It wasn't a piece of cake but it wasn't very tough either. It was just Loooooong.
I am glad I am done with it.
One step at a time.
Onward ho!
In life.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Night out cycle - phd comics
I used to do this sometime back (I mean the last 2 years). Thankfully, I stopped this 4 months back.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Positive definite matrices and quadratic minimization
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Lessons from the teaching assistantship experience
I. Introduction
I have been a teaching assistant in udub for about 2 quarters (including this one) and I find it to be a rewarding experience and a continual learning experience too. My job is to hold quiz sections twice every week where I go over examples to better explain concepts from the lectures and also give students some practice problems. I also help out with some grading. Believe me, this is not an easy job at all but at the same time it is a fulfilling and creative job. When you develop new, ingenious ways to communicate ideas and concepts to students and they "GET IT", that's awesome - that's why its fulfilling, that very feeling of having given your all into the job gives you back a feeling of fullness.
II. Key elements
From my limited experience , the key elements I have found for a successful quiz section are:
1) Know the content thoroughly and anticipate potential questions: You have already taken the course you are TAing, that's why you are qualified to be a teaching assistant. But knowing the concepts on the surface isn't enough, you got to be able to explain them, analyse them from all angles, think of potential questions students might come up with and see if you can answer them comfortably. To be able to explain content requires different preparation than just knowing the content and hence sufficient effort needs to be put in here depending on your knowledge of the subject.
2) Get to know the students, atleast their names: This is important, since your ideal quiz section is one where students are involved in it and find it interesting and useful. Knowing their names makes it easier to engage them and increases their participation in the quiz section. Eye contact is also important, you need to make them feel comfortable. These things come easily for some people who are more sociable than others. I am more of an ambivert and hence had to put some effort to get this connection thing going.
3) Make the quiz section interesting: Depending on the composition of the class, students may or may not be able to follow the class easily. If they follow the class easily, they would expect more than other students, who would be content with practicing problems related to the homework or quizzes. I try to bring in one or two examples from outside the book that the students can relate to, find interesting, and also helps their understanding of the concepts.
Cracking a joke or two now and then will also help lighten up the mood.
Variety is the spice of life, but it can also spice up the quiz section. This is something that keeps me interested too. I try out different things every quiz section, see if it works and imbibe it into my "teaching model" if it does.
4) Organize the quiz section well and incorporate time management:
Organizing or structuring the quiz section well gives the students a good idea of what's coming next, sets expectations (which isn't necessarily a great thing) and keeps them involved. Last quarter I was always on time for my quiz sections. But this quarter, I need to wake up by 7am and go to the quiz sections by 8:30am. I have had problems with the bus not coming on time and traffic signal delays. So basically, I don't have a time-window for uncertainities such as delays. It's good to be efficient but not at the cost of coming to quiz sections late every now and then. So I realized that early and am catching an earlier bus that gives me enough breathing time before I begin my quiz section.
It's also good to have a schedule of what you are going to do when during the quiz section, so that the quiz sections are efficient and the students get more out of it. Ofcourse, you have to decide the level of efficiency since being too efficient might come at the cost of rushing through the quiz section.
So that's a good summary of what I think has helped me out in the quiz sections.
III. Challenges
1) It has not been easy at all as I mentioned earlier. I wasn't given an agenda of what's to be done in the quiz section last quarter. A few examples and asking students to work out problems was what I was told. You know, just following those instructions isn't going to give you the greatest quiz section at all. When you realize that, your learning process begins. You begin experimenting, infact what you are doing is you are researching your teaching skills through experimentation!! Isn't that wonderful to be able to research your teaching skills on the fly, without reading any papers!
2) Feedback from students was my main motivation for improving the quiz section. Ofcourse, I would get feedback from students even when I didn't ask for it and sometimes, in a rude manner. Dealing with such cases was also a challenge.
3) The main challenge I would say is coming up with a basic, working, "quiz section model" that is good as it is, but can be improvized. That working model, is what I have described in the second section above.
I have been a teaching assistant in udub for about 2 quarters (including this one) and I find it to be a rewarding experience and a continual learning experience too. My job is to hold quiz sections twice every week where I go over examples to better explain concepts from the lectures and also give students some practice problems. I also help out with some grading. Believe me, this is not an easy job at all but at the same time it is a fulfilling and creative job. When you develop new, ingenious ways to communicate ideas and concepts to students and they "GET IT", that's awesome - that's why its fulfilling, that very feeling of having given your all into the job gives you back a feeling of fullness.
II. Key elements
From my limited experience , the key elements I have found for a successful quiz section are:
1) Know the content thoroughly and anticipate potential questions: You have already taken the course you are TAing, that's why you are qualified to be a teaching assistant. But knowing the concepts on the surface isn't enough, you got to be able to explain them, analyse them from all angles, think of potential questions students might come up with and see if you can answer them comfortably. To be able to explain content requires different preparation than just knowing the content and hence sufficient effort needs to be put in here depending on your knowledge of the subject.
2) Get to know the students, atleast their names: This is important, since your ideal quiz section is one where students are involved in it and find it interesting and useful. Knowing their names makes it easier to engage them and increases their participation in the quiz section. Eye contact is also important, you need to make them feel comfortable. These things come easily for some people who are more sociable than others. I am more of an ambivert and hence had to put some effort to get this connection thing going.
3) Make the quiz section interesting: Depending on the composition of the class, students may or may not be able to follow the class easily. If they follow the class easily, they would expect more than other students, who would be content with practicing problems related to the homework or quizzes. I try to bring in one or two examples from outside the book that the students can relate to, find interesting, and also helps their understanding of the concepts.
Cracking a joke or two now and then will also help lighten up the mood.
Variety is the spice of life, but it can also spice up the quiz section. This is something that keeps me interested too. I try out different things every quiz section, see if it works and imbibe it into my "teaching model" if it does.
4) Organize the quiz section well and incorporate time management:
Organizing or structuring the quiz section well gives the students a good idea of what's coming next, sets expectations (which isn't necessarily a great thing) and keeps them involved. Last quarter I was always on time for my quiz sections. But this quarter, I need to wake up by 7am and go to the quiz sections by 8:30am. I have had problems with the bus not coming on time and traffic signal delays. So basically, I don't have a time-window for uncertainities such as delays. It's good to be efficient but not at the cost of coming to quiz sections late every now and then. So I realized that early and am catching an earlier bus that gives me enough breathing time before I begin my quiz section.
It's also good to have a schedule of what you are going to do when during the quiz section, so that the quiz sections are efficient and the students get more out of it. Ofcourse, you have to decide the level of efficiency since being too efficient might come at the cost of rushing through the quiz section.
So that's a good summary of what I think has helped me out in the quiz sections.
III. Challenges
1) It has not been easy at all as I mentioned earlier. I wasn't given an agenda of what's to be done in the quiz section last quarter. A few examples and asking students to work out problems was what I was told. You know, just following those instructions isn't going to give you the greatest quiz section at all. When you realize that, your learning process begins. You begin experimenting, infact what you are doing is you are researching your teaching skills through experimentation!! Isn't that wonderful to be able to research your teaching skills on the fly, without reading any papers!
2) Feedback from students was my main motivation for improving the quiz section. Ofcourse, I would get feedback from students even when I didn't ask for it and sometimes, in a rude manner. Dealing with such cases was also a challenge.
3) The main challenge I would say is coming up with a basic, working, "quiz section model" that is good as it is, but can be improvized. That working model, is what I have described in the second section above.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
kamalambal bhajare
Amazing muthuswamy dikshitar composition and beautiful rendition by Mandolin Srinivas. Listen to it here.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The "Clicking problem" in laptops (mine's a Dell)
Does your laptop "click" incessantly when you are doing even mildly intensive work such as opening documents or running a small software?
Does your laptop "beep" every minute or two when it's idle (This problem might be exclusive to dell laptops).
Well this problem has got to do with your hard-drive's power saving features (unless your os starts to crash - Then it might be a mother board problem). If your computer's pretty ok except for the "incessant clicking and ocassional beeps", do visit this forumpage.
It gives you a step by step procedure to minimize the noise due to those "clicks".
To summarize the solution in the forum page:
1) Install Microsoft .net 2.0 version from here. If you have an earlier version of .net, uninstall it before installing version 2.
2) Install NHC (Network Hardware Control) from here. Note: users of Dell laptops such as Dell Vostro, Dell Inspiron, etc use the Dell bug fix version on the same page. The other version would give you an error when you try to install it.
3) Run the installed NHC 2.0.
4) You should see an icon to the left of your desktop icons that looks like a big battery.
5) Double click the icon.
6) In the window that just appeared select the Settings tab
7) Click Show all NHC options and settings
8) Now select the Hard Disk tab, and under Advanced Power Management select the highest setting: Max. Peformance Mode
Voila ~ you are done!
Now you can enjoy blissful sleep when your laptop is idle(a.k.a those painful beeps vanish). Also, if you want to work in a very quiet place, the "incessant clickings" would become incessant whispers that are hardly noticeable.
Enjoy the peace and be peaceful :-)
Does your laptop "beep" every minute or two when it's idle (This problem might be exclusive to dell laptops).
Well this problem has got to do with your hard-drive's power saving features (unless your os starts to crash - Then it might be a mother board problem). If your computer's pretty ok except for the "incessant clicking and ocassional beeps", do visit this forumpage.
It gives you a step by step procedure to minimize the noise due to those "clicks".
To summarize the solution in the forum page:
1) Install Microsoft .net 2.0 version from here. If you have an earlier version of .net, uninstall it before installing version 2.
2) Install NHC (Network Hardware Control) from here. Note: users of Dell laptops such as Dell Vostro, Dell Inspiron, etc use the Dell bug fix version on the same page. The other version would give you an error when you try to install it.
3) Run the installed NHC 2.0.
4) You should see an icon to the left of your desktop icons that looks like a big battery.
5) Double click the icon.
6) In the window that just appeared select the Settings tab
7) Click Show all NHC options and settings
8) Now select the Hard Disk tab, and under Advanced Power Management select the highest setting: Max. Peformance Mode
Voila ~ you are done!
Now you can enjoy blissful sleep when your laptop is idle(a.k.a those painful beeps vanish). Also, if you want to work in a very quiet place, the "incessant clickings" would become incessant whispers that are hardly noticeable.
Enjoy the peace and be peaceful :-)
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