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Topic Starter Topic: Got sent a deal for teaching physics with Forza motorsport..
tnf
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 02:50 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


So M$ is working with a company called Young Minds Inspired to sell more Forza games. I've got an activity packet that includes all sorts of activities based on in-game scenarios that kids will watch (they send a CD-rom with the video so you can play in on the cpu - or you can have the kids try it in game.) The activities are pretty good though, deriving experssions for the maximum speed of a car without slipping on a banked curve of a given radius - then again on unbanked. There are lots of basic kinematics, etc. It also comes with a nice big poster including all of the detailed equations used.

I feel robbed, though. I was way ahead of the curve here. I was using video I made with Vice City 3 years ago to demonstrate all sorts of shit (collisions, conservation of momentum, etc.) Should have sold my idea to M$.

I also got about 30 coupons for 5 bucks off Forza at best buy. Heh.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 02:51 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm supposed to distribute the coupons "to help the students bring the learning home."
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 02:53 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


For fucks sakes tnf, "cpu" means central processing unit, its not the same thing as PC.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:00 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
I'm supposed to distribute the coupons "to help the students bring the learning home."


Fucking hell, that's horiffic.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:01 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


ToxicBug wrote:
For fucks sakes tnf, "cpu" means central processing unit, its not the same thing as PC.


do you think?

But I still use it as an abbreviation for computer, and will continue to do so. Now get back to your struggles with basic physics and bother me no more.
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phantasmagoria
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:04 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


i'd love to have been taught mechanical maths by you, rather than professor dull, who completely put me off the whole subject :(.



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Foo
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:04 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Despite being a massive cock, Toxic has a point in this instance.

You're a teacher, and you're knowingly teaching an error purely for your own convenience. Pretty slack.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:09 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Do as I say, not as I do. That's lesson 1.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:10 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Now, back to playing dvd's on my CPU.

And please, let's not derail this thread into a debate about cpu vs. computer. We've had it before.
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Foo
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:11 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


But that's something you say.

Anyways, I'll drop it. It's irrelevent to the main point... hideous corporate invasion of schooling dependant on the (perhaps mostly true) assumption that teachers are gullible fools who can be manipulated to exploit their pupils by proxy.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:15 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I think that educational animation videos are more useful in chemistry than in physics. In chemistry you can't see what's going on at the microscopic level, but its important in order to understand equilibrium. In physics you easily can picture a car going around a banked curve and just draw a circle to get the equation with which you will find the max speed it can do without drifting off. Elastic collisions can be demonstrated with different sorts of balls.

I wonder if its possible to calculate the maximum speed that a car can do while drifting around a curve though.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:16 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I never taught it. But I will teach the correct thing - "KIDS - DON'T USE ERRONEOUS SHORTCUTS AND ABBREVIATIONS IN ORDER TO SAVE TIME OR BE LAZY. AND DON'T DO DRUGS."

Remember, that is what I've just SAID, not what I DO. Now, do as I've said, not as I have done and as I still do.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:20 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


ToxicBug wrote:
I think that educational animation videos are more useful in chemistry than in physics. In chemistry you can't see what's going on at the microscopic level, but its important in order to understand equilibrium. In physics you easily can picture a car going around a banked curve and just draw a circle to get the equation with which you will find the max speed it can do without drifting off. Elastic collisions can be demonstrated with different sorts of balls.

I wonder if its possible to calculate the maximum speed that a car can do while drifting around a curve though.


Yea, but the diagrams for chemistry are fairly easy to draw for something like equilibrium. The motions of the molecules and atoms involved are fairly straightforward in those cases.

Animations always help, though, regardless of the subject.
I've used video games in a number of ways - when you take a concept that can be relatively dry (conservation of momentum) and discuss it by showing a guy on a motorcycle in vice city crash into a fence at 120 mph and then go flying off the bike...and ask why the bike stopped and the guy kept going, it draws kids in. Many times students never develop a 'correct' understanding of very basic concepts like this because teachers assume it is so 'common sense' that they brush over it. When you can use a tool like a video game, everyone is attentive, even for those easy concepts that they often tune out or take for granted and then mess up later on.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:26 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
Now, do as I've said, not as I have done and as I still do.


I always found a problem with this. If your (the general your, nothing personal) advice is so great that I should listen to you, why aren't you following it yourself?

..and to that end, I came to the conclusion that anyone who said do as I say not as I do wasn't someone worth paying much attention to overall.

Not to be a cunt, but it'd seem fair to think many of your students will reach this same conclusion. The days of classroom repetition/verbatim are gone, and 'do as I say not as I do' seems one of the statements that naturally died with it.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:26 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


You just wanna excuse to play videogames at work. :icon31:
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:29 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
The days of classroom repetition/verbatim are gone, and 'do as I say not as I do' seems one of the statements that naturally died with it.

Hmm. Treating teenagers like adults is just giving them a license to behave like retards.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:33 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Not at all. it's just that some WILL invitably behave in that manner, and it stands out like a gigantic sore thumb and masks over the beneficial side of it.

Besides, there's treating teenagers like adults and still being able to control a class, and being a strict teacher who has to rely on archaic methods to control their class, becuase they don't have the skill/mentality/experience to control their class. Teaching isn't easy, and I have full understanding for those who do 'cop out' and resort to the old rod and cane shit, but it's not the best way.

On a side note, there's still 'Do as I do now, not as I did in the past' which is perfectly valid, as otherwise that would mean ex smokers wouldn't be able to impart the wisdom of never beginning, and so on.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:36 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
Do as I say, not as I do. That's lesson 1.



Yes folks, this about sums up everything thats wrong with america. Weird how you hit it so precisly on accident tnf.


Seriously bud, not trying to make you look bad, but im just wondering, as the shaper of the future leaders of the world and this country, considering its state, wo uldnt you want to be on the ball with everything possible ?

Again, its not a CPU/PC question, more of a philosophical inquirey.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:37 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
tnf wrote:
Now, do as I've said, not as I have done and as I still do.


I always found a problem with this. If your (the general your, nothing personal) advice is so great that I should listen to you, why aren't you following it yourself?

..and to that end, I came to the conclusion that anyone who said do as I say not as I do wasn't someone worth paying much attention to overall.

Not to be a cunt, but it'd seem fair to think many of your students will reach this same conclusion. The days of classroom repetition/verbatim are gone, and 'do as I say not as I do' seems one of the statements that naturally died with it.


You all aren't seriously trying to imply that my ramblings here about "do as I say" are how I teach, are you? I was simply trying to put the fire out on the whole "HEY TNF DID YOU KNOW THAT CPU ACTUALLY MEANS Central Processing Unit NOT PC????" issue.

And it isn't about following your own advice all the time - its about telling teenage kids that you've made the mistakes in the past, you've done the stupid shit and learned the hard way from it, so when you tell them to "do as I say, not as I've done" you are speaking from experience.

Perhaps they also tell you "do as I say, not as I do" because they are 'trapped' into the bad habits and want to prevent you from ending up stuck on the same in same situation.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:40 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
Foo wrote:
tnf wrote:
Now, do as I've said, not as I have done and as I still do.


I always found a problem with this. If your (the general your, nothing personal) advice is so great that I should listen to you, why aren't you following it yourself?

..and to that end, I came to the conclusion that anyone who said do as I say not as I do wasn't someone worth paying much attention to overall.

Not to be a cunt, but it'd seem fair to think many of your students will reach this same conclusion. The days of classroom repetition/verbatim are gone, and 'do as I say not as I do' seems one of the statements that naturally died with it.


You all aren't seriously trying to imply that my ramblings here about "do as I say" are how I teach, are you? I was simply trying to put the fire out on the whole "HEY TNF DID YOU KNOW THAT CPU ACTUALLY MEANS Central Processing Unit NOT PC????" issue.

And it isn't about following your own advice all the time - its about telling teenage kids that you've made the mistakes in the past, you've done the stupid shit and learned the hard way from it, so when you tell them to "do as I say, not as I've done" you are speaking from experience.

Perhaps they also tell you "do as I say, not as I do" because they are 'trapped' into the bad habits and want to prevent you from ending up stuck on the same in same situation.


LOL. When someone says CD drive on my cpu i laugh inside :D

But man why couldn't my teachers use video games when i was in school....all i had was tetris and some sprite games on my TI-86
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:41 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
You all aren't seriously trying to imply that my ramblings here about "do as I say" are how I teach, are you? I was simply trying to put the fire out on the whole "HEY TNF DID YOU KNOW THAT CPU ACTUALLY MEANS Central Processing Unit NOT PC????" issue.

See iccy's post above on the general philosophy thing. Also, I'm not taking this too seriously. It's 30 past midnight and I'm avoiding constructing a presentation, so I have time to think about inconsequential shit :)
Quote:
And it isn't about following your own advice all the time - its about telling teenage kids that you've made the mistakes in the past, you've done the stupid shit and learned the hard way from it, so when you tell them to "do as I say, not as I've done" you are speaking from experience.


Agreed, hence last post by myself.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:42 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Also, in regards to verbatim repetition - the fact that we've left that behind is one of the big problems facing education today. Memorization is a VERY useful tool in education - when it is used in conjunction with the development of understanding. It's another one of the many intellectual tools that students need to be successful later on.

These poor kids have been coddled with our 'feel good' system - they know feel good about themselves for no real reason because everyone is tippy toeing around to avoid hurting anyone's feelings with an F. We eliminate all the 'boring' or 'hard' work - and anytime a student fails we say it is because his/her learning style was not addressed. We are really setting some of these kids up for a REAL kick in the ass when they leave the safety of the educational system and get out into the working world. "Hey boss, I'm not an auditory learner - I am tactile/kinesthetic. So if you want me to do this, you will have to do more than just tell me how. And, I will need more time than everyone else because my parents have convinced myself and everyone around me that I have special needs."
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:43 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


You sound like kick ass teacher man. I bet that Vice City lesson really caught their attention.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:43 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
tnf wrote:
Now, do as I've said, not as I have done and as I still do.


I always found a problem with this. If your (the general your, nothing personal) advice is so great that I should listen to you, why aren't you following it yourself?

..and to that end, I came to the conclusion that anyone who said do as I say not as I do wasn't someone worth paying much attention to overall.

Not to be a cunt, but it'd seem fair to think many of your students will reach this same conclusion. The days of classroom repetition/verbatim are gone, and 'do as I say not as I do' seems one of the statements that naturally died with it.



Exactly, it im not trying to be a bitch about it either, but if X+Y=Z then thats what it is, you can tell me its A cause you said so. Its like the stuff going on in the government right now, telling us we dont know well enough and should just listen cause the higher powers know better, its turned us into mindless lemmings afraid to think outside the box and for ourselves, we are a society, for the most part, of clinger on's. We expect that someone else will give us the answer and cant be bothered to get it ourselves cause we are too busy talking on our cell phones or doing whatever else our inner circle deems as " cool"


Its the little varations in a path that create great change when you look ahead to the distant point of arrival. Just expressing a perspective.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:49 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:



And it isn't about following your own advice all the time - its about telling teenage kids that you've made the mistakes in the past, you've done the stupid shit and learned the hard way from it, so when you tell them to "do as I say, not as I've done" you are speaking from experience.



Good enough reply. Just trying to express a faulty perspective is being relayed, IMHO, if thats a unchecked mentaly. I cant deny your correct, i mean if i have my leg cut off cause i bet on a horse and i say to not bet on horses, its a valid perspective. But in the same rspect if i take a drink and tell you to not do so, thats hipocracy. Just a thin line to walk on that topic, so i think its healthy to have peopel keep you on your toes :)
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:51 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


tnf wrote:
Also, in regards to verbatim repetition - the fact that we've left that behind is one of the big problems facing education today. Memorization is a VERY useful tool in education - when it is used in conjunction with the development of understanding. It's another one of the many intellectual tools that students need to be successful later on.


To take one example of this: I'm reasonably of the belief that a person's mind has a finite capacity, and that after a point, as a mind learns new things, older less important things are inevitably forgotten.

Now, from this I derive a belief that the best information to pack into your head is equations. Ways to work things out given certain inputs, and getting an output. The opposite method to this is to be given all the possible outputs and just store them, as a big list, in your head.

Verbatim teaching supports the latter, and I believe strongly in the former. Think of it like this... take a disc. you could cram in hundreds of equations to create an infinite number of beautiful fractals over time, or you can store about 10 more perfected crisper fractals in jpg format. The former might be slower, but can produce so many more results and has so much more flexibility.

So I'll apply this, more or less, to the teaching methods one can employ. I could also use the shitty 'give a man a fire he'll be warm for a day, give him the means to create fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life' analogy too. Shit. I just did :icon33:



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 03:59 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Also, an observation from school times still fresh in my memory:
You can class students into 2 distinct groups. There are those who simply accept the information being presented to them, and attempt to store it all up and regurgitate it as necessary. These are typically the students who can do above average in class, and fit in well in workplace scenarios in the future where low original thinking is required.

On the other hand, you've got the paths. Those who worked out properly at an early age how certain bricks fitted into certain shaped holes, but not just THAT they fitted in there, but WHY they did. From that point on, education for this kind of person has been about receiving some new information, then working it around in their head until it fits into the existing information they already carry. This kind of learner can have trouble with exams and such where they can't get their head around what the lecturer is really wanting from them, yet they do know all the subject material at hand. These can also be those bastards who appear 'effortlessly' smart in school.



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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 04:04 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
tnf wrote:
Also, in regards to verbatim repetition - the fact that we've left that behind is one of the big problems facing education today. Memorization is a VERY useful tool in education - when it is used in conjunction with the development of understanding. It's another one of the many intellectual tools that students need to be successful later on.


To take one example of this: I'm reasonably of the belief that a person's mind has a finite capacity, and that after a point, as a mind learns new things, older less important things are inevitably forgotten.

Now, from this I derive a belief that the best information to pack into your head is equations. Ways to work things out given certain inputs, and getting an output. The opposite method to this is to be given all the possible outputs and just store them, as a big list, in your head.

Verbatim teaching supports the latter, and I believe strongly in the former. Think of it like this... take a disc. you could cram in hundreds of equations to create an infinite number of beautiful fractals over time, or you can store about 10 more perfected crisper fractals in jpg format. The former might be slower, but can produce so many more results and has so much more flexibility.

So I'll apply this, more or less, to the teaching methods one can employ. I could also use the shitty 'give a man a fire he'll be warm for a day, give him the means to create fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life' analogy too. Shit. I just did :icon33:



Kids need to have a mastery of the language of science - vocab, basic math relationships, multiplication tables, etc., in order to do scientific work in a timely matter without getting too bogged down.

I understand your point, and that is not what I am implying in regards to the usefulness of memorization. We have moved too far to the other side at this point, though.

For example, I might be working a problem on the board, and I'll say "ok folks, if this wave is moving at 72 m/s, and it has a wavelength of 8 meters, what is its speed?" Instead of someone giving me a quick answer after we set up the problem, I have to wait for someone to dig out their calculator. This doesn't seem like a big deal until students are in situations where time is a factor.

You will have to take my word on it - I've been involved in scientific research, written textbook material, have graduate experience in both the biological and computer sciences - so I KNOW what the general skill sets are that people need to do well in science beyond high school and college. Many of our students are leaving high school without many of these skills (memorized latin and greek roots, memorized algebraic formulas, memorized physics formulas).
I'm all for a MAJOR overhaul of the way the current educational system is going, and also for an overhaul of graduate programs (many graduate programs in the sciences, at least) for a variety of reasons.

In the states, we are getting surpassed by other nations in matters of current science (look at Korea and the stem cells) for many reasons - the Bush administration is hampering science at almost every corner (slashing the NSF budgets...etc), and dumbass states like Kansas aren't helping matters.

There - all this from a topic about Forza being used as a physics tool.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 04:09 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Foo wrote:
Also, an observation from school times still fresh in my memory:
You can class students into 2 distinct groups. There are those who simply accept the information being presented to them, and attempt to store it all up and regurgitate it as necessary. These are typically the students who can do above average in class, and fit in well in workplace scenarios in the future where low original thinking is required.

On the other hand, you've got the paths. Those who worked out properly at an early age how certain bricks fitted into certain shaped holes, but not just THAT they fitted in there, but WHY they did. From that point on, education for this kind of person has been about receiving some new information, then working it around in their head until it fits into the existing information they already carry. This kind of learner can have trouble with exams and such where they can't get their head around what the lecturer is really wanting from them, yet they do know all the subject material at hand. These can also be those bastards who appear 'effortlessly' smart in school.



You have taken my suggestion about memorization and applied it to extreme situations. Notice - I said "memorization alongside a teaching of UNDERSTANDING."

Perhaps I can't speak about this very well, because I had an almost photographic memory (before I drank most of it away...heh). I was one of those 'bastards' who could miss a week of class, show up during the review, take no notes, skim the book for a few minutes, and then get A's on all the tests....Good thing, too, because I had horrible attendance throughout high school (skipped most of my junior year to play Adamms family pinball...) but graduate with only 1 B in 4 years (in both high school and college.)
:icon34:
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 08:16 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


bitWISE wrote:
You sound like kick ass teacher man. I bet that Vice City lesson really caught their attention.


Thanks. I think I was the first teacher in the country to use it. I had to make sure there was nothing too inappropriate...I did, at one point, have to knock a broad off a bike after I crashed the one I was demoing with.

But I made everyone close their eyes.
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PostPosted: 05-23-2005 09:25 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


WOW

this thread got derailed fast.

for the record: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH SAYING CPU WHEN YOU MEAN COMPUTER.*

why? because of two reasons i believe:

(1) as its been said time and time again, language is dynamic. nowadays when people say cpu, they mean computer. yeah, its not technically correct and if this thread were a techincal thread about computer parts it would be inappropriate. but still, its just the way people talk nowadays and that is ok.

its just like when people say atomic bomb. i know what they're referring to, they're usually referring to the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. technically its nuclear bomb, not atomic bomb, but the term works. and again, if it were a technical discussion, then its important to point out.

i think actually that its more forgiveable when someone says cpu for computer than atomic bomb for nuclear bomb because...

(2) the word escapes my mind but there is a literary device used when you say a part of something to mean the whole thing. like saying shingles when you mean roof. i think cpu is also like this. and i think the whole cpu for computer thing started out of a combination of my reasons (1) and (2). anyway, you can find this literary device in other things too. sometimes its hard to think examples but...here's one: many people say "im going to get some ass" to be "im going to get a girl".


* there actually might be something wrong with that word usage. i'm not that arrogant or pretentious to make it sound as if what i say is the end all. i just wanted to catch people's eye.
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tnf
guru
guru
Joined: 13 Mar 2001
Posts: 18068
PostPosted: 05-23-2005 09:32 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Language is not completely dynamic. There may be a dynamic bit in the slang used at different times, and, tbh, I see the term 'cpu' to be a sort of 'inter-slang' for computers.
The rules that govern the usage of the English language are pretty standard, though.
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AmIdYfReAk
Elite
Elite
Joined: 10 Feb 2000
Posts: 28023
PostPosted: 05-24-2005 06:24 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


so when people say that they are putting a new cpu into there computer, it blows your mind right?
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GONNAFISTYA
Glayven?
Glayven?
Joined: 23 Jan 2005
Posts: 13025
PostPosted: 05-24-2005 06:54 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


lol

tnf devotes his life to teaching...helping to shape the minds of our future society.

I spend my time twisting and rotting the minds of our future society....teaching them the of virtues of weapon proficiency, blasting Mexicans with an Uzi and the proper technique of shooting mutants in the groin. :lol:
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tnf
guru
guru
Joined: 13 Mar 2001
Posts: 18068
PostPosted: 05-24-2005 06:12 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


AmIdYfReAk wrote:
so when people say that they are putting a new cpu into there computer, it blows your mind right?


No...my mind usually functions at a high enough level that I can handle most of the things thrown at it, even that. In fact, I've built my last 5 computers, and have put CPUs in all of them without ever getting confused at the whole situation, going cross-eyed, and falling over onto the floor in convulsions.
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