I've seen more people with tablet computers (not 'toy' tablets, but actual PCs) than I have since I taught at an all-tablet school! I love my Lenovo tablet!
Angry Bird Physics
- Rhett Allain!
- This vehicle for engagement and analysis has been pretty well-covered (certainly very well by Rhett himself) in the blogs and even mainstream media, but I wanted to get it straight from the horse's mouth :)
- A little Tracker analysis - I love using the quadratic fit rather than even the v vs t slope - kids often think that you can get the v directly from the video, not even knowing that there's an error-inducing difference quotient in there
- The split blue birds have a total mass 45 times the mass of a single blue bird?!
- The yellow bird analysis (what happens when you tap?) is a decent entry-way into designing an experiment that will need revision (it's not immediately clear what's going on and how to analysis the data), but it would really take a long time to collect all of that data, and I can see that many students would be disillusioned by that
- The white bird egg dropping seems not only to use non-real physics (no problem), but it seems to reinforce some pernicious misconceptions (the egg always falls straight down, momentum's not conserved even in a conceptual way, etc.). This may do more damage than it's worth, considering that students usually remember the first thing they see/hear, and that we've previously set up a few examples to illustrate that the physics is (sometimes, at least) good in this game
- Good point that this requires indirect techniques, which is very indicative of science - we can't just weigh the rock, but have to come up with a way to get at what we want by measuring what we're able to measure
- Contact:
Transforming Physics Curriculum by Teaching Physics Online
- First point: online learning needs to be personal - tailored to the student, flexible, etc.
- Star Trek IV clip!
- Interesting: he's not afraid of making a statement. So far, he's said that electronic books, regular books, and clickers are a dead end
- Biggest point is that changing the content isn't the answer - it's about how the content is taught
- The classroom needs to be a safe space where students can learn and discuss without the fear of punitive grading - sounds like SBG to me!
- His vision seems to be about social media more than anything else
- OK, here it is: the social homework project
- It's supposed to enable students to collaborate on their physics HW and to learn from each other. There are peer-review, group solving, and discussion capabilities for rich-context problems, and they write problems and questions for other groups as well
- It looks like a Facebook app/group for collaboration, basically. Everything seems to be in an early form yet
- A questioner brings up a common issue with discussion forums: frequently, a well-meaning student will "give away" the solution - this requires management and acculturation
- Contact: hlousek@csulb.edu
- This is about a CSU-wide online course in particle physics (senior undergraduate level)
- They used Elluminate, with downloaded equation packet, live lecture with video camera with some whiteboard space.
- They scanned and sent in HW, he sent back scores only
- Tests were given live, by local faculty as proctors
- Could any research-inspired methods be incorporated here? Is that less important as the audience is winnowed down to upper UG physics majors and grad students?
- Contact: pbsiegel@csupomona.edu
- This is about some courses developed in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History and NASA
- They aren't inquiry courses, but say that they try to model it
- They're using a stripped-down and more accessible version of the global climate model
- Good lessons here about bringing together model, theory, observation, causality, etc.
- rsteiner@amnh.org
- These kits are designed for students taking distance (or face-to-face) courses as a relatively simple way to get hands-on intuition about light
- There's color mixing, diffraction spectra (glasses), some LEDs to demo things
- Neat experiment using two LEDs to simulate amber light - very different spectra
- Spectra about CFL backlit monitors
- Apertures to develop the ray model of light - good conceptual question about a hole at the end of a hallway
- Pupil aperture size/power
- Point vs. extended sources through apertures, also with shadows
- Neat question giving two point sources, location of shadow components on screen - where's the shadow-caster?
- Ray tracing to determine image location with flat, curved (cylindrical) mirrors
- Photoelectric-type effect: UV making paper glow green, red light won't
- Peacock feather for iridescence
- Increases engagement, but doesn't always transfer - more mental-model creation needed in structure of investigations
- millspaj@ipfw.edu
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