Workshop Day 1

Right now I am currently in the middle of day 1 of our workshop. Like I said in my previous post, I started my day at 4 am because my body was thinking it was 5 pm. So after I finally got up, we met for breakfast, again phenomenal and then waited for our bus to arrive. We took the bus to a local university- Chulalongkorn University. Here our supervisor (Dr. Panoff) led the workshop on "Computing MATTERS: Towards an International Partnership to Promote Inquiry-Based Science Education Enhanced by Computational Thinking"

We had a few sessions early on where we learned about different models we could use in our math classroom to help our students understand their expectations, observations and reflections.  For us as teachers it is important to understand that the way a students answer looks depends on how the question is asked and that answers may not be wrong, just unexpected. For example, if you go to google and type in 3+2*6 you would expect the answer to be 15 and if you were to type in III+II*VI you would expect to get XV. Both answers are correct, they just look different, but are expected for their questions asked.

After a few sessions we had a lunch break which I found very culturally different. Think to yourself- If I were at a conference in the United States- what would the lunch menu look like? Myself and a few other Americans came up with - a hoagie platter, pasta salad, a cookie tray and sodas, very typical. If it were a hot meal maybe- hotdogs, burgers, mac n cheese, a cookie tray and soda. Here in Thailand, we had rice, some sort of egg (which I think had an animal in it), some sort of spicy chicken mixture, soup, fruit and water bottles - no wonder they are so skinny! Fruit seems to be the go to dessert here, which is fine with me because it is always so fresh and delicious, but I would be lying if I said that I'm not craving a cookie right about now.

We have another session in store and then dinner, which is also here at the university. Afterwards we are free to do what we want. A few friends and I decided that we would explore the local shopping scene and pick up some souvenirs! Hopefully my pictures will all be downloaded when I get back to the hotel so that I can share them with you all.

xx