Start again

I find it very interesting that in this past year since I was at RPI (all 2009-till August 2010), I have learned so much about teaching and learning, assessment and accreditation. Oddly it feels like I have spent a sabbatical year concentrating on learning and assessment issues.
Is interesting that by not teaching for three semesters, Spring and Fall of 2009 and Spring 2010, I had the opportunity to learn about teaching! I had more time to read about teaching, to think about teaching, and talk with other faculty about teaching and assessment issues.
I see now the accreditation issue from two points of view: faculty and administration.
I found that by taking this "time off from teaching" I became a better teacher! I had more time to think and reflect about education issues. I feel rejuvenated, enriched, and I know "what I want to be when I grow up" --- yes, I am a teacher!
In Spring 2009 it was weird to not have to prepare my syllabus and notes for the semester. I felt as if I go "cold turkey," it was for me a complete withdrawal from the teaching bug. I thought it will pass, but it just repeated and intensified in Fall 2009, and then Spring 2010. I do not think it will go away. I missed the students, I missed sharing my knowledge and learning in the process of a semester course. This year I learned who I am and who I want to be.
I know so much more about student learning, motivation, teaching, assessment, accreditation, and educational research. This year at RPI was a great one because I learned a LOT!!
I am looking forward to the future!

New beginnings are always exciting, and I start full of hope at Marist College. :-)

Good bye Scout

My friend Sharon in Tucson, AZ had to say Good bye to her second Jack Russell Terrier: Scout.
Scout was my favorite, he was a very sweet dog and Taylor loved him as well.
Sharon lost Siegfried her other JRT and now Scout.
Is heart breaking.

We will miss you Scout!

Anca -- Boston

We went Friday May 7th, to Boston to wish Anca my friend a very Happy Birthday!!
We stopped to see MIT and Public Gardens.

Taylor loved the walk and squirrels in Public Garden.
But then Saturday was raining heavily and we returned home, at 44F and high wind and rain.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Anca!!!!!

AERA in Denver, CO

I was at AERA conference in Denver, CO.
April 30- May 4, 2010.

I had altitude sickness :-(

Didn't go too much sight seeing. But I took some pics in downtown where the conference was.

Big bear looking in the Convention Center window is so cute!!
Met with friends from UA and SIUE and other ones from SIGs and acquaintances...

Killer dog

When Taylor receives any squeaky gift, then first things first: Kills the squeaky part!
Take out the fuzzy filling, the noise out of it, then is good to trash and go get another one :-)

The driver

I took this cute picture of a unknown dog sitting in the driver's place ... he was waiting for his Papa who was inside the building. So cute!

It seems blogging is not my fad anymore since with the yahoo messenger, phone, and e-mail is much easier to reach family and friends.

Taylor has a friend, Bosley, who has a blog
http://bosleythepug.blogspot.com/

Well Taylor did not meet yet Bosley but when Spring comes perhaps they will meet. Till then they can read each other's blog :-) woof woof

Past summer 2009 pictures by Tracey Buyce

New scholar year 09/10

A new scholar year started. Our RPI campus is like a bee hive. Is so exciting and refreshing to see the students with backpacks full of books and laptops. I volunteered at the laptop distribution. Each student receives a laptop and backpack assorted.

Faculty came back to campus, got ready their syllabus, met the new class of students, and set up the Fall 09 schedules.

I REALLY miss the excitement of the first week of classes, I miss meeting with students, learning new names and faces, explaining the syllabus, setting up teams, starting a new adventure on the planet of Knowledge.
I think I missed my call, I thought I don't like teaching, but I definitely do. Yes, there were some struggles, but here at RPI I know what was not going well. I was teaching to another audience. My teaching style would be perfect here for the students who are competitive and are used to working hard and at fast pace. There are some junior courses that are much more difficult and demand more than my graduate courses did (and my students were complaining I ask too much!). I would love to teach to this audience of students.

Is odd to not have a class, to not meet my class of students.
And since I miss so much school, I am taking (!) a course in Acess-Excel. I never took a course in Excel so here it is the opportunity. I might not have the time to do everything is required, then I will be gone to a workshop and later a conference, so I will miss some classes. But at least I will be involved (in some way) in the teaching-learning process.

I miss teaching!

Day trip Niagara Falls

Taylor

Here a slide show with Taylor in Yaddo Garden in Saratoga Springs, NY.

The photographer is Tracey --- she is a great phographer!

Here her webs:

Tracey Buyce Photography
www.traceybuyce.com
www.traceybuyce.blogspot.com
518.441.2704

Jason Mraz -- I'm yours

more pics

In the Spring when we first visited Yaddo gardens Taylor got to be in some professional picture taking.

I liked so much Tracey's pictures that I asked her to make some more for Taylor.
You can see some of her work here:

Tracey Buyce Photography
www.traceybuyce.com
www.traceybuyce.blogspot.com
518.441.2704

4th of July 2009

I am so bad on posting to this blog.... I gues it is because of Yahoo messenger and e-mail and phone... no more need of blog when I tell all by e-mail and phone.

Anca (our Romanian friend who graduated from SIUE and got a job in Boston, MA-- started January 2009) came to visit us.
We went up to Lake George and cruised the streets and beach, it was a very nice sunny and breezy day.

Coming home we stopped at Yaddo gardens and we took pictures with the flowers.

Muky 1996-2009

Muky -- with us 1996-2009

our little black dog I brought home in 1996 rescued from the streets where she was beaten and a neighbor in Cluj gone to a conference to Alba-Iulia found her laying in the corner of the building she had the conference.
Dr. Ioana Bogdan-Cataniciu rescued Muky, but in the apartment they had already two dogs so I took Muky home to my parents. The Veterinarian said that Muky was pregnant with puppies and someone kicked in her belly, and if Ioana would not take her home and to the Vet immediately to have a C-section and take the dead puppies out then the dog would have died very soon. At that time the Vet said she was 1 or 1 1/2 years old.

At first Muky did not let any man approach (most likely was kicked by a man), but then with care and patience she got attached to my Dad. She was my Dad's loved dog, always following him like a shadow.

Muky most likely was by now 16 years old.
Muky got sick and paralyzed suddenly of her back legs. My mom took care of her like you care for a baby, but in the last week she could not stand up at all she was falling back and did not want to eat. Medication did not help at all.

She asked the Veterinarian to come and put Muky to sleep, but the Vet said that they are not allowed by law (Romanian laws) to put any animal to sleep.
Mom said that it was heart breaking since he said that he does not have any cure for Muky and she most likely will die paralyzed.
There was a struggle to keep her in her misery or let her go...
The only way they could save her was to ask our neighbor with a hunting gun to help out.

It is outrageous what laws can do, I cannot imagine that they let animals suffer and die like that.

Mom says that other people put their dog or cat in a sac and in sac a big stone, tie it up and go to the big river Mures and throw it in so the stone drains the animal. Or go in the forest and abandon the dying animal in the middle of nowhere to die or be eaten by wolfs.

I cannot believe that a "do not kill" law is going so far to put owners of pets into such a heart breaking situation. Not only do they loose their pet but they have to use extreme methods that make their pain even stronger.

My parents wanted to bury at home Muky as we did with all our dogs buried in the corner of our garden. So painful, so bad laws. Someone needs to change them. I understand they fight for "do not kill" shelters but to make an animal suffer so much or be killed in much pain that is not animal protection either!!!!
I am heart broken!

--
Muky rest in peace!

long absence after very short summer :-)

I cannot believe it has been since April I did not updated this blog :-(

It was alike a marathon.
Semester ended, I took a short trip to Romania to visit my parents, and then got back to teach three summer courses. With the courses ending I tried to catch up with the work left behind and clean my house (stage my house).

Getting ready to start a new semester which already started August 25th.

My parents now have Internet!!!!
So, we can use the Yahoo messenger --- will go thru a phase where I am the Customer Service representative on the phone directing Mom in front of her computer to be able to see and hear me via Yahoo Messenger (wonder when Google will do something attached to Gmail and Blogger?).
We will get there!
They are frustrated since it is slow and don't know how to handle it and.... forget from one talk to the next what they did before to start and connect. We will get there!..... be the Olympics and hear the Anthem in our honor
:-)


This is a cool way of singing the American National Anthem:

IME 106

Dr. Cem Karacal and I have a project running in his IME 106 _ Engineering Problem Solving course.

I take care of student teams' blogs and Newsletters.
Some are very good, some not so... but considering they are just in first year of college they seem to be more technical than education students.

I forgot to post on Blackboard the instructions to "how to create a blog" -- but I did tell them in class that each team will need to create one on blogger. The IME 106 students did not ask about the instructions when after posting my Announcement that I am waiting for their e-mail with the team's blog address. They figured it out :-)

We are now at the end of the semester and teams completed their Newsletter (each 4 teams presented their Newsletter on a project).

Here are some jokes on engineers that I really liked, and some I found myself :-)

1) To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. (this is my favorite)

2) You might be an engineer if you have no life and can prove it mathematically.

3) You might be an engineer if you consider a non-science course easy. (No wonder my courses are perceived by the Education students as being way too hard).

4)

Five surgeons were taking a coffee break.

The first surgeon said:
"Accountants are the best to operate on because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered."

The second surgeon said:
"Nah, librarians are the best. Everything inside them is in alphabetical order."

The third surgeon responded:
"Try electricians, man! Everything inside them is color coded."

Then the fourth doctor interceded:
"I prefer lawyers. They're heartless, spineless, gutless and their heads and their butts are interchangeable."

To which the fifth surgeon, who had been quietly listening to the conversation, replied:
"I like engineers. They always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end."

Vince is with God.....

Vince would have been 10 years old on May 2nd, when I would have seen him (after 6 years of my absence). He lived with my parents but was my dog. He was my graduation present when I graduated from Psychology in 1998.

Vince died in sleep, and now is with God.
I hope I will meet him (and all my pets) when I go to our eternal Home.
I am sure the Heaven must have all our lost pets waiting for us with wagging tails.

I will not see Vince anymore in this life.....

One day Taylor will follow him, and all my lost pets. I dread that day, and now I take one day at a time. I tell myself that Vince had the death I dream about, dying in sleep, really passing away.

May he rest in peace and happiness, where there is no pain but only eternal joy, and bounty of treats and LOVE.

AERA conference in NY

I just returned from Big Apple: NY, NY.
The AERA conference 2008 in NY was a week long and I was in Times Square at the Marriott Marquis...

This is the view from the window of my room at the Marriott

The Time in Times Square

In the middle of NY cabs and cars horning people walking, music and noise, a horse like descending from another time....

Times Square was a daily walk (mostly walk between the hotels that hosted the AERA conference). I could name this living one week in Times Square.

I am so very tired. One week at AERA. I am not sure if people are getting better at giving titles to their works or getting worse doing their work, or that I did not choose the right sessions?
At AERA I made myself busy. Lots of business meetings.
I attended a couple of sessions, but was not as impressed as last year....
Hope others don't say the same thing about our work which I presented Friday at noon then got my luggage and jumped into a shuttle bus just to spend the next two hours in traffic jam towards JFK (It really took us 2 hours and 10 minutes to get there from Times Square).






I was glad to see my dear friends:
Sarah Bonner who actually lives in NY (she is a Queens!) and is at Hunter College
Jonathan Schwartz my friend now at U of Hawaii at O'Ahu who flu across the Pacific and US to be in Big Apple

Sarah and I met with Jerry D'Agostino (our former Assessment and Measurements prof at UA) who now is at the Ohio State University.

Sarah and Jerry

We took the subway, visited Museum of Natural science, got to see Hunter College, then we went to downtown and walked a bit on Madison Ave.







After the two hour shuttle bus drive to the JFK, we could see from the plane the sunset beautiful.
Next to me was sitting a 14 years old student from South Coreea who studies abroad. I understand it is not at all uncommon to have students as young as fifth grade to be sent abroad to study in English.
The company that his parents use for his education gave them a spring break trip to NY, visiting the attraction points and of course the prestigious universities. Harry dreams to get in MIT, and I am sure he will!
He asked me why I was in NY and upon telling him that I was at an education conference and did not see all those interest points he visited he asked me what kind of conference and what are people doing there. I tried my best to explain him but he was so very curious that I ended up on teaching him a two hour class in introductory in statistics (talking about mean, median, mode, normal curve and t-test) when we got to the t-test he had some trouble :-)
Of course this is college level topic and he is in eight grade now.
The most interesting and beautiful was that he always asked me more and more and at times he said: "Now let me guess" and he was trying to make sense and really think about the next step and using amazingly logical thinking.
This was the best class I ever taught and he said that this was the best class he ever got!
I was pleasantly surprised to have Harry understanding the basics of the normal curve and regression to the mean, a topic most college students have some problems.
I promised I will send him a book.
We then showed each other the pictures we took in NY. His were better than mine and we promised to e-mail and exchange pictures. So, keep checking back and I'll post his pictures with statue of Liberty and United Nations and some college campuses.

His camera run out of battery and asked me to take a picture of him with his brand new hat, and asked me to let him take a picture of me with the hat as well (I guess was like a friendship exchange or recognition that I taught him interesting things :-))