Project #3 C4T #2

C4T #2 Comment 1
For C4T #2 I was assigned to John Burk. His blog is titled "Quantum Progress". Mr. Burk is a physics and math teacher at boarding school in Delaware. He is a fairly active blogger so finding a post wasn't a difficult task. For post number I chose, "Exploring Parametrics with Ships in the Night". In this post, Mr. Burk talks about the parametrics of the possibility of two ships hitting each other. He gave his class a rather lengthy ten page worksheet to figure out if the ships would collide or miss. At the end of his post he talks about his students truly understanding the problem, and this is where his question comes in to play, "If a student can calculate a set of parametric equations to model the position of the boat, but doesn’t know what a parameter is, is that ok?"

I started off my comment back to Mr. Burk by introducing myself, and letting him know that I was commenting on his post per an assignment for EDM310. I then gave him the links to our class blog, my blog, and my twitter. I told Mr. Burk that I believed knowing the vocabulary is just as important as understanding the concept. I also told him that not only does knowing the vocabulary help the student to differentiate concepts, but it may help solve the problem you have been facing with the students struggling in presenting their data. Luckily, Mr Burk responded back to me and told me he completely agreed, but he wasn't sure if students being able to define what a parametric equation is as an essential skill if they can solve problems with them in the appropriate context.

C4T #2 Comment 2
For comment number two on, "Quantum Progress," I posted on, "My Colleague Finds a Mistake in Feynman". This post was based upon a video Mr. Burk watched by Richard Feynman. He sent the video to a colleague of his whom told him Mr. Feynman had it all wrong. Mr. Feynman suggests that the oxygen generated during photosynthesis is the product of a splitting apart of carbon and oxygen in carbon dioxide. When in fact, all the oxygen produced by photosynthesis is generated by the splitting of water to make H+ e- and O2, says Mr Burk's colleague. This interaction generated Mr. Burk's thoughts on the damage of one teacher teaching several subjects.

In my comment back to Mr. Burk, I told him since most science teachers specialize in whatever subject it is that they teach, it makes sense that a specialist in one area would call out a specialist in another area on specific information that pertains to their expertise. I then said that having a single teacher for all subjects would hurt the overall quality of education that students receive now. It seems that teachers would teach with a “jack of all trades, master of none” mentality. I ended my comment by saying I thought that the current system is our best option right now, with a focus towards specialization.