Regular posting will resume after this… January 7, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in Uncategorized.Tags: football, NDSU
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Things like this make me proud to be a Bison.
Another approach to multiplication November 14, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in math, teaching, Uncategorized, younger son.Tags: arithmetic, math, multiplication, teaching
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My younger boy has been working through multiplication, and the problems he’s doing are getting more difficult, so I decided it was time to start working with the dreaded memorization.
I’ve talked before about simply giving kids multiplication tables to work from. My younger son, however, seems like he’s a little better with memorization, so we took the following approach.
Most kids have a fairly easy time with learning to count by twos, threes, and fives. So that’s where you start. The other thing the child needs to know is how to add with carrying. If the child can do that, the rest of the tables are easy. Since counting by 2s and 3s is known, we’ll start with fours.
If you have a problem involving a 4, say 8 x 4, then you have them compute 8 x 2. Once they have the answer to that, have them double it. So basically, once they know all their 2s, they can easily obtain their fours. The same principle goes for 6s and 8s. For a multiplication problem involving a 6, they can either add the corresponding problem with twos three times or take the threes problem twice. Finally, for 8s, they can work from twos to fours, and then from fours to eights.
With the younger boy, this means that if he has a problem like 8×7, he first figures out 2×7. He doubles that answer to get 4×7, and then doubles it again to get 8×7. For him, adding things up goes a bit faster.
For nines, he uses the finger method: he holds down the finger that corresponds to the multiplier, moving from left to right. That is, if he has 3×9, he holds down the third finger from the left. To the left of that finger, he has the number of tens (in this case, 2), and to the right he has the number of ones (7). So the answer is 27.
So what do you do about 7s? Actually, given you have methods for everything else, the only one to memorize is 7×7. On the other hand, if you have a kid that sort of stuck when it comes to commutivity of multiplication, then another way to deal with it is that it’s the sum of the threes problem and the fours problem. (7×7 = 3×7 + 4×7 = 21 + 28 = 49)
Tens are usually pretty easy, so I’ll skip that one.
Eleven and twelve were learned by breaking them into two parts. First, take the number times ten and then take it times one (for eleven) or two (for twelve) and add the results. So 12×9 would be 10×9 plus 2×9.
I’m fairly certain this method would have never worked with my older boy. He has very poor working memory and ADHD, so I don’t think he was able to do a lot of this in his head (and was always resistant to writing it down). For him, I think using a multiplication table was a better approach. For the younger boy, though, who seems to enjoy working through problems and has a very good working memory, this has been a far more, and I might even say quicker, method.
One week without a computer October 18, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in computers, Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Recently, a friend told me that he became so addicted to the computer game Civilization that the only way he was able to stop playing was to break the disk.
“Whoa,” I thought. “That’s pretty extreme.”
On the other hand, I think I might have just gone through something similar, though breaking the hard disk on my computer was certainly not intentional.
I spent a week without my computer, and I found that I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would. Granted, I have access to a computer at work and also have an iPhone. However, I don’t like ‘web surfing’ with my iPhone all that much, and I try to get work done when I’m at work. (Although when I’m there in the evenings, I leave Twitter open.) After I got my computer back, I went on a camping trip. The computer needing some work done, and camping is no place for a computer anyway. (Although the iPhone was awesome for sending smug messages to friends, letting them we were enjoying smores and beautiful stars…while they were not.)
After that week, I concluded that I spend way too much time on the computer doing useless things. Not a surprise. I am also trying not to fall back into bad habits now that I have my computer up and running again.
I hope that blogging isn’t a bad habit, though. That one is hard to give up.
Looking for a college: tutoring services September 11, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, teaching, Uncategorized.Tags: student services, tutoring
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This week, I’m covering a lot general information about studying with my students. One thing I’m going to discuss with them is tutoring services. NDSU has a fantastic tutoring service available to all undergrads, free of charge. It’s available most days from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Specific tutors keep differing schedules, however, so you do need to check when tutoring for a particular course is available. This has been scaled up since I was a student. Back then, it was evening sessions during certain nights of the week.
Looking at this made me sad, however, as it brought back an unfortunate memory.
When I was TAing a couple years ago, I had a student who was really struggling. He was an older-than-average, minority student (a double whammy). He had a fantastic personality, obviously carrying with him a real joie de vivre, but he had an emotional outburst during class one day.
He really felt like he couldn’t make it in the class. He started getting very upset and agitated. He stood up and told me loudly that he was just going to leave. I talked him down and said that I was sure we could figure things out together. Then I worked with him for a few minutes to get him over the hurdle he’d encountered.
I honestly think the real problem was self-confidence, but I can’t fix that.
We talked after class, and I suggested he come to my office hours. His schedule and mine didn’t work well, however, so he said that he wanted to get a tutor. I was new at the time, and I wasn’t sure what was available on campus for tutoring. I said I would find out and get back to him.
I spoke to the instructor of the course, and he told me that he would find an undergraduate major whom the student could hire for a tutor. I was simply appalled. The student is paying an incredibly huge amount of money for his education, and he wasn’t being provided with tutoring services. He was going to have to pay for it out of pocket. It seemed unfair because this obviously put my student at a disadvantage: I’m pretty sure he had no pocket money for tutors.
Through time, I have been at a top-rated university, a couple state universities, and a California community college. Every one of them except this place had tutoring services in one form or another. The tutoring services were available free of charge to students…even at the top-rated place.
I guess I took for granted that those services were available everywhere. Obviously, however, I was wrong, so I think it’s important to look into what support services are available when making a decision on where to attend college.
I’m very sad to say that my student ended up dropping the course. I honestly think it was avoidable, and I have worried about him ever since.
Gender-appropriate engineering June 30, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in feminism, research, Uncategorized.Tags: female bits, sensors
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There are a lot of stories talking about how women can offer a unique perspective in engineering.
I might have had one of those stories, had I not chickened out.
Some people I’m working with are interested in non-invasive medical sensing devices. While they were talking, I realized that one idea had a great application.
When I exercise, I often wear an integrated GPS/heart-rate monitor. The system uses a chest strap to send heart signals to a receiving monitor, which is usually something like a wrist watch. The chest strap is usually a sensor and battery embedded in a plastic strap which attaches at each end to an elastic band. I was saying that it might be good to try something different because the chest straps were so unbearably uncomfortable. One of my coworkers enthusiastically agreed…and the rest gave me no response.
I wondered later if the rest of the people in the group (also males) were uncomfortable with my statement because it brought to the fore that there was a woman in the group. You see, I’m sure none of them have ever had the joy of trying to wear a chest strap under a bra, and they didn’t particularly want to think about it. Either that, or they had no idea why chest straps were uncomfortable.
Having my great idea shot down, I was less inclined to bring up a very good criticism of another idea. They were talking about how it would be cool to simply hold a sensor against someone’s body to measure relevant body functions. One area mentioned was the chest area. I wanted to scream, “Are you crazy? The last thing I want is someone, even a medical professional, doing something that might resemble groping.” Of course, it would draw attention to the fact, yet again, that I am a woman and may have a body different to that of my colleagues.
I say we should just start using medical tricorders, like they have in Star Trek. No groping. No chest straps. But, unless you’re a woman, you might not know why that’s important.
Touch math June 10, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, math, teaching, Uncategorized.Tags: finger counting, math, memory, touch math
3 comments
I have another rant about elementary math education, but this one is slightly different.
I am completely appalled that schools still do not teach touch math.
You probably have no idea what I’m talking about because you’ve probably never heard of it.
When I was in fourth grade, we moved to a town in rural North Dakota called New Salem. At the time, the population was 2000. Now it’s half that. If you’ve ever driven through North Dakota and seen the world’s largest Holstein cow on the side of a hill, you’ve seen New Salem. (The cow, by the way, is named Salem Sue.)
Shortly after we moved there, I was sent to get some extra help in math. In fourth grade, I was still counting on my fingers. Some people term that a math disability now. However, the way this rural school saw it, there was an easy fix. I was sent to the special ed teacher for two one-hour sessions. I was, of course, feeling very ashamed about my finger counting. She said that it’s not unusual and that she had a way to fix it. She pulled out a piece of paper with an image that looked something like this (only, back then, it was black and white because I grew up in the days before they invented color):
So what the heck is this?
It’s a way of computing addition and subtraction facts.
The dots are places where you touch the number, and the dots with rings around them are places where you touch the number twice. You’ll notice that seven has a single touch and three double touches. Basically, when a child is sitting there with a math problem in front of them, they can touch the number in the designated places, and count those touches rather than their fingers.
As I got the hang of this (which was very quickly), I started being able to see the points and make computations without touching the numbers. I started developing some visual strategies for calculations. Eventually, with practice, I ended up memorizing my math facts. I’ve written before about how math facts are better memorized through practice than rote. I think this would be another great method for teaching facts, as it obviously worked for me. In fact, you can look at the Touch Math website and see that there’s a decent amount of research showing that the strategy works well both for average children as well as those with learning disabilities.
So why isn’t it being used? I’m still surprised that teachers in a small rural school district were thinking so far ahead. I’m not sure why larger schools have not followed suit in the past 30 years, and it’s really unfortunate that so many people have not heard of it.
The happiest grad students May 24, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, grad school, science, Uncategorized.5 comments
Having done grad work in both science and engineering, I have to come out and make an observation that I doubt people will be happy to hear. This observation has given me pause because it pertains to grad student contentment.
The happiest and many of the most productive grad students were
(drumroll please)
Employed elsewhere.
They were going to school as a way to get further in their job. Their jobs often paid for their classes, rather than an RA or TA. And if they were overwhelmed with it all, they didn’t fail to leave because they weren’t dependent on grad school for a living.
In engineering, it’s not uncommon to work on a technical masters or MBA outside of work. Many engineering programs even have special arrangements with various companies to enable their employees to participate in this sort of program. This is, of course, not all of engineering grad students, but it’s a not insignificant chunk of them.
I contrast this with the way I’ve seen in science and other parts of engineering: the student is usually in the employ of their advisor, and this can make for a rocky relationship. Advisors at universities don’t really go through much management training, don’t seem to have the same sorts of rules that many companies have, may not have a way to deal (effectively) with advisor difficulties. Most workplaces do have these sorts of rules in place, if nothing else than to prevent the employer with being sued for harassment or the like.
The person who supervises you, in most places in industry, has no ability to control your paycheck. If they want to fire you, they have to go through a formal process, in most cases. In grad school, rules about this are very vague and can change from place to place. It can leave a student with a sense of fear and lack of control over their situation. They may feel like they have no rights.
In a job, your objectives and expectations are often more clearly defined. In grad school, advisors can string a person on for years.
I’m not saying that grad school is all bad, nor are all advisors. However, I think part of the fact that so many people find grad school miserable is because the lack of clarity about the situation and lack of rights afforded to students. Rules may be put in place that are left intentionally vague for the purpose of flexibility…but this lack of clarity can also be used by an advisor to threaten or bully a student, who is left feeling like they can do nothing about the situation.
At my grad institution, there is an attempt to form some sort of student union. I know one big issue is pay. While I am sympathetic to the problem, I also understand that it’s hard to find extra pay when the university system is already dealing with budgetary shortfalls. On the other hand, I think a union that focuses on developing clear guidelines for students which require more professional behavior from faculty, explicitly written, would be a huge boon to grad students. Such a system might make grad school a bit more happy place, at least for the students.
A soft spot in my heart for occupational therapists February 14, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, older son, Uncategorized, younger son.Tags: dabrowski, occupational therapy, overexcitabilities, sensory integration disfunction, sensory processing disorder
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I have had to deal with a LOT of teachers over the years. I have found that most teachers are trying to get kids to do stuff they don’t really like, but they generally have no other methods than threats or rewards.
My children are notoriously immune to bribery and too pig-headed to let threats be scary. I don’t think this is a bad thing (at least in the long run), but it is immensely frustrating to parent such a child. The only thing that seems to work is to somehow find something that is internally motivating or to invite Henry Kissinger to mediate discussions.
On a more serious note, I have found that occupational therapists (OTs) are some of the few people who work with kids and are very in tune with them. An occupational therapist can watch a kid for a half hour and tell you the various organizing strategies and sensitivities a kid has.
Both my kids have sensory issues. In the gifted realm, these sensitivities are often referred to as Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities (OEs), particularly sensory or psychomotor OEs. In OT-speak, they are referred to as sensory processing disorder (SPD). I have to admit that I prefer looking at it from the OT’s point of view. Dabrowski’s OE are primarily an indicator of gifted children, while children with a wide range of abilities can have SPDs. Probably more crucial for me, however, is the fact that OTs understand how to deal with the sensitivities so that they can process sensations more normally. None of this is intended to discount Dabrowski’s work on finding the strong connection between these behaviors (especially the non-sensory OEs) and giftedness.
Several of my older son’s teachers claimed he must be autistic or Asperger’s because he has a large number of sensory issues. To them, the strange behaviors they saw were simply things that autistic kids do. Because these behaviors were present, they assumed he had to be on the spectrum despite having two researchers who study autism disqualify that as a possibility. The researchers said giftedness was his problem. Unfortunately, OEs and SPD were never part of the conversation so I was under the assumption that the researchers were correct, which they were, but that there was nothing that could be done about it.
Near the end of first grade, an OT evaluated him and said he had sensory integration dysfunction (what they used to call SPD). Unfortunately, because his functioning was normal, he couldn’t receive therapy through the school. However, because this person told me what the the problem was, I was able to get him therapy through a medical provider. The OT also told me about the book, “The Out-of-Sync Child”. It is an excellent reference for dealing with these issues.
I have to admit, though, that I’m frustrated. Kids who have SPD or OEs are on a continuum, just like so many other traits that humans may or may not have. Given how many kids a teacher generally sees in a period of 5-10 years, you imagine they’re going to have had at least a handful of kids with these issues. You would think that they would become fairly familiar with them as these kids are likely to be some of the more disruptive, unfocused, or unattentive kids in the class. It’s not their fault: a normal day for most of us is an assault on these poor kids sense of well-being. Yet my experience is that most teachers who have had kids like this still don’t understand how to deal with this type of problem. What’s worse is that some honestly believe that these kids are intentionally disruptive or difficult. Hence, they prefer to use punishment and rewards to try to coax the appropriate behavior out of the child, not realizing the child is probably using every ounce of willpower and still failing.
I am glad to say, however, that my interactions with the half-dozen OTs I’ve dealt with (all of whom specialized in SPD) have been extremely helpful. They really get that kids want to be cooperative but that they’re struggling to deal with their senses. The OTs have so much empathy for the kids and can really understand the problem from the child’s point of view. Better yet, they often have a real, effective solution to the kids’ problems.
For Valentine’s Day, I want to give a very heartfelt thanks to the OTs out there who have helped kids, parents, and teachers navigate this strange world of SPD. Their efforts are very much appreciated.
Scientific bias in politics February 10, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in Uncategorized.10 comments
Here we go again. A while ago, I posted about an article in Slate claiming that scientists are keeping republicans out of their ranks. Yesterday, I came across a similar line of thinking: Jonathan Haidt is claiming social psychologists are excluding conservatives.
I won’t go into the same arguments I made before. I think that Haidt is being more thoughtful about his approach, but I still see a problem with it. Claiming we need more conservative thinkers to provide a different approach is like claiming we need more climate denialists doing climate science. And really…no one is crying about the lack of communists in science. So why are conservatives getting all the attention? And while it may be statistically improbable (or impossible) to have that high a proportion of liberals in one room, it’s also statistically improbable to have that many social psychologists in one room…yet it happens.
The problem I see is that there are a number of conservative think-tanks (such as the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute), and what sort of research do we see out of them? First of all, they begin with the assumption that laissez faire capitalism is the penultimate good. The research they do is often funded by groups who have a vested interest in a specific outcome, predetermined to contradict current scientific findings. They most often don’t come out and say, “Our statistics indicate that so-and-so’s results need to be modified such-and-such factor.” No, they challenge the whole thing as being out and out wrong. And frankly, some of the research is repulsive to even basic moral values. For this last point, I’m thinking specifically of the proposed eugenic policies suggested in The Bell Curve. (Don’t get me wrong: the statistical analysis in The Bell Curve was fine…it was just that the policy implications didn’t necessarily follow straight from the data and certainly didn’t pass a litmus test for respecting human decency.)
The fact of the matter is that, given this is how conservatives tend to align with their science, it simply doesn’t come across as good science. There is nothing wrong with questioning the standard theory and trying to find where it fails. That’s good science. Trying to throw it all out and replace it with hypotheses that are not well-supported with data, especially if doing so benefits a client of yours, is simply not science. Scientists should be objective…not bought and paid for.
I’ve talked before about how engineers tend to be more conservative. (I’m still totally fascinated with the “Engineers of Jihad” study.) While I would certainly like for engineering to be more liberal, I think it’s obvious that the approach to the profession is inherently attractive to those personality types. I think the same is true for science, just in the opposite direction. I agree groupthink is not a good thing, but neither is wasting one’s time chasing down ideas that really don’t qualify as science.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
Back in my day… February 19, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in societal commentary, Uncategorized.Tags: corporations, deficit, government spending, the American dream
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Somehow, when I was a kid, I don’t remember so much talk about how making money was the ultimate goal of every American.
When I was a kid, I remember people actually having dreams, like colonizing space. People also had other goals whether it was to have a career they liked or simply to get out of whatever small town they’d grown up in. No one was really out to get rich, they just wanted to be comfortable and have some financial stability and security.
With the gap in income between middle and lower class, I feel like people are ever more eager to get to the other side of the fence. I know a lot of people now who are trying to get rich quick and many more who’ve given up on the idea of ever not having to work two jobs. I’m seeing more and more college educated people under- and unemployed.
I’ve never thought highly of politicians, but I’m sick of what has increasingly become a bitter doctrinal war that insists that “the other side” has nothing of value to add. There is no discussion anymore about the fact that cutting government spending is anything more than reducing the deficit. There is no acknowledgement that cutting government spending will result in huge and serious job losses and destroy a significant amount of the infrastructure that has contributed to things like healthcare. I read that the republicans want to cut things like heating subsidies in their spending reduction. Heating subsidies. Do you know who gets those? Poor people and old people who don’t have enough to pay their heating bills. Without these, they can freeze to death (and yes, it has happened). And it’s not hard to believe this can be an issue with the price of crude increasing.
And once upon a time, corporations and businesses were more focused on providing stable jobs to people and providing a quality product. Now it seems like they’re more concerned about providing the big bucks to their stockholders.
I can’t tell if this is as a result of me being older and more aware or if there is an actual shift in beliefs and infrastructure. Some days, it makes me really want to tune out so that I can let that feeling go that people are getting stupider and more selfish.