Kieun Kim

Last Minute Valentine’s Day Gift – Origami Rose

 To Be a Good Husband  Comments Off on Last Minute Valentine’s Day Gift – Origami Rose
Feb 142011
 

Gentlemen, it’s that time of the year again.  It’s Valentine’s Day, a day to tell your wife, your fiancé, your girl that you love her – and figure out some clever, special way to do it.  Well, not all of us plan ahead, and I know a cool trick up your sleeve can save your butt if you are scrambling to figure something out the day before or even the day of Valentine’s Day.  So here’s a treat for you all.  I am going to explain a way to make an origami rose in 5 minutes or less that you can give with your V-Day card.  Any schmuck can buy a rose.  But to make a rose, to show that you spent time to create an item of love and devotion – that’s gonna impress any girl.  And consider this for any Dads out there with boys in school – this is a cool little trick that you can show to your boy so that he can make a rose for his special sweetheart.

First, let me show you the end product so you know what you’re trying to create.  This is the end product, the rose you’re trying to make.

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To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test

 Things Dad Should Know, To Be A Good Dad  Comments Off on To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test
Jan 242011
 

I’m stealing the title of this post from this NY Times article. It’s an interesting story they tell: a recent scientific study indicates that to best learn and retain what you have learned, the most effective means of doing this may be to stop every once in a while and take a test to quiz yourself on your knowledge.

The study was conducted at Purdue University by Jeffrey Karpicke. He divided the participating students into four groups and each was asked to study some material that they didn’t know before, and asked to follow up in different ways. The first group was asked to simply read the text for a single sitting of five minutes, the second group was asked to read for four consecutive five minute sessions, the third was asked to engage in mind mapping to organize what they read once with the text in front of them, and the last group was asked to take a “retrieval practice” test. This test involved writing down in a free form essay what they read without looking at the text. They then reread the passage and took another retrieval test. A week later all four groups were given a short-answer test that assessed their ability to recall facts and draw logical conclusions based on the facts.

The group that made the mind mapping did well initially, but in the long term, one-week after test, the group that did the best was the one that did the retrieval test as they were learning. In fact, they were able to retain up to 50% more information than the groups that used the other methods.

I am a little chagrined to hear this. If you recall your school days, at the end of the chapters in all the textbooks I’ve ever used, there were various “end of chapter” tests, to supposedly test you on what you just read. I never used them. Seems like these tests were supposed to do exactly what this study seems to indicate is beneficial for students. So this is important mental note for the future, when the little bambinos enter school and they’re studying their science or social studies. I will teach them all the mental mapping and note taking techniques, but I guess I will also be making sure that they take those end of the chapter tests, too.

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Study Hacks

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Jan 222011
 

In my continuing series of sites that I think are worth noting and are of interest to fathers and would be fathers, I’d like to introduce the Study Hacks. It’s a blog by a fellow named Cal Newport. Cal is a post-doc at MIT and he started this site in 2007 when he was a grad student. It’s built on a simply premise, one that seems almost fantastical in today’s world – that one does not need to be stressed to be successful. It’s fantastical, that is, until you actually read his well written posts.

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Museum of Mathematics

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Jan 202011
 

Here’s an incredibly cool place to go in the future for those of you lucky enough to live in NYC. It’s the Museum of Mathematics. I can already feel my inner nerd jumping up and down with excitement and envy. Seriously, why didn’t someone think of this when I was a kid? We in America decry the lowering math scores and how we’re losing our competitive edge in science and math to other countries, and we don’t really do enough to make science and math fun for kids. A zillion dollars going to boost standardized test prep and all the debate in the world about national standards aren’t going to be nearly as useful as making intellectual pursuits fun for kids. Why? Because at the end of the day, unless a kid has fun doing something, he or she is not going to motivated to continue growing their brains outside of the classroom. What’s sad is that it wasn’t until 2009 that this museum was actually chartered. They plan on opening their doors in 2012, but in the meanwhile they have a traveling exhibition: Math Midway. We need more places like this and we need to make places like this grow and succeed.

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