Dear fellow netters,
Meet young Romualdo de Souza.
Not to be confused with Romualdo de Sousa, s.j.,
Goa's educationist emeritus.
However, his nephew and godchild.
Also Willie's nephew.
Also aunt, Sr Noemia (Nirmala Niketan) and uncle,
Michael, are educators.
Michael was the principal of St Michael's, Anjuna.
Romualdo's father Orlando is not generally kown in
Goa, but retired as a senior vice-president of Exxon,
having headed their aviation fuel division, among
other divisions.
As such he helped build airports, large and small,
around the world over many years.
My reason for this introduction is that I think where
Professor Phillip, Gabriel de Figueiredo and other
netters who take such keen interest in the Goa's
existing airport as well as the prospective one, to
interact with Orlando, [EMAIL PROTECTED], the result
would be mutually beneficial.
Orlando and Frances live in -- where else-- Dallas,
Texas.
Alfred de Tavares,
Stockholm, 2005-06-29
Saturday, June 25, 2005 3:58 PM
Web-based teaching method at IU being used for high
school chemistry
by Steve Hinnefeld 331-4374 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Romualdo de Souza created the Web-based instructional
system known as CALM almost a decade ago as a way to
teach introductory chemistry to large numbers of
Indiana University students.
But he thinks it is even better suited to high
schools, where its individualized approach can turn
students on to the challenge and sense of
accomplishment of learning about science.
"You want them to come out of high school excited
about learning and with the tools to learn new
content," said de Souza, a nuclear chemist and
professor of chemistry at IU.
CALM - an acronym for Computer Assisted Learning
Method - lets students sit down at a computer and work
on science problems at their own speed. They get
immediate feedback on whether they're solving the
problems. Typically, they can keep working until they
get it right.
Guided by IU faculty and staff, a handful of
high-school teachers began using the method three
years ago. Last year it had spread to 40 schools
across Indiana and was used by 3,000 students.
Additional teachers were on campus this week to learn
about the system. CALM veterans were also there,
learning new features and helping align the database
of problems with Indiana's standards for high-school
chemistry.
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"Our hope is we will be expanding this," said Brian
White, a Lawrence North High School chemistry teacher
who brought two colleagues to a CALM workshop.
De Souza developed the approach in 1996, when he was
teaching introductory chemistry at IU. Other chemistry
faculty soon began using it for their intro-level
courses.
Students log on to the system and work through a list
of problems assigned by their teachers. Teachers can
select the problems and questions to fit with the
topics and level of difficulty they've been teaching.
At it's best, CALM makes use of the Socratic method,
offering leading questions to guide students through
problem-solving exercises.
"Math and science is problem- solving," de Souza said.
"If you don't solve the problems, you haven't learned
the material."
The problems include everything from multiple-choice
and true-or-false questions to multistage problems in
which students must get each step right before moving
on.
Teachers say it's the instant feedback that makes the
method effective. Under the pencil-and-paper system
for doing practice problems, students must wait for
feedback until their teacher finds time to grade and
return their work.
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"In the old system, they might be taking a test
without having had any feedback on their homework,"
White said.
The program generates individual problems for each
student, so students can't copy someone else's
answers. They talk with classmates about how to solve
problems, not just what the answer is, said Cheryl
McLean, a Westfield High School teacher who has used
the method for three years.
While many students like the method, not all do. "Some
students don't like it because it holds them
accountable," White said.
De Souza said CALM doesn't replace teachers. In fact,
in empowers teachers by helping them keep track of how
students are progressing. Teachers can customize the
program, even write their own problems.
IU provides the program to schools free of charge, but
there are costs - covered so far by the chemistry
department, the College of Arts and Sciences and the
Bloomington campus - to developing and maintaining it
and training teachers. The development team includes
chemistry department instructional programs and lab
coordinators and two computer programmers.
With the effort now under way to align the problems
with state standards, de Souza hopes the state finds a
way to fund the program so it can expand further. CALM
requires access to the Internet, but teachers say
that's less and less of an issue. Students who don't
have computers can print the problems at school and
work on them at home. And de Souza said the number of
chemistry students who don't use the Internet has
declined significantly.
"The day is coming," he said, "when these guys will be
able to do this on their cell phones."
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