Week 11!

This week we prepared for teaching the six grade kids in maple ton when we come back from thanksgiving break.  Our group is going to teach about the physics of flying.  We are going to use paper airplanes and talk about or really have the kids experiment and see why certain styles and designs of paper airplanes work and why they don't.  I'm not really excited to teach this subject.  After hearing the one of the other groups talk about potato batteries and having the kids do that it makes me want to scrap the whole plane idea but its too late for that.  I will still be a team player and teach and act as excited as is appropriate but our lesson plan is boring.  I'm hoping that it can be over soon and we can move on. 

Week 10!

We had our last stl lesson presentations this week.  They were pretty good today.  The activities were engaging and they were things that I wanted to do so it wasn't a chore to do them.  I kinda want to talk about my woods project that im working on.  I am building the writing desk and of the three options that were available to us i thought my Paige could use a little desk when she gets older for school and stuff.  Tate and I will make something else so he can have that experience with me but I decided to give the desk to Paige.  Its coming along really well.  I wasn't making good progress on it last week and then I decided that I was going to speed up and do things my way instead of looking at the plans so much.  In the beginning you have to look at the plans because I didn't make my own plans so I was using someone else's idea and it is a little complicated but now its really coming together.  Today I cut the drawer rings to fit inside the desk and give it some much needed structure.  We have a dado blade set for the table saws but there are so many students in the class and they are all trying to use the same dado set so i just went over to the table saw and did the work way quicker because I wasn't feeling the pressure to hurry up so some one else can use it.  because i decided to go this route, Im farther ahead than I would have expected to be and Im feeling good about the whole thing.  I even had the whole thing put together as a pre-dry fit and I am very pleased with my own work.  It may not be the coolest thing ive ever made but it is by far the finest thing I have ever made.  I have never used so many good tools and machines.  I have never really had the chance to work with anything but plywood and pine 2x4s.  That is the stuff you can buy at home depot and so my work was construction site grade.  Im going on too long with this but im having fun except for the little quizzes that Dr. C has to make the class a class.  If it was just go work in the wood shop I would love this class.  As it is now, it stresses me out.

Week 9

I just finished my power point for my STL lesson tomorrow.  It is my lesson plan and I am really excited to share it tomorrow.  I really like preparing lessons that I get to present.  I just love being in the group that we are in.  The whole major is like this where we all work to benefit and uplift each other.  There isn't the competition in this program that exists in other programs.  I would hate it if we all worked against each other.  My lesson tomorrow is on power and energy technologies and I have quite the plan.  I will start with some boring old definition time.  That will be the activity that I look at and do my formative evaluation.  The summative evaluations will be at the end when i ask about ways that we can use power more wisely.  I just remembered that we have a quiz or learning adventure on the philosophers of teaching and styles or teaching.  That has totally killed my buzz but I just need to study the philosophies of the people that I remember and the teaching methods that go with those then I can get on with my lesson.  Mike is teaching tomorrow too so that will be cool.  I thought I would incorporate a vegetable tray into my lesson because they are good and vegetables are a good example of chemical potential energy which fits my lesson.  It would be better if I handed out LED's to everyone but i'm not going to do that.