Challenging questions about Simple assessment

This question can be given to students who are learning decimal units to provide basic calculations and provide an assessment of a very large number. A simple question that challenges to stimulate simple assessment one of which is as follows.

I want to count to one million.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...How long does it take?

Of course, this is an open-ended question. The answer could be a variety of conditions. It could be when spell is interspersed stop, or can also be in spell the numbers constantly. In the case of simple assessment, it can be said that the number takes about one second to be spelled, and if they do not stop counting until finished it will take about one million seconds.

As a sequel, in terms of studying the decimal unit, then be directed to the state of one million seconds into a simpler form, for example by converting into units of minutes, hours, or days. These issues provide a good opportunity to emphasize the ability of the assessment.

1,000,000 seconds to change to the day we need to calculate:

For a quick calculation, round 24 to 25, so that:

Because more than 10, then a good estimate is 11 days. The real answer is approximately 11 ½ days.

Read more at:

Teaching Mathematics Third Edition: a resource book props, activities, and strategies, written by Max A. Sobel and Evan M. Maletsky, published in Jakarta by grants in 2004.

As Mathematics Education Student, We are Proud !

Friday, May 13th, 2011, I and my friend got our English course. In our English course, Mr. Marsigit, our lecturer, told about anything. In that meeting, he said that in his point of view, we should be very happy as mathematics education student. Why?

Then, he told us the reason : We should be very happy as mathematics education student because only few of young people who concerning to the mathematics education. However, as mathematics education student, we need to empower ourself. We should not to be hesitate and disappointed. We had to wake up and make sure that we’re in the right track. We should support our competence. We could use many facilities thats’s available to support our competence. To gain our goal as the mathematics teacher, we also need support from our family. And the most important’s getting understand. We should understand ourselves and everythings around us. If we didn’t understand, we could be blind and empty. Blind meaned there’s no destination. To know our life destination, we had to know the inside of ourselves and the world outside. Then, we could find the destination of our life. Whereas, empty’s, we had not anything in our life. So, we had to fill it by hard struggling in our life. Then, we would not get blind and empty.

Mr. Marsigit said that life could be defined as a character. For example, “What are you?” he asked. “You are a character who want to transform yourself to a certain characteristic. You are aware of characteristic, again and again.”
Continuing his explanation, Mr. Marsigit said, “As the adult student, you must not depend on your lecturer. Doing anything by understanding and self-awareness, not by other influence and other compulsion. You can do some exercises by your self as the adding supplement to support your goal beside the lecturer teaching. Because there are various source in learning English. Even, you can benefitted the internet facilitate that provide youtube as the video provider. From youtube, we can download many learning material video that is usefull for you.”

We, as the candidate of mathematics teacher should be proud. We had an important role to break the old paradigm about the old way on teaching. We had to renew our paradigm. Because the most difficult thing’s to show the different function of traditonal teacher and modern teacher. As the modern teacher, we had to know the different thingking of younger student and the adult student. It could be explained from the nature of mathematics iceberg. It showed some grade of mathematics learning types. They’re formal mathematics for adult student (learning postulates), model, scheme, and physics for younger student.

Teacher should prepare something to teach. The preparation of teacher could be Lesson Plan (RPP) and Student Work Sheet (LKS). Teacher also need to know the role of interaction. Interaction could make transformation from subjective knowledge of mathematics to objective knowledge of mathematics. This meaned that teacher should guarantee to improve their knowledge about mathematics from the subjective mathematics to objective one.

That’s all Mr. Marsigit explanation about mathematics education generally.

My Impressing English Course

It was Friday, February 18th, 2011. At 1 o’clock, I had arrived in my campus, Yogyakarta State University. As soon as possible, I walked to my classroom, it was 209 room, it’s in the 2nd floor of my campus building. But, unfortunately, the room was used. So, my class should be moved to another room. After asking the Academic Staff about my classroom, I went to 107 room. On my way to the room, I met my friends, they are my classmates. Actually, they didn’t know about the changing room. Moreover, they thought that our English lecturer would not come. So, they conclude that the English lecture on that time was canceled. But, finally, we decided to wait our English lecturer in the place where I met my friends.

After waiting for a while, Mr. Marsigit, our English lecturer, came. He was leading me and my friends went to the room. Entering the room, I and my friends took a sit immediately. We had sat neatly. We had ready for our first English lecture in University. But, suddenly, Mr. Marsigit ordered us to sit around him. It’s unusual, but it’s good enough. I thought that it could make me more focus to the matters that would be explained by Mr. Marsigit. I and my friends did that first Mr. Marsigit’s instruction quickly. In a short time, we had ready to listen Mr. Marsigit introduction. He introduced himself to us. In his introduction, he often shared jokes to us. It made us laugh. Even, one of my friends laugh until her face getting red. I thought that Mr. Marsigit was a humorous person. That was supported by one of my friends words. She said, it’s Gombong people characteristic, that they’re humorous. Gombong’s a city in Central Java where Mr. Marsigit was from. After his last word of his introduction, he asked us (me and my friends) whether we had some questions about his introduction. I thought, it was the second instruction for me and my friends to speak up. But, no responses he got. For a while, I and my friends just keep silent. A moment later, one of my friends asked him about the lecture contract. Mr. Marsigit answered the question. Knowing, there’re no more question from us, he started to tell us everything about motivation that could inspiring us. Through his story that he told with smile occasionally, he gave us many inspiration and motivation. We’re impressed to him. It showed by our attention to his explanation. I looked that some of my friends faces showed that they were impressed to Mr. Marsigit when he told us about his experience in some countries, like Japan. Beside that, he told us about three important points for us. They’re Perception, Attitude, and Behaviour. He said that Perception of a person to a something could influence the person’s Attitude. Continuous Attitude could build Behaviour. So, according to me, based on the Mr. Marsigit explanation, positive Perception would grow positive Attitude. Positive Attitude would build positive Behaviour. This positive Behaviour would help us live in this life.

That’s all my story about my impressing English course. Started by room problem and lecture cancelling isue. Continued by attention and laugh. Ended by inspiration and motivation. It was impressing!