One of my students has suggested multiple times that I talk about robots, so two weeks ago I came in with a presentation on robots, trying to link them in with geometry by discussing how all robots have rotating parts (tying into the degrees of freedom talk the previous week) and they all use logical arguments in sensing and responding to their environments (tying into the conditional statements talk from the beginning of the year). I began with a screenshot from the movie "I, Robot", and asked them if it was realistic for the world to be that way in 2035. Most of them said "no", and I reminded them that the book was written 60 years ago, and that's what some people expected would happen. I then asked them their thoughts on what defines a robot, what robots are useful for, and what they have in common. I concluded by showing several examples of existing robots including the roomba vacuum cleaner, toy robot dogs, auto-manufacturing robots, the military packbot, and the mars rover. I tried to emphasize the if-then statements that are programmed into these examples, and talked some about the degrees of freedom and the motion of each. I hope that this showed them that some really cool and useful things can come out of applied geometry. The student from second hour who had requested a talk on robots, D, said at the end that he wanted to hear more about "realistic" robots. Apparently he was referring to human-like robots, which are really not used in practical applications at this point. I tried to explain that what I showed really are realistic robots that are in use right now, but it seems that he was disappointed that I didn't talk about any prototype android robots that are under development. The classes all responded fairly well to the talk, and it seemed to arouse more interest in fourth hour than I've been able to do all year (though there was still a lot of chatter, it seemed to be on-topic), which was terrific. Sixth hour again asked lots of questions, and Ms. Tran and I cut them off after a while.
Last week, Ms. Tran was out, and I had the opportunity to teach two days' worth of lessons. She left me the notes, and my job was to teach the students from those notes, and have them work on an in-class worksheet as we went through the material. On the first day, I used the ELMO projector, which projects anything (paper, calculator, book) onto the wall, so I simply used her notes and talked through them with the students. Some students had trouble keeping up, and the writing was a bit too small for many, but in general we were able to get through the notes in every class. On the second day I used the traditional transparency overhead projector, and I wrote out the notes along with the classes, so I was able to write bigger and write at the same pace as them. This went much better, as most of the students kept up with me and were able to listen to my explanations. I was surprised at how long it took to get through a mere two and half pages of handwritten notes, and it took most of the hour to do so. Fourth hour was again problematic for me - many of the students sat in the back and just talked constantly. I know that this is distracting for the few students that actually wanted to take notes and learn the material, but as hard as I tried to ask them to show some respect, it never seemed to hit home for at least half of the class. I am again at a loss for how to deal with this group of students.
