Blurts

I have written about PHET simulations several times over the years. If I remember correctly, the originals were developed in Flash and with the demise of Flash, they have been reworked in HMTL5. New additions are constantly being added to the collection and they are appealing in the K12 environment because they are free.

Simulations have always interested me. They are hands-on, but many offer the important opportunity of trial and error. The opportunity to test your understanding is important because it is a proven way to modify flawed understandings of how things work. Without first activating personal theories, it is possible we can maintain flawed beliefs even when learning an alternative way of understanding.

One example those who study this issue often use is our understanding of electrical current and what is “used up” when some device uses current. For example, a light bulb uses something and we know this because we pay electric bills. It would make some sense that the current measured on one side of a light bulb would be different than on the other side. This is not the case and a simulation allows a test (so does the physical equivalent) of this idea.

Simulations are useful for other reasons, but this example of what it takes to challenge misconceptions is especially interesting.

I don’t know if this will be considered drifting over to the dark side or not. I have started adding a few of my posts to SubStack. I have no intention of requiring a subscription to view anything I cross-post to that source. The material that follows explains my motives. 

If you are a SubStack user, I have an account at https://markgrabe.substack.com

The online world is littered with my tried and abandoned accounts. That makes me an online litterer. Here is how I know. Maybe you have had this experience and recognize the problem. You learn of some new service and decide to give it a try. You apply for an account and are told your proposed username is already in use. You have been there before. You make the effort to recover your password and sure enough. You were there. Maybe there remains evidence of the last time you explored the service and maybe not. 

I maintain multiple blogs and use Facebook and Instagram. I have the Mastodon accounts and even TruthSocial. I have two photo accounts and three social bookmarking accounts. I use Notion, Obsidian, and Mem.ai. I have a paid Open.AI allocation so I can apply ChatGPT APIs. Etc.

I originally justified my exploration because I worked as an educational psychologist spending the last twenty years or so of my employment in the field researching and teaching the classroom applications of technology. This work included the generation with my wife of two textbooks. Some of what I wrote was intended to extend the content of the textbooks for adopters. Some my accounts were applied to engage with my own students. Since retirement, I can no longer use my work as an excuse. I have to admit that I just enjoy learning and creating.

Establishing an account on SubStack is very recent. In a way, missing this service for so long may seem strange. While I pay for quite a few services I use on a regular basis, but I came late to Mastodon and SubStack. I explain this avoidance for this reason. I have had at least one blog since 2002. I initially operated a blog on my own server I operated from University office. When I recognized that using University resources to host content (free) associated with our textbooks (not free) that might be seen as a conflict of interest, I began renting server space. With a personal investment in thousands of blog posts on servers I have maintained, I have been unable to write blog content through an intermediary. I see value in keeping my 20+ year investment in one location.

I recognize that I can cross post articles to both Medium and SubStack and I will probably do so. My intention is to use free posts to these services to encourage user exploration of my main collection of material. As I have tracked what brings readers to my content, I have seen a switch from RSS to search. Instead of recent posts being read at a much higher level than more dated content, readers seem more and more to arrive looking for something specific. Perhaps the communities that follow these more community oriented services may find something I write of interest and use the link to my server associated with these community accounts to read some of the other things I have written.

Schools are having difficulty filling open positions. In North Dakota, there are currently 200 open slots. These are clearly challenging times and various strategies have been proposed to keep an adult at the head of the classroom.

The Educational Standards and Practices Board in ND has proposed a new solution to the Governor. How about if student teaching, the supervised semester that preservice teachers spend in a classroom, just be eliminated if an unfilled position is available and the novice be declared the teacher of record.

OK. Depending on how an educational major has arranged his or her schedule, the student teaching experience could be the last semester of college. Why not help a school out and fill in? When I student taught many years ago, my in-school cooperating teacher was very seldom in the classroom. After a week or so of observing, I first took over sophomore biology sections on film day. The teacher had a day a week dedicated to showing biology-related films. Access did not allow many of such films to be relevant to the current topic, but you took what you could get. I had decent AV skills and had mastered the challenge of looping the film just right so it would feed through the projector without a problem and as long as I could control the class with the lights off I was golden. After I rolled the empty 55-gallon aquarium into the store room so students could not get a handful of gravel to throw at each other during the film sessions, things went well. I moved on to actually deliver presentations while my mentor spent time in the teachers’ lounge doing other stuff.

Why is the ND proposal any different? I think it is because the students knew their “real” teacher was still in the building and I was a kid a few years older than them substituting for a few weeks. The data on new teacher survival are discouraging. Nearly 50% of new teachers quit within the first five years. This plan may make things worse in the long term. Having a good experience as someone new to the profession is very important and being thrown directly into the fire without much support is not likely to improve the present dismal odds.

I became concerned when I realized I had logged into my password manager while writing at what I think of as my “home” coffee shop. I don’t typically pay much attention, but realizing that all of my long passwords would do me no good should someone be able to connect to the password manager somehow reached my consciousness. The concern has passed and I think that I would be alerted from the company hosting my password collection should a new device be used when connecting to my vault. Anyway, I did do some research on Wi-Fi vulnerabilities in what I consider the “modern era”. 

Here is a useful resource should you want an analysis of some of the many dangers (likely and unlikely) that you face when using public Wi-Fi. Here are a couple of things that caught my eye as issues that are common enough to recognize. 

User error is likely the greatest danger. Two examples from the review I cite caught my attention. First, there is danger in connecting to an unknown hotspot. If you are in a coffee spot, the identity of the hotspot and password are probably displayed. You can get in trouble when you try to access a different hotspot that may have been set up to have a similar name or an inviting name. I used to frequent a Starbucks adjacent to a Bruegger’s Bagels. I would often use the Bruegger’s Wi-Fi even though I was in Starbucks because it offered a stronger signal. Safe in that case because I had been in both establishments, but generally not a good idea. Some communities have a free Wi-Fi service, but there is nothing that prevents you from naming your own hotspot “Free Wi-Fi” and evil people could easily use this ploy. BTW – my favorite hotspot name is one I encountered when I lived in Grand Forks, ND. From a downtown shop we spent a lot of time in, I could see “Bring the beer” which I assume was the property of a student living in a nearby apartment.

Your browser should tell when you are attempting to connect to a “secure” site. The URL should begin with https, but you can look for a lock symbol that should appear in front of the URL in your browser. BTW, I looked afterward and the URL for my password manager did show the lock signal.

Access to my password manager would be a severe problem, but using a password manager with unique long passwords for the many different logins you want to protect is important. A password manager allows a single access point, but then automatically connects to the various sites with the long and distinct passwords that the experts recommend you use. Reliance on a simple password for multiple logins is a common rookie mistake that is easy enough to avoid.

You may have heard that some schools are having difficulty filling open positions and some states are looking at changing the qualifications necessary to become a teacher. This article from CBS News does a nice job of describing the situation. 

Since 1970 the percentage of college students enrolled to become teachers declined from 17% to 4%. Those seeking business degrees have been the major benefactor of this decline. Part of the decline may signal an improvement in career options for women, but the relatively low pay in comparison to those with comparable degrees and the perception that society has lesser respect for educators are also recognized as causes. Public school teachers earn about 24% less than peers. This pay gap has widened since 1980. Public perception of the profession is difficult to assess, but only 22% of those responding to a University of Chicago poll said they would encourage young people to become educators.