spool roll toward you or away from you? Physics gives you the feeling
that you can figure out \emph{anything} (to a first approximation),
and if you're not sure you're right, you can usually design and build
-a simple experiment to test your understanding. In no other
-discipline are the fundamentals of the scientific method so clearly
-laid out or so obviously powerful.
+a simple experiment to test your understanding. In order to do any of
+this quantitatively, you need to know some \emph{math}.
Since that high school course, I have enjoyed honing my skills in
-physics and related disciplines, but no task has been as satisfying as
-introducing new students to the discipline and sharing my enthusiasm
-for the material and philosophy. I have been lucky to have almost a
-decade of teaching experience from a range of teaching assistant-ships
-covering the classic introductory courses (with recitations and labs
-of 20 students in classes of up to 700) as well as some more advanced
-numerical methods courses (with as few as five students). The range
-of formats allows me to experiment with a number of teaching styles,
-from modeling recitation problem solutions to more Socratic approaches
-for helping students design and troubleshoot software.
+physics, mathematics, and related disciplines, but no task has been as
+satisfying as introducing new students to the discipline and sharing
+my enthusiasm for the material, elegance, and philosophy. I have been
+lucky to have almost a decade of teaching experience from a range of
+teaching assistant-ships covering the classic introductory courses
+(with recitations and labs of 20 students in classes of up to 700) as
+well as some more advanced numerical methods courses (with as few as
+five students). The range of formats allows me to experiment with a
+number of teaching styles, from modeling recitation problem solutions
+to more Socratic approaches for helping students design and
+troubleshoot software.
While I have not yet been in a position to design my own courses, I
have enjoyed building some supportive tools. Over the past several
students directly. Downloadable class notes also give students more
time to focus on the concepts and applications instead of focusing on
transcription. I look forward to tying these pieces together and
-building cohesive courses to introduce new students to physics.
-
-Earlier attempts at instructional tooling\citep{christian01} have not
-kept up with the rapid pace of software development. Using flexible
-open source tools makes it possible to distribute maintenance costs
-across a community of teachers. This makes it easier for existing
-teachers to share ideas and for new teachers to pick up where previous
-teachers left off, instead of having to start by recreating earlier
-work. On the self-study side of this, Ben Crowell has already
-developed a number of open source
-textbooks\citep{crowell-light-and-matter,crowell-simple-nature,crowell-mechanics,crowell-conceptual-physics,crowell-calculus,crowell-general-relativity},
-which are freely available along with
-\href{git://lightandmatter.com/physics}{their source} under the
-\href{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/}{CC BY-SA 3.0
- US} license. There is room for continued development along this
-front, as well as uncharted territory in open source laboratory
-materials and equipment. My Ph.D.\ thesis focused on developing open
-source software for controlling atomic force microscopes in
-biophysical applications\citep{king13}, and I look forward to
-leveraging this experience to develop open source software and
-procedures for undergraduate labs. Besides making it easier for other
-teachers to collaborate on lab design, an open source platform
-(software and hardware) will enable on-the-fly student alterations. I
-expect that replacing the magic of ``black boxes'' with well
-documented, explorable tools will encourage students to see labs as
-chances to build their theoretical and practical familiarity with the
-physical world instead of arbitrary, cookbook-style recipes.
+building cohesive courses to introduce new students to math and the
+sciences. While I generally prefer to host my own websites, I also
+understand the benefit of working within an institution-wide system,
+and I have had the chance to work with Blackboard and SiteCore at
+Drexel.
As a scientist, I feel that teaching itself can be improved through
the scientific method. By testing the effect of different classroom
Developing quantitative evaluations of student learning is tricky,
but---at least at a basic level---it is possible. Mentioning these
difficulties when discussing course organization with students will
-provide jumping-off points for discussing the limitations of the
-scientific approach and the flavor of scientific progress, while
-avoiding confusion about the well-understood fundamentals covered in
-the content of the course itself.
+provide jumping-off points for discussing the limitations of
+statistics, the scientific approach, and the flavor of scientific
+progress, while avoiding confusion about the well-understood
+fundamentals covered in the content of the course itself.
I look forward to guiding students through the early stages of their
-exposure to physics, while at the same time engaging in higher level
-discussions about the practice and role of science in general. I hope
+exposure to mathematics, while at the same time engaging in higher
+level discussions about applications and the roll of science. I hope
that this experience is as transformative for my students as my early
-physics courses were for me, teaching them how to break down problems
-into manageable chunks and encouraging them to make use of analytical
-reasoning and evidenced-based inquiry in their chosen profession,
-regardless of whether it is directly related to physics.
+mathematics and physics courses were for me, teaching them how to
+break down problems into manageable chunks and encouraging them to
+make use of analytical reasoning and evidenced-based inquiry in their
+chosen profession, regardless of whether it is directly related to
+mathematics.
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