Well, also the tai chi lessons. They were definitely a factor. And I suppose I just like being barefoot. But shoes never fit me right. And Mom never made me wear uncomfortable shoes, so we're back to her again. I guess it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem.
The problem, of course, is why I fell over during 5th period today. I'm fine (not even a bruise except to the ego), and the kids got a good laugh out of it. I did too, really, but falling over in school is not a good plan. Not unless I want the "crazy teacher who falls down a lot" label. I have "Crazy Teacher" nailed, but I could do without the second part.
Very simply, I was going to put some papers in my organizer next to phone, and my foot got tangled in the cord, and I fell over. But at the root, it's my mom's fault.
I have excellent balance, and am extremely sure-footed. But there is a caveat: it only works when I'm barefoot or in socks. As soon as shoes go onto my feet, I turn into a bumbling idiot. Think Clouseau from the Pink Panther. I have no idea how to walk, I trip over my feet, I tangle them in cords, I bump into stuff. And I blame brain plasticity.
Brain plasticity has just recently been recognized as a reality. Even as an adult, our brains change all the time. Whatever we use gets more of our brain. Whatever we don't use, gets less. Our brain maps are constantly changing. As a child, my mom taught me to "see with my feet". I learned to pay attention to signals from the nerves in my feet, which means that I allocated more neurons to foot input. Added to that, I have never worn shoes at home. As soon as I walk through the door, I lose the shoes, so I have reinforced that map over and over and over again.
Wearing shoes, far fewer signals get to the brain. In some people, probably most people, this is no problem for their balance. Most people get their balance cues visually as well as from their vestibular system. But I learned to balance in tai chi class, which I started when I was 13 and took regularly for 8 years. In tai chi, you are barefoot or wearing slippers and are constantly focusing on your feet to ground your attention and energy. I tend to do this with closed eyes. I use signals from my feet to balance. Hence, shoes are a problem.
I guess the solution is to spend hours and hours teaching myself to walk in shoes, but I really don't want to. Although if I fall over in class again, I may have to rethink the idea.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
I met some students today.
The kids seem fabulous. I have some whiney complaints about things, but the fact that the kids are going to be great trumps them all.
I have garden pictures on my phone, but have been too lazy to go get them. I worked on a sock some today, but have no pictures of that either. All in all, bad blogger. But hey, I am not abandoning the attempt, so that's got to be worth something.
Have a link of the importance of pets on human evolution. It's an interesting thesis, and I do love my furry things, so it's good to have some further justification of their importance.
I have garden pictures on my phone, but have been too lazy to go get them. I worked on a sock some today, but have no pictures of that either. All in all, bad blogger. But hey, I am not abandoning the attempt, so that's got to be worth something.
Have a link of the importance of pets on human evolution. It's an interesting thesis, and I do love my furry things, so it's good to have some further justification of their importance.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
I should post something
School started. I have had lots of training over the last two days, as well as a discussion of the importance of handwashing after getting bitten by a rabid bat. Yes, you read that correctly. We also meditated for two hours, because we will be teaching meditation to the students this year, 30 seconds to 3 min at a time.
So, in lieu of any actual thoughts, here is a medieval castle being built in France. Having spent many hours with David Macaulay's Castle book as a child, this is pretty cool.
Tomorrow, there will be pictures of my cucumber plant eating the other garden plants.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Nook limitations
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have about 7 million family obligations in the next week. I also start the school year again. So instead of working on anything for those things, I am knitting and playing with my Nook. I have 48 more hours of denial, and I'm not wasting a second of it.
For the record, the Nook is a pretty spiffy gadget. It's taking some time for the touchscreen and I to make friends, but that's my problem, not the machine. It's easy to read on, intuitive to use, comes with sudoku, and the Barnes and Nobles free book selection is interesting, if eclectic. The only other problem I've encountered is a desire to shake it above my head like an etch-a-sketch to see if the words disappear. So far, I have resisted the silliness.
However, I have discovered a limitation. In the ebooks you buy, you can bookmark a page and highlight specific lines. I, of course, was pondering the knitting applications, and thought, "How great for a pattern! I can mark the line I'm on and come back to it later!" Not so. On pdf files, I can bookmark, but not highlight. There is no way to mark a specific line. This means that knitting patterns will continue to require post-it notes or paper print outs. Not the end of the world, of course, or even a reason to dislike the Nook. And I like post-it notes -- I'm a teacher. It's in the job description.
So if you need me in the next two days, I'll be the one with post it notes stuck all over my Nook, swearing at blue dental floss as I continue to knit on the Maelstrom shawl. Against advice, I have not yet purchased pointier needles, nor have I found my stitch markers. But there is a lifeline in the lace at row 60 (264 stitches in a round), so there's hope for me yet.
Pictures will follow when I remember during daylight hours.
For the record, the Nook is a pretty spiffy gadget. It's taking some time for the touchscreen and I to make friends, but that's my problem, not the machine. It's easy to read on, intuitive to use, comes with sudoku, and the Barnes and Nobles free book selection is interesting, if eclectic. The only other problem I've encountered is a desire to shake it above my head like an etch-a-sketch to see if the words disappear. So far, I have resisted the silliness.
However, I have discovered a limitation. In the ebooks you buy, you can bookmark a page and highlight specific lines. I, of course, was pondering the knitting applications, and thought, "How great for a pattern! I can mark the line I'm on and come back to it later!" Not so. On pdf files, I can bookmark, but not highlight. There is no way to mark a specific line. This means that knitting patterns will continue to require post-it notes or paper print outs. Not the end of the world, of course, or even a reason to dislike the Nook. And I like post-it notes -- I'm a teacher. It's in the job description.
So if you need me in the next two days, I'll be the one with post it notes stuck all over my Nook, swearing at blue dental floss as I continue to knit on the Maelstrom shawl. Against advice, I have not yet purchased pointier needles, nor have I found my stitch markers. But there is a lifeline in the lace at row 60 (264 stitches in a round), so there's hope for me yet.
Pictures will follow when I remember during daylight hours.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday the 13th
I am not superstitious, but if you are looking for new and different things to be worried about this Friday the 13th, here are my suggestions for the day.
First and foremost, having a plant start to grow inside your body. Ewww.
New and scarier diseases. Bacteria are awesome, in a disturbing kind of way. And viruses . . . MHAAA HAAA HAAA! I think being an epidemiologist would be an awesome job.
And just because . . . .a very beautiful galaxy picture from Hubble. This has nothing to do with Friday the 13th. I just love the photo.
May you have a calm and uneventful Friday the 13th. I'll be in bed with my new Nook.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Holy Vegetables, Batman!
I just looked at my garden for the first time in a few days.
The super bright sunlight has washed out some of the colors in these veggies, but wow! As a size reference, that block is about 12" deep, so the squash are about 7" long folded and about 4" in diameter at their widest point. And for the record, I have only one plant of each type of veggie, and all of them are still producing flowers.
Any suggestions for the serrano peppers? I appear to have some to spare.
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| First tomato, two lemon cucumbers the size of my fists, . . . |
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| twenty (!) serrano peppers, . . . |
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| and three yellow squash. |
Any suggestions for the serrano peppers? I appear to have some to spare.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Education -- what's the point?
There is an unspoken philosophical debate going on in this country about the purpose of education. The question is this: Is the purpose of education to sort out the superior students or is it to teach everyone?
Historically, everyone needed to know enough to read the Bible, write letters, and keep track of their finances. There was a heavy focus on memorization and handwriting. Only a very few students went on to higher education. However, the majority of jobs in the 1800s and earlier did not require any more education than this most basic level. Education sorted out the few who would continue to college and professions. Sorting was the goal of the day. There were wonderful people such as Catherine Beecher and Booker T. Washington, who advocated for further education for women and minorities (believed unlikely to ever need an education), but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Education progressed in many ways, but up through about the 1950s-60s, sorting still remained the primary goal of most public education. The brightest few were identified early in the schooling process and pushed up through the system to finish high school, and possibly attend college. Everyone needed the basics, but the bright students definitely received more time and attention. For the record, most of these favored few were white males. Black students were separated into inferior schools, although the historically black colleges did serve the brightest from that system. Girls have a mixed history in school, and I'll leave that for another day.
Obviously, the statements above are huge generalities. There are, no doubt, hundreds of examples of teachers and schools that did not operate in this manner. Overall, though, the institution of public education was not terribly concerned with slower or uncooperative students up until this time.
In the 1950s - 60s, major change swept the nation. Brown vs the Board of Education eliminated segregation, IDEA brought kids with special needs out of institutions and into the classroom, and the feminist movement became active. The law of the nation stated that every child was entitled to a free and appropriate public education. These three things were huge in education. Education was no longer allowed to ignore huge numbers of kids, but the structure of public schools has changed little.
Today, we have No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The name of this law implies that sorting is out. Education has still not really caught up. Even the testing that school success is based on (by the law's standards) is normative, at least here in IL (PSAE for high school, ISAT for lower grades). This means that scores are compared to other students taking the test on the same day. The score that the most kids get is the 50th percentile, and is scored accordingly. There is no objective standard for these tests, which means that by definition, they are competitive exams. I can rant lots more about that, but I'll save that entire rant for another day.
For now, the question is, as it has been for the last 50 years, what is the purpose of education? How do we educate everyone without neglecting the top students? Does sorting have a place in education? There aren't simple answers to these questions, but until we talk about them, no answers can be found.
Historically, everyone needed to know enough to read the Bible, write letters, and keep track of their finances. There was a heavy focus on memorization and handwriting. Only a very few students went on to higher education. However, the majority of jobs in the 1800s and earlier did not require any more education than this most basic level. Education sorted out the few who would continue to college and professions. Sorting was the goal of the day. There were wonderful people such as Catherine Beecher and Booker T. Washington, who advocated for further education for women and minorities (believed unlikely to ever need an education), but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Education progressed in many ways, but up through about the 1950s-60s, sorting still remained the primary goal of most public education. The brightest few were identified early in the schooling process and pushed up through the system to finish high school, and possibly attend college. Everyone needed the basics, but the bright students definitely received more time and attention. For the record, most of these favored few were white males. Black students were separated into inferior schools, although the historically black colleges did serve the brightest from that system. Girls have a mixed history in school, and I'll leave that for another day.
Obviously, the statements above are huge generalities. There are, no doubt, hundreds of examples of teachers and schools that did not operate in this manner. Overall, though, the institution of public education was not terribly concerned with slower or uncooperative students up until this time.
In the 1950s - 60s, major change swept the nation. Brown vs the Board of Education eliminated segregation, IDEA brought kids with special needs out of institutions and into the classroom, and the feminist movement became active. The law of the nation stated that every child was entitled to a free and appropriate public education. These three things were huge in education. Education was no longer allowed to ignore huge numbers of kids, but the structure of public schools has changed little.
Today, we have No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The name of this law implies that sorting is out. Education has still not really caught up. Even the testing that school success is based on (by the law's standards) is normative, at least here in IL (PSAE for high school, ISAT for lower grades). This means that scores are compared to other students taking the test on the same day. The score that the most kids get is the 50th percentile, and is scored accordingly. There is no objective standard for these tests, which means that by definition, they are competitive exams. I can rant lots more about that, but I'll save that entire rant for another day.
For now, the question is, as it has been for the last 50 years, what is the purpose of education? How do we educate everyone without neglecting the top students? Does sorting have a place in education? There aren't simple answers to these questions, but until we talk about them, no answers can be found.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Busy day today
But here's a video about how to pluralize the word "octopus". This is in honor of my friend Dylan's soon-to-be-born baby.
As one cephalopod fan to another . . .
As one cephalopod fan to another . . .
Sunday, August 8, 2010
For K -- some science content
I recently came across this article via twitter. It summarizes some interesting research that was done by Professor Stanislaw Karpinski of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences about plants. Most of us learned in school that plants were non-thinking creatures with no nervous system. I've taught biology before and taught that. However, this research causes us to question that assumption.
Professor Karpinski and his team shone light at one leaf of a plant and looked to see what happened in the rest of the plant. Specifically, the parts of the plant being kept away from all light. What he found is that the entire plant reacts to a signal to one leaf. That means that the plant can transmit information throughout itself. That means a nervous system of some kind. Not like ours, of course -- we'd have recognized that sooner -- but a nervous system nonetheless.
In plants, it seems the role of the nervous system is played by bundle sheath cells. I always thought that bundle sheath cells were a rather boring structural and protective cell that surrounded the plant transport system (except in C4 plants, but that's a topic for another day), but apparently not. They send the chemical signals throughout the plant, starting a cascade of reactions.
Even more interesting, different signals get sent depending on the intensity and wavelength of the light (how bright and what color). A blue light sets off a different cascade than a white light. It seems that the purpose of these cascades is to activate different parts of the plant's immune system. The characteristics of the light are associated with different diseases, and the plant defends against the appropriate ones for the season and area with that light quality.
This means that the plant "remembers" different kinds of light. Is this decision making? Is it instinct? Could we say that a plant has "racial memory"? Where does memory lie in a plant?
While this research is very new, and obviously needs to be confirmed by other sources, it does call into question our assumptions about what intelligence is, and where it exists. I love finding out that the world is even more strange and mysterious than we thought it was. . . .
Professor Karpinski and his team shone light at one leaf of a plant and looked to see what happened in the rest of the plant. Specifically, the parts of the plant being kept away from all light. What he found is that the entire plant reacts to a signal to one leaf. That means that the plant can transmit information throughout itself. That means a nervous system of some kind. Not like ours, of course -- we'd have recognized that sooner -- but a nervous system nonetheless.
In plants, it seems the role of the nervous system is played by bundle sheath cells. I always thought that bundle sheath cells were a rather boring structural and protective cell that surrounded the plant transport system (except in C4 plants, but that's a topic for another day), but apparently not. They send the chemical signals throughout the plant, starting a cascade of reactions.
Even more interesting, different signals get sent depending on the intensity and wavelength of the light (how bright and what color). A blue light sets off a different cascade than a white light. It seems that the purpose of these cascades is to activate different parts of the plant's immune system. The characteristics of the light are associated with different diseases, and the plant defends against the appropriate ones for the season and area with that light quality.
This means that the plant "remembers" different kinds of light. Is this decision making? Is it instinct? Could we say that a plant has "racial memory"? Where does memory lie in a plant?
While this research is very new, and obviously needs to be confirmed by other sources, it does call into question our assumptions about what intelligence is, and where it exists. I love finding out that the world is even more strange and mysterious than we thought it was. . . .
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Laceweight -- an aid to humility.
Normally, I consider myself to be a pretty competent knitter. Give me a project, and I can pretty much do it. There are a few notable exceptions (a sweater for me), but I am working on that. So when some very good friends gave me free laceweight yarn from a thrift shop, I jumped at it.
It's a 2-ply weaving yarn, at least according to the English translation of the Finnish website. However, it sure looks like laceweight to me. Now, I have knit lace before, but with fingering weight yarns, and that was fun. So I took this lovely stuff, and found this (ravelry link). It's a gorgeous lace shawl, and I have a mile of teal yarn. What could possibly go wrong?
Have you ever tried to cast on with laceweight? This stuff is thinner than my dental floss. It took me about 4 tries and three different kinds of needles to cast on 8 stitches, and join without twisting. The language was not teacher-appropriate, to say the least. I now understand why lace knitters want pointier needles, and I may have to buy some in the near future.
So I finally succeeded in the cast-on. Then, the set-up pattern. The first 18 rows went fine. But then some stitches slid off the needle, and I'm doomed. I'm doing this magic loop, and one half of the shawl now has 47 stitches, and the other 57. I have no idea what I did or how to correct it.
I will be frogging this shortly. The question is, do I restart it now? Restart it after I buy pointier needles? Give the laceweight away and deny all knowledge? Does it get better?
It's a 2-ply weaving yarn, at least according to the English translation of the Finnish website. However, it sure looks like laceweight to me. Now, I have knit lace before, but with fingering weight yarns, and that was fun. So I took this lovely stuff, and found this (ravelry link). It's a gorgeous lace shawl, and I have a mile of teal yarn. What could possibly go wrong?
Have you ever tried to cast on with laceweight? This stuff is thinner than my dental floss. It took me about 4 tries and three different kinds of needles to cast on 8 stitches, and join without twisting. The language was not teacher-appropriate, to say the least. I now understand why lace knitters want pointier needles, and I may have to buy some in the near future.
So I finally succeeded in the cast-on. Then, the set-up pattern. The first 18 rows went fine. But then some stitches slid off the needle, and I'm doomed. I'm doing this magic loop, and one half of the shawl now has 47 stitches, and the other 57. I have no idea what I did or how to correct it.
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| The shawl so far. About 3 hours worth of work. |
Friday, August 6, 2010
New blog
What to say? How to start a new blog?
Let me introduce myself. I am a knitter, teacher, and scientist, sometimes in that order. I work teaching science to high school students. I am looking for a forum to discuss these three topics.
Today: Knitting, specifically gift knitting
I often find myself knitting for other people. Recently, I finished a top down raglan for the baby of a woman I work with, a baby kimono for another friend who's expecting, and fibonacci socks for my brother's graduation from college (big stupid size 11 boy feet!). I love my family and friends, and they are appropriately grateful knitwear receivers. The pictures are from my camera phone, so excuse the poor picture quality.
So here's my dilemma . . . Do I have to knit for everyone for Christmas? Because if so, I need to start now. But I don't want to. As much as I love them, I want to knit for me . . . so what's your policy on gift knitting? Do I need to get going on a million pairs of felted slippers, or can I start that shawl I want?
Let me introduce myself. I am a knitter, teacher, and scientist, sometimes in that order. I work teaching science to high school students. I am looking for a forum to discuss these three topics.
Today: Knitting, specifically gift knitting
I often find myself knitting for other people. Recently, I finished a top down raglan for the baby of a woman I work with, a baby kimono for another friend who's expecting, and fibonacci socks for my brother's graduation from college (big stupid size 11 boy feet!). I love my family and friends, and they are appropriately grateful knitwear receivers. The pictures are from my camera phone, so excuse the poor picture quality.
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| I need to get a better camera, but it's a baby kimono, I swear. |
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| About 10 different leftover sock yarns went into these. Wild, but he'll love them. |
So here's my dilemma . . . Do I have to knit for everyone for Christmas? Because if so, I need to start now. But I don't want to. As much as I love them, I want to knit for me . . . so what's your policy on gift knitting? Do I need to get going on a million pairs of felted slippers, or can I start that shawl I want?
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