danaleeling

Tuesday the class went on a healing plant walk into Paies. The new campus fencing system is still incomplete - the generator driveway gate remains unlocked.  This allowed the class to take the yellow path rather than the longer red path.  The gate was simply open. This was one of the walks for which the Tripltek was purchased on my path to operating paperfree. This walk often occurs under rainy, wet conditions, and having waterproof technology is necessary.  I usually carry a paper copy of a language cross-reference for the plants on this walk. This term the list was electronically shared to the students and I had a copy open on the Tripltek. I was also able to carry and access the flora  and the class roster. For reference I also had a copy of the text open to chapter three in a tab.  The walk began by heading down to the Scaevola taccada, Ocimum tenuiflorum, Premna obtusifolia, and Volkameria inermis. I covered "why are plants medicinal" at this first locatio...

On Wednesday the board still had the predicted parabolic curve from classwork done on Monday.  With the graph on the right still on the whiteboard, I held the Tripltek up to the board to show that the predicted shape had come true. This led naturally to a review of the equation d₁~½at₁² from Monday and d = vt from the prior Monday and the illustration of the parallel equations in algebra. I then asked whether the parabola had a slope. The class was silent. One student ventured to answer that no, the parabola had no slope. I then explained to the class that the parabola had a slope and they should demand a refund for any money they spent on learning mathematics in math classes. Math classes cannot teach one to think mathematically, to possess mathematical insight. That no one realized a parabola has a slope does not mean math classes should teach this specific fact. No. This is not a failure of coverage of some specific fact. This is an indictment of what mathematics education tends...

After glancing at the approach taken last January , I decided to attempt a parallel approach this fall and tread along the edge of calculus. I began with a graph of a medium speed velocity of 3.5 meters per second from the 11:00 class last Thursday. I then made a second graph of time versus velocity. I noted that the 2.88 second time recorded at 10 meters was only an approximate time. I then showed that the area under the velocity line in the second graph was the distance: 2.88 seconds horizontally × 3.5 meters per second vertically is 10.08 meters. In other words, the time × velocity is the distance - which is exactly what d = vt expresses. Distance is velocity × time.  The third graph was another time versus velocity graph, but here I supposed that each second my velocity would be one meter per second faster. So I would start at 0 meters per second at time zero, be moving at one meter per second at one second, increase my speed again to two meters per second by the two second mar...

Although the sample size remains small at twenty, preliminary results from a social media and student technology survey may provide some insights into trends in the larger student population. The 20 students are students who are in courses at the College of Micronesia-FSM. The survey was anonymous, the course in which the survey was posted includes both a residential and online section. In keeping with a Pew Research Center study of teens, social media, and technology , I include YouTube in social media. Paralleling their results, YouTube is a top platform both in terms of use and time spent on the platform.  YouTube garners the most time spent on a platform. While students generally have FaceBook and Instagram accounts, the site that students spend the most time on after YouTube is TikTok - a testament to the almost legendary ability of the TikTok algorithm to addict a user to the platform. Charts such as the one above are why Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram) are so fearfu...

Platform metrics increased markedly for all categories as more instructors brought courses up in Instructure Canvas. Engagement as measured by page views remains strong. With the end of the second week the number of scores in Canvas has increased from 2219 to 3921. The systemwide average dropped from 74.7 to 66.6 on a 100 point scale.  The distribution of grades system wide includes some bimodality. This is still only the end of the second week. Although the data is not directly available, at this point most students may have completed only one or two assignments, perhaps a few more in an active class.  The course learning outcome average, which encompasses a much smaller set of courses and students, is 4.03 which is deemed sufficient mastery of the learning. Dashboard For those instructors who have imported course student learning outcomes from the institutional bank of outcomes, assessment data is already flowing into the system. A video covers how to access these course le...

 Tuesday I introduced seedless vascular plants in a traditional lecture format. This replaces student presentations that were assessed as not being all that effective or meaningful. In some cases students fell back on reading from online websites without any comprehension of what they were speaking about. With the shift to the focus on ethnobotanical use presentations, the botanic science presentations were dropped post-pandemic. Cyanobacteria has been erased already from the left side of the board. Life cycles were simplified, terminology was defined. The white board presentation was followed by a slide show presentation of some of the primitive plants and cyanobacteria. Thursday was the field walk day. I began just ahead of class by walking to the moss on the east end of campus. I discovered that the macro camera on the Moto G60 is not a fixed focus macro but capable of autofocus. The images generated were unreal.  The operculums are clearly visible in this photo.  I t...

Monday began in the classroom with the question of what would happen on a time versus distance graph for an object moving at a constant rate. One student suggested that there would be a slope and another suggested that the slope would be negative. The class then went out to the sidewalk where I measured off 30 meters and then did a cold open on the RipStik.  At this point I asked if the predicted model was possible. The student who had suggested the negative slope said it was not possible. I then took the RipStick to the east end of the run out near 33 meters and rode back to zero while timing. Possible. The velocity for the second run is a negative velocity. Negative slope, negative velocity. This was the first term for a negative velocity, but this would prove useful throughout the week. Wednesday I would start with the two velocities determined on Monday as seen above. Coverage of the operation of the stopwatch followed this review. Then I laid out the activity for Wednesday: de...