E-bike: Frank v2.2

This post has nothing to do with education.

This the bike I built.  Just got it put back together with new battery boxes. Currently has about 670 miles on it.
Let me know what you think.

Affective Dimensions of Reading

I have never really had trouble reading.  Ever since I learned how to read I would read the back of the cereal box when I was eating breakfast, and I remember one time just after learning how to read I was reading the ingredients list thinking to myself, “I can read anything!” I was pretty excited.  Another childhood reading experience was when I was in the second grade, we were divided into three or four reading groups and each group was given a color.  There was a red group, a blue group and one or two others I can’t remember.  The teacher never told us but we all figured out pretty quickly that the blue group was the good readers, the red group was the not so good readers, and the other(s) were in the middle. I was in the blue group. 

After the initial excitement of being able to read wore off I slowly stopped reading books that weren’t assigned for school.  I usually didn’t enjoy school assigned readings very much, my worst reading experience was when I had to read The Great Gatsby.  At the time I thought it was the stupidest thing ever written – my sister (who has an English degree) says that I didn’t like it because I didn’t understand it, but I think that I wouldn’t like it even if I did understand it.

Now I still don’t read books very often, but I do a lot of reading for school.  Whenever I sign out of my email on MSN or Yahoo I scroll through the articles and read the ones that I find interesting, so it’s not like I never read or am anti-reading.

I never had much pull from anyone outside of school encouraging me to read or not to read until I got married.  One of my wife’s favorite things to do is read so we have bookshelves and boxes full of books everywhere.  She is always telling me that I need to read more, but it’s not that I don’t like to read- there’s just plenty of other things that I would rather do.  Plus with all those books in the house I still don’t have much of a selection because almost all of them are in Chinese.

I think that there are few people who really hate to read, I think that most students wouldn’t mind reading if what they’re reading is really interesting to them-although I could be completely wrong.  One of the benefits of being in Technology education is that almost everything that kids care about now has something to do with technology.  I think it’s a great idea to have a classroom library with a wide variety of texts for students to have access to.  Another way that I could encourage them to read is to let them know that if they find anything they’re interested in that has to do with technology, like a news story or an internet article, they are welcome to bring it up in class for discussion.

I don’t know exactly how I could build self-perception in reading in my students.  Some students in class may struggle with reading traditional texts, but may be able to interpret a more technology related one like reading a wiring diagram or house plan.  Giving these students responsibility in helping others in the class might improve their confidence in reading different texts.

I still read cereal boxes when I have breakfast.