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2013

Flipping the Classroom: How to Turn Your Students' World Right-side Up, at Turning Technologies Webinar (New York, NY), Thursday, August 8, 2013:
talk_2192.pdf
Instructors all over the globe are turning their students' worlds around by flipping their classrooms. In a flipped class, teachers move information coverage out of the lecture hall so that they can better leverage in-class time to address student difficulties and misconceptions. In this interactive webinar, Dr. Julie Schell will flip the workshop by providing brief introductory, pre-workshop activities to participants. She will use responses from these activities in the workshop and discuss the why, what, and how of flipped classrooms by confronting and resolving a series common myths about... Read more about Flipping the Classroom: How to Turn Your Students' World Right-side Up
Memorization or understanding: are we teaching the right thing?, at Institute of Laser Engineering Lecture, Beijing University of Technology (Beijing, China), Sunday, August 4, 2013:
talk_2191.pdf
Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses -- instructors present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of lectures is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing... Read more about Memorization or understanding: are we teaching the right thing?
Femtosecond laser micromachinging and subcellular surgery, at Institute of Laser Engineering Lecture, Beijing University of Technology (Beijing, China), Sunday, August 4, 2013:
talk_2190.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 Femtosecond laser micromachinging and subcellular surgery
Stopping time, at Open Science Lecture, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Thursday, August 1, 2013:
talk_2187.pdf
Time is of philosophical interest as well as the subject of mathematical and scientific research. Even though it is a concept familiar to most, the passage of time remains one of the greatest enigmas of the universe. The philosopher Augustine once said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know." The concept time indeed cannot be explained in simple terms. Emotions, life, and death - all are related to our interpretation of the irreversible flow of time. After a discussion of the concept of time, we will review... Read more about Stopping time
Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Open Education Lecture, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Thursday, August 1, 2013:
talk_2188.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
Adjusting to Peer Instruction, at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong, Hong Kong), Thursday, August 1, 2013:
talk_2189.pdf
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. Peer Instruction is now used in a wide range of science and math courses at the college and secondary level. In this 2-3 hour long workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the "class" in which Peer Instruction is... Read more about Adjusting to Peer Instruction
Pushing a physics discovery towards commercial impact, at REU Seminar, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Wednesday, July 24, 2013:
talk_2178.pdf
In 1997 my research group discovered that shining intense, ultrashort laser pulses on the surface of a crystalline silicon wafer drastically changes the optical, material and electronic properties of the wafer. The resulting textured surface is highly absorbing and looks black to the eye, making this 'black silicon' useful for a wide range of commercial devices, from highly-sensitive detectors to improved photovoltaics. Over the following ten years we investigated this material and developed a prototype detector. The prototype gave us the confidence to commercialize black silicon. Together... Read more about Pushing a physics discovery towards commercial impact
Learning Catalytics: Socrates Meets Facebook and High Academic Standards, at BLC 2013 (Boston, MA), Tuesday, July 23, 2013:
talk_2032.pdf
Most -- if not all -- of the important skills in our lives are acquired outside the traditional classroom. Peer Instruction is a research-based pedagogy that introduces rigorous problem solving while providing teachers with invaluable real time data. The process has been shown to dramatically improve conceptual understanding and personalize instruction, even in large classes. While successfully implementing Peer Instruction doesn't require any technology, using the right technology can improve student engagement, and dramatically increase learning.

In this workshop you will learn how to...

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The Tyranny of the Lecture: Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Enrico Fermi Colloquium, European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy Seminar, Universitá di Firenze (Florence, Italy), Friday, July 19, 2013:
talk_2180.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 to Help People Learn, at OnRamps Professional Development Summer Institute, University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX), Friday, July 19, 2013:
talk_2183.pdf
Advances in cognitive science have changed what we know about how people learn, but pedagogical approaches have not adapted to use this knowledge to help our students learn better. In this workshop, Dr. Julie Schell will demo three simple tips educators can use to catalyze learning in any educational context.

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