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I had many requests for a step by step instruction of making the "Hydraulic Crane".

Although this wasn't my construction (one of my brilliant students did this one for a project that I assigned), I can figure out the basics from what I saw.

Note: The following is only meant as a start for anyone that wants to try this project. However, everyone has their own twist to every assignment, every design. Use your imagination to make the crane better, and your own!

Materials:

• 30 mL syringes (x8)
• dialysis tubing (or any other kind of plastic tubing for connecting the syringes together)
• wood (for crane construction and for base)
• anchors (to hold the tubing in place)
• bottle with water (or any other weight to counter balance the crane arm)
• a scoop (any kind of shovel)
• Screws / Nails / Nuts / Bolts
• + Other miscellaneous materials.

Procedure

Introduction
Some things are easier to learn than others. Piaget, one of the fathers of the constructivist movement, talked about two types of learning: assimilation and accommodation (Atherton, 2009). Assimilation and accommodation are the two complementary processes through which awareness of the outside world is internalized (Atherton, 2009).
In assimilation, the perceptions of the outside world are incorporated into the internal world model without changing the structure of that model, but potentially at the cost of "squeezing" the external perceptions to fit (Atherton, 2009). In accommodation, the internal world model has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted and thus adapt to it, which can be a more difficult and painful process (Atherton, 2009). Accommodation has everything to do with conceptual change, and is the starting point of the many theories concerned with misconceptions.

My grade 11 students have an ultra secret facebook group dedicated for studying physics and chemistry (their sciences). I don't actually know what goes on in this group... I tried to become a member of their group, but they rejected me (hahahaha). But they have my website as a link, so I guess I'm supposed to be a useful link to their studies. So maybe in a way I can influence them even though I'm not a member of their silly little group... (HEHEHEHE)

Here is an awesome website they (and anybody else who wants to) can use to study physics (that is if they don't have enough physics with me during regular school hours). It has great notes, interactive stuff, simulations, practice questions with answers, and many many more practical applications. The best part of it: It's FREE for anyone to use. I hope my students will go and visit this site and use it on a regular basis: THE PHYSICS CLASSROOM.

Judging from the comments from the article Teacher Pay Scale Across Canada, many people covet the schedule of a teacher and believe that they are paid too richly for simply reading textbooks. I think that teachers are not paid enough!

At the most abstract and philosophical, people get paid for value. How much would you pay me for a map to a long-lost gold nugget worth $1,000 that was buried in your backyard? Unless you have a logic deficiency, it would be some amount under $1,000. You might think it fair to split it 50/50 and offer me $500.

Hey! I have an MBA! I went to university for 6 years. Furthermore I invested 500 hours searching the old library archives to piece together the location of that lost nugget. My education entitles me to $50/hour, so for the 500 hours I'm going to need $25,000. You're lucky I'm not a lawyer at a big firm otherwise you'd be paying me $125,000 for that map.

Growing up, children have a plethora of experiences that have to do with the concept of force. Even before they start talking and knowing the word “force” they have an intuitive understanding of the concept of push and pull. It doesn’t take long for a child to figure out that pushing their brother will result in him moving in the same direction. Babies realize from very early on that things fall down. (A common game among babies and parents is the “baby drops toy – parent picks up toy – repeat many times until parent loses patience”.) This environmental input of the force of gravity acting on an object, thus accelerating it towards the earth gets absorbed by the child’s awareness, and becomes second nature to the child. Most children will ask a parent about these phenomena. The parent then tries to explain these phenomena in terms of sophisticated words such as force, gravity, energy, power, and push / pull. The adult might go in depth or just quickly dismiss the inquiry, depending on the adult’s actual knowledge of the phenomenon, the parent’s interest in scientific principles, or even the time and place of the question. Based on these explanations, and the instances of hearing the words of force or gravity in context, children start to associate what force actually means in terms of their world around them.

I was impressed from the very moment I read about Knowledge Building in the Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006, pp. 97 - 115). As a science teacher, I see the enormous potential of this learning philosophy, and cannot wait to apply it to my existing teaching repertoire. In order to implement the principles of Knowledge Building, I must understand it fully and understand how to apply it. To this end, I am writing this thought paper with two articles on Knowledge Building as a backdrop. The first is “Learning to Work Creatively With Knowledge” by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia (2003) and the second is “Student-Directed Assessment of Knowledge Building Using Electronic Portfolios” by Jan van Aalst and Carol K. K. Chan (2007). The first article serves as the theory portion of my understanding of Knowledge Building. The second article provides an example of Knowledge Building in practice and presents a possible way of implementing the innovative learning environment as well as assessing students in the collaborative Knowledge Building setting.

When teaching, the teacher always should have an objective in mind: what is the purpose of this lesson, this activity, this game? So when I am teaching how to factor polynomials, I could use many games (factoring bingo), activities (group work / collaboration), and manipulatives (algebra tiles), but I also have to have a purpose in mind. For instance I can't tell my students to play Monopoly, as that is irrelevant to factoring polynomials, even though the Monopoly game could be used in a different situation to teach how to count money, give out change, etc. Similarly in a science classroom, we shouldn't be showing explosions unless there is a relevance in what we want the students to learn.

I apply this logic most of the time. But recently I was teaching some math workshops and as a fun activity (yet educational - I thought) I decided to teach the students how to construct a Mobius Strip and discuss it.

I got this video three or more times by email. I guess my friends know that I love physics and cool things. Well - this really is COOL. Everytime I see it, I can't believe it, and it makes me smile. You have to see this:

When somebody asks me what I do, I reply that I am a math and science teacher. I have been a teacher for the last nine years, and a tutor even before then. I taught all sorts of subjects and levels, in many different schools and even in two separate provinces (Alberta and Quebec). I feel like I have a lot of experience, and being exposed to the different types of schools (public, charter, private) I can compare the teaching going on in many different environments and I have opinions of what seems to work better for me. I pick and choose what I like and what works best. I learn and apply from one environment to the next. The overall result is that I am becoming a great teacher. In fact, I might be called an expert teacher by my students, peers and superiors.