What do you want to do when you grow up?

Hal asks: “What is your dream position in Archaeology”? For me, the question would have to be posed slightly differently, of course, since I’m not an archaeologist.

My dream position as a teacher would be teaching a bunch of wonderful and motivated students who love mathematics and science (especially physics) as much as I do, who are really interested and want to learn. Unfortunately, students like that are very rare. Physics is the least-liked subject among students in Germany, and even for grown-ups it is cool to say they never understood what math was all about. (In Mathe war ich immer schlecht…)

Although there seldom has been a better time to become a teacher than right now (because most teachers in Germany are over 50 years old, and more than 50% of all teachers will be replaced by new, younger ones within the next five or ten years), I would prefer to do something else.

I would like to teach people to become teachers, either in university or during the two years of post-university training on the job. It would also be interesting to work for a publishing company that makes school textbooks, either writing said textbooks or working on the company’s websites. Some of them offer a great amount of useful information for teachers and students.

It would be interesting to work for a scientific newspaper or magazine, or a scientific TV programme. (Wie zum Beispiel die Sendung mit der Maus. ) Or a science museum like the Exploratorium.

I would be very happy if my future job would not solely be about math and science, but also about other things that interest me, like computers and the internet.

I’m also thinking about applying for a job as a Park Ranger at the National Park Service.

And while I’m dreaming and thinking aloud here, I wouldn’t mind if the job was well-paid and included international connections and traveling to other countries from time to time. My English is fluent, and I even remember some French from school. Please send your job offers to andrea@spicynoodles.com.

Community

The Far Side of Oliver’s Mind has moved to http://www.fsomm.com/. From Oliver’s bulletin: “The site is now hosted on Frontier 7 on Mac OS X on a PowerMac G4 Cube.” Cool! And the new design is very neat as well.

Susan has beautiful photos of Los Angeles at night.

Parks

Urban Parks Online is produced and
managed by the Urban Parks Institute, which “was established in 1996 to help improve the quality of urban parks, especially in underserved neighborhoods, by educating public, private and nonprofit sector leaders about best practices in urban park revitalization.”

The most interesting part of the site is a list of Parks, Plazas, and Central Squares. I found the site while looking for info on Parc Guell, a park in Barcelone, Spain, that was designed by Antonio Gaudí.

Mathematik

Zirkel und Lineal für Java ist ein dynamisches Geometrieprogramm für den Schulunterricht, aber nicht ausschließlich: “Dieses Programm soll ganz verschiedenen Benutzergruppen dienen. Es soll auf elementarem Level im Gemetrieunterricht verwendet werden bis hinauf zu Forschungszwecken. Entsprechend vielfältig sind die Ansprüche an die Funktionalität und an die Oberfläche eines solchen Programms.” Man kann es direkt im Browser ausprobieren.

Diesen Link schickte mir Tim gestern per Email. Danke!