December through April

It’s been a while since my last update.  A ton has happened since then so I’ll try to cover everything in detail.

First, the high school.  It’s been going really well.  I introduced the students to electromagnetics, interference and frequency through slideshows consisting of a great many pictures and animations and ended each lesson with a few critical thinking questions that were above and beyond what we had covered, in order to get the students thinking about the applications of the lesson to the world at large.  These two lesson plans culminated in a large activity in groups of four.   Each group was handed a piece of paper representing the frequency spectrum, broken up into squares.  On one axis was time and the other was frequency bands.  The activity started with a short introduction to time-division multiplexing, how signals are broken up and sent out in pieces so that multiple transmissions may occur in what seems to be a single time-slice.  There were four ’rounds’ to the activity.  In the first each group member merely had to write their unique letter in ten boxes on the paper (there were 40 boxes total).  Each group just had a single person per column.  Easy, right?

Well, the second round involved a point scheme.  The time axis had a decaying point value and some frequency bands were worth more than others.  After being told that the person with the highest points wins, one group broke out in a frenzy.  It was a group consisting of the quietest girls in the class and they were all yelling and grabbing for the paper.  They didn’t even manage to finish in time.  Another group settled on a round-robin picking style.  Very fair.  The last two groups didn’t seem to care over much and just let someone win.  After being told who was the winner and who was the loser, though, the group seemed very…uneasy.

In the third round some of the blocks were already occupied, by the ‘primary users’.  I added a new rule.  Whoever did not get the letter down the ten required times lost many points.  The two groups who were so complacent before immediately broke out arguing.  The group consisting of the quiet girls was once again a crazy mess and didn’t finish on time.  The round-robin group finished easily and seemed very content with themselves.

The fourth round consisted of a new situation.  All blocks were available, but primary users were transmitting at unknown times.  If someone wrote their letter in a box that was later revealed to contain a primary user they lost many points.  After a very long internal debate in all the groups each group finally settled on a round-robin style picking.  They all seemed confident in their choice and readily explained why they had needed to do so.  One person was very clever and purposefully occupied the low value time/frequency slots in order to avoid the primary user.  I was very impressed with the entire activity and how involved every group was.

Now, poster sessions.  First there was a poster session in DC in which Pratik, Ibrahim and I presented our individual posters concerning our research and how we brought it to the students in the high school.  The actual session was for the NSF GK-12 final meeting, and it was interesting to see the other groups.  I saw a great many people from biology, chemistry and earth science, but very few from engineering, math, or computer science.  It was a little disappointing, and it seemed that many groups did not attempt to bring their research into the classroom, merely take over the role of the teacher and teach the students their normal material or take them on field trips.  There were a select few that were very interesting and very well done, however.  We also explored the city, which was greatly entertaining.

Next there was a poster session here at UML for the research and community engagement symposium.  I used the same poster and it was a great success.  I went around and harassed the other members of the lab and got them to explain to me their research.  Very interesting.

Last there was another poster session here at UML for the ASEE.  As my focus was on a workshop that I attended with Anthony Vardaro, however, I did not physically attend the poster session.  The workshop was on the blending of programming and music.  In the workshop we first started out with Audacity, a free program that lets one create music or sounds (But is geared towards sound creation/music arrangement due to the lack of a step sequencer, mixer or piano roll),  and contains a great many effects.  Each group was given three sound files to work with.  Anthony and I got the sound of a pen clicking, a cymbal, and some weird periodic noise.  We were told to create a song sixty seconds in length.  Anthony and I completely disregarded this instruction and spent our time playing with the effects and generating cool sounds with what we were given.  The noise of a cymbal reversed is greatly entertaining, as is other sounds put through a ‘wahway’ filter, whatever that is.  A music guy explained what it was but it went completely over my head.  Of the four groups, one made some supremely cool psuedo-music, one made some vanilla music, one made very off and unrhythmic music, and then there was Anthony and I’s, which was merely a collection of cool sounds.

Next we worked with Scratch, a visual programming tool.  Instead of writing for loops and such, they are visual pieces that you can snap together.  We were told to create another song and we started making a midi song that told the tale of an adventure descending into a cave and then coming out.  I made out basic rhythm from the loop Anthony had made and then layered a cymbal or a bass on top of it (can’t remember), and then we began making our actual song layered on top of those.  I was told by Anthony that I am in the wrong field and should be making music.  When we presented,  one group had horribly un-rhythmic stuff as they didn’t know what they were doing, one had a short cool thing, and one had some vanilla stuff.  Anthony and I’s was epic and we blew everyone away and got asked if we were in the right field.  Was awesome.

The workshop concluded with discussions from everyone on how these tools can be brought to students and how the mixture of music and programming can be beneficial to those learning either.  Was so much more entertaining and useful than I had ever imagined and now I’ll seriously start working with FL Studio.  Great fun.

November

November was all over the place.  In that class occurred I managed to accomplish a few things.  First, a warning to anyone in Lawrence attempting to access anything on the internet that uses any sizeable bandwidth: don’t.  I tried to use an online live video stream of a camera overlooking a highway.  Very bad resolution, so it wouldn’t have been that demanding but Mrs. Chay’s computer could still not load it.  Wouldn’t even start.  Since my lesson plan for that day pretty much revolved around that stream it was a complete bust.

Anyways, I managed to get Matlab installed on the computers in the back of the room.  Mrs. Chay called the IT people and they unfroze them.  They have some software called DeepFreeze or something like that, that resets the computers in the whole school every day, so any new files that were put on it are erased.  Which means Matlab would be if it wasn’t unfrozen.  They unfroze it, I got it installed, it needed to connect to Mathworks to register in order to be used.  Couldn’t connect.  I called IT, they said they didn’t really know other than to try to whitelist www.mathworks.com…yeah, it didn’t help.

So I worked around it.  When installing there’s a second option to register later, and then I just went to the mathworks site, made an account, grabbed the computer ID from the matlab install, filled out the forms, they gave me a license.dat file to download, bam, done.  Of course, now I have to scan a copy of my student ID to prove I’m a student within 30 days, since it’s a student license.  Gotta remember to do that.  After that, she called to refreeze, and over all I’m glad it even worked, given the trouble I’ve heard that Pratik is having.

In order to fix my problem with the live video stream I used Fraps, a video recording program that does a couple other things as well, to record an eight minute video of the stream on my home computer.  This broke into two 4 minutes files, since I guess Fraps does that for convenience or something, who knows.  I used a random video compressor that I found online to combine them and get the size from 6 GB down to a 900 MB avi file and a 60 MB wmv file.  I did two types just in case her computer can’t play one.

The plan is to play these on the project/huge widescreen TV each classroom has, and have them count the number of cars that pass every five seconds.  We’ll do that for two minutes or so, enough to get plenty of data points, and then do a histogram.  They’ll be able to see the distribution, I’ll have them find the mean, and finally show them the Poisson equation.  They are learning exponentials and although haven’t gotten into ‘e’ yet, I think it will be a nice introduction.

Mrs. Chay has said she’ll be able to get stop watches, so next week we’ll redo the same video and have the kids count the time between cars and repeat the rest of the activity.  That will be an exponential distribution.  I hope to work this into the math projects Mrs. Chay does in January or December or something and involve Matlab and have that be the project that goes towards the symposium.  We’re still talking about how to incorporate it, but she was very excited and thought that a group of kids who were interested would be easy to get in each class.

October – Week Four

I went to the high school twice this week.  The first day I showed the students the poster I helped present at ITC with Pratik and went over the two photos on it and explained what everything was.  I explained our setup, what we are doing, how much the board costs, so on and so forth.  They though it was pretty cool and seem excited to be able to come to the lab (Whenever that happens) and see what everyone really does in here.  There were a few questions about what this research is going to benefit, who is going to use it, that kind of stuff.

The second day I did a demonstration with Matlab, to introduce them to what the program is like.  My plan is to install Matlab on the computers in the back of the room (Which I’m doing tomorrow) and incorporate using Matlab into the projects they have to do in January for exponential functions.  Mrs. Chay has them each pick a project from a list of choices, where they analyze a situation with an exponential function, like money, time of death, bacteria growth, etc, and it would be very easy and fun to have them use Matlab to simulate their results.  They could see what happens in the bacteria situation with their drug of choice and how it affects the population, so on and so forth, and this would ultimately work great for the symposium poster session in March.

Anyways, I demonstrated the power of Matlab and how it can plot functions, invert them (Using ‘funtools’), solve them, factor them, so on and so forth.  A couple of them were really interested and when I was helping a student in the advisory period after class I was able to further show how Matlab can be used.  Next class I am going to have them identify the key variables in a system that they would need to know to create a model and organize those variables into a function that defines the system.  I’ll use a gravity situation with a thrown object, have the kids find the function that describes what is happening, and then lead them into terminal velocity.

This will lead into the class next week where I will introduce them to a queueing system and have them find the important variables for it and we can begin constructing the functions that define it.  I’ll also start introducing them to Matlab and how to use it in preparation for their projects.  I will install Matlab on the computers in the back of the room.

October – Week Three

Yesterday was my first day experiencing a class at the very beginning of the school day and I have to admit that things went a lot better.  The kids were a lot more subdued and a lot more focused on anything I had to say.  I introduced them to a model of traffic on a highway where many variables could be controlled.  I asked them how they thought they could improve the result of the simulation by changing certain variables and played around with it for a bit.  We discussed some of the variables that were involved in making this model and where it might be used for, where models in general are used, so on and so forth.

Next week I want to be able to have them see a graph or a picture of a real life situation and model it with a function.  I’m currently searching for a good quadratic example.  I want to be able to show them a picture with a description and have them make up the function that will describe what is happening, but I also need to take care in avoiding multiple variables.  I originally thought of doing an acceleration/velocity/position equation but I think even that will be too much for them.  I need to keep it to only one to two, at least until they get the idea of how it works.  I think I may come up with a few examples.  A simple situation with an exact model and a second situation where they are given a set of points and attempt to create a function with best fit.  I can show them how Excel has a best fit function and they would be able to compare theirs to Excel’s at the end.  I think they would find that pretty exciting, so now I just need to come up with two good engaging situations.

Maybe I’ll use the sunspot data for the second one and have them do a piecewise function – one positive parabola for one section and a negative parabola for the second (Since they haven’t learned sine waves yet).  I just need to think it through a little more to make sure they can handle everything, but I’m pretty excited about it.

October – Week One

Today was the first day I went to the high school and both groups of kids seem really great.  They are currently learning shifting and reflections about the axes.  I gave an intro on what I was doing, who I am, and got them involved in a discussion on what engineers do, what do electrical engineers do, so on and so forth.

A few kids in both classes want to be engineers, which surprised me since I’m in PFA, but pleasantly surprised.  The kids seem much more interested in math and my talks compared to last semester’s.  They all listened and seemed really eager to ask questions about what I want to do when I graduate.  I gave them just a tiny bit of information about what my research is, since I didn’t want to spend too long trying to explain the terminology, but even with that I think they were excited to learn more.

I think the semester is going to go very well and it will be very easy to get the students interested.  Quite a few of the students in the second class are in a mentoring program with Raytheon, so they’ll have some first hand experience with what engineers are like and hopefully also see what it is that engineers do.  I’m hoping to bring in some pictures of the Pentek board and our setup so the kids can see what Pratik and I have done.

We are also going to be using the journals, so next week or the week after they will be passed out and I’ll give them good thinking questions related to whatever material we cover then.

International Teletraffic Congress

Pratik and I attended the ITC from Sept 5-9.  It was an outstanding experience and a great chance to meet some fellow students from around the world as well as professionals and professors from various backgrounds.  We arrived Sept 5 and it was a long day due to having to get up at 3 AM, but also a short day due to the time difference in where we gained 3 hours.  Tues-Thur the papers started early at 8, with a breakfast being served and then a keynote presentation.  The keynotes were on cognitive networks, data centers, download plans for carriers and so forth.  Very teletraffic-y.

There were breaks and we made some friends, Paolo from South Africa, Valentino from Italy, Emanuel from Germany, as well as quite a few people from various universities or organizations around the world.  There was a dinner Tuesday and the afternoon break of Wednesday is when our poster session occured.  It did not seem as if the older audience such as the co-chairs and whatnot cared to participate but most of the younger audience and a few people from varying positions walked around and were very interested.  Many who stopped by our poster seemed very interested but openly admitted to not knowing much about the subject.  We received a few remarks of how they would be interested in papers we write in the future.

Since we did not pay for the full registration (An extra $100) we did not get the banquet on Wednesday and so Pratik went to the golden gate bridge while I ordered food.  He said it was cold, windy and so foggy you couldn’t really see the bridge so I was content with my food.  There was apparently requests to see all the student posters again so we had to get up even earlier on Thursday to get them up before breakfast.  We had a few more people walk around but it was obvious that there was not a major interest in the posters from the majority of the attendees, at least from what I saw.  We talked to someone who used to be the chair of the congrees (Before they removed the position) and he strongly believed that things like student posters were what the ITC needed, not more paper readings.

Pratik, Paolo, Valentino and I took a break from one paper reading session to see a cable car museum, climb Coit Tower, and wander around the city for a while.  We returned in time for the panel and the closing discussions.  We didn’t win the student poster award but it’s ok, I know I’m a winner inside.

Thursday ended with a dinner with Pratik and Paolo at a little Thai place which was delicious.  We got contacts from a few people and slept a couple hours that night before getting up at 3 AM on Friday to make it to the flight.  Although Monday was nice since we gained 3 hours, Friday was terrible because we lost 3.

We made it home, though, with much gained from the experience.

Pedagogy Workshop: Day One

On the first day of the workshop we were introduced to an inquiry based classroom, a method of teaching based on asking and receiving questions to and from the students.  This method enables a much more active learning experience where students are directly involved and their levels of understanding can be more fully understood.  It also facilitates a much better learning experience as the students learn things from their own perspectives, rather than being handed each and every answer.

We then watched a video of an example of this type and played with a black box as an example for something that engages students and teaches the basic critical thinking skills.  It gets them directly involved with a hands on activity that lets them solve the problem in their own way.  We then read an article that summarized what we had talked about: the different types of questions to ask, when and how to ask them, which ones are useful and which are not.  We learned that asking “Why do you think … ” is a much better form of questioning due to the nature of it not having a wrong answer.

The workshop drew to a close with a discussion on Bloom’s Taxonomy, a classification of levels of thinking with six categories and we compared the list to what we originally thought the order would be.  Mine was very different but I think it was just my misunderstanding of the meaning of the different words, as I had trouble differentiating between creating/applying and evaluating/analyzing.  I was just missing context, I guess.

The workshop ended with a “ticket-to-go,” which is a personal question(s) involved with the day’s lesson and how this may be useful to us as it lets us know if the students understood our lesson or not and is very easy to implement.

The workshop was very easy to understand and the activities were engaging and thoughtful.

HOMEWORK:

I. Remembering: What is a frequency?

II. Understanding: How is someone’s voice/tone related to frequency?

III. Applying: How is this related to the different channels on a walkie talkie?

IV. Analyzing: Why do you think all these different frequencies are used?

V. Evaluating: What would you recommend we do so everyone can be heard?

VI. Creating: How would you adapt this model if multiple frequencies were used?

Essential thinking: How can we organize many people or devices to talk without anyone interfering with each other?

April – Week Two

This week we continued plotting things using the log scale.  I put together, using some data I found online, an example demonstrating the usefulness of the log scale.  I gave them all graph paper, both in log-log scale and linear scale (One on each side of the paper).  I put up a table of data on the projector that showed the relationship between the rank of a word and it’s frequency (The data was drawn from an experiment that collected data from all kinds of literature and compiled a list of the frequency of words used) and basically just said, “Ok, plot this.”  They had some difficulty getting started.  A few people made their scales too small and some people labeled their axis completely wrong, using increments that were NOT equal (36,669 for the top line, then 20,130, then 17,560, etc, not 40,000 > 30,000 > 20,000 and so on).  I did not expect them to have this trouble and so time became a huge issue.  Explaining the log-log scale wasn’t too difficult and most of them got the hang of it pretty quickly and we managed to get 10-20 points plotted for everyone for both sides, at which point they could clearly see the curve in linear scale and the line in log-log scale.  A few students were really interested at the end and I explained how the linear scale doesn’t show, at high ranks, the relationship that the log-log scale does.

I think it turned out fairly well and they now understand the usefulness of log-log scale, but I was unhappy we couldn’t get more points plotted.  I did not expect to have so much difficulty in getting scales set up in a linear graph.  I will definitely be modifying my plan for the next demonstration and having the scales for them filled in so they can focus on solving the problem as otherwise I will never have enough time to get anywhere.

April – Week One

Due to assemblies, spring break and CORI I have not been able to start my module until this week.

This week I talked about my research and explained how I am creating allocation strategies. I did a few examples with six servers slowly being filled by primary and secondary users and got them really involved and giving me different ways I can organize the arrivals so that less people get blocked.

The beginning of the module was the most interesting, though. I showed them a plot from my research that demonstrated the blocking probability of two types of users as the secondary arrival rate changed and had them analyze the graph. I asked them what the plot meant, what did it tell them, what was going on. I then showed them the same graph with the y-axis in logscale and asked them the difference and although it took a little while eventually someone recognized that it was the same plot, just a different scale. I had them tell me what the benefit of a logscale was. After this I asked them if my plot was correct. They all seemed a little surprised and I got a couple “yes,” so I asked them how they knew. This went on for a little while until they said they didn’t know and I asked them what they would need to know. This lead to my showing of a table of values representing the servers being filled with departures times. I explained how it worked and what it meant and that from this table I could see if whatever organizational strategy I created was working or not. Then I asked them if one departure time was correct or not. This lead to the equation representing the exponential distribution and we concluded with the understanding that in order to fully represent and understand a system one form of information is not enough. We covered graphs, tables and equations.

They all seemed really involved and I think they really enjoyed creating an allocation strategy with me. Next week I am going to have them do some plotting of their own involving log-log plots and a simple equation and data table so that they can see first hand the importance of the log scale.

March – Week One

This week I talked about problem solving in engineering.  I asked the students what their thoughts of engineers were, what we did and what stereotypes they had and I of course got the usual “doing math” answer.  This was perfect as it let me jump right into how we may use math a lot in our work but ultimately engineers are about solving problems and I gave a small talk about what would typically be expected of engineers in a job and some different types of engineers.  I would like to come back to this at some point in the future and see if I can get some of the students interested in some kind of engineering specific to what they like, as I’m not sure they know of the plethora of engineering types.  I then gave them a very broad and difficult question: if you owned a grocery store and I told you I wanted to know how many people would be in the queue at any given time, how would you do it?  I tried to make the problem very open ended and purposefully lacking direction to get them involved.  They were of course stumped at first and I explained that what we do is not solve math problems where the answer is known.  We must take a very difficult problem and learn what we need to solve it.  I started them off with finding the important variables to the problem and got many responses and then had them organize their suggestions into a pseudo-formula of how the queue is affected by each of them, simply positively or negatively.  I very much desire to implement a more individual or group based problem similar to this related to their subject matter in the class, which is trigonometry, so I can get them to solve a problem and see that what they are learning is applicable in a real sense .  I feel that if they use the material and solve an actual problem they will not only have an appreciation for what they are learning but also come out feeling proud of themselves for being able to solve an open ended problem.  I am going to discuss this idea with Mrs. Chay and hopefully work towards a module project that I will continue over the course of classes, as I get fifteen minutes every class period, which I think might be better for me as I can keep their attention more easily and use journals more often.