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January 31, 2011

Cod Liver Oil Weeds?

Filed under: Chemistry — Tags: acid, Chemistry, cod, fatty, Higher, HL, I.B., IB, level, liver, long, oil, Omega-3, short, SL, Standard — David @ 11:30 am

Genes from algae and fungus have been added to the genes in a common weed (thale cres) to allow the weed to produce omega-3 fatty acids.

Omega-3 fatty acids are fatty acids. The long chain omega-3 fatty acids are important in keeping the heart, brain and joints healthy. Most plants make short chain omega-3 fatty acids which the body can convert into long chains – but this process is not very efficient. However, some algae make the long chain version of this fatty acid. This trick is therefore to make the plant produce the long chain fatty acid – and this has been achieved but unfortunately, the plant does not produce enough of the fatty acid for it to be used effectively. The long term aim is to insert the genes into plants such as linseed.

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The year of the rabbbit: shifting economies, shifting social relations

Filed under: Social and cultural anthropology — Tags: China, China Blue, Chinese Working Women Network, dagongmei, Factory Girls, Feng Xu, houku, IMF, India, Japan, labour shortage, manufactured landscapes, manufacturing, Mexico, migrant workers, Ngai Pun, price inflation, rising wages, US, year of the rabbit — Laura Fulton @ 4:45 am

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Currently, 2.5 billion people are in the midst of migrating within China – the majority of these are rural workers returning home from their factory jobs in the cities. February marks a time of excitement and celebration as the largest annual migration stirs lunar New Year into action.

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January 30, 2011

Personal Engagement in the Arts

Filed under: El Programa de los Años Intermedios en Acción — triplea_mbi @ 11:08 pm

The objectives of the Arts subjects define what the student will be able to accomplish as a result of studying the art form implemented by the school.

It is interesting to see the image shown in figure 1 of the Arts guide 2008 on page 5. The arts specific objectives interrelate with each other and form the basis of the student’s experience in the arts. We can see that Personal Engagement is in the centre of the diagram surrounding the student. Personal engagement connects directly with each of the other objectives.

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Online stories for children/teens in many languages

Filed under: School Innovation: building our future school systems — Tags: French stories, Language b material, Online stories, Spanish stories — Robert Vanier @ 9:41 pm

Back in Novemeber Maria asked me for some more basic level online books for students in beginner Spanish. Well I have finally gotten around to finding such a resource. My criteria was really to find something that would be useful to many levels and languages, while giving story topics that really felt international. Another criteria is that the site had to work well even on slower connections etc.. My best pick so far is: which has hundreds of titles, and has a great search function where you can choose the language, age level, topic type, etc and then read it directly online.
You can also contribute stories. For Maria, the site is also available in Spanish check it out!! I will make another post regarding how I think this could best be used with older students.

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Excellent resource

Filed under: Biology — Tags: Bio, ICT, Online Learning — Stephen @ 7:26 pm

Take a look at this excellent resource from the Khan Academy, a nonprofit corporation that has a huge selection of educational videos that cover not just biology but mathematics, chemistry, economics, physics etc

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A Great Activity With Motion Sensors

Filed under: Physics — Tags: motion detectors — stefan_merchant @ 2:51 am

I got this idea from a Physics teacher at an IB workshop in Thailand. I can’t remember his name otherwise, I would give him full credit – I love this idea!

Most motion detectors (we use the ones from Vernier) use ultrasonic sound waves to measure distance. By keeping the detector pointed at a stationary target (like the ceiling) and varying the temperature of the air we get a varying distance measurement. We can use our temperature and distance measurements to come up with a relationship between air temperature and the speed of sound. In the tropics, this is accomplished by turning of the air conditioning and taking distance and temperature measurements every two minutes or so for a period of a few hours.

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Working alone is no fun, nor is it best for the students

Filed under: Physics — Tags: collaboration — stefan_merchant @ 2:40 am

I teach at a very large IB school and am part of a department of eight physics teachers. The opportunities this gives me for collaboration and professional development are remarkable. Every day I have informal discussions about lesson plans, ideas for demonstrations, assessment and a host of other topics related to teaching physics. I realize that my situation is very unusual and that many (most?) IB physics teachers are in schools where they are the only physics teacher.

Being the only physics teacher in a school does allow you to have complete control over the program and its delivery but the disadvantages are numerous. A sense of professional isolation, a lack of sharing teaching ideas, no moderation of practical marking, limited resources these are all issues for teachers working in small schools. So how to overcome these difficulties? The answer is to seek collaboration outside of your own school. There are plenty of opportunities, IB workshops are always great and of course there is the OCC. Teaching in Singapore, one of my colleagues started an IB Physics teachers group that meets once or twice a year. It consists of IB teachers from all over Singapore and every meeting has a specific focus but the discussion always ends up all over the map. It has been a great way of sharing ideas, meeting other teachers and sharing resources. This is something that could be done (and is done) in many locations. Rather than wait for (and pay for!) an IB workshop, you can start your own workshop!

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Choosing Extended Essay Topics

Filed under: Physics — Tags: extended essay — stefan_merchant @ 2:37 am

Does anybody else have difficulties with this? At my school we usually have about twenty five students doing an EE in Physics. This is a great thing for the department as the supervision of EEs is always interesting (and sometimes frustrating!) and as teachers we get learn some new physics that we would have never pursued on our own. Although the students should be coming up with topics themselves, they always need guidance and I find this guidance difficult to give. Andy’s advice is “simple experiments done well and analyzed well” and this is clearly good advice as many students are overambitious in their choice of topic. At the same time we don’t want to quash any enthusiasm for interesting and timely physics.

I know I am not the only teacher with this difficulty, in a recent mass email from Singapore IB Physics teachers group there was a plea for help with this process. While the mechanics of the process are easy to manage (we start the students in March of their grade 11 year and demand that they complete experimental work by the end of the school year in late June). In general, the Physics EE grades are low so a poor choice of topic really dooms the student from the start. As a department, we write down EE ideas as they come to us during the year but this has not proven that successful. The only students who use these ideas are the ones who truly cannot think of anything on their own and because the idea is not their own they never really seem to get their teeth into the topic and achieve the level of understanding necessary to do well on the EE.

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January 29, 2011

Measuring student interaction in a second language.

Filed under: School Innovation: building our future school systems — Tags: assessment challenges, speaking evaluation — Robert Vanier @ 10:20 pm

I have a great interest in measuring natural usage of the language in student interaction. Over the years I have found that this is a VERY subjective thing. I have also found this in assessment, both with my colleagues as well as with the moderation process of the IB. Writing a reading comprehension or production etc is quite straight forward…well maybe not the reading comp…that too can get a bit messy – but lets save that for another day! Getting back to the talking part…I have actually taken video recordings of students in natural discussions, the kind of setting they would use in the real world… and I have been quite surprised both by the patterns of speech that emerge as well as our(teachers) inability to agree on levels of performance for the students. I have found this also to be the case with the IB moderation process, which has chosen to have students be interviewed one on one with teacher if possible (not so day-to-day natural, but very similar to job interviews etc, so in some ways quite natural). I think the IB criteria do in fact have the strands needed to evaluate, but the WAY we do this as teachers is what I see to be the real problem point. I really think we are far more subjective when it comes to this area….a clear pronunciation or correct usage of a troublesome grammatical form can cover other areas and our judgment, and the reverse is of course true even more. Perhaps we will someday get an automated program to quickly evaluate speaking levels…quite believable with the present pace of voice recognition technologies…but for now…I long for a quicker fix in this area…some game of sorts…that would be better than my big spreadsheet of broken down strands of speaking and interaction.

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stereotypes: the black athlete

Filed under: TOK meets global citizenship — Tags: ideology, racism, Sense Perception, sports, stereotypes — Eileen Dombrowski @ 6:08 pm

“How could whites continue to make claims of innate superiority over blacks when the very epitome of muscular physicality, as represented by the heavy weight champion of the world, was a negro born of slaves from East Texas? If that central aspect of racial ideology proved to be false, then where did that leave the theory of white supremacy itself, founded as it was in part upon the facts of physical pre-eminence?”

In reading this quotation from Ben Carrington’s recent book Race, Sport, and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora, Laurie Taylor, British sociologist and radio interviewer, opens an interview with the author. Carrington makes an extremely interesting argument regarding racial ideology and the stereotype of the black athlete, putting forward a heavyweight boxing match in 1908 as a pivotal moment in ideas of white supremacy.

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