow time to use effectively for those questions with problem of understanding.

In an institutional setting, the study group should meet for a minimum time as prescribed by the course. But if the students are willing to spend more time, they can continue with the rest of the questions.

Peer Instruction

I have just spent 1:20:00 watching the following youTube. The method is brilliant. It can be used in almost every subject. I don't want to spoil the fun of watching it. If you are really have no time, highlight the white area below the movie, I have a summary there which should take about 10 sec. to read.

The students are asked to read a prescribed text before class. During the class, a problem is presented. The students are to remain silence for about 1 minute to think about the problem. Vote the answer. Discuss with neighbour. Vote again. Lecturer explains the solution. Repeat. The important point about these problems are they focus on conceptual understanding, not "receipt substitution".

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

by J.K. Rowling at 2008 Harvard Commencement Meeting
Absolutely inspiring and brilliant. The full text is also available from the link above.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Oscillating chemical reactions

Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction

Mercury beating heart

RC star

This is a remote controlled plane made from pieces of garbage. It really flies too.



Why don't school science classes have students designing some of these?

Now that's is new

CNN 360^o video which you can pause, explore then continue.
Link

Any educational use, people?

Bill Clinton speaks at Harvard

Bill Gates Speech at Harvard

Emergency preparedness

Watch the following video and pay attention to the tone of the pilot.


Imagine you were a passenger sitting on the rear left window seat and saw the puffing flame from the left engine. What would you do?

We were unable to hear the messages the pilot would have given to the passengers. But if you were the pilot, why you could be calm and what would you do?

ps

Aging

Here are two talks from TED on aging. The first one predicts that at a certain point in the future when science is able to repair the damages due to metabolism faster than the generation of these damages, human can live as long as s/he likes.

The second talk looks at areas in the world where there are exceptionally many people over 100 years old. In particular, draws out the nine basic characteristics in these "blue zones" to give us a hint of how we can live longer.

The neuron basis of learning

from TED

iPhone as a musical instrument

iPhone as a musical instrument WOW!

Science can be fun

Norm Goldblatt at Wonderfest.org hosted by fora.tv

That's why I am fascinated by Physics

That's why I am fascinated by Physics when I was young and why I am still fascinated by Physics some 50 years later.


If looking at mother earth from one of Saturn's moon is not exciting enough, watch how science figure out the black hole at the center of our own galaxy.

On Knowing

When we refer to knowing something, we usually mean know-how and know-what. These are knowledge that get things done. Let's taking cooking curry as an example. The know-how is the recipe, the method of preparation, the know-what is the knowledge of the right combination of different types of spices to make the dish.

However, there are some useful know-x too. If I know someone who can make a good curry, I can ask. That is a know-who. If I know somewhere I can find good curry, I can go there and get what I want. That's know-where. Both of these (know-who and know-where) is a step "further" from the actual knowledge of making the curry. But it achieves the same objective - a good curry meal.

Talking about one-step from achieving my objective, there is a know-how2. If I know how to find the recipe, I can still get the recipe and make my curry. Here I am calling know-how2. There is an equivalent know-what2. Instead of combining the spices myself, I can get a curry powder - someone with the first know-what has used that knowledge to make the curry powder so that I don't need that original knowledge to achieve the aim. So if I know a good brand of curry powder (that's know-what2), I can also achieve my objective.

Let me elaborate a bit to drive home one message I would like to make in this post.

To cook the curry meal, I will need a pot, a stove, the actual ingredients themselves. There are specific knowledge embedded in the making of the pot, the stove, growing the spices and so on. In the example above, they were assumed and were not the focus of the path to make a curry meal.

In other words, we are now living in a highly entangled web of knowledge, many of these are assumed. If we go back to the "basic", we need to go back to the age when fire was first discovered, or even earlier. The environment we are living today has all the accumulated knowledge ever discovered by human.

As an individual, a pre-school child walking into a kindergarten already knows quite a bit of things. The only really "blank slate" is very likely the moment when the sperm enters the egg. From that fertilisation moment onwards, the baby is developed under the influence of the social environment we are born, initially via the food the mother is eating (which is obviously socially bound) to later the first sound a baby hear (still in mother's belly!) ...

In the brief discussion above, I have left out know-why. The development of theory, scientific theory is what I have in mind now, enables us to "explain" thing and hence to predict thing. When we ask the question why apples fall down, we answer with the theory of gravity. However, the theory of gravity itself is a generalisation of many carefully done observations of things falling towards the earth. The fact that this particular apple falls is (1) an evidence supporting the theory of gravity and (2) can be "explained" by the theory.

Another way of putting this. "Why x?" is equivalent to "do you know a generalisation (theory) of which x is an evidence".

Hence, for learning, if the focus was to solve a problem directly, one needs to know-why to find a theory and hence apply, or have know-how and/or know-what. If that's knowledge is not readily available, the next step would be to draw on know-who, know-where, know-how2 and/or know-what2. That said, a lot of the knowledge is in the community (all human experience combined).

We are in an exciting time. We are beginning to see knowledge moving from human into machine. But that's for another post.

Science Comedy

This will be a very fun way to learn some Science:

New book on role-based e-learning (2)

In the book, we talked about different types of rules:

Rules of normal social behaviour

Rules of physics

Rules of engagement within the online role play

Rules defining structure and process of online role play

Social rules are guides and may be broken. Here is a good example when it should. From the angle of corporate training, what has gone wrong in the case of Qantas? Does Qantas actually know that it is upsetting the people who are generating their "bottom-line"?

e-book reader, game on

I have Sony's PRS 505 for a while now and really enjoy reading with it. BUT I still want one with a larger display, color and ...

My mind was set on Kindle DX, unfortunately, it is not available outside USA and is black and white only. It seems that there will be more choices when DX become available here. I am happy to wait.

Slashgear reports that Qualcomm mirasol color video ebook readers to ship in 2010. Unfortunately, it seems it will be a 5.7-inch screen which I think is too small for me.

Pixel Qi is also on track to deliver laptops which are black/white day-light readable and full color with back lighting. At the moment, I am leaning towards a pixel qi enabled laptop with 10-inch screen as my reading device. But I would like to be able to boot to read within 1 sec or two. That would ultimately swing the final choice I am going to make.

New book on role-based e-learning

Sandra Wills, Elyssebeth Leigh and I are writing a book on Role-based e-learning to be published by Routledge in the coming June/August. In one of the chapter, I have updated my model on the various dimensions a moderator plays in role play simulation. Previous, I have 5 dimensions:

Administrator

Guardian Angel

Resident Resource

Manipulative Devil

Improvising Storyteller

The new dimension is Institutional Representative.

As ‘Guardian Angel’ Moderators read communications and observe participants’ efforts to understand the direction in which the action is moving. They assist without intruding. When responding to participants’ requests for help, they do not give instructions. An Angel suggests, questions and prompts, giving equal support to all participants, not interfering to turn the action in a direction they prefer.

As a ‘Manipulative Devil’ the Moderator may insert additional problems or barriers into the action. These may be part of the design or may be impromptu additions provoked by the need to generate activity, or delay or re-direct attention. Occasionally it may be necessary to prompt for activities that are not legitimate in real life, but are needed for subsequent analysis of their impact on the scenario and/or others’ actions. Thus in Middle Eastern Politics the ‘Devil” may allow things to be ‘done’ that - while not legal - do occur in the real world.

Being the on-site Teaching/Learning Resource enables Moderators to contribute crucial content knowledge. Selecting the activity, providing essential information at the beginning, suggesting external resources, checking for accuracy in referencing and providing prompts from their expertise are all ways a Moderator enacts this role.

Sometimes unforeseen game situations create the necessity for scenario modifications or extensions. As an Improvising Story Teller the Moderator can respond to such moments by inventing and introducing reasonable alterations to the original design.

Moderators must, at time, solve technical issues and assist in relevant skill development. As an Administrator a Moderator may need to do such things as delete wrong or duplicate messages and assist participants to develop technical expertise.

Finally, learners in an online role play are situated in a larger institutional context, and the Moderator is the Institutional Representative. An Institutional Representative has undoubted power over learners in regard to such things as successful completion of their qualification.  However, since role play puts learners in a contrived context, it is important they know that, as long as they are ‘in character’, their enactment of the role will not adversely effect their study or career goals. Suggestions, given from within this dimension, need to be offered as choices. As Institutional Representative, the Moderator also monitors and ensures completion of participation obligations.

The particular power of this model is its flexibility in guiding choices about the range of dimensions via which a Moderator can respond to the action and the needs of individual participants. Table 5.4 outlines some of the factors involved and the following examples illustrate the process in action. A Moderator may use the ‘Manipulative Devil’ role early on to provoke a degree of confusion among participants so that they are unable to rely on their ‘taken for granted’ assumptions about how things ‘usually are’. And it can re-appear later on, as participants are settling into routines, and again unsettle them so they are alerted to the value of constantly looking beyond the ‘known and familiar’ on a regular basis. Similarly the ‘Guardian Angel’ may appear as guide and mentor more than once – and in different disguises.

Blocking News from Google, who will get hurt?

MICROSOFT has held talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp over a possible plan for the software giant to pay the media company to remove its news websites from Google. [source]

The source cited the biggest beneficiary to be the newspaper. I do not agree. In fact, it will spell the end of news paper.

News are everywhere, news agencies competing against each other, bloggers "reporting" live and new microbloggers such as Twitter. When news.com.au are blocked from indexing by the default search engine, it will just not be visible to millions of online reader who only read online news, like me.

The only viable business model of online news is advertising, just like paper-based news which depend overwhelmingly on advertising already. Cutting readership is cutting revenue stream.

Good luck with News Corp if they really go ahead with M$'s plan.

Local dad spoke only Klingon to child for three years

I don't know what I can say about this.

I know that a child will develop its intonation at the early age and will be very difficult to change later in life. I myself is a good example of speaking broken Cantonese-toned English. I also know that a child can simultaneously master several different languages almost effortlessly at the early years.

However, is it best for the child to teach her a language which has very limited real life use?

Typist still exists today

This Taiwanese student earns his school fee by typing. Only $40 Taiwan dollar (US$1.24) per 1000 words. But he can so 137 words per minute.


This girl does 616 words in 1 min. 11.03 sec, averaging at 520.2 words per minutes.

How long does it take to type a-z?

What about 0.3 sec? The following video shows a 5-year in Taiwan using all his 10 fingers.

Quote

On online discussion:

“Tell Your Story” encourages posters to share their perspective on a topic and avoid assuming they can know or can represent the perspective or thinking of others. For millennia, humans have learned through sharing stories. We’re wired that way. Telling my own story keeps me anchored in real events, emotions, intentions, and outcomes without second guessing the emotions or intentions of others. Listening to stories of other people’s experience helps me learn a fresh way of perceiving the world. Telling someone else’s story brings me too close to the slippery slope of judgment and labeling, and, like a bug in a venus-fly-trap, I slide into the Fundamental Attribution Error, interpreting other’s unfortunate behaviors and actions as arising from character flaws, while viewing my own actions through the lens of the unavoidable situational constraints and drama of my story.

“Ask a Sincere Question” supports a mode of inquiry and curiosity. I pose sincere questions when I show a willingness to admit I don’t know, “I’ve never tried pair programming, how do you start?” or seek to extend my knowledge “What’s on your task board? How does it work for your team?” So, what’s an insincere question? It’s when a statement masquerades as a question (Don’t you agree that...?) or the question disparages another (How did you get to be such an idiot?) or manipulates the respondent (Are you still beating your wife?).

“Interpret Generously” gives me an opportunity to rethink an initial reaction before I respond. I get to ask myself, “what else would have to be true for this puzzling position/behavior to make sense?” and “why would a reasonable person behave this way?” Once I can imagine a generous interpretation and a positive intent, whether close to actual facts or not, my reaction changes. I become more ready to ask a sincere question about the other person’s story and to learn what lies behind the mystery of why we have differing perspectives. Diana Larsen, chair of the Agile Alliance board of directors

What is it?

The answer is this is a fan. Watch James Dyson's explanation:


also posted at Sustaining Future

A New Explanation For the Plight of Winter Babies

The initial comments at slashdots focuses on the accuracy of the data and soon shifted to speculation of the causes. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcom Gladwell writes about the birth month of players in the Ontario Junior Hockey League. More players were born in January than in any other month. Why? Read Chapter 1 of the book.

Want to know the answer now?

The explanation for this is quite simple. It has nothing to do with astrology, nor is there anything magical about the first three months of the year. It's simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January i. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year—and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve­-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in
physical maturity.

This being Canada, the most hockey-crazed country on earth, coaches start to select players for the traveling "rep" squad—the all-star teams—at the age of nine or ten, and of course they are more likely to view as talented the bigger and more coordinated players, who have had
the benefit of critical extra months of maturity.

And what happens when a player gets chosen for a rep squad? He gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind in the "house" league, and he practices twice as much as, or even three times more than, he would have otherwise. In the beginning, his advantage isn't so much
that he is inherently better but only that he is a little older. But by the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better coaching and all that extra practice under his belt,
he really is better, so he's the one more likely to make it to the Major Junior A league, and from there into the big leagues.""

The cause, suggested by the original researcher can be found here.

Computer Program Self-Discovers Laws of Physics

While I have not given sufficient thinking on the implication of "The Petabyte Age" to have proper comment, I want to point out my underlying stance for scientific theory.

Science focuses on repeatable observable events. We throw a stone up, it falls back down. Do it again, it falls again. So, we try to *understand* a collection of similar events (throwing the stone up, forward etc) by proposing a theory. The utility of the theory is that we can use the theory to *predict* similar events.

As we progress, and hence have accumulated more observations, we want to develop more powerful theory which can predict more types of events. When one theory can also *explain* (i.e. predicts events) other events covered by other theory, we choose the more powerful theory.

At the same time, as the accuracy of observation increases, the demand on the theory also increases. The theory needs to predict to the same or higher accuracy of the observations.

An example is the relationship between Newtonian mechanics and Einstein's relativity. At human speed, Newton's laws of motion is perfectly fine in predicting the velocity of objects. As the speed approaches that of light, we need relativity to predict the velocity. However, at the same time, Relativity also produces the same prediction of velocity at human speed albeit the mathematics is more involved.

I also noted two interesting points on this process.
1. Terms are coined to represent very specific ideas used in the theory. For instance, momentum is defined as the mass times velocity. Such concepts are useful shorthand which can reduce the complexity of the theory.
2. Inevitably, mathematical models are used. Mathematics are tools developed entirely based on logic. In its purest form, mathematics are not independent of evidence or observation. Mathematics are pure conceptual construct - an art. Scientists find the logical deducing power of mathematical model useful to express complex observations. Almost all major advances of physical science is pre-dated by the development of a powerful mathematical tool. Most physical theories are now expressed in mathematical form.

The combination of (1) and (2) above makes learning science a highly demanding task. There are lots of terms to learn. These are concept shorthand and conventions. In order to be able to understand the theory, we must have working knowledge of all the terms used. As many physical theories are expressed in mathematical form, we must also have working knowledge of the system of mathematics which is used by the theory.

With these observations, I am not sure computer-based generation of theory would be useful for our understanding of the physical realm we live in.

Whatever happened, don't give up.

Random Acts of Kindness

Does Random Acts of Kindness still exist?

Think before you post

Online Sexual Exploitation

Amazon was sued in a class-action

According to PCMag, two Kindle users – one of them a high school student – have filed a class-action lawsuit against Amazon after the company remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's "1984" from their e-readers ... for breach of contract, intentional interference with their belongings, as well as violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

In this online world, old rules are not enough to handle the new situation. But the plain-old moral standard should be the guiding light.

I hope online retailer will learn a good lesson from this.

Who Owns eBooks you have paid for? - more

In the original post, I thought Amazon only deleted the archived copies. It turned out that those copies on customers' Kindles were also deleted remotely. That is a complete new can of worms!

Let's suppose I have bought a copy of 1984 on my Kindle and have backed it up on a local offline storage. Will the copy, I later put back on Kindle, automatically disappear as well?

I was thinking of selling my current Sony eBook reader and buy a new Kindle DX. Now I am having second thoughts.

I hoped I would have saved some trees by going digital. But I am more afraid of Big Brother than Global warming. I better keep the dead trees!

Who Owns eBooks you have paid for?

New York Times posted a story about "Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers".

Apparently, the publisher has changed its mind after selling some electronic edition of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm and decided to take back the electronic copy and refund the customers.

This causes a few questions:
1. Is electronic transaction, in this case, buying a copy of a book in electronic format, final? If yes, the customer may choose not to sell his/her copy back, or may charge a different price for selling it back. In this case, if I were the customer, I would charge the publisher $1,000,000 to buy back my copy. If not, when is the transaction final?

2. I have not read the fine print re: buying eBook from Amazon. I suppose they must have the above scenario covered. I would still challenge the legality of such product recall. At least it is morally unacceptable. From now on, I will seriously consider buying anything from Amazon.

Information lives inside a Pandora box. Once released, it cannot be taken back. What Amazon has done was to remove the archived copies. Those who have downloaded the book into their computer and have made proper backup would have copies. Will the police come knocking on these customers door?

The whole issue of copyright and Intellectual Property needs to be re-examined. To me, I prefer no copyright and intellectual property. If you like to keep something secret, like the recipe of the famous Coca Cola, keep it as a secret. Otherwise, share your information and ideas. The world would be much simpler and happier.

Compound parabolics

How can you design a parabola which can focus sunlight at the focus at different time of the day without tracking?

Here is the answer:


And a mould for creating the compound parabolic solar cookers

What's you call?

Today on Australian Seven's "Deal or No deal", it is a classic probability case.

In the last round, the contestant was left with his and his daughter's cases to open. The board has $4000 and 50cents. The host has been playing up for a mega-guess which would be $10,000. The bank offers $2020, should he accept it? (Answer in white below. Highlight to cheat and see my answer.)
No. We can do much better than that.
In the show, he did not accept the offer and has chosen "no deal". As expected, the mega-guess was offered. What should be the guess by his daughter?

She should have guessed that she has $4000. If she is right, they combined would have $10,000.50. If she is wrong, her father would have $4000. In both cases, it would be better than the bank's $2020 offer. However, they did not play the game optimally. The game ended with 50cents for both of them.