Monday - the 20th - Teaching Principals

After the busy weekend I still had an extra task on Monday. I had promised to give a lesson about blogs and Wikis in education to some of the gymnasium principals in Turku. My part started after lunch but I wanted to be present from the beginning to hear what the other lecturers had to say.

There were two very interesting parts I have to mention here.
There first one to start the day was the chief of the gymnasium and adult education office in Turku. He had very advanced opinions about the direction where teaching should go. Distant learning must be used also to give different options for the students and also to make learning more interesting. Lately the gymnasiums have had less appliers than before. It seems that professional trading is more interesting than the higher all-round education which basically tries to prepare the students for universities. He made it very clear that even the last ones opposing technology in teaching should change their opinion now! I agree :)

Even more interesting was the demonstration of two students about their use of Facebook. My children are too old; they have learned about Facebook after they had graduated but these two girls use Facebook in their everyday life. All events and parties are announced to friends in Facebook and people confirm that they are definitely attending, are not coming or don't know yet. Facebook is like e-mail to adults with the exception that you can really handle several people at the same time. Only a couple of their friends did not use Facebook which created some problems to others. I can imagine that; to me nowadays it is hard if I can't send e-mail to someone.

One of the principals asked how long times the girls spend on Facebook pages. I think that showed how much the worlds of us old people and young students differ. I have heard about the studies that students using Facebook are getting worse grades than those not using it but I think these two girls were already on the next level. Facebook is a tool for them, not the place where you use the childish applications. People who do that are people like me, having fun in a different way for a change.

I introduced the audience my Finnish blog, the Wiki I used in my computer science class and also told about Twitter. Like Saturday I was again talking about something no one knew. Fortunately I had info about the use of Twitter in classes and even universities and I had blogged about the Twitter conversations Saturday. Also I had to promote myself a little showing my story on Conceptis pages.

I am not sure if I convinced any of them. The good thing about all this is that my own principal shares my opinions totally. She even said in her introduction about me that I am "wonderfully nuts" about technology in teaching :)

Wild About Math!

During my 1.5-year journey in the blogosphere I have found amazingly many good resources. There are times when I find a place which leads to so many new resources that I spend days exploring them. One of these occasions was when I found Sol Lederman's blog Wild About Math!. Sol's blog is a serious math blog which mine is not; I have many times been more enthusiastic to write about puzzles or the Finnish lifestyle and of course Piitu.

Sol covers all aspects of math from the fear of it to the fun of it and takes care of all ages from kindergarten to university. Even his Blogroll is full of math bloggers.

Here are some posts I enjoyed the most:

8 really fun paper and pencil Math games
Interesting little Math problem
Five constants tie together multiple branches of mathematics
What patterns can you find in Pascal’s triangle?
Ti-Nspire inspires Math students

The last one is important to me at the moment. I have a trial version of the TI-Nspire program and I was planning to check it over the holidays. I guess I am running out of time...

Sol has also made great mathcasts (videos)

I still have lots to learn!

Thinking Blogger Award

This is my 100^th post! I would never have imagined this would happen so soon, if ever, when I started in August. I have had so much fun doing all this and gained so many friends and I have also grown an interest to things I did not care about before or didn’t know even existed.

It is quite a coincidence that at the same time sweet Hanna from Amori,poesie,arte,chat virtuali by Hanna rewarded me with the Thinking Blogger Award. Thank you so much Hanna; this makes me feel that my blog really matters. I am very honoured.

I started to check backwards how many people there was between me and the first awards. I soon got into trouble finding links, partly because the award has been travelling Italy lately and I can't speak Italian. When I finally read the original post from The Thinking Blog I realized that it has been travelling almost a year. The post had been written in the 11^th of February in 2007!

At some point I have to try to create the whole chain. This is one odd part of me: digging the past. I have done quite a bit of family search and this reminds me of that adventure finding older generations.

And now to the award:

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

In addition there is a note: “Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! “

I take notes like that very seriously and that is why I am tagging:

Gil, who got me to start this blog. My blog is more like having fun with serious issues and I feel so small when I read what Gil has written. His variety of the content is amazing and so is his knowledge about movies.

Tomi Ahonen, who convinced me that blogging will be the next popular way to communicate (following e-mails and text messages). Tomi is originally Finnish but currently in Hong Kong and he is an expert in 3G blogging and lecturing about it.

Meghna, who is 12 years old and living in India. Her stories are unbelievable, creative and enjoyable to read. Every time I read her stories I start to think about people: why many adults behave like children compared to this talented girl.

Mokki, whose blog compares Portugal and Finland. He has shown me a new side of my own country not only in his blog but all the other social platforms where we have friendied each other.

Rash Kath, whose passion in mathematics blogging has made me convinced that I’ll start a real mathematical blog to my students. My current Finnish blog concentrates on the entertaining and beautiful side of math, like this one. Rash Kath also created a group named Passionate Teachers and the amount of knowledge shared there is even too much for me to swallow instantly. Now I know what I will be doing next summer on my vacation.

Unlike before the award did not stay in Finland, but left to various places: Portugal, India, Hong Kong and Israel.

Reasons to blog

Before I started blogging I thought it was just like keeping a diary but publicly. I was even wondering why anyone would like to do that. My experience was based on a journal of a girl my daughter knew. To be precise my daughter’s room mate was mentioned in the journal against her will. She had started dating a guy the writer knew. It was not nice to read about that personal flood of words even though any names were never mentioned. All the people involved and many others knew what it was all about.

To my surprise most blogs are not like that. There are blogs where you can learn about things you never knew about. There are blogs where you can laugh watching funny pictures or reading jokes. And I can even enjoy blogs written in languages not known to me just watching the beautiful photographs. One of the most enjoyable things is making friends with people from all over the world.

My first friend was a Norwegian photographer Thomas Laupstad, whose blog is about photos from northern Norway; beautiful scenery, the beauty of which I have experienced myself. I even got engaged in Oslo. It is so enjoyable to get mail with a link to photos like this:

Another interesting discovery is Luís Alves with his blog Mökkikunta. The description of his blog is: Finnish Model in Analysis [Modelo Finlandês em Análise] Finland and Portugal: two distant territories, two decentralization forms.

The latest contact is Lawrence Cheok from Singapore and his blog A Long Long Road about personal development. I have been sitting in lectures of the same subject and never gotten anything out of them and now I find reading Lawrence's blog so very interesting and can relate to what he is writing about.

I left the best to the last: my source of inspiration, Gil Galanti, who blogs about anything. I just wonder when he starts to give advice about knitting :)

My Finnish Blog

When I started blogging, I could never have imagined, where it would take me. Blogging is fun and with the help of other bloggers I have found many interesting sites and interesting people.

I teach mathematics and our school Turun iltalukio, has a very good learning space in the net. The disadvantage however is that it is a secured site and only the teachers and students have access there.

I gave it a long thought and checked what and where people are blogging in Finnish. I came to a very odd conclusion but it may be that I was not thorough enough. Most of the Finnish blogs are diaries or journals about the blogger's every day life and feelings. I found one with a teacher informing students about events, homework and classes (5th grade). The aspect of linking to general groups was not very visible. Well, that may be a part of the Finnish character; we have a reputation to keeping to our selves.

The main host was LiveJournal which to my eye is very old-fashioned. It reminds me of those days when I first learned how to use Internet and e-mails. I can't even remember how long ago that was, more than 10 years ago.
Blogspot was also used in some cases and someone stated that he got bored with the inconvenience of LiveJournal.

I decided to start blogging in Finnish about my work in the hope that I could get someone convinced that it is never too late to study ;) I will also provide links to my students who want to have something more than just the normal school maths or who want to exercise the logic skills in sites like Conceptis.

Since I am a bit proud of my home country I chose a blog from Blogs.fi. After writing two posts I am not sure if I continue there or choose another place. It is definitely worse than Blogger. The most irritating thing is the Google-ad's. I would have to pay 39.90 € to get rid of those and at the same time I would get more options for the layout. What I have seen so far made me decide that it's not worth paying that.

Currently my new blog is in matikanope.blogs.fi but it maybe that I'll start a new blog somewhere else.

Amazing things happen!

I have previously used clipmarks in my blog when I created links to Conceptis website. I have been viewing other people's clipmarks and popped the interesting ones for further use. I have so far created 17 of my own, containing news and of course my main interests: puzzles and mathematics. This clip I made two days ago and it has been popped 21 times! On top of that it has been commented on 7 times (that contains my own comments). I was among the 5 most popped yesterday.
The more I spend time blogging and socializing in the net, the more I get amazed. This was not something I thought would interest so many people.

clipped from users.forthnet.gr Do Mathematics Exist? According to Neo-Platonists, mathematics exist independent of human quest, so they are in fact discovered, not invented. Even the most abstract mathematical objects are real and invariable For Formalists on the other, mathematical objects do not exist. Mathematics consist of symbols, axioms/sentences composed of such symbols and rules to transform sentences into others (e.g. theorems), but none of these has any particular meaning. Mathematics is therefore a humanly constructed language devised by human beings for definite ends prescribed by themselves. Constructivists take the extreme view that if something cannot be constructed in a finite number of steps it does not exist. Links on the Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics can be found at the University of Waterloo/ Department of Philosophy site here

When nobody becomes Somebody

I consider giL my mentor in my new blogging hobby and what a good mentor he has been!

Yesterday giL published a post about the second most popular clip on YouTube this week showing the incomprehensible answer Miss Teen USA South Carolina 2007 gives in a beauty contest to one of those questions which normally should have an answer like "I would like to save the Earth" or something similar.
Since my opinion of the clip was quite different from giL's, I even commented the post in his blog. Another comment from cooper suggests that the girl probably will be famous because of it.

I very much agree with cooper on that and I have an example here from Finland. Our country is very small, but because of the internet, even a Finnish person can get famous by doing something so funny that the video starts to get more and more watchers.

Olli Hokkanen made himself famous or like Wikipedia describes it: became an internet phenomenon in Finland after failing his attempt to drink 1.5 litres of Coca-Cola on the television show Ennätystehdas ("Record Factory").

On the television broadcast Hokkanen attempted to drink 1.5 litres of Coca-Cola that was poured into seven regular-sized glasses. No specific time limit was set, since there was no knowledge of an existing record for drinking 1.5 litres of Coke in Finland. Hokkanen abandoned his effort after drinking three glasses. After the third glass of Coke, Hokkanen commented on the high carbonic acid level of the drink, by saying the now famous words, "Ei pysty, on niin hapokasta" ("Can't do it. Too acidic"). The host asked him whether or not he was surprised at the fact that Coca-Cola contains carbonic acid. Hokkanen then explained that at home he usually keeps his bottles open for some time so that the drink becomes less 'acidic' and thus easier to drink. Prior to the attempt Hokkanen had said that he was an experienced Coke drinker since early childhood.

I happened to see the actual show on TV and had a good laugh but I would never have imagined where it would lead.

After the broadcast of the seventh episode of Ennätystehdas, the Internet phenomenon started to emerge. The YouTube video-sharing service was the most important distribution channel for the video, which has been watched over one million times (as of July 2007). In addition to the video, new edited video clips, edited images and pieces of music related to the event appeared. T-shirts with a text "Can't do it – too acidic" in Finnish have been sold. Hokkanen also claims that rubber masks resembling him have been made.


The story of Olli Hokkanen continues at the moment and Wikipedia seems to get updated regularly. Even though Olli Hokkanen was laughed at by everybody, he thinks that publicity has more benefits than disadvantages and that this was like winning in the Lottery.

here is the video with English Subtitles, judge for yourself :)

Conceptis on Technorati

I added conceptispuzzles.com to my watchlist in Technorati and got 173 Blog reactions!
The latest are mostly mine ;)
The rest of the list can be viewed here