Chapman Kids Blog

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Category: Education Page 12 of 18

Common Core math just wrong

By

On Saturday, November 23, 2013

In culture, Education, Homeschool

Day 824 of 1000
Betty Blonde #8 – 07/28/2008
Betty Blonde #3
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

This is an excerpt from a World Magazine article about how the Common Core government education standards treats math:

Two years ago in September, Heather Crossin’s 8-year-old daughter Lucy came home from her Catholic school in Indianapolis with a math problem that seemed unusual.

“Bridge A is 407 feet long. Bridge B is 448 feet long,” the problem read. “Which bridge is longer? How do you know?”

“Bridge B is longer,” Crossin’s daughter had written. “I found this out by just looking at the number and seeing that 448 is greater than 407.”

The youngster’s answer was mostly wrong: According to her new textbook, enVisionMATH Common Core, she was supposed to compare the hundreds column, the tens column, and the ones column individually. The teacher gave her one point out of three.

Read the whole article here.  The sad part is the Common Core is not only bad in its philosophical biases, but in that it will effect even those how do not buy into the governments really bad educational methods and ideas–home and private schools.  Here is an excellent analysis of Common Core and its impact from people who have done their homework and have an excellent record of supporting educational methods that actually work.

Lorena’s term paper–Intro to New Testament

By

On Wednesday, November 20, 2013

In Education

Day 821 of 1000
Betty Blonde #6 – 07/24/2008
Betty Blonde #3
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.

Lorena's term paper on the Apostle PaulLorena was required to take a Religion class for her college transfer associate degree at Wake Technical Community College.  The kids enjoyed their New Testament class while they were at Wake Tech, so Lorena decided to take it, too.  Lorena loves both the class and her professor.  He is a remarried widower who is also a pastor at a local church.  He is an engaging teacher both in the way he lectures and how he manages class discussions.

Today, Lorena had to turn in her term paper and give a five minute presentation on its contents. You can see the paper by clicking either here or on the image to the left. For the last month she has reasearched the life of the Apostle Paul. She took many notes and distilled them down to eight hand-written pages. Then, last weekend, she had Kelly helped her write the report and Christian helped her print it. We think she did a great job.

Lorena faithfully reads her Bible, but feels like she has learned new ways to study that will help her in the future.  She feels like she now understands the flow of Paul’s life much better than before.  She also has a better sense for the culture and influences around Paul during the time he lived.  It makes me want to study my Bible more and better.  It also makes me want to read some more history of the Ancient Near East to get a little better understanding of the big picture of that time and place.

Kelly’s undergraduate research symposium at UNC Charlotte

By

On Saturday, November 16, 2013

In Education

Day 817 of 1000
Betty Blonde #2
Betty Blonde #2
Click here to see full size strip.

Lorena drove Kelly to UNC Charlotte for an undergraduate research symposium this morning.  Several teams from NCSU went there yesterday.  Kelly stayed behind to print out all the posters for the three Statistics teams, so she was kind of the hero when she got there this morning.  Here she is with one of her teammates by their poster.

Kelly at the undergraduate research symposium

Kelly’s first undergraduate research poster

By

On Thursday, November 14, 2013

In Education

Day 815 of 1000

This is Kelly’s first undergraduate research poster she will present at a symposium in Charlotte this weekend. Click on the poster to see or download the poster as a PDF.
Kelly's fall semester 2013 undergraduate research poster

The BEST statistics class

By

On Wednesday, November 13, 2013

In Education, Work

Day 814 of 1000

Quality control browniesMy professor for Statistical Quality Control at the University of Texas at El Paso was Dr. Thomas McLean. He was the head of the department, a classmate of Ross Perot at the Naval Academy, and a great guy. I was there to run the Machine Vision Applications Laboratory which was started by Dr. Carroll Johnson and I, but they talked me into getting a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering at the same time.  I had to take a few undergraduate leveling classes to get started and the SQC class was one of them.

I loved the class.  It was not so much that the material was so complex or innovative, but that I had worked in the manufacturing sector for ten years before I arrived at UTEP and I understood its importance.  SQC is a tool that is frequently used in conjunction with Machine Vision.  Machine Vision has been the main focus of my career, so it was great to take that class with an excellent instructor.  I used what I learned in that class for part of my thesis and frequently ever since.

I told Kelly about the class.  I am sure she was a little skeptical, but she was required to take it as part of her Statistics degree.  She has enjoyed it a lot.  Yesterday, she had to make brownies that were used as part of a project for the class where the quality of a process was measured and evaluated.  What an awesome way to make this material come to life.

GRE scores are IN!!!

By

On Saturday, November 9, 2013

In Education

This is just a brief note to record a very positive result on the GRE for both Kelly and Christian.  They both should definitely be able to get into a good program.  These scores are not everything, but in the really good schools they are a gatekeeper.  Both kids are at a level where their scores will not be an impediment at all for the schools the wish to attend for there PhD’s.  It was a huge worry before and now it is not.

Christian is doing the same stuff as me

By

On Wednesday, November 6, 2013

In Education, Software, Technology

Day 807 of 1000

Position probability mapAmazingly, Christian uses many of the same algorithms for his undergraduate research as I do for my day job. Christian created the image to the left. It is a normalized correlation response map used in the process of finding a pattern in an image. His work is very technical–some of the elements of his research requires deeper math skills than I normally use. It has been fun watching the work move forward.

Class registration for the last semester at NCSU

By

On Tuesday, October 29, 2013

In Education

Day 799 of 1000

I only have one more tuition payment before the kids graduate.  They both registered for class in the last couple of days, so it will be arriving soon.  I am feeling a little nostalgic about the thing.  We warned the kids that registration for their last semester was something to be very carefully considered because it is necessary to get all the advisors, administrators, and professors aligned and in agreement that the classes taken are sufficient for graduation.

Here are their final courses:

Christian
 ECE 421 Introduction to Signal Processing
 MA 426  Mathematical Analysis II
 MA 513  Introduction to Complex Variables*
 MA 747  Probability and Stochastic Processes II*

*Graduate classes

Kelly
 EC 302  Intermediate Macroeconomics
 ENG 332  Communication for Business and Management
 ST 431  Introduction to Experimental Design
 ST 432  Introduction to Survey Sampling
 ST 498  Independent Studies in Statistics*
 HESR 249  Tennis

*Undergraduate research

It will be very nice not have so much pain in that wallet area of my anatomy.

Corn yields in North Carolina: an exciting new statistics paper

By

On Monday, October 21, 2013

In Education

Day 791 of 1000

The following is the abstract for Kelly’s undergraduate research work.  It is very cool that I am actually excited about this!

Evaluating the Ability of Drought Indices as Predictors of North Carolina Corn Yields

Corn is of growing importance to North Carolina’s agricultural economy.  The ability to accurately predict corn yields per year under different different climate conditions is essential.    The North Carolina State Climate Office (NCSCO) maintains seven separate drought indices that contain information on precipitation dating back to 1895 for each of the eight North Carolina climate divisions. Drought index data used spans the period from March through October for each year from 1981 to 2011, reflecting the normal growing season of corn in North Carolina.  This study first attempts to determine if there is a correlation between drought and North Carolina corn yields over time, using North Carolina corn yield data from the USDA. The study will then attempt to determine which of the indices are the best predictors of corn yield per year for each climate division in the case of a correlation. If any strong corn yield predictors are found, expanding the drought indices’ predictive capabilities to other important North Carolina crop yields, such as tobacco or soybeans, could prove to be useful.

The only thing that might be cooler is if she were doing statistics on pork bellies.  After all, this is North Carolina.

Getting serious about applying to graduate school

By

On Sunday, October 20, 2013

In Education

Day 790 of 1000

I spent the weekend helping the kids work on graduate school applications.  It is a lot of work.  One of Kelly’s required three essays with a fourth optional essay and a resume.  There are a ton of GRE scores and official transcripts we have to get sent.  Everything has to be complete within the next two or three months.  While all this is going on, the kids have one of the hardest semesters of their career.  I am going to make a spreadsheet to track whether we get everything done.

Mid-career Masters Degree: El Paso, Texas

By

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013

In Education, Work

Day 786 of 1000

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how a mid-career Masters degree changed my life. I admire people who do an after work and weekends Masters degree so they can pay the rent and support the family, but I did not do it that way. I bailed out of my job and dived in full time after having spent ten years in the workforce.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here.

[Previous post in series]
[Next post in series]

After ten years in industry, there were lots of good reasons for me to return to college at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) for a Masters Degree.  Primarily, there was a professor there who wanted me to come for a specific reason.  He was not just willing to have me come.  There was a need for someone like me.  That was huge.  I had something to offer the Industrial Engineering program at UTEP because of my ten years of experience that other students who moved directly from their Bachelors degree did not.  I was able to talk to people in the industrial sector around Texas and New Mexico as well as the Maquiladora sector in Ciudad Juarez, and Chihuahua in Mexico.  Those ten years experience that to speak with the industrial base in ways that “fresh-outs” could not.

It turns out that our program was further reaching than even the industrial sector around El Paso.  We ended up providing services and/or installing equipment in Israel, Singapore, and Monterrey, Mexico.  Those services brought money and research opportunities to the University.  The experience I gained representing UTEP in industry was, in some ways, more valuable than the classes I took.  The bigger point is that anyone with ten years experience in the private sector, if they were working hard and paying attention, will have something significant to offer a University that will make the transition back to college much more palatable.

While UTEP is not one of the flagship universities of Texas like Texas A&M or University of Texas at Austin, it is a great regional university.  It had exactly what I needed and it was not only willing to accept me as a student, but had a unique way to use my skills.  When I first got there, I wondered whether I had made a big mistake, but the longer I stayed, the more I liked it.  It was a super match for me and we actually were successful enough in our work that, when I finished my Masters degree, I was invited to Texas A&M to continue on to a PhD.  I never availed myself of that opportunity, but UTEP allowed me to transition from a mediocre (in terms of grades) Bachelors degree to a top tier University in one step.

The bigger point is that finding a slot like this might take some serious investigation and a move to what might at first seem to be an odd place, but it is worth it to find a school that will not only accept you as a student, but has a professor with a desire for someone with your unique skills.  The professor with a desire for your unique skills and a willingness to go to bat for you makes all the difference in the world both with respect to acceptance into a program and life as a student once you get there.

A surprisingly good article by a liberal

By

On Tuesday, October 15, 2013

In Education

Here is an article in the Columbia Daily that does a pretty good job of describing what it is like to be a conservative on just about any secular or government college campus in America today.  With regard to a previous article written on this topic, Jake Goldwasser writes the following:

…he talks about how once we leave Columbia we will leave the domain of constant self-congratulation and enter a world that is skeptical of our institution. It is not that professors collect empirical evidence to support liberal claims that makes the world sneer at places like Columbia. It is the self-righteous attitude, the certainty of conviction that comes from an institution whose purpose is to foster doubt and balanced discourse and critical thinking.

I appreciated the article in its effort to describe the reality of the undergraduate Ivy League world.  Nevertheless, I think both this article and the one to which the above quotation refers, overestimate the level of accomplishment required to gain entrance to a liberal arts degree at an Ivy League school.  Sadly, the level of knowledge attained by earning such a liberal arts degree is equally as suspect.  The “real” world has figured out that ethnicity, money, connections, personal (politically correct) proclivities, ACT/SAT preparation classes, and checking the right social participation boxes is more important than real ability when applying to these schools, especially when it comes to liberal arts degrees.  Many of us have too much experience dealing with the products of these institutions to consider them elite in any meaningfuly way.

Still, and I am sincere about this, thanks for trying to understand.

Immigrants on the rental car bus

By

On Monday, October 7, 2013

In Education, Work

I got co-opted into running up to Arvada, Colorado from Prescott, Arizona this afternoon.  On the bus ride from the rental car return to the airport, I got to listen to two immigrants with fairly thick accents talk to each other about the way to get ahead in America.  It was a very enlightening conversation.  Both of them said it is essential to get an education.  The reason for the education was not the education itself, but how, in America, it could really open up job opportunities.  One of them talked about his sister who was studying to be a nurse.  The bus driver talked about his brother who came here with a Bachelors degree from his home country to study for a Masters degree.

He was an engineer and (I love this quote) and as an indicator of his brothers great success, he said, “He drives a brand new Ford Mustang.”

The other guy was in awe.  He said, “Wow.”

They talked about various community college options, a six month program that would allow the bus driver to advance in his current job.  It was all about the job.  I am on board with that.  I believe learning for learning’s sake is a good thing, but learning so you can put beans on the table is even better.  Actually, they can be the same thing a lot of the time.  It was all quite motivating.  I left the bus inspired.

There is something wrong with this picture

By

On Saturday, October 5, 2013

In Education, Family

Day 775 of 1000

Kelly works the two big monitors on her stats project at Hunt Library NCSUThis a picture Kelly snapped while at work at the fabulous new NCSU Hunt Library today. As I am stuck out in Prescott without the family working through the weekend, I got a little melancholy.  Lorena, the kids and I started going down to the NCSU Hill Library (the old one) when the kids started community college three and a half years.  At first it was fun because we got to watch the posturing and histrionics of the college kids while Lorena, Kelly, and Christian studied and I worked on volunteer research for NCSU. 

When the kids moved on from community college to NCSU, we continued to go about every other Saturday, but now it was even more fun because the kids were part of the drama.  Then, at the beginning of 2013 the best college library in the world opened over on the Centenniel campus.  Now, we only have a few short months to go to the library together.  I want to enjoy every chance I get to be with the kids before they go off to graduate school in the west.  Fortunately, the plan is for me to be home for a couple of weeks after this trip and I plan to make the most of it.  I am very thankful that they still do not mind if I tag along. 

The career fair at Big State U is your friend

By

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013

In Education, Work

Day 771 of 1000

Kelly went to her first job fair at NCSU last year.  She was not wildly excited about the idea as she said none of the other students took it too seriously.  Actually, she pretty seriously drug her feet, but in the end she dressed up very professionally, we updated and beautified her resume, and she went.  When she went, she was wiped out–it really is hard work to work a big job fair.  She said she was a little skeptical, but that changed to outright enthusiasm after she got four interviews and three job offers.  This year, she does not need the job fair as badly as last, because she has a standing offer for internship work at the JHU-APL.  Still she plans to spend some quality time there.

Kelly’s experience helped Christian a lot.  He is pretty fired up.  Last summer, he did research, so he was not looking for an internship.  This year, he wore his suit to school today, has an armful of updated resumes, and plans to spend several hours working the floor.  I am looking forward to hearing how it goes.

Invitation to write a community college course

By

On Sunday, September 29, 2013

In Education

Day 769 of 1000

We love community colleges.  In spite of our dedication to getting our kids through Big State U and on into grad school, we believe that if there is going to be a long term future for mass public post secondary education, it will be centered around community colleges.  Some are fortunate to live within driving distance of a state four year college, but almost all of America is within a half hour drive of a first rate community college.  They do a great job right now at training people for jobs in auto repair, dental assisting, welding, electronic technician work, bookkeeping, and so many other great fields where people can make a great living.

They also are great in preparing people for entry into four year schools.  We believe that these four year schools will start to get more distributed.  When that happens, the community college will be great places to proctor sit-down exams, on-sight seminars, and a plethora of other activities associated with the delivery of distributed classes.  They currently work with Big State U to coordinate classes and even perform some research, but we see that collaboration getting bigger as pressure is added to drive cost out of higher education.

With that as a backdrop, you will understand when I was excited about an opportunity I have been given to write a two semester community college course in Machine Vision.  I will write the course plan, develop computer programs, and help do some “train the trainer” sessions to get the thing going.  I think it will take at least a year given my current schedule to have anything ready to go, but it is an exciting new opportunity that I believe I will enjoy thoroughly.  I will keep you posted.

GRE day in the Chapman household

By

On Saturday, September 28, 2013

In Education

We hit another milestone today in the kids education.  They took a GRE practice test two weeks ago and are scheduled to take the real thing at 1:00 PM this afternoon.  It is hard to believe we have come this far in time and place from when we started homeschool with Kelly in the first grade in Oregon in 1999.  Now both the kids have to take the Graduate Record Exam (college entrance exam) so they can start applying to graduate schools next month.  We plan to celebrate, maybe at Chick-fil-A.

Mid-career Masters Degree: Getting started again after a pretty lousy start at community college

By

On Saturday, September 28, 2013

In Education

Day 768 of 1000

This is the third in a series of posts about how a mid-career Masters degree changed my life. I admire people who do an after work and weekends Masters degree so they can pay the rent and support the family, but I did not do it that way. I bailed out of my job and dived in full time after having spent ten years in the workforce.  The introductory post and index to all the other posts in the series is here.

[Previous post in series]
[Next post in series]

I have good friend named Troy who made one of the most bold mid-career moves I have ever seen.  He spent the better part of a decade in Christian ministry.  Before that, he went to a local community college up in Ohio.  His grades were not so hot because his heart was not really in it.  At around age 30 he left the ministry and needed a way to make a living.  He had done a pretty big water project during his time in the ministry that he really enjoyed so he thought he might take a stab at a degree in Construction Engineering Management (CEM).  He decided to move down to our part of the world, work for awhile to be a resident so he could get in-state tuition, and then go back to college.

About that time, our family met him at church and we struck up a friendship.  We went out to lunch after church quite a lot and we talked about his plan.  In our discussions, he explained he was most interested in the technical aspects of water and construction projects much more than their management.  I asked him why he did not think about trying a degree in Civil Engineering rather than CEM.  He said he liked that idea, but Civil Engineering is a much harder course of study (it truly is) and he did not know if he could handle some of the math and chemistry given his current responsibilities as he was planning to get married at the time.

I suggested that after he started a family, he would not have much chance to switch careers again, so he would probably be stuck doing whatever he studied after whatever degree he got.  I also suggested that fear of a hard course in math or chemistry was no reason to give up on a career that he thought he would truly love.  Fortunately, his fiancee, who had taken a hard course of study in college through graduate school was on exactly the same page, so I was just reenforcing something she had already said.  Both of us felt (independently–I had not met her yet), that if he got really stuck, it was possible to get an inexpensive, but really good tutor for whatever material caused him problems.

GaugeCam in the tidal marsh of the North Carolina coastWith the help of his wife, he decided to go for it.  His next big problem was to convince one of the top Civil Engineering schools in the country to admit him to their program.  That was precisely my problem when I wanted to go back to college before I met Dr. Johnson.  I did not think anyone would let me into a program of any quality, especially for an engineering degree.  Troy felt the same way.  Even though he had gotten stellar grades in high school, he really was not paying attention while he was at the community college many years before and had, like me, dug himself a pretty deep hole.  Still, because of my experience at UTEP, I encouraged Troy to go talk to whoever would listen to him about getting accepted into the program on a probationary status.  I encouraged him to use the fact of his long run in Christian ministry as an indicator of his repsonsibility.  Again, you have to use examples of what you have done right to move forward.  It worked.  He was admitted on a probationary status–the same as mine when I got admitted to UTEP.  He had to pass two very difficult, technical classes to remove the probationary status.  One of the classes was the math class he feared the most.

He got a tutor for the the class he thought he might not be able to handle on his own.  He received an A i both classes.  His success helped him realize he could do it on his own.  The tutors really were a help, but the help came in the form of a confidence boost as much as an academic boost.  He was admitted on a probationary status, passed the two courses they gave him and was a full time, matriculated student in Civil Engineering in short order.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude three years after he started.

Since graduating with his Bachelors degree, Troy has moved on to a PhD in engineering.  The image that accompanies this post is of Troy’s undergraduate research project called GaugeCam.com.  It was so successful, it has continued beyond his undergraduate effort and has been taken over by faculty and additional graduate student researchers.  So far there has been one refereed journal article, with a second almost ready for publication, and several more in the works.  It pays to make bold moves.

Ten years of homeschool socialization

By

On Friday, September 27, 2013

In culture, Education, Family, Homeschool

I have written a good number of posts about the issue of “socialization” in homeschool over the years. Since the subject still comes up regularly, I thought it might be good to make an index of some of the more interesting posts on the subject. I will list the posts in reverse chronological order with a brief description because some of the titles are not very precise with respect to the content of the articles. I would like to state for the record that we know home schools, government schools, children, parents, and teachers vary. These posts are about our experience and observations.

Memorization, learning to read, and homeschool

By

On Friday, September 27, 2013

In Education, Homeschool

Day 767 of 1000

The sound quality of this video is not so great, but it shows Kelly recite The Owl and the Pussycat when she was a little past four years old .  It was not too long after this that she learned how to read for herself.  We read this book to Kelly and Christian many, many times.  We did not know she had it memorized until she just recited it to us one day.  She received lots of accolades for this memorization, mostly from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older friends–other kids did not care so much.  This happened often enough, Christian wanted to get in on the action, so we worked with him on memorization, too.  We mostly memorized Bible verses, but there was some poetry and other things thrown in there, too.

The next thing that happened is Kelly started associating the words she had memorized with the appearance of the words in the books.  At about the same time, we bought a computer game program called Reader Rabbit.  Kelly loved to sit on my lap and play that game.  We did it, on a schedule, for about ten minutes per day.  Before we knew it she was reading.  At first, she only read aloud, but one day it dawned on her that she did not have to say the words to read the book and proclaimed that loudly to Lorena, “I am reading in my head!”  This all started with memorization.  We think it is a wonderful tool for the entire learning process, not just reading.

We believe this little event was what put us on the road to active participation in the education of our children and eventually to homeschool.  The kids memorized longer and longer passages throughout their homeschool education.  One of the key goals we meet toward the end was the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 in the Bible.  I had told them they could get their drivers license they completed this memorization.  I never really held them to that, but both of them were able to quote it all.

Now that the kids are in college, we feel somewhat of a void.  We get great joy out of seeing other people teach their kids to memorize and read.  What we did not know at the time is that practiced memorization gives kids a “super-power” through college and even on into their work life.

Update:  One of our homeschool friends left a comment.  I went over to her website and found they have big time trumped us with an entire alphabet of memorized, little kid poetry.  Pretty awesome.  Check it out here.  Click on the individual letters to access the videos of the poetry.

Page 12 of 18

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén