Where are the teachers?

I was looking through my daughter's yearbook and I noticed something interesting. The yearbook contained the pictures of all the students in the school along with their name and what they want to be, when they grow up.

I saw a lot of doctors, dentists, rocket scientists, astronauts, firemen, ballerinas, princesses, singers, actors, musicians, etc. What surprised me was that not one student wanted to be a teacher! That struck me as odd, since most kids love their teachers (at least, in their elementary years).

What this means is that there is not a lot of publicity about teachers, and being a teacher. Kids pick up a lot of what they want at home, and in a lot of cases there is parental influence on their decision. Most parents would not want their kid to be a teacher, since teaching is not a coveted position (especially in the United States). Graduate level teaching is another matter. At that point, children would know a lot about the world, and teaching staff in higher education do get paid well and are known and respected a lot more.

There are several reasons why the education system in the US is failing, and this is one of them:
Lack of good teachers.

Why do we lack good teachers? Because, a majority of students do not want to be teachers. School teacher is not a glamorous job. Most parents dread when their kid comes home and says that she wants to be a teacher.

Teaching, as a profession, is not respected, whereas, great teachers are always remembered and respected. If the profession is not respected and sought after, it is hard to attract talented people into it. I am not going to go into the reasons why the system is broken. There has been a lot of debate about this and many smart people have come up with great suggestions.

It is going to take a lot to fix the system and start attracting talented people into this profession and make teaching a coveted position it once was.

Lessons in sports photography

I have always admired sports photography for the stunning action images as well as the emotions they portray. I wanted to first hand experience how easy/difficult it was to capture such images. So, on the first opportunity I had I went to the Marymoor velodrome armed with my camera and lenses. Here is an account of what I learnt, and how to take better sports pictures.

First of all, here is what I took:

- DigiSLR

- 100- 300mm (1:4.5-5.6) zoom lens

- 16- 35mm (1:2.8) wide angle zoom lens

First mistake that you notice is that I didn't pack my tripod! My lenses are not extremely fast, and to top it off, the races were held at night. I realized this as soon as darkness engulfed us, and flood lights turned on.

Lesson #1: Do your homework on the gear you will need.

As a spectator, I had visited the velodrome several times, but had never thought of the different locations and the angles they provide. Armed with a camera, I started noticing all of this when I started shooting, and looking for the angles you see on a sports publication. As I started shooting, and moving around, I discovered that most of the coveted spots were already taken!

Lesson #2: Do your scouting in advance and pick the best location.

When it comes to angles and composition, it pays to know a bit about the sport. How does it start? What happens during the event? How does it end? What do the competitors do: before, during and after the event? Knowing all these lets you pick the right spot, and be there when the action is happening. Strategize in advance.

Lesson #3: Learn about the sport you are shooting.

I shot a lots of pics from different angles, locations, and most of them turned out mediocre (see examples above). About a third of them were blurred. Many of these can be attributed to the equipment I had.

It is always a good idea to experiment and shoot lots of pics and keep good notes on the parameters used.

First of all, you need a fast lens to shoot in low light. Since you need to use fast shutter speed to freeze action (if that is the intent), a fast lens helps immensely. Image stabilization on top of it will add to the sharpness. Setting a higher film speed also helps, but there is threshold (ISO 800?) beyond which the images become grainy.

A long lens adds to the effect by laterally compressing the scene. A wide angle lens lets you capture the bigger picture, including the spectators. Larger apertures are helpful in blurring out the background.

A tripod would help, but a monopod will do better. A monopod will offer a lot of flexibility when the subject keeps moving and changing direction. I would love to take a monopod during my next visit.

Last, but not the least, shoot a variety of pictures. Keep in mind that your subject in a sporting event is not only the sportsperson during the event, but also the sportsperson before and after the event. Your subject could also be the spectators and their reaction. Your subject could be the equipment, the organizers, the concession stands. It could be anything that symbolizes the sport and the spirit of the sport.

Final lesson: Look at the bigger picture.

Airport Design

I was looking at the airport terminal maps on a recent flight for various international airports and noticed that no two airports looked similar. I had to figure out a way of transferring between two terminals in SFO in the shortest possible time. Only after I ran through the airport did I discover that I had to go through airport security once again, even though I was just changing planes! That is when I started thinking about airport designs.

Why isn't there a standard airport terminal design that is optimized for airplane traffic as well as passenger traffic?

Airports have been around for quite sometime and there are hunderds around the world. A lot of thinking goes into airport design such as environmental concerns, reuse, use of natural light, efficient heating/cooling, etc. I have seen several contemporary airport terminal designs, each expressing their own style and culture.

But, what is surprising is the fact that the terminal maps and the runways are different in every airport. I had imagined that studies had been conducted and standard designs would have come out of optimizing the operations of an airport. Most airports are built upon a rectangular patch of ground. Of course, some airports will have certain constraints, but none too great to not use a standard, efficient and proven layout.

I am all for unleashing ones creativity when it comes to the cosmetic design of the terminals. But, when it comes to efficient design of the runways, taxiways as well as the terminals, there needs to be a study conducted by an operations research scientist. I am sure someone has already done this, but I fail to see it in use anywhere.

Total Recall

I was at a birthday party a few weeks ago. The party was for a toddler and was held at a theme park. One of the attractions was a water ride in which kids rode around a water way on a small canoe. The ride was manned by a teenage girl, and what was interesting about her was her incredible memory. Kids would get onto the boats on one side of the ride, and she would talk to them and ask their names. When the boats came back, she would greet each and every one of them using their names. Remember, there were 4-5 boats in the loop. What was even more interesting was that I met her in the concession stand a half hour later, and remarked about her incredible memory. She thanked me, and went on to correctly name my daughter as well as the other kids who rode with her!!

Some people are blessed with incredible photographic memory (I think it is called Eidetic memory). I started wondering how that girl could put this talent of hers to use. Apart from excelling in her studies, being able to recall the content of any page of a text book, remembering shopping lists, remembering names, I could not think of many other uses.

Having the ability to memorize things in great detail is of not much use if the information is not used. It is similar to a database; you can store a lot of information. But, if the information is fragmented and not properly indexed, it is pretty much useless. The same can happen with people who have great memory.

One of the gifts that a human is born with is memory, especially variable storage memory. Our ability to easily forget memories that we do not cherish is one of the boons. If one has eidetic memory and holds everything down, it may be hard to forget things too. That would make their life miserable.

All in all, good memory is always beneficial since it helps one excel in studies, socially as well as professionally.

Spurring creativity...

Here is a great design for a multi-purpose container. It starts out its life as a water bottle, and turns into a toy. Great way to encourage people (in this case, children) to reuse the empty container.

Now you have two reasons to buy y-water! What a concept.