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.

Week 8!

This week has been busy so I haven't captured or reflected on much.  I finished up our lesson plan for the rov things with Nate over a Google doc.  I love Google docs.  They are so convenient for me because I can't meet with groups but I have plenty of downtime here at work so its no bog deal if I spend a couple hours on a Google doc pounding out some details for a paper or project.  We talked about technology in class on Tuesday and I thought about mechanical advantage and why we have technology and its just cool.  We have technology to make up for what we are incapable of.  I can't be everywhere at once but I have the internet to make it as easy as possible to complete assignments and other stuff.  We may not be all powerful beings that have no limits but have amazing minds that come up with solutions to complex issues and I love it!

Week 7? Reflection 7 at least.

Today I had the opportunity to go and observe two classes in the same time that I would normally only see one.  I Went over to maple mountain high school and observed Mr. Roberts wood shop class where all the kids were working on nightstands.  Utah makes all the wood shops make night stands as one of the projects because my brothers both made the same kind of thing but much better quality.  There were a bunch of kids in there working on their projects and they weren't doing a very good job because the night stands were all crooked and messed up.  The teacher said that was his slacker class.  He said it always seems to happen where one of the classes are full of slackers and kids that don't care or listen too well.  It was unfortunate but you can't get around it.  I helped out some of the kids as they were putting their panels together for the top of the nightstands.  That was a fun experience.  After Mr. Massic's prep period was over the welding class started.  It was fun to watch but most of it was out in the welding booths and you need protective masks and gloves to get in there.  We didn't stay much longer because it was already ten o'clock.  He had some interesting methods like the time clock that he had the students use to log their hours for attendance and they also get state credit for the time they put in welding.  That was cool.
I would probably do things similar but the wood shop class needs to be tightened up.  The kids being slackers isn't okay.  At the same time, you cant make kids care about the subject you teach so you can either let them stay or kick them out.
I will have to watch how I manage things with my kids.  I know I don't really like letting them get into things because they make such a mess but i just can't help trying to keep things straight and clean at home.  That is as good of an "action" as I can think of.
I also wanted to mention my experience with the other high school that I went to this week.  I wont mention names but the teacher let me know what to expect as far as pay was concerned teaching in this school district and possibly its the same in others.  It was slightly more than I make now by about $10,000 a year.  I didn't consider a career in teaching to make it big and live a fancy expensive life but I feel like putting all this work in to get slightly better pay per year than I get now seems like a bad deal.  Honestly that scared me.  I hope I don't sound greedy or ungrateful,  I just want to be able to live.  4+ years of schooling and barely making more than what you can make at an entry level position is not a good trade.

BYU Library Instruction Class

So we have to take a class here at BYU and probably all universities called technical writing if you are in the engineering school or just some form of third year writing class for all the other majors.  My gripe is this little hour long instruction is probably meant to help us but what they don't realize is that we usually try to avoid this crap at all costs.  We do not come to the library for research as undergrads and if you are a graduate student then you probably have the ability to do this stuff already.  The teacher knows his stuff but I just don't care about this library stuff.  Even if I wanted to know how to do this stuff like finding sources and do it all right and proper then I would ask for help because that is how I learn stuff.  I do not do well with this mass instruction on stuff that is pretty boring.  Anyway, maybe one day people in authority will figure out how to take feedback and design stuff before they design activities that are particular.

New Handlebars!

I got my new bars in the mail on Saturday and had them on in a couple hours.  It took longer than I wanted it to because the cables and the wires had to be tucked in and made to fit.  the cabling on this bike is a mess.  i need to make new cables for it and clean them up.  I opened up the headlight bucket and tried to stuff some of the cables in there but it was just such a mess.  The starter button doesn't always work now either.  If it is the first start of the day then you need to push start the stupid thing but if you were riding within the last hour or so then you can hold the button and twist the throttle til it decides it wants to start.  Its a weird thing.  I think I want to make some significant changes tho this bikes electrical once ive got it out of service for the winter.  Clean up the wiring.  maybe even run the cables in the handlebars or something.  The bike looks pretty bad but with the new bars it is much more sporty feeling.  I love the riding position.  Much more comfortable.  I will order some new mirrors to replace the old ones because right now it looks way too busy.  the seat will stay for a while until i can find some tubing and bend a rear hoop.  I have access to a tubing bender at school and I can weld it to the bike once I can make changes without needing to ride it home.  Im thinking I want to paint the tank grey or silver and most other things flat black.  I like the idea of a brown or tan vinyl seat.  I would like leather for a seat but that might not do so well if it was to get wet.  Still getting bad gas mileage.  Ive been getting about 90 miles out of 3.6 gallons.  Our camry got better gas mileage than that.  I don't know if I need to sync the carbs or something else but that hasn't been done since I put in the new jets so its a fair assumption.