Testing iPad

Yesterday I got my schools iPad for testing. We hope to give computers to our students because the matriculation exam will involve using computers as early as 2014. I have never actually use a Mac before and this is a whole new adventure to me. All the things I am accustomed to are different and I am still having hard times finding things. If Windows is filled with folders and subfolders and buttons, iPad seems to be lacking them. I have used several touch devices before; my phone is Nokia N900, my husband has an android based touch phone and I use the smart board daily. Still I don't seem to handle this device well. Choosing text is weird. Tapping on the screen may choose one word, one chapter, or the whole screen and the text "copy" appears on a black bubble. Now I am wondering how I will accomplish that when I really want to copy something. Also the predictive writing gives me hard times. The default language is now Finnish and typing English creates funny sentences. The odd thing is that if a suggestion appears, I have to close it. If I don't, the suggested text appears. That is so different from all my previous Nokia phones where I have to choose the suggested word if I want to take advantage of it. The funniest suggestion yesterday was changing my username " lekahe" to ketale, which is Finnish and could be translated as a crook!

Friday on a Cruise Ship

I am finally starting to be back to normal again. Last weekend I was so busy that I can't even remember when was the last time I had my schedule so full.

Regarding Friday I first have to explain something. The following is quoted from Wikipedia under Collective bargaining:

In some countries, such as Finland, collective agreements with enough support are universally applicable, in a particular field, regardless of union membership. Effectively, the universal collective agreement sets the minimum wages and other benefits, under which no employer may go with any employee, union member or not. Personal benefits can be given regardless.

The teacher's collective agreement states that we must have 3 days in a year to get some further education to keep our skills up to date. Mostly I am not so sure if the goals are reached. I have been sitting in numerous lectures and wondered if the subject of the lesson has anything to do with my real life. Sometimes the lessons are very entertaining, sometimes very boring and sometimes held by people who have no idea how the school works nowadays.

Friday was one of the days mentioned above but now I knew it would be very interesting. The only thing I did not like was the place where the event took place: one of the cruise ships between Turku and Stockholm.

These ships are not really a good way to travel to Sweden because the journey takes about 12 hours. They are used mainly for entertainment, dancing and drinking on a cruiser (reminds me of Love Boat) and holding conferences. I guess that way the people attending the conference remain there better; there is absolutely no way to escape except one of the bars, but the chances to get caught are too big.

I was one of the teachers who gave a lesson and I told my co-workers about my journey over the internet and social media. I demonstrated how to use Skype and had wonderful help from Dave Green and Gil Galanti from Conceptis. Besides that they are just the best when it comes to chatting online there was one thing I had really forgotten about because I do it so often. Israel is probably the most exotic country from the Finnish perspective. A group chat from a cruise boat between Finland and Sweden to Israel is not really something people are accustomed to :)

I also introduced Delicious and Diigo, told about Math bloggers and about the article Conceptis published about me and showed how I can find good links by not using Google. I also told how wonderful interacting with people from different countries is. I have really enjoyed all these years having friends outside my own country.

Twitter was something only one of the teachers had heard of and he did not even know what it is about. Twitter is awesome, like I already told in my earlier post. If you have a sufficient amount of followers you always get an answer from the Twitterverse when you want to find out something. By following teachers and other people interested in mathematics and puzzles I have been able to add numerous links to my huge collection of good resources.

Altogether six teachers told about their job and that was really interesting. After all the introductions I could really see why the adult students love our school. We have amazing personalities among the teachers, all dedicated to their job.

Part of the teachers continued the journey to Stockholm and came back the next morning. They did not really leave the ship at all but just turned around in Sweden. I belonged to the bigger group of people who turned around changing ships in Åland Islands (Ahvenanmaa) which is an autonomous part of Finland, closer to Sweden than Finland.

The journey back was a bit boring. We had dinner at the Buffet of the ship. They had a Spanish week and lots of exotic foods. Shopping in the ship's Tax Free is also a habit even though we never left Finland not to mention EU and the prices are not free of tax. I tried to use my distant connection with the laptop but the GSM network was not strong enough for pages to load. No chance of getting 3G in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The rest of the time we had conversations among the teachers, which was actually nice. At work we are usually too busy to have deeper conversations.

After the long day I was totally exhausted. I am probably getting old...

The story about the weekend continues in the next post

Twitter is Great!

I had a school day Yesterday. It was one of the three compulsory educational days for the teachers and I did a presentation to the others about social communities in the internet and what I have learned from my friends. Before I left, I sended a Tweet:

I got a good example of the benefits using Twitter. The first one to response was the Finnish national radio!

Then wishes from old friends




And 3 messages from followers I really have not had a closer contact with.




Have a problem, ask Twitter. Someone always has something to answer. This is one of the reasons I changed my way in adding followers. I basically add everybody who has a profile and has sent some reasonable tweets. You never know what you'll need and who knows what!

Math Anxiety

I am preparing for a two-day course in learning to use Moodle. Already a year ago I learned about WiZiQ which helps teachers to create online lessons. Browsing their site I found this great presentation about Math Anxiety. It is meant for both teachers and students. I think my conciense about handling the students is clear :)

The presentation is a bit long, but worth to watch.

Can you understand my blog?

Just when I was thinking what to write about, my friend André Benjamim sent a community message to MyBlogLog about The Blog Readability Test. The question was: What level of education is required to understand your blog?

I was afraid of this:

I know that many people think that it requires being a genius to understand mathematics and puzzles. I don’t agree. André had the same result and thinks that it is because his blog is not in English. I hope my Finnish lyrics are the reason for my result :)
My Facebook blog needed a high school education, and my StumbleUpon blog can be read with elementary school knowledge!

What Makes a Prodigy?

The Daily Galaxy -News from Planet Earth & Beyond contained the article posted by Rebecca Sato on September the 6th.

clipped from www.dailygalaxy.com

Newton’s Children -What Makes a Prodigy?

It seems to me that no progress has been done in many years.
The story contains an example of a very gifted child.

March Boedihardjo is like other boys his age in many respects, but the Indonesian-Chinese mathematics prodigy is also Hong Kong's youngest undergraduate. The 9 year-old was accepted by Hong Kong's Baptist University to study for a master's degree after gaining straight As in entrance A-level exams usually taken by 17 to 18 year-olds.

"It was too easy," Boedihardjo complained to reporters after his first day of classes earlier this week. He added that he'd already learnt all this stuff a year or two ago. Not only were the classes boring, but he thought the other students were pretty dull too. The boy pointed out that his old school friends "wanted to play", unlike the university students.

"They made no response. They just listened in the class and didn't interact with each other," March said.

Even though the university has designed a special five-year program for the child, some educational experts have been critical about the boy attending college so young. They warn he might experience stunted personal and social development as a result. However, March wants to continue learning new things—something that would be nearly impossible in a class of typical 9 year-olds.

I very strongly disagree on the worry about the social development. If this child was attending school with children of his own age he would face at least two problems. He would very possibly get negative attention from his school mates and being teased. That would not improve his social development but made him realize that he can't cope with normal people. The other result might be boredom in classes which again might cause him disturb the whole class or a serious affect on his learning habits. He would conclude that he does not have to work ever to learn something. I have come across to both problems in real life.

Some theories, particularly the biosocial theory of creativity, suggest that there is a strong link between genius and disorders. It suggests that the source of the genius abnormality lies in a physically “defective” brain, which is the result of hereditary coincidences. This theory points out the many cases of geniuses that also suffered from some form of “insanity”, as in the common portrayal of the mad scientist. People with “savant syndrome” are often considered to be geniuses, but their genius appears to somehow coincide with autisms or some other developmental disability.

This theory is very old. I somehow agree with that since many intelligent people have been considered insane. However part of this is due to the fact that people with lesser intelligence have no ability to understand the thouhgts and logic of a genius. In addition many intelligent people find it hard or even impossible to lower their explanations to the level the other people can understand. This is usually easier for women and very often women are not referred as geniuses even though they exist. Women have to create the ability if they have children.

Currently, the causes and the nature of genius are not well understood. The human brain is still a mystery in many ways, but science has unraveled a few interesting clues. Scientists don’t know exactly how the gray matter in the human brain works, but there is an interesting correlation between intelligence and grey matter. While the overall size of a brain does not appear to have much influence on intelligence, the amount of grey matter in the brain may.A 2004 study at the University of California, Irvine found that the volume of gray matter in parts of the cerebral cortex had a greater impact on intelligence than the brain's total volume. The findings suggest that specific physical attributes of certain stuctures of the brain may partially determine in what ways a person excels intellectually.
A paper published last year in the journal "Nature" also suggested that particular way a brain develops affects intelligence. A person's cerebral cortex gets thicker during childhood and thinner during adolescence. According to the study, the brains of children with higher IQs thickened faster than those of other children. Studies also suggest that children do partially inherit intelligence from their parents. Some researchers theorize that this is because specific physical structures of the brain can be an inherited trait.

I have been very interested in this. Even though there are acceptions, certain abilities seem to run in the family. In all aspects I think the development and functioning of the brain is not very well known. I trust the truth lies in biology and psychology has done more damage than improvement to some people.

The conclusion of the article gives hope to everybody:

Even “normal” people have been known to acquire exceptional talents with enough patience and perseverance.

I just hope all parents remeber that a child can not be forced to be a genius. The passion has to come from the child's own interest.