On Friday night, I attended a UofT lecture by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I really didn't know what to expect going in but I ended up really enjoying it. I have been a fan of NDGT for a while but didn't know he would be nearly that funny and entertaining giving a lecture. Neil discussed his take on Science through a cultural lens. Some of the things that stood out for me were:
He showed us his collection of the banknotes of different nations with scientists on them and discussed how this can set a standard for the population of that country. Especially interesting was Germany's 10 Deutschmark note with Gauss on it. There is even a bell curve on it!
He discussed how discovery of something leads to the naming of that thing using the periodic table and the planets as examples. Google 'periodic table country of discovery' and 'year of discovery'. It's pretty neat to connect the dots with what was going on in those nations at that time.
He also touched on more controversial topics such as technology and GMO's and the place of Social "Sciences" and arts compared to Science (his quotations around Sciences not mine).
The most impressive thing about the lecture was that even if you did not have any background in Science, you would still probably have understood most of the lecture and probably would have enjoyed it. Neil actually touched on this during the question period. He talked about how a lot of the skepticism toward Science comes from Scientists generally not letting the public into their 'club'. They use fancy words to maintain group exclusivity. This is the exact opposite of what education should be. Knowledge Construction on the other hand occurs when you start with what the student knows and build their understanding from there as opposed to just throwing a bunch of facts and words at them. Neil did a great job of this during the lecture. He made a ton of jokes, kept the tone conversational, didn't use any fancy words and even tweeted during the talk! He did as well as you can do with Knowledge Construction in a lecture scenario. For me, it basically it boils down to this: To get people excited about Science (and Math), get rid of the unnecessary pretense and subject-specific lingo and don't be afraid to show your passion for the subject. Lastly, Neil insisted he show us the following videos (even though the talk went way later than it was supposed to). Somebody had slowed down his Big Think talk (regular speed and slow motion videos below). It's pretty funny and it was even more funny to watch Neil's reaction to the slowed down one.
Regular speed video:
Slow motion video:
Oh, and checked the Toronto Star yesterday and today and NO mention of the talk. Hopefully there will be something in the Monday paper. It's absolutely nuts what they prioritize over Science and education.
Wow, has it been a while since my last post. Blogging hasn't been my priority since I have been teaching since the beginning of the semester. It's March Break now though so I thought I would try to fit in some blogging. 3D Imaging Technology Last night, I attended this year's Engineering Innovations Forum at the Ontario Science Centre with a few of my Engineering friends. The topic of discussion was 3D imaging technology. The presenters talked about 3D scanning and modelling for Construction Design, Forensic and Medical applications. There is some really cool and interesting tech out there. Particularly interesting to me was the discussion of Photogrammetry (using photographs to find measurements and model in 3D). Eugene Liscio, president of AI2 3D talked about how taking pictures with any digital camera can be used to generate a 3D model which he uses in Forensic applications. He mentioned the Autodesk app 123D Catch, which can create a 3D model from photographs with any Apple mobile device. Pretty neat. Now how could I use this in my classes? Something to think about over the next week... 3D Printing Technology Turning 3D computer models into tangible objects for the Medical field was the theme for another one of the presenters. You must check out the pictures at this link for 3D Printed casts. They look awesome. Breathing Anyways, the presenter talked about how he was involved in designing a mask to be used to analyze breathing in sleep studies. He needed to find the optimal spot for the microphone so it picked up the sound of breathing from the nose and mouth at the same time. To find where to put it, they went outside when it was cold and snapped a picture of the condensing breath. They used this to find the ideal location of the microphone. The picture he showed us looked something like this (red lines indicate direction of breath):
Application problem time! My Grade 10's are starting the unit on solving linear systems so I could get them to overlay an axis and grid on the picture and determine the location of the ideal microphone spot. Here is a screencap of a Geogebra model of it that I threw together. I didn't scale it to the size of the face but that would be necessary to solve the problem:
Also, here's a link to a Desmos graph of the same thing. This could be a quick activity to show the students how this stuff can actually be used in real-life. And then they could use their answers to design a mask which could be printed on the school's 3D printer.... ok maybe that's not that realistic yet. It would be AWESOME if every school had a 3D printer. Only $2500 each! Somebody needs to get on that. Real-world problem solving to the MAX.
This is why I still go to Engineering events when I can. It gives me some ideas for presenting concepts in new ways and helps me stay current with the technology that's out there. Engineering PD is teaching PD for me as a math/science teacher.
