Science teaching update

Hey all you fans of science education, thought you'd want to know that the 5E learning cycle model has come to Tibetan science. We spent time on this and science content in my sessions and the monks and nuns seemed to really enjoy that way of being taught. In Saturday's lesson on electrostatics that I designed, we discussed how students learn and what we know about high quality science teaching. We built electroscopes out of aluminum pie pans, styrofoam cups, string, straws and foil. In a later lesson on Sunday, I intended for the students to use gelatin, pieces of wool, fruity pebbles cereal, and balloons (all of which I carried from Atlanta along with the electroscope supplies) to investigate electrostatics. I had a hunch that they would not be familiar with JELLO so brought some along and I made it in the morning in the dorm kitchen.

At night we did our investigation and then worked with the electroscopes and saw some movies I downloaded from the TV show ZOOM. They got so involved that they didn't want to leave when it was time to go (even though it was Sunday evening).

I asked for a picture of all my students so there was the chaos of a holiday family photo and we then closed up for the evening. Thought you'd want to see some action shots so will include 7 pictures, one here of the group and 3 in each of the next two posts since blogger won't take 7 pictures in one posting.

The man standing next to me in the shots on the next post where I am teaching at the front of the classroom is Tenzin, one of the translators for the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. He and has been splitting the duties with three others.

In the group picture below, he's on the far left holding the pan of jello and Paldon, one of the other translators is to his left. Tenzin is a mechanical engineer by training and Paldon is a zoologist. Both studied in Delhi but their homes are here locally and they work on this project as employees of the LTWA. Karma is the third of the four translators. He's in the purple shirt holding the orange balloon in the front row. Standing next to me on my left is Geshe Lhakdor, the head of the LTWA. Prior to coming to his position about a year and a half ago, he was the official translator for the Dalai Lama. Next to him in the white t shirt is Sangye Tashi, a 26 yr old who is the organizer of the workshop logistics. Check out the next posts for more pictures.

Enjoy!