Jeni Ann Flores

      You know something is terribly wrong with the world when someone like me starts to watch football. A few years ago, I came home exhausted, collapsed in bed and started to watch the San Diego vs. New Orleans game.        I was half asleep and all I could see was a field of squirming and running angry men in black and white tights, some with pink accessories, some without. I could not tell one team from the other. I get it. This is the Pink team vs White team game.  I made a mental note to myself: watch more TV to catch up on the latest styles of NFL uniforms.       Then I was baffled - why were some players in the Pink team pouncing on others from their own team? Maybe they were preventing their teammates from going in the wrong direction? But why did those teammates keep insisting on going the wrong direction? Or were their teammates trying to get to them before they are tackled by opponents? Hm. Note t...

     What if you can send an email to your future self and receive it five, 10 or 30 years from now?      This idea so fascinated Matt Sly and Jay Patrikios that they created "Future Me" (www.futureme.org), a website where you can send yourself an email that will not arrive until months, years or decades later. How far into the future you decide to send your email will depend on how you define “future.”  What you say about your present will also depend on how you define “present”.     The Greeks had two concepts of time - "kronos" and "kairos." "Kronos" (as in chronology) describes measured time, such as minutes, days, years. "Kairos" is relative, having to do with seasons, opportunities, relationships and moments. Teachers get frustrated when students come into the classroom without a “kronos” concept of time. Sometimes it is developmental - they are not old enough to have an accurate sense of time. Sometimes it is cultural - they ...

   Need a reality check? Not just any reality check, but an expanded, strengthened reality check. This new reality, called augmented reality, or AR, is described by some techies as the next big thing since sliced bread. Some think it will so revolutionize the way we live that it would equal the change brought about by the internet.      Yup, it’s that big.       What is augmented reality? Imagine walking in the woods. You point your camera towards a mountain and it will show an overlay of information - the mountain’s height, fauna and flora, etc. Your washer breaks. Just point your camera towards the washer and there will be an overlay diagram showing parts which need to be replaced. You point your camera towards a storefront and see an overlay of a sweater on sale. A voice message was left there by a friend who had recently been to that store and raves about that sweater.       Augmented reality w...

      “I accidentally  kicked  him,” my student said.      "You were both standing there and your foot, without your knowing it, accidentally kicked him."       This is a typical exchange between me and my second grade students. Hopefully this “by accident” plea is not something I use when it comes to teaching and learning in my classroom - that my students are not learning “by accident,” but rather, they are learning by design, or purposefully.      Or are they? Thankfully, there is a way to find out through a t-test using paired samples.     It sounds complicated but it's really quite easy. Dr. James Carroll of the University of Portland taught me how to do it with EZanalyze,  a free add-on to the Excel spreadsheet program. I type in my two sets of scores from a pre test (test given before instruction) and post test (test given after instruction). With a few clicks, (plea...