Education Matters

31 Jul

Using GPS Data with Google Earth & the Activboard

Author: Administrator // Category: Classroom

One of the best things about Promethean is that we are surrounded with some fantastic technology, but it’s technology with a purpose. We love exploring new ways of using technology but also integrating it with other cool applications. After all, isn’t the learning experience so much better when we bring together the best-of-the-best, for a rich, blend of media, and all through the Activboard?

This is something we were recently exploring on our new ActivBoard 300 Pro. using Google Earth 5.0 We decided to explore the option to sync your GPS data from a journey, with Google Earth, to display an overview of your travel history.

To do this, it’s actually incredibly simple. With our Garmin eTrex device we were able to connect the USB cable from the device and plug it into the USB port on the new Activboard 300 Pro.

With Google Earth 5.0 running, we then simply went to Tools > GPS > Device > Import.

This then brought up the journey we’d previously plotted, from start to finish, overlaying on to Google Earth the route that we’d taken.

Using this date we could then explore the journey, observing the distance, the habitat, the geography of the surrounding area, zooming in to Google Earth using our Activpen.

Top-Tips for Google Earth With the Activboard!

We shot this video with our FlipVideo – a great way to record instant moments -to show you how easy it is to plot GPS data over Google Earth.

We’ve also included in the video a top- tip on how you can use your Activpen to zoom in on locations with a right-click, rather than having to use Google’s zoom function.

If you’ve any great tips for or videos of your class using Google Earth on the Activboard, feel free to contact the Planet team and you could be reading about yourself very soon!

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29 Jul

Should teachers’ student loans be forgiven?

Author: Administrator // Category: Classroom

The Student Loan Forgiveness Program

On July 1, 2009, a new government program, called the Student Loan Forgiveness Program, went in to effect to financially assist people who take on careers in public service, such as teachers.

As a former classroom teacher who incurred a great deal of student loan debt through four years of college and two years of graduate school, I feel that this program is well deserved and long-overdue. There are stipulations, of course, but the program serves to help teachers get out of debt sooner and perhaps remove some debt they incurred while furthering their education to become a high-qualified educator.

Is student loan forgiveness program too forgiving?

Here is the link to an interesting article, published last week, that offers two sides of the discussion, “Is student loan forgiveness program too forgiving?”.

My answer is “NO”…read the article to see what you think.

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27 Jul

Looking at Ocean Data with Google Earth & the Activboard

Author: Administrator // Category: Classroom

Continuing with our recent blog post on using Google Earth to map GPS Data, we thought we would explore the possibilities of the ‘Layer’ function to display volcano information, using our Activboard.

Using Layers

The layer function within Google Earth 5.0 (see left image) allows teachers to overprint extra data on to their map.

At the click of a button, you can choose to display a wide range of geographical information from earthquakes to cities. In this situation, we decided to take a look at the volcano information that layers offers.

Using Google Earth 5.0 with the Activboard

With a simple right-click of our Activpen we were able to zoom in and out of the map withour having to switch to the Google zoom function. This enables us to examine some of the tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust and start a whole load of discussion with the class about volcanic positions:

What patterns can you see from the plates?
Which countries would have the most volcanic activity?
How much of the Earth is made up of water?

We shot this brief video clip of us demonstrating this feature on the Activboard using our FlipVideo camera – a great way to capture instant moments of inspiration!

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24 Jul

How gardening helps scientists

Author: Administrator // Category: Science

Arabidopsis thaliana is a distinctively unremarkable plant. It is small, scraggy, has few leaves and very modest flowers. It has no dietary value, nor does it look particularly pretty on a bouquet. It is possible that even goats don’t care much for it.

Yet the plant has served mankind over the past few dozen years like no other. It is the chosen plant genetic model for hundreds of researchers around the world, who take advantage of its short lifespan, relatively easy growth, adaptability and small size and do wonderful research. It also has one of the smallest genomes any plant has, and research from Arabidopsis has not only revealed much of the working mechanisms in plants (of profound use in agriculture and whatnot) but also in general biology. Many findings from Arabidopsis has applied to all living cells, from bacteria to mammals.

But when I say “model plant organism of choice”, I don’t mean it is as easy to do experiments with Arabidopsis as it is say with fruit flies or yeast or bacteria. It is much harder, and graduate students pursuing their PhD with Arabidopsis on average have to work 6-7 years before they’ve done enough to get that PhD.

So I was stunned when a Chinese colleague of mine told me about his friend and old university mate. His friend had worked with Arabidopsis for his PhD, and had produced a prodigious amount of work, finishing his PhD in a mere three years. This was a record almost unheard off in the Arabidopsis community. My friend was just as surprised when his friend told him this story. So he asked his friend what the secret to his success was.

His friend grinned and said “Most researchers are pretty smart and know a lot about biochemistry or genetics or development, but they don’t know plants. I’m smart and I know plants. I’m from a family of peasant farmers, and my family used to grow vegetables back in China. I know more about growing and caring for plants than the rest of my lab put together. They spend their time learning how to grow the plants, and I spent all my time just designing and doing experiments.”

Now you tell me there isn’t value in rustic wisdom.

************

That said, there’s something more in this story. I’ve met lots of Chinese researchers who have come from very humble backgrounds. Many of them grew up in rural areas, and were from families of farmers. But they all got to go to school, and those who shone academically got scholarships to study in top colleges in Beijing or Shanghai or other cities. While there is much that I don’t like about China (particularly politically), I think they’ve done very well in educating a massive population. India and China had similar class conscious, massively illiterate populations some 50 years ago, and China has done far better in educating its people, and giving more chances to the “underprivileged”. Many of my Indian friends here in the US are researchers. But they all come from urban, middle class, “white collar” backgrounds. I don’t know a peasant yet who has done a PhD in an elite institution, or pursued a career in research. Some food for thought, this.

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21 Jul

The 130’s at 1:30

Author: Administrator // Category: Maths

Last week, while driving around in Southern California, my sister and I pulled into a public parking lot and, as we got out of her car, I asked her what time it was. She said it was 1:30.

For some time, my sister has had a fascination with car license plates. She likes to notice multiple digits and characters like 444 or UUUU.

As we got out of the car, Connie pointed across the lot and said, “look at those two cars there.” See Figure 1.

Figure 1

You certainly can’t tell from this view, but both license plates end in the digits 130. Here is a closer view. I photo-shopped out the first digit and the three letters of each plate, leaving only the last three digits. See Figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2

Figure 3

My sister has a fascination with license plate characters and I have a fascination with the likeliness of events. What is the probability that two cars parked right next each other share the same last three digits of 130 at 1:30 PM?

Computing the probability that two cars parked right next each other share the same last three digits of 130 at 1:30 PM.

Standard California License Plates
To compute this probability, let’s assume standard California license plate numberings, a digit 0-9 followed by three letters a-z followed by 3 digits 0-9. See Figure 4.

Figure 4

We use the Multiplication Principle to count the number of standard license plates.

Since the first character of the plate can be any one of the 10 digits, there are 10 ways of choosing the first character of the plate.

Since the second character of the plate can be any one of the 26 letters of the alphabet, there are 26 ways of choosing the second character of the plate.

The same ideas hold for characters 3-7. So, by the Multiplication Principle, there are

$\begin{array}{clclcl} 10\cdot26\cdot26\cdot26\cdot10\cdot10\cdot10 &= 26^3\cdot10^3 \\ &= 17,576,000 \end{array}$

different standard California license plates possible.

But how many of these 17,576,000 plates end in the digits 130?

Again, using the Multiplication Principle, there are

$\begin{array}{clclcl} 10\cdot26\cdot26\cdot26\cdot1\cdot1\cdot1 &= 26^3\cdot1^3 \\ &= 17,576 \end{array}$

different plates that end in 130.

Computing the Probability of getting one 130

To compute the probability of getting two 130’s at 1:30, we’ll assume that all license plates are equally likely to be seen. For equally likely events,

$P(\hbox{event}) = \frac{\hbox{number of elements in the event}}{\hbox{number of elements in the sample space}}$

For us, let’s let $E = \hbox{getting a license plate ending in 130}$

Then,

$P(E) = \frac{17,576}{17,576,000}$

That is,

$P(E) = 0.001 = \frac{1}{1000}$

Computing the Probability of getting two 130’s next to each other

To compute the probability of getting two 130’s, we’ll assume that seeing one plate ending in 130 does not affect the probability of seeing another plate ending in 130. That is, we’ll assume that seeing two plates ending in 130 are independent events.

If two events are independent, we obtain the probability that both of them occur by multiplying the probabilities that each individual event occurs.

So,

$\begin{array}{clclcl} P(E) &= 0.001 \cdot 0.001 \\ &= 0.000001 \\ &= \frac{1}{1,000,000} \end{array}$

The probability of seeing two license plates ending in 130’s next to each other is expected to happen one time out of million trials. That is, observe two cars parked next to each other 1,000,000 times, and you would expect to see a pair of 130’s only one time.

I used 130 in this computation because that is the time at which my sister and I saw the two license plates.

We have to multiply only $P(\hbox{one 130})$ by $P(\hbox{one 130})$ and not $P(\hbox{1:30 PM})$ since the 1:30 PM just selects the ending plate numbers. The problem as posed, does not ask for us to compute the probably of randomly selecting a time then seeing two plates having that time.

Exercise: Find the probability of randomly selecting a time during the day (6:00 AM to 6:00 PM) and then seeing two license plates showing that time in their last 3 digits.

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Using GPS Data with Google Earth & the Activboard

Should teachers’ student loans be forgiven?

Looking at Ocean Data with Google Earth & the Activboard

How gardening helps scientists

The 130’s at 1:30

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