Many students in other countries need help with their English conversation from beginner to advanced. While online teaching is convenient, it is still demanding as the teacher needs to focus their full attention on the student for fifty minutes. So I am fully aware of the time demands. Each of these lessons also need preparation time so this must also be factored in.

I know what it’s like to learn long distance because I have taken online Bisaya lessons for over two years. I studied the southern Filipino language Bisaya, also known as Cubuano language, using Skype and I know the pros and cons of using this technology. My other experience using online teaching and learning has been the use of Wiziq. My MathCounts team regularly met online at Wiziq for online math practice. I routinely taught between four and ten students the finer points of advanced mathematics. I often used the online whiteboard to solve problems and manage the students. The skills required are different from face to face, but good people skills are a plus.

Wiziq has the benefit of having an online whiteboard. This helps the teacher and student to interact when numbers and symbols are important for understanding. Another benefit of Wiziq was being able to share powerpoint presentations. I suspect that sharing files, video and a whiteboard will slow the connection, especially from students in other countries. For this reason, I’ll only use Skype for my English lessons.

The Link Between Teaching English and Science & Technology

I have lots of ideas on topics that may be of interest to talk about when teaching English conversation. Some ideas to make the connections will be to discuss simple science demonstration like observing an egg or ice floating in water. Why does that happen? How can you explain that? This would give the English learner something interesting and authentic to talk about. Another idea would be to show some pictures in current events in science so the student has something concrete to think and speak to. In this way, science and technology are the ling to learning more English vocabulary.

Other ideas I plan to implement include using mathematics and statistics as a link to improve English vocabulary. Many of the students hoping to come to graduate school here should be familiar with some of the more basic topics in science, math and statistics. I’ll find in each student their interest and background and use these links to improve their English vocabulary and conversational skills.

Helping with the English TOEFL test

I also will be getting into TOEFL test prep for English learners. This English test is used by many schools and corporations to assess  the English reading, writing, listening, and speaking levels. Many ESL students need to score at a certain level to study here in the United States and this creates stress and a need to improve their TOEFL score.

I have taken professional development classes and also graduate classes in teaching English as a second language. Even though this will be my first time teaching English online, I have almost twenty years teaching science and mathematics. I also have over five years experience in online teaching and learning. I’m ready to go.

Visit me at Siyensya.com at KevTechEnglish both here and on youtube and start your English lessons now. Contact me or find me at at Skype at KevTechEnglish and get your free 15 minute English lesson.

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I received my Christmas present early from my wife last week. She got me the new Olympus Pen EPL5 DSLR micro four thirds camera with a 14-42 kit lens. It’s the camera I wanted since last year. I almost bought the EPL3 last year but decided to wait for the newer camera. Olympus skipped the EPL4 and went directly to the EPL5 model.

EPL5 Video at ISO 25600

It’s been a week now since I’ve had my new camera, and that’s given me time to play around and see what it can do.  I played with the video today to see what the video would look like with very high ISO. The maximum ISO is 25,600 on this camera and I wanted to see what it looked like on a dark night. The only light available was from the lights on the houses for the Christmas displays as I walked around town.

The EPL5 is much smaller than my other camera, the Olympus E620. I took some pictures in the Philippines with this camera. This is both good and bad. The good is that it’s much lighter to carry around. The difficult part is that the buttons are smaller, which makes it difficult to operate in cold damp weather. So tonight was a test to see how well it would operate in the cold damp weather. I must say, I’m very impressed with with the EPL5′s performance. I’m just amazed that the video is of high quality just like the pictures.

A First Impression of the EPL5

As you can see from the video, even at very high ISO, it is still pretty good. I expected much more graininess in the video than what I saw. This is just the first impression and I plan to take more video to test the limits of the camera. For me, one of the best things about the EPL5 is that it is so small – about the size of a point and shoot, but with a bigger lens in front. I was able to take this camera on my nightly walk around town and just keep it in my pocket.

So far, I am still getting used to the controls. It’s difficult to see the buttons in the dark but I can remember where most of them are. One problem I had was trying to display the super control panel. By default, it’s not turned on. You must go into the menus and activate it. I found some good information at the Olympus EPL5 site here.

We bought the camera at Dan’s Camera in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It’s a great store with very knowledgeable people working there. Now with all this great video I’m about to take, I guess I’ll need another external hard drive to store it. And I also got my eye on the new 45mm f1.8 prime lens,. If you want a great, lightweight, interchangeable lens DSLR camera, consider the Olympus Pen EPL5 camera.

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I am almost done with my statistics one class at Coursera.com. All I need to do is complete the final exam this week. I learned a great deal of statistics using the R programming language. I also completed a graduate class in statistics at Loyola Marymount University in California on teaching middle school statistics via R programming. I learned a great deal about the R programming language related to statistics and I continue to learn more about the R environment.

To get a better understanding of R programming, I have become interested in reviewing classes that I have taken in linear algebra and linear optimization. I found a great class on linear algebra online at MIT. This class is taught by Professor Gilbert Strang and all the lectures are online for anyone to view. In lecture one, Professor Strang explains these topics in an easy to understand way and he gives good complete examples on how to work with linear combinations using both row form and column form.

This linear algebra class at MIT is a great review for getting up to speed on matrix algebra. Today I completed the first lecture about using matrices and vectors and how they are used in a linear combination. I hope to go through all 34 videos over the course of the next few months.

From Professor Strang’s Linear Algebra book:

The century of data has begun! So many applications are discrete rather than continuous, digital rather than analog. The truth is that vectors and matrices have become the language to know.

I’m also using the major system  to help students remember different formulas in years for the scientists. Our first scientist, Albert Einstein, was born in the year of 1879. To remember this year, I use the peg system to transform the year 1879 in to two words, tough cup, or simple tuf cup.  You can see my video here on how to use the peg system.

Einstein was born March 14, 1879. March 14 translates into pie day, 3.14. So this is also another way to remember his birthday and birth year. He is the first scientist we talk about the beginning of the year and I give the students his famous equation E = mc². I tell the students that E is for energy, m is for mass and c is for the speed of light squared.  I try to find one or two important  facts about each of the scientists or mathematicians that I teach so the students have a good background knowledge of the history of science and mathematics. I generally give a new scientist on Monday morning and we put it into the peg system for the students to copy down.

I teach eight scientists in each of the first three quarters this year for a total of 24 scientists and mathematicians. For my honors classes, I have a few extra scientists I have my students write about in a short report.  Knowing about the history of science and mathematics adds to their background knowledge. I believe this helps them to make more connections in math and science as they progress through their career.

The class is challenging and I am learning a great deal about using the R language to program and write scripts.  This week I’ll be studying for the midterm exam on the content for the first three weeks.

In my other class, a graduate class at Loyola Marymount University in California, I am busy researching different teaching methods on how to implement the teaching of statistics in the middle school. I am concentrating my research for this class on how to involve students with science and statistics and using programming as a means to interact with the data. I believe that computer programming, with R in particular, along with statistics should be taught at the middle school level. Using these technologies would give the students real world experience using scientific data.

So far, I haven’t come across too much research showing how to do implement programming at the middle school level. This week I hope to put together a final lesson plan on how to implement statistics and science in the middle school.

XTOL, partnering with a US-based accredited university, is offering a select group of students a full scholarship to complete an innovative Master’s degree program.

 

To do this, I had to manipulate the data as there were two conditions to deal with. I read many posts and some web sites about what to do and these helped a great deal in using statistics and R. There is no shortage of statistics and R information out there, it’s just that I don’t know which function would be best for my data.

Eventually, I found some other students on the forum and corresponded with them and I compared our scripts. Some students in the class are obviously R programming experts and I have found that I learn the most from reading there posts about how they would attack the problem.

I’m putting some major time into this statistics class and I’m learning a great deal. I think a lot has to do with the fact is that we have real data from a real problem and that motivates me to find the solution.

I’ll start watching the week two statistics lecture videos shortly. These lectures are about correlations and also how to implement these using R. I expect to learn much more about the R programming environment, statistics and writing scripts. My only problem is I’m not getting enough sleep lately.

From John Mighton:

It is important to bear in mind that entire civilizations failed to discover the idea of zero as a place-holder for operations such as addition and division. If the Romans couldn’t develop an effective method of division over the course of eight centuries, it seems unrealistic to expect children to discover a great deal on their own.

 

 

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Scientists simply don’t have time to verify that all the theories on which the work is based are correct; they rely on the integrity of the peer review system, so that whenever they cite another scientist’s result, they are confident in the soundness or validity of that result.

…In educational papers, however, citations play a more ambiguous role. Many authors appear to make citations to prove the validity of their claims by appealing, for instance, to the results of an experiment or the authority of other authors. But as educators will admit themselves, many educational papers fail to meet the basic standards of logical and experimental rigor that are required of scientific papers. This makes the whole edifice of educational theory somewhat shaky, as it is not clear how much weight citations actually carry.

I’ve been teaching myself R for a while now.

The class will also have a forum to discuss the lesson and a meetup to meet students from the class in your area.

Here is more information about the class.

 From Coursera:

About the Instructor

Course Syllabus