FYS thingamabob

Today in class, Dr. Campbell asked me if I’d ever play music for the class. Dr. Campbell, I’d be delighted to. So that explains my title. Come on, I like little clever, creating, catchy titles. A title is part of my blog, and my blogs are an extension of myself.  So I like to keep my title rather quirky.

Today we talked about Nelson’s view on schools, which led us to talk about the way the standardized school system is limiting us.  I agree. I think having the standardized tests, such as TAKS, has changed the way we approach teaching.  Teachers must follow a certain curriculum that is concurrent with the TAKS, so it’s almost like the test limits what you learn. Instead of going beyond the content of TAKS, students are limited to that and spend so much time “preparing” for it. I’m sorry, but I have a big problem with TAKS. I mean, why would you spend the whole year focusing on that? It’s a minimal skills test, not brain surgery. When I was in junior high we focused on it so much, so high school was a nice change because the teachers didn’t limit their curriculum to TAKS material.  I think that was beneficial for the students because we were able to broaden our knowledge and think beyond the questions asked on that test.  The things you learn outside of TAKS material is so much more interesting and useful and beneficial, that I do find it a real shame when teachers are only limited to teaching TAKS material, and students are limited to learning that material.

So how can computers supplement and extend the traditional forms of teaching? Well, the first thing that came to my mind when I read that question were programs like Blackboard, CourseCompass, and the UT Homework system, which my old Calculus teacher used.  I also have a big problem with Blackboard and the UT Homework system.  It does make things easier–Blackboard’s not so bad, but the UT Homework system–man, it’s glitchy. When I’d use it for calculus, I’d get an answer, but it would be marked wrong because the correct answer on the system was the same answer in a different form.  But I see why teachers use these programs. It’s like a school facebook. On facebook, we constantly check it for updates, and update them ourselves. On Blackboard, teachers post things and keep us updated, and we have to constantly check for updates. So then…..why can’t we just use facebook? Haha.

Something that also caught my attention–Independent Study: kind of like my Engineering Design and Development class.  It was basically a research and development class. We were required to think of a problem (that other people thought to be a problem too) and find a solution to it.  Although we had a teacher for that class, I think his job was more to guide us, rather than to teach us.  I think the real teachers were the students. We actually did the brainstorming and the research behind our projects–we had to think of a problem to something, research existing solutions and think of why they weren’t the best solutions, and concoct a new solution that surpasses these previous solutions, based on our research and observations.  Our EDD teacher didn’t do all this for us–he merely gave us suggestions and guided us on how to present our solutions and go about the research.  I think that that form of teaching is beneficial to an extent.  For a research project, it’s something you can’t learn from a teacher, because it’s more like you’re teaching yourself, and you’re making all these discoveries and observations yourself. FYS sort of reminds me of this form of teaching. In class, we have discussions of various topics, but Dr. Campbell guides us to where he wants us to get.  My old art teacher was the same way. He didn’t “teach” us what to draw or paint or sculpt, because then it wouldn’t be our artwork–it’d be his. Rather, he would guide us and show us different techniques to produce quality artwork–the content and composition was completely up to us.

However, there are some downsides to this form of teaching, but that depends on the subject being taught. If it’s a class like art, where it’s more abstract, you can’t really teach that because the art is subjective–you can’t be taught what you want to create, and art should be like an extension of yourself.  It’s inspired by feelings, thoughts, anything, and different people find inspiration in different things.  In a more concrete subject like math, however (and I don’t care if people think math is abstract–it’s not), that sort of thing has to be taught.  You need to be taught the basics and the rules, because all the other types of math are based upon those principles.  Math doesn’t come from feelings–I guess in a sense it does come from inspiration…I feel like I’m contradicting myself.  Ok, so then I suppose that in anything, you have to teach yourself, only to some extent, but you also need someone to guide you. I mean, you have to study and do the assignments yourself, with the guidance provided by your teacher.

“If you’re prepared to learn, school can be anywhere. If you’re not prepared to learn, school is nowehere.” I agree with this. Thank you, Dr. Campbell. I don’t want to use myself as an example; that’ll just make me seem full of myself.  But I think it’s true that you need to want to learn in order to learn.  And I didn’t share this with the class, but for piano, I did have formal lessons. Which explains why I’m strictly a classical pianist. I know a lot of “self-taught” musicians who are completely against a formal, classical music education. It’s understandable, I mean, music can’t exactly be taught, because it’s just like art. It comes from you, and not a teacher.  But, a teacher teaches you the techniques used to play music. I think I was really lucky to have the piano teacher that I’ve had because the way she taught required me to incorporate my feelings into my playing.  There was a point, however, when I seriously considered quitting piano. I stuck to it though, and I think what made me stay was because I wanted to be like the more advanced students who played all the hard songs. Which brings me back to the point that in order to learn, you need to be motivated. And to all those musicians who have a problem with classical training–don’t. No need to be such haters.  I think classical technique helped me a lot in my songwriting.

So I think that about sums up everything I wanted to say.  Now, time to put it all in song. Just kidding.

Ari xx

Oh, and here’s me on youtube, since I can’t delicious for some reason Sorry–I was sick that day, but I never miss Java Night, so I sang anyway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4awj1yHEZvk

Today’s FYS class was really interesting.  Oh by the way, Dr. Campbell, thanks for using my uber long blog for the Wordle demonstration. Wordle is awesome!!! And I might as well clear this up–the reason my blog title is what it is is because when someone was reading today in class, and he made a little slip of the tongue, I just thought, “Freudian slip!!” Lol, sorry.  What can I say?  My old English teacher was big on Freud. But, my whole Freudian slip thing just goes back to word association and the different ways people interpret and associate different things.   Which goes back to the Wordle demonstration today.  By seeing the different words in that shape (which when it first came out, I thought it looked like a fish. Haha) and by seeing which words were bigger and bolder and stood out more, we could more or less get an idea of what my blog was about.  However, seeing only the words, I think, is still very abstract–as in, others will probably make different assumptions about what the blog is about that could be totally different from what it really is about, simply because different people make different associations with words.  But, it’s also beneficial to hear these different associations because, like we mentioned in class, you’ll expand your perspective on things and be able to make more connections when you see certain words.

Something else I found really interesting was that chair explanation Dr. Campbell talked about.  When we see a chair, we say it’s a chair without thinking.  And when we see the word chair, it’s not a chair, it’s a word.  And if there was no word for chair and you wanted to sit down, well, you’re screwed.  The point was that language makes communication so much more efficient and effective, and being fluent in a language makes it that much better, whether you’re communicating personally or through something like instant messaging or Twitter.  What it made me think of, though, was how just because you can say something eloquently, that doesn’t automatically mean that it will be perceived by others the way you perceived it.  Like Shakespeare. I mean, I absolutely love him–and literature/poetry in general because it’s open to many different interpretations.  And, certain words have certain connotations–which can be different to different people–which is one of the reasons why a piece of work can be interpreted in various ways. Diction is one of my favourite rhetorical devices Diction and satire

So, there’s my two cents for today, and in addition to two cents, I’ve provided a lovely link to a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwu2HvXRAGk

Ari xx

So…today, while I was having a deep conversation with Eric about our FYS class, he said something that I thought was really profound. He always told me I was random–which, I must say, I beg to differ–and that I was an “extreme case” of what we talked about last time in class.  We discussed how many different people associate things with many different things, making it very difficult to compile everything into a single category, and apparently I am like one of those people, but  to the 10th power. I guess I see his point; I think I really do make these random associations when I hear something.  So when I was blogging and thinking about random associations, I thought of that game people played–the word association.  You’re shown a word and then you say the first word that pops into your head.  For example, the word “disgusting” makes me think of “Crocs,” and “Utopia” makes me think of “communism.” And “jerk” makes me think of “Kanye West.” Just sayin.’

Word association is a curious topic.  Some believe that this word association game can reveal things about a person’s subconscious mind, as it shows what things they associate together.   Mostly the fun of the game comes from observing the links between the words and wondering how the person’s mind managed to make such an association.  The goal of the game is usually to compare the first and final word, to see if they relate, or to see how different they are, or also to see how many words are repeated. Likewise, players often review the list of words to see the pathways of associations that go from beginning to end.

I think the class should play this game together

Another interesting thing I found: word association can be dated back to the time of Avicenna, a Persian physician and philosopher, in the 11th century.  He treated a patient afflicted with “love sickness” by feeling the patient’s pulse as he recited aloud to him the names of towns, streets, people, etc.  Avicenna noticed how his patient’s pulse increased when certain names were mentioned, from which he was able to conclude that his patient was in love with a girl whose home he was able to locate through the test.  Avicenna advised his patient to marry the girl he was in love with, and the patient soon recovered after his marriage.  Call me cheesy, but I thought that was pretty cool. On the other hand, that patient really needs to get it together.  Love sickness? I didn’t know that was a real sickness.  OH RIGHT…it’s not.

Anyway, there’s my long and drawn-out train of thought; I hope there’s something in there that you liked. Part of what I like to do is share music, so here’s a song I think some of you might like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkNlMDMMmIY

Peace–

Ari xx

So….I just finished reading this essay by Vannevar Bush, called “As We May Think.” It was published twice–before and after the U.S. nucelar attacks on Japan.  Initially, this essay was a bit hard to follow.  Bush talked about how the war was among the scientists, coming up with strange devices that benefited man.  He had these detailed explanations of ideas for new and powerful instruments that would be more reliable than any human operator.

Is it just me….or does the essay sound slightly satirical? Oh well, it’s really late, I’m slightly delirious, and I can’t think straight. -_-

So, I was reading the part about arithmetical machines. Bush talks about machines that can perform different types of arithmetical computation–addition, subtraction, you get the picture. In addition, it would not be confined to arithmetic and statistics–btw, I keep misspelling arithmetic, and then I have to go back and fix it. It’s so frustrating. I hate being typo-prone. Anywayyyy, Bush talks about machines being able to perform differential equations, functional and integral equations. That sounds like my TI-89!!! Lol. It was my best friend in Calculus last year. Besides Peter Jung. It seems so normal and commonplace right now though (the TI-89, I mean, not Peter), and it’s interesting to see how not too long ago, machines like that we’re simply ideas.

I really liked that excerpt where Bush talks about how a mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures or perform the transformations of equations using calculus–rather, he is in individual skilled in logic and is a man of “intuitive judgement in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.” I think that’s true. One of my old math teachers used to say that people who thought math was complicated didn’t realize how simple it was compared to real life. Lol. I believed her until I tried to do my  homework. -_-

My contact lenses are bothering me. I should take them out. Till next time–

Ari xx