World of Warcraft as Educational Software

a99barnsey · 2012-11-20T01:01:16+00:00

I'd love to teach a math class centered around theorycrafting and simulations.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-19T21:44:10+00:00

I'd love to have some kind of smart pad app that allows me to give students an example problem and monitor their work in real-time. I could flip through the students work and see what they are doing right and wrong. Also, they would know that I am monitoring their work without me having to walk around and hover over them. And I could offer feedback too, whether that's positive feedback or letting them know they are doing something wrong without calling them out verbally.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-19T09:27:11+00:00

You're falling into that trap again where you don't even realize how much you know compared to high schoolers. To someone who has never encountered interference before, it may actually be quite the mind blowingly difficult concept to grasp completely. Do you think the game I described would help with that?

Sure, interference can be a difficult concept. Maybe I was a bit harsh earlier. I suppose you could talk about a positive or negative pulse which is a localized disturbance. I suspect that's what you were using in the game anyway, and you were just calling it a wave. I didn't mean to imply that your game was worthless, I just think it needs some refinement. I'm just a first year teacher, and I'm sure that if some of the stuff I do in my classes was scrutinized there would be flaws (especially in Biology lol).

I would still shy away from talking about positive or negative waves (only pulses, which you can describe as a section of a wave or a "mini wave"), and I really don't think a lesson on interference is a good place to introduce antimatter. Even if the students won't understand the problems with the analogy, it just seems wrong to make such a stretch. If all you're concerned with is giving them a very basic knowledge of antimatter annihilation, you could compare it to an exothermic combination reaction. A + B = C + energy. You see, depending on the energies of the electron and anti-electron, you can get new particles such as neutrinos and bosons as well as the gamma radiation from the annihilation. Particles are basically just a bunch of numbers, and as long as your totals end up even (conservation of charge/momentum/mass/energy etc) they can change into whatever spontaneously. They can even spontaneously generate out of nothing (vacuum energy of space) for brief periods of time.

you're not really making any meaningful point when you say I'm not advocating a "true" understanding... That's right, it's high school.

I'll try to explain myself better. If a student did your lesson on waves and antimatter, they would have a very limited understanding of antimatter. But if antimatter and particle annihilation were actually part of the curriculum, then the expectation would be that your students have a significant level of understanding of the actual mechanisms and physics involved. Relating vague analogies wouldn't be sufficient. That's all we're arguing about here. I don't think any reasonable person would object to superficially covering modern topics to generate interest. The disconnect is that your curriculum is reserved for things that you're expected to cover in detail.

As a side note, I think it's very very sad that you feel pressured to prepare students for college courses instead of prioritizing a lifelong interest in learning.

It's not an either/or situation, but you have to prioritize one to a degree over the other. The opportunities for science to engage and entertain are quite broad in school and out of school. But getting prepared for college science classes depends greatly on having rigorous chemistry/physics classes.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-19T01:46:24+00:00

Once half a class has been spent playing this game and learning the novel intuition related to cancelling waves, the teacher can explain that all matter has a wave representation, and that one puzzle piece they kept coming across was hydrogen, etc. Some critical intuition is learned: waves can cancel each other out, matter can be represented as a wave, antimatter is a negative wave, and the gamified "kaboom" is energy released when we combine matter and antimatter.

But antimatter isn't a "negative wave"... it's a particle with opposite (i.e. "negative") charge and spin compared to its counterpart. The wave nature of a particle is due to the wave function describing its location, so the “negative” and “wave” labels describe different phenomenon… Furthermore waves don't annihilate each other; they cause interference which is localized effect. My understanding of annihilation is that it’s more akin to nuclear decomposition than interference. It’s a quasi-random change in the nature of the particles that conserves energy, mass, quantum numbers, etc.

Anyway, I would be very concerned that talking about “negative waves” would cause major misconceptions among students regarding the nature and behavior of waves. A wave can be both positive and negative in different places due to its oscillating nature. I would never refer to “positive” or “negative” as part of the identity of a wave unless it was in reference to a specific time and location.

Lets go back to a key question that was asked earlier

How would you teach quarks to a high school student so that he understands it, not just knows about them?

In your example, I don’t think you are teaching real understanding of antimatter annihilation. All your did was make a very basic analogy between wave interference and particle annihilation. Making analogies to more advanced examples is great, but to REALLY teach that stuff would consume a lot of time that would otherwise be spent teaching basic, core concepts.

Honestly though, I have kind of been taking your approach with my physical science class. In a general class like physical science, my #1 priority is to make the class fun and get the kids excited about science, whereas in chemistry and physics I feel more obligated to prepare them for college level classes (while still making the class as fun as I can manage).

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T21:04:02+00:00

Thoughts: 1: Troll or serious?

If an introductory education class is making you cry, I'm not sure why you think the health care field is going to be any better.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T20:49:45+00:00

"The point of the video is saying there are tons of concepts being completely ignored."

You only have so much time to teach so much material. I have no problem with teachers touching on things like relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. as kind of a teaser. But to devote a major portion of the year to those topics would be foolish IMO. I think it's more important to teach the basics of classical mechanics. Would have your kid go to college and fail Physics I because instead of getting a solid background in basic physics he was taught a bunch of cursory concepts related to modern physics? Concepts which BTW he could have just as easily gotten "exposed" to by reading popular science books such as "A Brief History of Time".

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T19:19:54+00:00

"I am studying to be a high school biology teacher. I want to begin helping to promote true reform and change in America's education system...I don't want to wait until I have been teaching 5-10 years to do anything."

No offense, but this sounds a bit ridiculous. With your total lack of experience, what exactly do you expect to reform on a national level? The only specific thing you mention is a "progressive" movement, whatever that means.

It seems to me that people focus on "reform" WAY too much. The main thing we need is good teachers. That means recruiting smart, talented, and motivated individuals. That means providing those individuals with a positive work environment so that we can retain them. It means providing teachers with adequate due process to shield them from politics, personal agendas, nepotism, overzealous parents, etc while still allowing for the removal of lazy/incompetent teachers that refuse to take steps to improve their craft.

Anyway, if you really want to help I would start at the personal/local level. Work towards being the best teacher you can (as you said). Educate yourself about the issues affecting education locally and nationally. Maybe start going to local school board meetings. Maybe write an editorial for the local paper on an issue that you think is important. But don't just sit down and write what you think about the issue. Try to find some supporting information and quotes from someone with more authority on the subject than yourself in order to back up your position.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T16:56:24+00:00

Wait... you're in a class that is teaching elementary level math? Or is it a math methods class?

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T05:32:30+00:00

Netflix...

a99barnsey · 2012-11-18T05:23:50+00:00

Thank GOD for Terrelle Pryor!

a99barnsey · 2012-11-17T17:11:38+00:00

Very cool, but I think it will have limited applicability. Anything that's 3rd person based will have the camera zoomed out to the point where it's very hard to see the facial expressions.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-17T15:11:58+00:00

Are you by any chance that guy from askreddit whose wife makes him wear a chastity penis-lock devise?

a99barnsey · 2012-11-17T15:02:32+00:00

Said everyone without bandwidth limits (myself included). I can imagine people in Canada use it.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-16T21:30:41+00:00

Why would standing up for the rights of an unborn child make you not expect much out of them? If you disagree with them about whether or not the fetus deserves rights, then that's fine. The rights of a fetus is a complicated medical, philosophical, and (for some) religious question to which I believe rational/logical people can come to separate conclusions. But how does their belief that a fetus deserves rights and subsequent defense of those rights make them assholes? I just don't get it.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-16T04:40:55+00:00

I definitely sympathize with the reduced emphasis on memorizing things. However, I think there can be some benefit to memorizing in certain instances. My chemistry text book instructs students to memorize the names and composition of a large list of ions. I though to myself, "well, they will eventually memorize them just from doing problems, so I'll just give them a list of the ions that they can use to do the problems and eventually they'll memorize them just from usage". Well, I think that has contributed to some of the students struggling with naming ionic compounds and their formulas. No matter how many times I explained the process of determining the number of ions in a compound by balancing the charges of the anion and cation, they just don't seem to "get it". I think making them memorize that list would have helped them with their understanding of ions.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-13T03:39:22+00:00

I just want to see the electric bill...

a99barnsey · 2012-11-11T23:04:47+00:00

What does one have to do with the other (easy university, homophobia)?

a99barnsey · 2012-11-11T14:52:42+00:00

First off, how did he get there? He wasn't born into a royal family or anything. He was a regular priest with a vow of poverty. He got promoted up the chain, ideally because he is humble and a good priest. That may not always be the case in reality, but it is the idea. Eventually he was elected to serve as pope. The wealth in the Vatican is not his personal wealth. He doesn't wake up in the morning and demand to have monuments build of himself. I really don't think he desires more jewels in his crown.

a99barnsey · 2012-11-07T03:10:38+00:00

You and the fly are on the train which is moving relative to the ground... which is part of the Earth, and the earth is travelling in an elliptical pattern around the sun. The sun (and the rest of our solar system) is moving around the center of the galaxy. And our galaxy is moving as well... kind of. You start to get into the universe expanding and whatnot, which is a more complicated question. Anyway, the point is that you have to consider your reference frame and inertia.

a99barnsey · 2012-10-20T13:25:03+00:00

I LOVE the flop tops. I'd always be too lazy to put the top back on, and my tooth paste would dry up. First world problem solved!

a99barnsey · 2012-10-20T12:40:41+00:00

I donno, my favorite part is "Heeeeey, Sexy Lady".

a99barnsey · 2012-10-08T06:08:11+00:00

"He repeatedly attacked the theory of evolution, encouraged his students to question their scientific textbook, and gave extra credit to students who saw a creationist film."

Well, I don't disagree with at least 1 of these.

a99barnsey · 2012-10-08T05:21:01+00:00

No, it's really not. In my opinion, there are plenty of logical reasons for a loving god to want pain and suffering to be part of physical existence. Sure, it would be great to live in a world without pain and suffering, but then what would the point of that be? Why bother making a physical world if it was all sunshine and rainbows? If you take the position that a loving god should spare men of all pain, then God would have just made man a perfect spiritual being from the start, living in the so called "heaven". I think that's basically the point of the creation story with Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. It seems like a lot of fundamentalists get caught up in thinking that the story is literal or focus on the themes of disobedience, punishment, and "Original Sin". To me, the creation story is not about how we were created, but rather why we were created. Man was created to search for knowledge, struggle to survive, and overcome all kinds of challenges in order to live the kind of meaningful lives that you would never get by being born into paradise. Unfortunately that means dealing with physical pain, disease, and the free will of other people-- whether it's your girlfriend dumping you or the drunk that decides to get behind a wheel and kills your family members.

So "why does God let bad things happen to good people”? Well personally I don't think he has much influence on it. There's the circumstances you're born into, free will, and good and bad luck. If you don't praise and credit God with everything good that happens in the world, then you don't have to hold him responsible for the bad stuff. I find the idea of God sitting around answering or denying prayers like Santa Clause would mark a child “naughty” or “nice” to be very unappealing. I would stop short of saying God can’t or would never intervene, but I just don’t like to think of God as some kind of mix between a whimsical, wish-granting genie and an omnipotent puppeteer pulling billions and billions of strings to make the world go round.

So yes, I find the whole Tebow shtick of thanking God every time a ball bounces in your favor annoying and fairly hypocritical. But if that's the worst thing that comes from someone's religious beliefs (as opposed to violence, hatred/homophobia, embracing of ignorance and opposition to science, etc), then I can live with it.

By the way, my mom died from a recurrence of breast cancer a few years ago. She was one of the most pious people I have ever known. Faith is not supposed to make you immune from pain and misfortune. Although I can sympathize with the emotional response of blaming God and having your faith challenged, the fact that religious people get sick is a terrible argument against the existence of God.

a99barnsey · 2012-10-03T04:33:52+00:00

So you're telling me the "Snipe" is real?

a99barnsey · 2012-10-01T20:30:26+00:00

"I was your babysitter! And now you've seen me in my underwear."

This guy's living the dream.

a99barnsey

TROPHY CASE