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2006

Active learning and interactive lectures, at AAPT New Faculty Workshop, American Center for Physics (College Park, MD), Friday, October 27, 2006:
talk_1219.pdf
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly.
How the mind tricks us: visualizations and visual illusions, at SLAC Colloquium, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Menlo Park, CA), Monday, October 9, 2006:
talk_1249.pdf
Neurobiology and cognitive psychology have made great progress in understanding how the mind processes information – in particular visual information. The knowledge we can gain from these fields has important implications for the presentation of visual information and student learning.
Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery, at Biomedical Engineering Department Seminar, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), Tuesday, September 19, 2006:
talk_1251.pdf
We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the function of individual... Read more about Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery
Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), Monday, September 18, 2006:
talk_1250.pdf
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly
Interactive teaching: Turning a large lecture into a seminar, at Stipendiatentreffen der Daimler-Benz-Stiftung, Franken-Akademie Schloß Schney (Lichtenfels, Germany), Saturday, September 16, 2006:
talk_1275.pdf
Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is mostly what happens in large introductory courses -- instructors present material and students take down as many notes as they can. This format tends to reinforce the idea that learning is about acquiring information rather than gaining new ways of thinking. In undergraduate science, however, learning consists primarily of developing new thinking skills; this mismatch between instruction and learning leads to students misunderstanding what science is, as well as frustration for both students and instructors. The problem has a... Read more about Interactive teaching: Turning a large lecture into a seminar
Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?, at Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), Wednesday, August 2, 2006:
talk_1213.pdf
Classroom science demonstrations are intended to serve two important purposes: to increase students' interest in the material being covered and to improve students' understanding of the underlying scientific concepts. Student end-of-semester evaluations typically praise demonstrations as one of the most interesting parts of a course, suggesting that demonstrations accomplish the first objective. What about the second? Do demonstrations effectively help students learn the underlying concepts? We examined whether the mode of presentation of demonstrations affects their effectiveness as teaching... Read more about Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?
Can Students Evaluate Their Own Understanding?, at AAPT Summer Meeting (Syracuse, NY), Tuesday, July 25, 2006:
talk_1209.pdf
Can students assess their own understanding in introductory physics? How does their assessment change during the learning process? Instructors often gauge how well students are assimilating the material based on the number of questions or confused looks they receive during their interactions with students. However, it is unclear how well students are able to recognize their own understanding (or lack thereof). In this talk, we present preliminary results from our study of the relationship between students' perceived understanding and their actual understanding of introductory physics concepts... Read more about Can Students Evaluate Their Own Understanding?
Learning Together Through Technology, at AAPT Summer Meeting (Syracuse, NY), Saturday, July 22, 2006
The LT3 software, a combination of the Harvard ILT and the Erskine BQ programs, is a free, open source, web-based program. Many instructors are excited by new interactive pedagogies like Just-In-Time-Teaching (JITT) or Peer Instruction. LT3 provides an easy way to implement these. Participants will have hands-on experience as they learn: to create and manage courses in the LT3 program; to set up JiTT reading assignments; to access and browse a unique pool of content material, including ConceptTests, physlets, reading assignments and homework problems; to facilitate this content for in-class... Read more about Learning Together Through Technology
Wrapping light around a hair, at RET/REU Seminar, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Wednesday, July 19, 2006:
talk_1212.pdf
Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a high uniformity of diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair

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