Who Needs Tutorials When You've Got Phunland!

When I was doing my homework this weekend, my 15-year old daughter looked over my shoulder. She first asked me what I was doing and then almost immediately gutturally moaned the word “physics” when she noticed the “2D physics sandbox” descriptor under the “phun” logo. Even though she won’t experience physics until next year, the course reputation has already been clearly communicated to Kelsey by her three older siblings. It’s also interesting to note that this groan came from an honors student who plans on pursuing a biology or chemistry undergraduate major when she enters college in 2011. But…as she watched me work within the application for a few minutes, Kelsey asked me if she could try the program and I promptly relinquished my seat to observe her.

I found it interesting that she quickly disregarded the program’s tutorial – like father, like daughter. I too, found the tutorial to be non-intuitive and frustrating. It seemed that I should be able to apply the tutorial directions directly into the program by following sequential instructions – which would have been awesome – but I could not achieve this kind of functionality. Fortunately, the Phunland program itself is so interesting and elegantly simple, that even people not intrinsically “wired” for physics like Kelsey and me felt compelled to just experiment with the program, learning through trial and error, which, I would argue is the ultimate goal of any science course or program. Through trial and error (and a little bit of back and forth with the tutorial for basic command guidance) with simple geometric shapes, springs and water, I spent an inordinate amount of time adjusting the friction and density of my moving objects in an effort to try and control the gravitational movement of my objects. As I navigated through the program I concluded that this is a wonderful constructivist teaching tool that quickly establishes baseline accurate or inaccurate understandings and through experimentation constructs new meaning for learners. I’m assuming that Phunland is the program you refer to as “aimed at high [intrinsic] motivation” given a learner’s natural tendency to want to play with the program, and Concord’s “molecular Work Bench” as the application focused on “deeper content.” If so, I’m not sure I agree with this general statement because I think that Phunland, used to enhance the instruction of a gifted physics teacher, could truly help make physics relevant and meaningful to even the most resistant and intimidated science students, helping to achieve a much deeper level of content understanding.

The Concord Molecular Work Bench program utilized sequenced instruction to step through a lesson focused on random motion and molecular stickiness. In fact, I would say that the instructional design of the lesson really negated the need for the typical “how to use the program” tutorial and replaced it with linearally sequenced content with instructions that simply moved the learner through a lesson with very, very specific learning objectives. While the program clearly transferred the ideas of “stickiness” variables of positive and negative charges as well as the effects of temperature on self-assembly, for me there was no depth of understanding transferred. So even though the sequential instructions made the application easy to use and navigate this “strength” was also the program’s weakness in that experimentation beyond the well-defined lesson parameters was not possible. Even though I am often a fan of the Corcord Consortium methodology, because manipulating animations teaches complex content infinitely better than any textbook can, I’d have to say that I preferred Phunland’s more free wheeling blank canvas approach when comparing the two for this assignment. I think that both programs could be powerful adjunctive tools in the hands of a good teacher depending upon the specific learning objectives that need to be achieved.

Sketchup and POV-Ray Assignment

The first image above was developed using POV-Ray, the coding for which can be found below. The second image was developed using Google's Sketchup. I found the Google product to be easy to learn and will probable find ways to utilize this application in our day to day training development work at B. Braun. The Sketchup illustration above is a diagram of a laminar flow hood, which is utilized in pharmacy clean rooms for sterile compounding processes.

The POV-Ray application was an exercise in futility. I found the program to be insanely complicated, non-intuitive and very frustrating. My dominate learning styles are visual spatial and verbal/linguistic. I am a weak logical mathematical learner, so the trial and error of arbitrarily plugging in coordinates to just place a star in my solar system illustration (above) was incredibly time consuming. The ability to copy, paste and drag shapes directly on the actual rendered image would have made creation a lot easier. If PON-Ray and Photo shop were a combined application, I could see it's ability to automatically create relationships between image objects to be compelling, but for me the inability to work on the "canvas" with PON-Ray wasn't a pleasant experience.

#include "colors.inc"
global_settings { assumed_gamma 1.0 }

background { color rgb <0,> }


camera { location <0.0,>
direction 1.5*z
right x*image_width/image_height
look_at <0.0,> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <1,>
translate <-5, 5, -5> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <0,>
translate <6,> }

light_source { <0,>
color rgb <0,>
translate <6,> }

sphere
{ <0,>, 2.5
pigment { color Gray }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/2 }
}

sphere
{ <-2, -3, 5>, 0.5
pigment { color Blue }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <-2,-3, 12> 1.5
pigment { color Cyan }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/2 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.5
pigment { color Blue }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.25
pigment { color Cyan }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <2,>, 0.25
pigment { color Red }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}

sphere
{ <0,>, 0.25
pigment { color Red }
finish { specular 0.6 }
normal { agate 0.25 scale 1/4 }
}
sphere
{ <-5, -4, 8>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

sphere
{ <-5.5, -4.5, 8.5>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

sphere
{ <3.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2.75,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <2.5,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <3,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}
sphere
{ <1.85,>, 0.05
pigment { color White }
finish { specular 100.6 }
}

TQ#7 Gapminder: “If Serious People Use the Internet the Internet Will Get Serious Content”

According to Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorates as one attends to ever more tasks. Claudia Koonz, professor of history at Duke University, encourages her students to “disconnect” from technology. She thinks students today have an aversion for complexity that is directly related to multitasking with technology. “It’s as if they have too many windows open on their hard drive,” she says. “In order to have a taste for sifting through different layers of truth, you have to stay with a topic and pursue it deeply, rather than go across the surface with your tool bar.” Today, students are sorters of the superficial, which results in mediocre learning versus mastery learning. How can a student be truly immersed in social studies research while listening to an AC/DC song on iTunes between checking email, while IMing multiple friends? The situation is further exacerbated when one looks at the depth of online content and the value of online content as opposed to reading peer-reviewed journal articles and studies and (God forbid) a genuine published book related to the social studies topic of interest. (Time, March 27, 2006) Even though I consider myself an enthusiastic early adopter of all kinds of technological tools to enhance performance, I often worry that digitally available information and resources are almost always considered credible by most students. In addition, I worry about the lack of content depth even if the digital information is, in fact, credible. I believe that all of the factors listed above are creating a digital “Cliffs Notes” generation who feel that two or three bullet points related to just about any topic is acceptable. That being said, I often find myself to be the lone skeptic – waiting to assess the real return of any technological teaching or learning application before advocating its use.

That being said, I rarely see any software application that “sells” me instantaneously, I was absolutely blown away by Hans Rosling’s Gapminders data mining application. Wow! Dr. Rosling has actually developed a truly transformational tool that helps students think about thinking. Gapminders can help learners overcome their preconceived ideas and encourages digging deeper into the data once the “gap” between their prior understandings and new information has been identified (truly a constructivist learning environment that creates new understandings). There are limitations in using the tool. For example, in the first image at the top of the posting, I was disappointed that information was limited to the years 1995-2006 when I tried to compare the GDP of countries to 8th grade math achievement – so even with this wonderful tool data depth will drive practical application.

I preferred working with the deeper data bases like when I compared electrical power consumption (kWh per capita) to total income (GDP). Between 1960 and 2005 it is interesting to me that India and China seem to be accelerating (faster) up and to the right (more power use = more total income) as compared to a more gradual up and to the right trend for the US. It left me wondering about the new “space” race for cheaper/cleaner energy solutions. Is the US at a disadvantage in having to restructure an entrenched 20th century energy infrastructure versus China and India who may be able to transition faster to 21rst century energy solutions like solar, geothermal, wind, Etc.? I found myself wanting more and deeper data to fill the “gap” in my knowledge. I found that increasing power consumption per capita was associated with:

• Increasing health expenditures per capita
• Increased adult literary rates
• More patent applications
• Increase income per person
• Greater total CO2 emissions
• Increased life expectancy
• Decreased average number of children per woman
• Decreasing infant mortality rates

For me, Gapminder gives the student who is wired for surfing the ability to do so within a constrained environment that encourages sifting through different layers and staying with complex topics and pursuing them more deeply. This tool could truly be a catalyst for mastery learning, specifically around the content areas that contain the widest and deepest databases. I see only upside – no down side in the use of this exciting tool. Kudos to Dr. Rosling on his accomplishment thus far with Gapminder and best wishes for his continued “liberation” of data to continue enhancing the capabilities of this transformational learning application.