It is intersting that since I have been here I have learned that here in Thailand students must compete to get into the best schools. To get into each school (even kindergarten) they must take an entrance exam! They get into schools based strictly on their entrance exam scores! The students with the best scores get into the best schools, and the next best get into the next best schools and so on. There are no geographic constraints on the schools that the students participate in. Someone from 4 hours away in north Thailand may take the entrance exam for the high school here next to the university (the best high school in Thailand), and if the student gets in and the family has the means they will move here to Bangkok for the student to be educated in that school. That is a whole different way of thinking about school isn't it? The sad thing about this is there isn't enough capacities in the Universities here, so not everyone who wants to go to the University gets to go.
On Tuesday morning we all met at the Bistro in the Hotel to get breakfast then we needed to be ready at the van at 8:30. The bistro had all kinds of food-thai food, chinese food, breakfast food, noodle soup, and etc! It was tasty!
We then took the van to the university, which is actually located across the street from the hotel! The university grounds are very nice, well groomed, and clean. I say this because there are many parts of the city that are not (sadly) and it is a whole different scene within the university grounds.
The workshop was from 9-530.
We were greeted with a warm Welcome here at the university! There are four of us NOYCE Teaching Fellows here at the Workshop. Here is the sign we were greeted with when we arrived.
When we arrived and this is how we were greeted. There were many Thai Teachers and Teacher Trainers here at the workshop as well. There were roughly a total of 20 participants of all different backgrounds but all somehow in the education field.
The workshop is led by Dr. Panoff, the founder of Shodor. http://www.shodor.org/
Shodor has been established for alomost 20 years. The following is the website to the talk that he gave on Tuesday: http://shodor.org/talks/ncsi/
The morning portions of the workshop covered some interesting ideas. One of the ideas that I found to be the most interesting the assertion that education and how students approach learning is changing due to the technology they have available to them. One example of this from my classroom, that I have seen is that my students often are less focused in class because they know that later when they get the homework, they can look up how to do it online. The bottom line is that students now think "why should I learn this when I can just look this up?"
Dr. Panoff started off by using a simple example of how students still need to keep "thinking" even if they use their resources. The example was "3+2*6. We first discussed what the answer would be. It would be 15. We all knew this because we all understood the same concvention for order of operations. We then entered the equation into the calculator on the computer. The computer gave us "30." We then tried entering it into the scientific calculator on the computer and it gave us "15." We then tried entering this into google and it came up with 50 and presented the parentheses around the 2*6. The point is that the students may just look this up using one of these methods but they need to be reminded that they must constantly evaluate what they get when they use their technological resources because they are not all operating under the same assumptions and they will not always give the correct answer. This is a great example!! Another few examples that you could use in your classroom are "mass of earth" or "boiling point of radium." Which of the imformation presented is correct? Students need to be aware that not everything that they find on the internet is true. The information they find may be using different conventions or parameters.
The next intersting and useful tool that Dr. Panoff covered was an introduction to some of the teaching tools that his team at Shodor has developed. One very useful example is: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/GraphSketcher/ Dr. Panoff made the point that a traditional graphing calculator that the students use only spits out what the student puts in. This interactive tool allows them to identify what the variables in an equation signify. This is a much more powerful and visual tool to train the students to think scientifically about the meaning of each component of an equation. A math inquiry lesson using this tool could ask the students to determine in "y=mx+b" what each of the variables represents for example. Students can use the sliders and look at the graph to determine what is the significance or what changes as you change one of the variables. There are many more examples of models that have been build by Shodor that can be used by anyone. They are free! Look here for more information: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/
The next and for me the most intersting part of the day was when Dr. Panoff presented a tool for building models. This tool is also free. It is called Vensim. http://vensim.com/ Vensim is a tool so people, scientists, and students can build models without knowing how to code!! It is very useful. Dr. Panoff walked us through the four components of a model in this software using the example of compound interest. Thats right, there are only four main components! It was a very intuitive way to build a model and the models could be used for many different applications. I very much suggest you think about playing with this and incorporating it into some lessons with your students. Having your students develop even a simple model will allow them to "apply system thinking." System thinking is when they develop a big picture understanding of what is going on and then create a model of it. I will definitely use Vensim in my classroom.
After the workshop, we were given some money and we went to the 5th floor of the MBK mall. This mall is attached to our hotel. The food was tasty and very affordable. Kristin and I also had time to separate from the group to have a beer, and then we checked out the hotel pool! It was perfect. Ahhh.
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