Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Blog post - geology is different
As we venture off into geology I want to re-visit our thinking about process of science. Geology is different from physics in terms of process - way different. Both seek to understand phenomenon in the natural world but pursue questions in different ways. In physics we did experiments and were able to control variables. In geology we rely more on observations of natural phenomena and features; it is hard to control earthquakes or volcanic eruptions! Geology is more of a narrative science. We collect data and construct stories that include predictions and explanations. Some technical terms. Whereas physics (and chemistry) are analytical sciences, geology (anthropology, cosmology and some parts of biology) can be viewed as hermeneutic or narrative sciences; that is they involve interpretation of features that can not only be difficult to do but open to dispute and discussion. As we do more geology I will be asking you to reflect more on these differences.
Blog 3/28/12
Greetings
I hope everyone is doing well. This will be a long blog, but important. Please take the time to read through this...
The exam - as I said was difficult to grade due to poor performance. I Googled the 7 stages of grief and I definitely went through all of them! I am now at the "Acceptance and Hope" stage so I have made it a quick journey. I want you to know that I went through these stages because I care about my students' learning, so if you did not perform well no the exam I want to encourage you to renew your efforts, keep engaged and ask questions!
The average of the exam was a 52%, pretty low. I graded them 0-4 using the percentage as a basis: 0 = unacceptable; 1- below expectations; 2- meets expectations; 3- above expectations. You can find you grade on the your SBG sheet. For the low grades I included what your grade looked like if I only included those multiple choice questions that were on the pre-test. Even those grades were low! I also included how many times you did the pre-tests and your high scores.
I also did some reflection on the grades and my observations of student behavior, attitude and efforts within the group work. Honestly, there were very few surprises when you include some of these affective aspects into the grading. Before I enumerate these, I realize that instructional contingencies play a role in student performance - perhaps I was not clear about expectations or learning goals or something else. I am aware of this potential and am trying to address these in my teaching although I think I have been pretty clear about what I expect; maybe not clear enough. Here is what I have noted about performance.
Those who received 3 as a score tend to be group leaders or quietly involved in all aspects of the course. They rarely, if ever, miss or are late for class. Some in this group had significant previous knowledge and experience with physics. They appear to be rarely distracted by other things during the class. All of them have very positive attitudes about learning.
3 out of the 4 who received 2's have missed a lot of class. Perhaps they will do better if they come more regularly. The other person missed a couple of questions on material that was not part of the pre-test; this student works hard and I believe understands the material better than the grade.
The group who received 1's tend to miss class or come very late. Also people in this group seem to be distracted during class, especially by electronic media.
The group who received the lowest grade (0 - not acceptable) are not the group leaders, probably rely too much on other group members to complete tasks, and therefore do not gain the same level of understanding. Some students in this group have missed a lot of class or did not come to the test. They also tend to come late to class. Some of these students probably did not understand a lot of what we did and should have asked more questions. Many of these people have higher scores when you only count the multiple choice questions form the pre-test. They probably only studied by doing the pretest although only one of the did the pre-test more then once. Perhaps just seeing the questions a couple of times has helped them. Within this group there are 3 subgroups:
And I will leave you with a story. During my first semester in college I took a 200 level religion class that was way over my head. I was blown away receiving a ZERO on the first essay exam. And there were only 3 exams for the class. It was devastating. I just did not know how to study. But, I stuck with it, did better on the other exams and salvage a decent grade. I also got to know the religion professor very well, because I was always in his office, and for a bit considered pursuing a religion degree. The morale of the story (and you probably have ones as well) is to stick with it, work hard, enjoy the learning and good things will happen.
Please let me know if you have questions or comments.
See you tomorrow - dessert will be served.
Be well
Matt
I hope everyone is doing well. This will be a long blog, but important. Please take the time to read through this...
The exam - as I said was difficult to grade due to poor performance. I Googled the 7 stages of grief and I definitely went through all of them! I am now at the "Acceptance and Hope" stage so I have made it a quick journey. I want you to know that I went through these stages because I care about my students' learning, so if you did not perform well no the exam I want to encourage you to renew your efforts, keep engaged and ask questions!
The average of the exam was a 52%, pretty low. I graded them 0-4 using the percentage as a basis: 0 = unacceptable; 1- below expectations; 2- meets expectations; 3- above expectations. You can find you grade on the your SBG sheet. For the low grades I included what your grade looked like if I only included those multiple choice questions that were on the pre-test. Even those grades were low! I also included how many times you did the pre-tests and your high scores.
I also did some reflection on the grades and my observations of student behavior, attitude and efforts within the group work. Honestly, there were very few surprises when you include some of these affective aspects into the grading. Before I enumerate these, I realize that instructional contingencies play a role in student performance - perhaps I was not clear about expectations or learning goals or something else. I am aware of this potential and am trying to address these in my teaching although I think I have been pretty clear about what I expect; maybe not clear enough. Here is what I have noted about performance.
Those who received 3 as a score tend to be group leaders or quietly involved in all aspects of the course. They rarely, if ever, miss or are late for class. Some in this group had significant previous knowledge and experience with physics. They appear to be rarely distracted by other things during the class. All of them have very positive attitudes about learning.
3 out of the 4 who received 2's have missed a lot of class. Perhaps they will do better if they come more regularly. The other person missed a couple of questions on material that was not part of the pre-test; this student works hard and I believe understands the material better than the grade.
The group who received 1's tend to miss class or come very late. Also people in this group seem to be distracted during class, especially by electronic media.
The group who received the lowest grade (0 - not acceptable) are not the group leaders, probably rely too much on other group members to complete tasks, and therefore do not gain the same level of understanding. Some students in this group have missed a lot of class or did not come to the test. They also tend to come late to class. Some of these students probably did not understand a lot of what we did and should have asked more questions. Many of these people have higher scores when you only count the multiple choice questions form the pre-test. They probably only studied by doing the pretest although only one of the did the pre-test more then once. Perhaps just seeing the questions a couple of times has helped them. Within this group there are 3 subgroups:
- One group includes people who have missed a lot of class or are always late
- One group includes people who struggled with the content, may have relied too much on leaders and should have asked more questions
- One group is very distracted during class and don't participate in group dialogue or work to any great extent.
And I will leave you with a story. During my first semester in college I took a 200 level religion class that was way over my head. I was blown away receiving a ZERO on the first essay exam. And there were only 3 exams for the class. It was devastating. I just did not know how to study. But, I stuck with it, did better on the other exams and salvage a decent grade. I also got to know the religion professor very well, because I was always in his office, and for a bit considered pursuing a religion degree. The morale of the story (and you probably have ones as well) is to stick with it, work hard, enjoy the learning and good things will happen.
Please let me know if you have questions or comments.
See you tomorrow - dessert will be served.
Be well
Matt
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Blog 3-21-12
Greetings - I hope everyone is well.
For tomorrow we have two rather large tasks to attend - you need to have your presentation ready to roll. I am excited to see all of them. Each group has explored a different avenue to collect data, so there should be a lot of diversity. Good luck with finishing them up!
The second item is the exam. Perhaps one thing I did not stress is that you should know all of the formulas by heart. You should also know Newton's Three Laws of Motion by heart. The questions will only cover force and motion concepts; no energy questions. We really did not cover these concepts in any depth. Perhaps we will try to get to those in either earth science or astronomy. If you work through the questions on WebCT you should do ok. Good luck.
For this part of the semester in regard to our work in science and learning I am entertaining the idea of investigating the concept of neuroplasticity and perhaps some applications of neuroscience to education. I am going to investigate some resources on Friday and hopefully have some prepared for next week.
And next week we will be starting geology by investigating plate tectonics. On Tuesday during class we will be doing a pre-test so we can set the stage on our current content knowledge.
Good luck with everything and please let me know if you have questions.
For tomorrow we have two rather large tasks to attend - you need to have your presentation ready to roll. I am excited to see all of them. Each group has explored a different avenue to collect data, so there should be a lot of diversity. Good luck with finishing them up!
The second item is the exam. Perhaps one thing I did not stress is that you should know all of the formulas by heart. You should also know Newton's Three Laws of Motion by heart. The questions will only cover force and motion concepts; no energy questions. We really did not cover these concepts in any depth. Perhaps we will try to get to those in either earth science or astronomy. If you work through the questions on WebCT you should do ok. Good luck.
For this part of the semester in regard to our work in science and learning I am entertaining the idea of investigating the concept of neuroplasticity and perhaps some applications of neuroscience to education. I am going to investigate some resources on Friday and hopefully have some prepared for next week.
And next week we will be starting geology by investigating plate tectonics. On Tuesday during class we will be doing a pre-test so we can set the stage on our current content knowledge.
Good luck with everything and please let me know if you have questions.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Blog 3-6-12
Good morning everyone -
I hope all is well.
As we catapult towards spring break my blogs are getting shorter and shorter. Too much to do? A lot of other things going on, etc. A busy time for all.
I am compiling preliminary grades for everyone. This grade will be based on the blogs related to creativity, scientific process and the physics blog that you submitted. So, this is a limited sampling but should provide a guidepost for you work and effort in the class. Many people have opted not to complete the blogs, so their grades are VERY low. This is discouraging. There will be opportunities to improve these grades but to do so, you have to get it done. If you have questions, please let me know. And I am always available for assistance!
This week we will be working on our group physics project, which will be due the Thursday after spring break. I will have a list/rubric available later that provides specific details about requirements. I will be late for class on Thursday as I am returning from Las Vegas. So, official class will start at 12 noon and if you prefer to work on your own, the class is optional. I will be there to help.
I just finished reading a book by Susan Cain called "Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World Where People Can't Stop Talking". It was quite good although an introvert writing about introversion is somewhat of an oxymoron - wouldn't you expect introverts to keep it to themselves? In many ways I thought the book was important and has some application to teaching and learning. For example, group work is a big part of our work and likely will be for those going into teaching. And even for those going into other fields. But where does that leave the person who would rather slave away on their own? Or finds their learning hampered by the logistics and commitment required for group work? So, this is something I am going to reflect on and perhaps adjust a wee bit the emphasis on group projects. Maybe we can develop more of a dynamic between the individual and the group so that people can toggle in-and-out of these different modes?
If you are interested, and I think you should be, here is a very recent TED talk by Susan Cain
Susan Cain - Introverts
That is it - see you later this AM
Matt
I hope all is well.
As we catapult towards spring break my blogs are getting shorter and shorter. Too much to do? A lot of other things going on, etc. A busy time for all.
I am compiling preliminary grades for everyone. This grade will be based on the blogs related to creativity, scientific process and the physics blog that you submitted. So, this is a limited sampling but should provide a guidepost for you work and effort in the class. Many people have opted not to complete the blogs, so their grades are VERY low. This is discouraging. There will be opportunities to improve these grades but to do so, you have to get it done. If you have questions, please let me know. And I am always available for assistance!
This week we will be working on our group physics project, which will be due the Thursday after spring break. I will have a list/rubric available later that provides specific details about requirements. I will be late for class on Thursday as I am returning from Las Vegas. So, official class will start at 12 noon and if you prefer to work on your own, the class is optional. I will be there to help.
I just finished reading a book by Susan Cain called "Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World Where People Can't Stop Talking". It was quite good although an introvert writing about introversion is somewhat of an oxymoron - wouldn't you expect introverts to keep it to themselves? In many ways I thought the book was important and has some application to teaching and learning. For example, group work is a big part of our work and likely will be for those going into teaching. And even for those going into other fields. But where does that leave the person who would rather slave away on their own? Or finds their learning hampered by the logistics and commitment required for group work? So, this is something I am going to reflect on and perhaps adjust a wee bit the emphasis on group projects. Maybe we can develop more of a dynamic between the individual and the group so that people can toggle in-and-out of these different modes?
If you are interested, and I think you should be, here is a very recent TED talk by Susan Cain
Susan Cain - Introverts
That is it - see you later this AM
Matt
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Blog 3-1-12
Good morning NTSC'ers:
Happy March 1st - I hope everyone is well.
Just a quick post - gotta get the kids ready for school.
Today we will have a traditional lecture where I will try to summarize the important aspects of Newton's Laws of Motion and energy. My path here is to have given you chance to learn (re-learn) some of these concepts using the videos and experiments and then to provide the summary to solidify your knowledge. I hope it works.
I also want you to take a 12 question quiz (open notes and blogs) related to what we have been doing in class. This is my post assessment that will hopefully track our learning.
And then we are going to start our independent motion projects. This is the third prong of our work in physics, the other two being the shorter projects (that you have been putting on your blog) and the exam (which will be a take home exam). We will start the independent project by doing another round of question development, like we did at the beginning of the semester.
That's all - see you soon.
Matt
Happy March 1st - I hope everyone is well.
Just a quick post - gotta get the kids ready for school.
Today we will have a traditional lecture where I will try to summarize the important aspects of Newton's Laws of Motion and energy. My path here is to have given you chance to learn (re-learn) some of these concepts using the videos and experiments and then to provide the summary to solidify your knowledge. I hope it works.
I also want you to take a 12 question quiz (open notes and blogs) related to what we have been doing in class. This is my post assessment that will hopefully track our learning.
And then we are going to start our independent motion projects. This is the third prong of our work in physics, the other two being the shorter projects (that you have been putting on your blog) and the exam (which will be a take home exam). We will start the independent project by doing another round of question development, like we did at the beginning of the semester.
That's all - see you soon.
Matt
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Blog 2-28-2012
Good morning NTSC'ers
I hope you are all well...
Our progress through physics has (hopefully) followed these steps:
Describing motion - Quantifying motion - Explaining motion
The explaining motion is embodied in Newton's Laws of Motion. As indicated by the Khan videos - Newton's proposals were revolutionary and fundamentally changed how humans viewed and understood the natural world. They seem so common sense but, when view in depth, are quite profound. I hope you have gathered this as well. I will be expanding on this during our class.
We will be exploring the next subject day - energy! The connection to motion is what? Well, in order to move you need energy, right. So prior to motion there must be stored energy. Therefore we can separate energy into two categories: what is stored (has potential) and that is used during motion (kinetic). We will be exploring these in more detail today! And may use more Khan videos...
I have been exploring the connection between learning and creativity some more. Another blogger from Scientific American provided some details on how our society, although "supports" creativity is some ways, actually dissuades people from being too creative. The argument is that creativity breeds a bit of dissonance in our society; breaking norms and challenging the status quo. And perhaps, those creative types just don't really fit into our labeled and categorized society? Is this true? Sure, the Steve Jobs of the world are lionized because they find a way to maximize their creativity into something coveted by society (think iPads and iPhones) but not ever creative person is so "lucky". Sir Isaac Newton was, to be blunt, a very strange, reclusive person who in the end was enshrined in Western civilization but certainly did not "fit" in to many cultural norms. The blogger provided a link to an article that described a research project that looked at teachers' attitudes toward creative students. In short, teachers tended to not favor those creative, disruptive types but rather the ones that towed the line - did what was asked with few questions. I was one of the students. Above all I wanted the teacher's approval and to be seen as "the good kid". I remember those wise a.. kids in the back who were always in trouble. Maybe they were the creative ones? Now I do like to think of myself as a bit creative - or at least open to trying creative things in the classroom. So, as with most research, there are exceptions. Right. You may have also been one of those "good students" but still have a creative flame. Perhaps the take away message is to develop a lens (whether you are a teacher to be or not) that can modify our perspectives to be open to all types of learners. Of course there are some norms that have to be rock solid - anarchy does not work in a 3rd grade class. But we can develop skills and strategies that facilitate a more broad based educational and intellectual atmosphere. A real challenge.
Gotta run
See you soon
Matt
I hope you are all well...
Our progress through physics has (hopefully) followed these steps:
Describing motion - Quantifying motion - Explaining motion
The explaining motion is embodied in Newton's Laws of Motion. As indicated by the Khan videos - Newton's proposals were revolutionary and fundamentally changed how humans viewed and understood the natural world. They seem so common sense but, when view in depth, are quite profound. I hope you have gathered this as well. I will be expanding on this during our class.
We will be exploring the next subject day - energy! The connection to motion is what? Well, in order to move you need energy, right. So prior to motion there must be stored energy. Therefore we can separate energy into two categories: what is stored (has potential) and that is used during motion (kinetic). We will be exploring these in more detail today! And may use more Khan videos...
I have been exploring the connection between learning and creativity some more. Another blogger from Scientific American provided some details on how our society, although "supports" creativity is some ways, actually dissuades people from being too creative. The argument is that creativity breeds a bit of dissonance in our society; breaking norms and challenging the status quo. And perhaps, those creative types just don't really fit into our labeled and categorized society? Is this true? Sure, the Steve Jobs of the world are lionized because they find a way to maximize their creativity into something coveted by society (think iPads and iPhones) but not ever creative person is so "lucky". Sir Isaac Newton was, to be blunt, a very strange, reclusive person who in the end was enshrined in Western civilization but certainly did not "fit" in to many cultural norms. The blogger provided a link to an article that described a research project that looked at teachers' attitudes toward creative students. In short, teachers tended to not favor those creative, disruptive types but rather the ones that towed the line - did what was asked with few questions. I was one of the students. Above all I wanted the teacher's approval and to be seen as "the good kid". I remember those wise a.. kids in the back who were always in trouble. Maybe they were the creative ones? Now I do like to think of myself as a bit creative - or at least open to trying creative things in the classroom. So, as with most research, there are exceptions. Right. You may have also been one of those "good students" but still have a creative flame. Perhaps the take away message is to develop a lens (whether you are a teacher to be or not) that can modify our perspectives to be open to all types of learners. Of course there are some norms that have to be rock solid - anarchy does not work in a 3rd grade class. But we can develop skills and strategies that facilitate a more broad based educational and intellectual atmosphere. A real challenge.
Gotta run
See you soon
Matt
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Blog Update 2/22/12
Good morning NTSC'ers
I hope everyone is well!
I would wager that the success of yesterday's class was bimodal: those who did the experiment with the golf balls and got excellent results probably felt like Isaac Newton! The tennis ball group, where the results were not quite as good, probably did not feel the same synergy. What this really illustrates is that measurement for objects in freefall is VERY difficult, especially with hand held stopwatches. For example, the difference between 1.3 seconds and 1.5 seconds is 15%, and that is about the difference between success (a ~ 10 m/s2) and being not so successful. This is why Galileo and other physicists used ramps; measurement was much easier. We could probably use some better technology to run this experiment as well - something like light gates that automatically stop when passed. What we REALLY should be doing is going back out and re-running the experiment to get better values or at least check our results. Perhaps that vortex does exist! But we should move no. THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this exercise is using the equations:
a = 1/2at(squared)
average v = d/t
instantaneous v = 2 x average velocity
and interpreting the graphs. From these graphs you should be able to develop a motion and vector map! Can you do this.
Tomorrow we will watch another cool TED video about education and then do some small group investigation and documentation of Newton's Laws of Motion. It will be fun.
See you then.
Be well
Matt
I hope everyone is well!
I would wager that the success of yesterday's class was bimodal: those who did the experiment with the golf balls and got excellent results probably felt like Isaac Newton! The tennis ball group, where the results were not quite as good, probably did not feel the same synergy. What this really illustrates is that measurement for objects in freefall is VERY difficult, especially with hand held stopwatches. For example, the difference between 1.3 seconds and 1.5 seconds is 15%, and that is about the difference between success (a ~ 10 m/s2) and being not so successful. This is why Galileo and other physicists used ramps; measurement was much easier. We could probably use some better technology to run this experiment as well - something like light gates that automatically stop when passed. What we REALLY should be doing is going back out and re-running the experiment to get better values or at least check our results. Perhaps that vortex does exist! But we should move no. THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this exercise is using the equations:
a = 1/2at(squared)
average v = d/t
instantaneous v = 2 x average velocity
and interpreting the graphs. From these graphs you should be able to develop a motion and vector map! Can you do this.
Tomorrow we will watch another cool TED video about education and then do some small group investigation and documentation of Newton's Laws of Motion. It will be fun.
See you then.
Be well
Matt
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Blog update 2/21/12
Good morning - I hope everyone is well.
Where are we? At this time you should feel pretty comfortable with the Activity Model for Inquiry as a model for conducting (and learning) science. Hopefully this is becoming "foundational"; that is a base for our doing and learning science. You should also be comfortable with terms such as model, precision, accuracy, theory, law, hypotheses although I will be going over the last three in class at a later date. Science as a practice - you should be moving to a higher comfort level with designing experiments, identifying and controlling variables, constructing tables and graphs and using evidence to support statements. And then there is the science content - speed, average and instantaneous velocity, acceleration...The assessment on Thursday was a check to see where you are at with your understanding. If you did not perform well on these items, now is the time to check-in and get some help.
Where are we going? Our next step is to move from horizontal motion to vertical motion by looking a freefall. We will then move onto examining the "why" of motion - that is Newton's Laws of Motion, which provide the connection between forces and motion. We will then move onto momentum and energy. I will be discussing the schedule in class today but we are also moving towards starting our physics capstone project and our first exam! More later.
The blogs on creativity were awesome. For some I was looking for more connection to the article and the video. The insights were interesting and I hope we can take these ideas on creativity into our doing and learning. The challenge for those who are going to become teachers is integrating these ideas into a pretty rigid school culture and framework that focuses on assessment and outcomes. But that is the creative part of the teaching, right? It is a challenge in my practice and I am not always sure I am that successful.
And I think that is it - I look forward to seeing you in a few hours. Until then
Be well...Matt
Where are we? At this time you should feel pretty comfortable with the Activity Model for Inquiry as a model for conducting (and learning) science. Hopefully this is becoming "foundational"; that is a base for our doing and learning science. You should also be comfortable with terms such as model, precision, accuracy, theory, law, hypotheses although I will be going over the last three in class at a later date. Science as a practice - you should be moving to a higher comfort level with designing experiments, identifying and controlling variables, constructing tables and graphs and using evidence to support statements. And then there is the science content - speed, average and instantaneous velocity, acceleration...The assessment on Thursday was a check to see where you are at with your understanding. If you did not perform well on these items, now is the time to check-in and get some help.
Where are we going? Our next step is to move from horizontal motion to vertical motion by looking a freefall. We will then move onto examining the "why" of motion - that is Newton's Laws of Motion, which provide the connection between forces and motion. We will then move onto momentum and energy. I will be discussing the schedule in class today but we are also moving towards starting our physics capstone project and our first exam! More later.
The blogs on creativity were awesome. For some I was looking for more connection to the article and the video. The insights were interesting and I hope we can take these ideas on creativity into our doing and learning. The challenge for those who are going to become teachers is integrating these ideas into a pretty rigid school culture and framework that focuses on assessment and outcomes. But that is the creative part of the teaching, right? It is a challenge in my practice and I am not always sure I am that successful.
And I think that is it - I look forward to seeing you in a few hours. Until then
Be well...Matt
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Blog Post 2-15-12
Good morning NTSC'ers:
I hope everyone is well. It was my impression that people understood the intent and goals of yesterday's lab. I am hoping that is true! And not just deceiving myself. Here is a couple of items that, I think, underlay the work we have been doing.
1-We have been using models quite a bit and that is very common in scientific endeavors. The natural world is a messy place and we are saddled with making as good approximations of natural processes. That has not been to bad a place to be so far; the only "natural" data that we collected was with the sandbags and that was a pretty controlled setting. To be explicit, the Walking Man is certainly a model and we have used that to understand how to use different equations related to motion, understand the difference between instantaneous and average velocity, understand constant acceleration and interpret graphs of distance, velocity and time. You should start to feel comfortable with all of these terms and concepts.
The other model we have been using are graphical - a good model for constant velocity is a straight line model (y = mx + b) where m = velocity. For constant acceleration, the best model is a curve (exponential) line that reveals that velocity is increasing as shown by the steepening slope of the line. I wonder what a plot of changing acceleration looks like?
2- The second item is to keep our eye on our process - that is the process of science. While you are working do some metacognating. Think about where you are in your intellectual process: are you asking questions? are you collecting data? or reflecting on findings? How about communicating? I would like to think that a fundamental outcome from our work are experiences with doing authentic scientific work, that is breaking out of our experiences with more linear thinking and doing into a mode of more divergent and non-linear process.
Tomorrow in class we will go more vertical. We have been exploring horizontal motion, which is easier to observe and measure. Now as we go vertical we have objects that move at a much higher velocity (is it a constant acceleration?) and therefore harder to measure. This was a fundamental problem with early investigators (Aristotle, Galileo) who lacked the technology to make accurate measurements. We will explore new models (equations) that we can use to understand vertical motion (called freefall) and use technology to document our observations. After freefall, we will start to look at Newton's Laws of Motion that provide the framework for understanding motion, at least on the macroscopic scale.
See everyone tomorrow.
Thanks
Matt
I hope everyone is well. It was my impression that people understood the intent and goals of yesterday's lab. I am hoping that is true! And not just deceiving myself. Here is a couple of items that, I think, underlay the work we have been doing.
1-We have been using models quite a bit and that is very common in scientific endeavors. The natural world is a messy place and we are saddled with making as good approximations of natural processes. That has not been to bad a place to be so far; the only "natural" data that we collected was with the sandbags and that was a pretty controlled setting. To be explicit, the Walking Man is certainly a model and we have used that to understand how to use different equations related to motion, understand the difference between instantaneous and average velocity, understand constant acceleration and interpret graphs of distance, velocity and time. You should start to feel comfortable with all of these terms and concepts.
The other model we have been using are graphical - a good model for constant velocity is a straight line model (y = mx + b) where m = velocity. For constant acceleration, the best model is a curve (exponential) line that reveals that velocity is increasing as shown by the steepening slope of the line. I wonder what a plot of changing acceleration looks like?
2- The second item is to keep our eye on our process - that is the process of science. While you are working do some metacognating. Think about where you are in your intellectual process: are you asking questions? are you collecting data? or reflecting on findings? How about communicating? I would like to think that a fundamental outcome from our work are experiences with doing authentic scientific work, that is breaking out of our experiences with more linear thinking and doing into a mode of more divergent and non-linear process.
Tomorrow in class we will go more vertical. We have been exploring horizontal motion, which is easier to observe and measure. Now as we go vertical we have objects that move at a much higher velocity (is it a constant acceleration?) and therefore harder to measure. This was a fundamental problem with early investigators (Aristotle, Galileo) who lacked the technology to make accurate measurements. We will explore new models (equations) that we can use to understand vertical motion (called freefall) and use technology to document our observations. After freefall, we will start to look at Newton's Laws of Motion that provide the framework for understanding motion, at least on the macroscopic scale.
See everyone tomorrow.
Thanks
Matt
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Blog Update 2-14-12
Good morning - I hope everyone is well.
First, a bit of review. Our major goal last week was to enter into physics gently. Exploring simple motion of objects (us and The Moving Man) and how we can represent the data. Data represent took three forms: tables, maps (with vectors) and graphs. It appears that some people were frustrated with what to do with The Moving Man model; I will review that some more today.
This week I want to continue this pace - we will finish up our motion work that we started last week. We will plunge into comparing graphical values with calculated values. That is, we will make sure that everyone can calculate velocity and acceleration. And we will start looking at acceleration of objects down ramps and then freefall (much more challenging).
The bigger picture with our efforts is to build skills and content knowledge so that in a week or so we can launch into a student/group driven research project on motion. So, I am hoping for a good week.
We have also been working on our parallel path of investigating various aspects of learning with creativity being our major focus. I have asked you to reflect as a group (your motion group) on the Ken Robinson video about schools destroying creativity as well as read and blog entitled "The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience". These items have a similar theme: sometimes traditional teaching in a traditional classroom can stifle what students are really good at including the ability and desire to think and act creatively. I enjoyed Dr. Robinson's presentation; I think he is a great speaker and like his self-deprecating humor. Although it can be distracting at times. His use of the example of the dancer who went on to become quite famous and successful was especially poignant. It made me think about kids I went to school with who were on the outskirts of the standard academic environment who probably had skills and interest that were sufficiently quelled by the relatively fixed and inflexible atmosphere. Kind of sad.
The article was some of the same but also presented some practical suggestions about how to promote creativity in classrooms - let kids explore, provide times for play, don't always give the answer, allow for error, model times when you don't know the answer as well. This is hard. I am learning that in my teaching and perhaps you are sometimes frustrated in our work because of it. And then how do you do this when confronted with 25+ 3rd graders many with different needs. And then on top of that you have to attend to focus on literacy and math in preparation for testing. This is why teaching is so difficult, yet so rewarding. I know from my experience as a teacher and parent there is NOTHING quite so rewarding as experience the wonder of discovery in a student's face. So, I am marching on in a my own teaching process trying to develop ways to nurture learning and exploration and creativity. It is not an easy path. It would be simple to give you a prescribed lab ("hands-on activity") decorated with a few equations and then a study sheet for what will be on the test. But I ask you to join me instead in developing curiosity about the natural world, yes even something walking and dropping balloons or watching The Moving Man, to stimulate your own creativity as a learner.
See you later this AM.
Be well
Matt
First, a bit of review. Our major goal last week was to enter into physics gently. Exploring simple motion of objects (us and The Moving Man) and how we can represent the data. Data represent took three forms: tables, maps (with vectors) and graphs. It appears that some people were frustrated with what to do with The Moving Man model; I will review that some more today.
This week I want to continue this pace - we will finish up our motion work that we started last week. We will plunge into comparing graphical values with calculated values. That is, we will make sure that everyone can calculate velocity and acceleration. And we will start looking at acceleration of objects down ramps and then freefall (much more challenging).
The bigger picture with our efforts is to build skills and content knowledge so that in a week or so we can launch into a student/group driven research project on motion. So, I am hoping for a good week.
We have also been working on our parallel path of investigating various aspects of learning with creativity being our major focus. I have asked you to reflect as a group (your motion group) on the Ken Robinson video about schools destroying creativity as well as read and blog entitled "The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience". These items have a similar theme: sometimes traditional teaching in a traditional classroom can stifle what students are really good at including the ability and desire to think and act creatively. I enjoyed Dr. Robinson's presentation; I think he is a great speaker and like his self-deprecating humor. Although it can be distracting at times. His use of the example of the dancer who went on to become quite famous and successful was especially poignant. It made me think about kids I went to school with who were on the outskirts of the standard academic environment who probably had skills and interest that were sufficiently quelled by the relatively fixed and inflexible atmosphere. Kind of sad.
The article was some of the same but also presented some practical suggestions about how to promote creativity in classrooms - let kids explore, provide times for play, don't always give the answer, allow for error, model times when you don't know the answer as well. This is hard. I am learning that in my teaching and perhaps you are sometimes frustrated in our work because of it. And then how do you do this when confronted with 25+ 3rd graders many with different needs. And then on top of that you have to attend to focus on literacy and math in preparation for testing. This is why teaching is so difficult, yet so rewarding. I know from my experience as a teacher and parent there is NOTHING quite so rewarding as experience the wonder of discovery in a student's face. So, I am marching on in a my own teaching process trying to develop ways to nurture learning and exploration and creativity. It is not an easy path. It would be simple to give you a prescribed lab ("hands-on activity") decorated with a few equations and then a study sheet for what will be on the test. But I ask you to join me instead in developing curiosity about the natural world, yes even something walking and dropping balloons or watching The Moving Man, to stimulate your own creativity as a learner.
See you later this AM.
Be well
Matt
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Blog post 2/8/2012
Good morning NTSC'ers:
I hope everyone is well. And enjoying our entrance into physics. One of my strategies yesterday and into tomorrow is to scaffold our learning. A fancy word for building on knowledge - both what you already know and what you are acquiring. The goal is to avoid the tsunami effect; pouring so much in that students don't have enough time to really absorb and reflect (and enjoy) the learning process. Of course, there is a balance. You don't want to go so slow that students are bored.
Tomorrow we will be doing some direct instruction (lecture) on basic science process content and skills and then move onto analyzing our data. We will then endeavor to use some interactive visualizations to further our conceptual development of these physics concepts and then look at a real world application of motion patterns. It will be fun.
To continue our parallel effort of investigating education and learning topics we will be considering some more information on creativity. This will involve the following:
1- We will be watching a TED video on creativity by Ken Robinson during class
2- I also want you to read this blog/article on creativity The Education Value of Creative Disobedience
Within your motion groups (that we organized yesterday) I want you to have a blog discussion on these articles. I would like to keep this open but you may consider some of the following items:
This is due next Thursday 2/16.
I will cover this in class tomorrow as well.
See you then
Be well
Matt
I hope everyone is well. And enjoying our entrance into physics. One of my strategies yesterday and into tomorrow is to scaffold our learning. A fancy word for building on knowledge - both what you already know and what you are acquiring. The goal is to avoid the tsunami effect; pouring so much in that students don't have enough time to really absorb and reflect (and enjoy) the learning process. Of course, there is a balance. You don't want to go so slow that students are bored.
Tomorrow we will be doing some direct instruction (lecture) on basic science process content and skills and then move onto analyzing our data. We will then endeavor to use some interactive visualizations to further our conceptual development of these physics concepts and then look at a real world application of motion patterns. It will be fun.
To continue our parallel effort of investigating education and learning topics we will be considering some more information on creativity. This will involve the following:
1- We will be watching a TED video on creativity by Ken Robinson during class
2- I also want you to read this blog/article on creativity The Education Value of Creative Disobedience
Within your motion groups (that we organized yesterday) I want you to have a blog discussion on these articles. I would like to keep this open but you may consider some of the following items:
- What is your "definition" of creativity?
- Why do you think creativity is important?
- Can you think of a time when you were most creative?
- How does creativity mesh with the Harwood Activity Model for Inquiry?
- What can we do to foster creativity in ourselves and others (like our classmates or future students)?
- Do you know any really creative people - what are they like?
- etc.
This is due next Thursday 2/16.
I will cover this in class tomorrow as well.
See you then
Be well
Matt
Monday, February 6, 2012
Blog post 2/6/12
Good morning NTSC'ers
I hope everyone is well.
REMINDER
Please take the physics pre-test before class on Tuesday. This pre-test will not count towards you grade but will give all of us an idea about where we are with respect to our physics knowledge and where we need to go. It is very helpful to me, for sure.
OBSERVATIONS
To review - the goal of the "stick" exercise was to illustrate how thinking "outside the box" is sometimes required to solve or approach problems. Paradigm shifts in all fields usually start with looking at questions and observations from a different perspective and creatively. It requires mindfulness of the possibilities that lie outside our normal habits and patterns. This might be a stretch; I mean it was only a stick, right? But the general idea still holds. As we move through our learning experiences we should try to be aware (through metacognition - thinking about your thinking) how the new information fits into our model of the world, our previous learning experiences and our potential for use in the future (either through our teaching or other avenues).
THIS WEEK
We will be presenting our Candle Inquiry first thing on Tuesday and then moving onto physics. Real science! We will be taking two approaches during this and other science learning adventures: 1- we will learn content using a range of instructional strategies and 2- we will be learning, reviewing, re-learning a variety of skills that are required to better understand our natural world. So, content and skills. It will be fun. One of the issues with the content part is attending to the different levels of current knowledge and ability. Some of you might have extensive knowledge and aptitude with some of the content and skills. Others will not. In classrooms, this is approached through differentiated teaching - a fancy term for attending to as many levels of ability as possible in your/my teaching. It is a challenge, for sure. So, please be mindful that we all bring different knowledge and skills to our learning adventure and we need to take advantage of that.
Also this week we will be doing some reading and listening to issues related to creativity. This will require some writing on you part that will be part of your Science Education and Learning grade.
GRADES
I have finished grading the Changing Education Paradigm writing. I will be posting those grades by the end of the week.
AMI REFLECTION
Please remember that you have a reflection to post related to the Standards Based Grading sheet on Process of Science. This needs to be done by Thursday. Here is a copy of part of the email I sent to you on 2/3 regarding this assignment:
Be well
Matt
I hope everyone is well.
REMINDER
Please take the physics pre-test before class on Tuesday. This pre-test will not count towards you grade but will give all of us an idea about where we are with respect to our physics knowledge and where we need to go. It is very helpful to me, for sure.
OBSERVATIONS
To review - the goal of the "stick" exercise was to illustrate how thinking "outside the box" is sometimes required to solve or approach problems. Paradigm shifts in all fields usually start with looking at questions and observations from a different perspective and creatively. It requires mindfulness of the possibilities that lie outside our normal habits and patterns. This might be a stretch; I mean it was only a stick, right? But the general idea still holds. As we move through our learning experiences we should try to be aware (through metacognition - thinking about your thinking) how the new information fits into our model of the world, our previous learning experiences and our potential for use in the future (either through our teaching or other avenues).
THIS WEEK
We will be presenting our Candle Inquiry first thing on Tuesday and then moving onto physics. Real science! We will be taking two approaches during this and other science learning adventures: 1- we will learn content using a range of instructional strategies and 2- we will be learning, reviewing, re-learning a variety of skills that are required to better understand our natural world. So, content and skills. It will be fun. One of the issues with the content part is attending to the different levels of current knowledge and ability. Some of you might have extensive knowledge and aptitude with some of the content and skills. Others will not. In classrooms, this is approached through differentiated teaching - a fancy term for attending to as many levels of ability as possible in your/my teaching. It is a challenge, for sure. So, please be mindful that we all bring different knowledge and skills to our learning adventure and we need to take advantage of that.
Also this week we will be doing some reading and listening to issues related to creativity. This will require some writing on you part that will be part of your Science Education and Learning grade.
GRADES
I have finished grading the Changing Education Paradigm writing. I will be posting those grades by the end of the week.
AMI REFLECTION
Please remember that you have a reflection to post related to the Standards Based Grading sheet on Process of Science. This needs to be done by Thursday. Here is a copy of part of the email I sent to you on 2/3 regarding this assignment:
- Look over the specific benchmarks for the SBG Sheet- Process of Science. I have shared this document with you.
- For each item write a short description of how this benchmark was met during our inquiry
- Some of these might be - "well, we have not addressed this yet". That is ok for some of them, but not many. So, for these just indicate that we have not worked on this yet.
- Other parts may require some research to learn definitions of specific terms; you need to do that.
- Submit this as a blog - send me the URL of your blog.
- I will grade this using the blog assessment matrix
- This is due by Thursday 2/9
Be well
Matt
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Tuesday Update 1-31-12
Good morning - I hope everyone is well.
If you get a chance, please read through the NY Times editorial on ADHD and medication. It is very interesting.
I so enjoyed reading your blogs on the "Changing Education Paradigms" video. We will be looking at more Ken Robinson material in the future, specifically a couple that focus on nurturing creativity in education. If you get a chance and want to view an excellent discussion of the video by one of your fellow groups please see Nicole, Katherine and Alexandria's blog at
A good discussion of Changing Education Paradigms
I would wager that most people think that education practices need change. Not only to address test scores but to attend to changes in what students need in the 21st century - commonly called 21st century skills. I don't think many of these are different from the past - including being creative, asking good questions and having the means to investigate these questions. But the amount of time that we give students to work on these has decreased. So, one of our jobs in our class is to think about how we mesh learning important content and skills with opportunities to solidify this learning through processes that resonate with individuals and the group as a whole. That is - let's learn about physics in some traditional ways (maybe even some lectures) but build our knowledge in ways that are meaningful and robust for individual students.
Couple of more things: The ADHD issues was somewhat of a focus on many of the blogs (and I haven not finished reading these) but I actually think it was only a minor part. Not to say it was not important; just that there was a lot of other interesting ideas presented. Secondly, we are kind of stuck with the system we have. I would love to think we could make whole scale changes in the education landscape; take back our classrooms, rebel and stand up to outside forces that really don't have a clue about educational practice. But I suspect that will not happen any time soon. The challenge is to find a way to work within the system so you can decide what to do in your teaching that you know is best for your students but still work within the confines of the present school structure. It can be done. I know teachers that are quietly working within the system to re-claim their classrooms and practice. It takes will, knowledge and skill but is doable. My vision and hope is that your generation of teachers will constitute the game changers and bring sanity back to the classroom practice. A big job!
Thanks - see you later this AM.
Matt
If you get a chance, please read through the NY Times editorial on ADHD and medication. It is very interesting.
I so enjoyed reading your blogs on the "Changing Education Paradigms" video. We will be looking at more Ken Robinson material in the future, specifically a couple that focus on nurturing creativity in education. If you get a chance and want to view an excellent discussion of the video by one of your fellow groups please see Nicole, Katherine and Alexandria's blog at
A good discussion of Changing Education Paradigms
I would wager that most people think that education practices need change. Not only to address test scores but to attend to changes in what students need in the 21st century - commonly called 21st century skills. I don't think many of these are different from the past - including being creative, asking good questions and having the means to investigate these questions. But the amount of time that we give students to work on these has decreased. So, one of our jobs in our class is to think about how we mesh learning important content and skills with opportunities to solidify this learning through processes that resonate with individuals and the group as a whole. That is - let's learn about physics in some traditional ways (maybe even some lectures) but build our knowledge in ways that are meaningful and robust for individual students.
Couple of more things: The ADHD issues was somewhat of a focus on many of the blogs (and I haven not finished reading these) but I actually think it was only a minor part. Not to say it was not important; just that there was a lot of other interesting ideas presented. Secondly, we are kind of stuck with the system we have. I would love to think we could make whole scale changes in the education landscape; take back our classrooms, rebel and stand up to outside forces that really don't have a clue about educational practice. But I suspect that will not happen any time soon. The challenge is to find a way to work within the system so you can decide what to do in your teaching that you know is best for your students but still work within the confines of the present school structure. It can be done. I know teachers that are quietly working within the system to re-claim their classrooms and practice. It takes will, knowledge and skill but is doable. My vision and hope is that your generation of teachers will constitute the game changers and bring sanity back to the classroom practice. A big job!
Thanks - see you later this AM.
Matt
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Ritalin Gone Wrong - NY Times Editorial
Good morning - I hope everyone is well.
Here is a New York Times editorial regarding the use of behavior modification drugs for kids. Very appropriate (if you are on this side of the argument) regarding our viewing of "Changing Education Paradigms". I definitely defer to those of you who may have had direct and possibly positive experiences with application of these medications. But you have to wonder about the long term impacts and benefits. Here is the URL
Ritalin Gone Wrong _ NY Times Editorial 1/29/12
I will be blogging more today or tomorrow.
Matt
Here is a New York Times editorial regarding the use of behavior modification drugs for kids. Very appropriate (if you are on this side of the argument) regarding our viewing of "Changing Education Paradigms". I definitely defer to those of you who may have had direct and possibly positive experiences with application of these medications. But you have to wonder about the long term impacts and benefits. Here is the URL
Ritalin Gone Wrong _ NY Times Editorial 1/29/12
I will be blogging more today or tomorrow.
Matt
Friday, January 27, 2012
Class reflection_1-26-2012
Good morning - I hope everyone is well.
I have watched the "Changing Education Paradigm" RSA video many time, both in- and outside of class. I have great respect for Ken Robinson and believe he is somewhat of a visionary regarding educational policy. Of course, there are aspects that you may not agree; perhaps you have more direct experience with ADHD that supports the application of medication to improve student performance. I certainly have heard stories but have not seen outcomes. What I find interesting, stimulating and motivating is the prospect of change - clearly there are some issues with how we educate students as evidence by high dropout rates and low test scores. And, on a larger scale, how our society values different paths is certainly mirrored in our education system. It is my belief that large scale change starts in individual classrooms and I challenge my students, both those who are going to be teachers and those who are not (they will still be impacted by the educational system - and have been impacted) to get a little rebel in them. That is strive to be the kind of teacher that you remember as a great teacher. Stir curiosity in your students. Challenge them to think, to question, to investigate. Work within the system but put your fingerprint on your students' education. Your teaching should be more than test preparation - it should be developing that individual who might be the game changer. In our present environment there is nothing easy about the path you have chosen but it could be the most important one! As a class this semester let's use this learning opportunity to be enthusiastic learners ourselves so we can become fabulous teachers tomorrow.
Our connection to the video in class perhaps was subtle - I mean how do you connect a burning candle to changing the entire education system? However, what I hope you see and apply is that creativity, thinking divergently, is what we are trying to do by taking a simple object and framing an inquiry around simple processes. Essentially this is practice, which will be vital to our future efforts that are more content focused. And using something we are familiar and nonthreatening will build confidence and skills. But this is hard - developing interesting, testable questions (about a candle? - actually about almost anything) is very, very hard. So, if you are struggling with this, be patient with yourselves. Over the next 4 days or so you might consider reframing your question if it does not seem testable. It should not be just a yes or no question (closed). It should provide the opportunity to collect numeric data in order to answer your question. I will be emailing people/groups individually to shore up any questions about your questions.
I will end this post by including the Word Clouds (wordles) from our group observations. Have a good weekend and see you on Tuesday.
I have watched the "Changing Education Paradigm" RSA video many time, both in- and outside of class. I have great respect for Ken Robinson and believe he is somewhat of a visionary regarding educational policy. Of course, there are aspects that you may not agree; perhaps you have more direct experience with ADHD that supports the application of medication to improve student performance. I certainly have heard stories but have not seen outcomes. What I find interesting, stimulating and motivating is the prospect of change - clearly there are some issues with how we educate students as evidence by high dropout rates and low test scores. And, on a larger scale, how our society values different paths is certainly mirrored in our education system. It is my belief that large scale change starts in individual classrooms and I challenge my students, both those who are going to be teachers and those who are not (they will still be impacted by the educational system - and have been impacted) to get a little rebel in them. That is strive to be the kind of teacher that you remember as a great teacher. Stir curiosity in your students. Challenge them to think, to question, to investigate. Work within the system but put your fingerprint on your students' education. Your teaching should be more than test preparation - it should be developing that individual who might be the game changer. In our present environment there is nothing easy about the path you have chosen but it could be the most important one! As a class this semester let's use this learning opportunity to be enthusiastic learners ourselves so we can become fabulous teachers tomorrow.
Our connection to the video in class perhaps was subtle - I mean how do you connect a burning candle to changing the entire education system? However, what I hope you see and apply is that creativity, thinking divergently, is what we are trying to do by taking a simple object and framing an inquiry around simple processes. Essentially this is practice, which will be vital to our future efforts that are more content focused. And using something we are familiar and nonthreatening will build confidence and skills. But this is hard - developing interesting, testable questions (about a candle? - actually about almost anything) is very, very hard. So, if you are struggling with this, be patient with yourselves. Over the next 4 days or so you might consider reframing your question if it does not seem testable. It should not be just a yes or no question (closed). It should provide the opportunity to collect numeric data in order to answer your question. I will be emailing people/groups individually to shore up any questions about your questions.
I will end this post by including the Word Clouds (wordles) from our group observations. Have a good weekend and see you on Tuesday.
 |
| Word Cloud - Round 2 |
 | ||
| Word Cloud - Round 1 |
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Greetings - I hope everyone is well. I believe the QFT (Question Formulation Technique - that is what we did on Tuesday) worked pretty well. It was a bit of a trial to get through all the directions but I am hoping it will be a useful tools throughout the semester and perhaps serve your needs in the future. My original intent with this effort was to focus on doing and learning science but, at the last minute, I added teaching. And, not surprising, that was what most of the questions were about - teaching and learning. There were not too many questions that focused on science process - but that is ok; I learned somethings from this process and hopefully you did as well.
Here are a couple of word clouds that I constructed using the questions. This one is using all of the words:
It is pretty clear that nearly all the questions were about science followed by interest in learning, teaching, technology and student.
Here is a word cloud when I took out science
Once again, no surprises here - teaching, learning, technology (actually that was kind of surprising and encouraging since we will be using a lot of technology in the class), students were part of many questions.
I should remind everyone that we will be talking mostly about science content in this class and not about how kids' learn science, although we will do some work with that. But I am pretty happy with the outcomes of the QFT effort.
I also talked about the higher-level critical thinking that has to go on with question development. The first one was divergent thinking - looking outside of the box and creatively about an issue or concept. That is what we were doing when I asked you to generate a lot of questions. Second, there is convergent thinking; that is taking broad ideas and chiseling them down to a few more important ones. When did we do this aspect of critical thinking? Right, when we were prioritizing. Lastly, the process involves metacognition - that is thinking about your thinking. We kind of did this throughout the process. Generating questions really makes you focus and THINK about concepts and issues.
Tomorrow in class we will be looking in more detail at science as practice frameworks - mainly the Activity Model for Inquiry and the Understanding Science diagram. We will also be conducting a controlled experiment that has a content neutral focus. More details tomorrow - it will be fun.
Have a good night - see you in the AM.
Matt
Here are a couple of word clouds that I constructed using the questions. This one is using all of the words:
 |
| Word Cloud for QFT Questions - 1/24/12 |
Here is a word cloud when I took out science
 |
| World Cloud for QFT Questions w/o Science - 1/24/12 |
Once again, no surprises here - teaching, learning, technology (actually that was kind of surprising and encouraging since we will be using a lot of technology in the class), students were part of many questions.
I should remind everyone that we will be talking mostly about science content in this class and not about how kids' learn science, although we will do some work with that. But I am pretty happy with the outcomes of the QFT effort.
I would also like to remind people to blog about the QFT experience, especially with respect to how it might have changed you view of science as described in the first blog. Did the process make you think more about the importance of questions in learning? That is the essential question. Please take some time to think about this.
I also talked about the higher-level critical thinking that has to go on with question development. The first one was divergent thinking - looking outside of the box and creatively about an issue or concept. That is what we were doing when I asked you to generate a lot of questions. Second, there is convergent thinking; that is taking broad ideas and chiseling them down to a few more important ones. When did we do this aspect of critical thinking? Right, when we were prioritizing. Lastly, the process involves metacognition - that is thinking about your thinking. We kind of did this throughout the process. Generating questions really makes you focus and THINK about concepts and issues.
Tomorrow in class we will be looking in more detail at science as practice frameworks - mainly the Activity Model for Inquiry and the Understanding Science diagram. We will also be conducting a controlled experiment that has a content neutral focus. More details tomorrow - it will be fun.
Have a good night - see you in the AM.
Matt
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
A good post - this is the type of detail I am looking for - this would score a 3/3
Science to me is like experimenting with different things. You make observations of what you think is going to happen given a situation and then you wait and you see the results and you write what you observe then and if your predictions were right. It's a way of knowing and understanding more about I guess everything. Honestly, I do not enjoy science very much but I took one of the other physical science classes last semester and it was a lot better than just a regular science class. I tend to do better when I do things hands on, which we did a lot in that class and I'm sure it will be the same here. Last semester we did this project where we had a system in the body and we had to create a power point for it make a written out plan of how we were going to teach it, and we also had to have an activity to go with it. We were in groups of 4 and we each had to present a certain part of our system. I don't like getting up in front of people and talking/ presenting but that was not that bad and it actually helped me a lot. I am not really sure if I have a bad experience, like I said science is not my favorite subject, so usually I just put the effort I have to and nothing more, but with these physical sciences I really tried to go above my own expectations. I also do not think I used a scientific approach in my life to help me out, unless I did not realize. Well I do not know if this counts, but my sister had a baby in November and a few days before we all made predictions about when he was going to be born and how much he was going to weigh. We looked out how it was her first child, and usually they are late or the mother is in labor for a long time, we also looked at how big he was then and how much we think he would grow. We each put in a dollar and who ever was right got all the money. We observed my sister and the baby to make predictions about when he would be born, so in a way, I guess that was a scientific approach.
Updates
Good morning NTSC 261 Bloggers
I hope everyone is well. Nice to have some rain this AM although it makes me wonder how I will bike this AM without getting totally soaked! Wish me luck.
A note about our efforts with technology - be patient! The blogging will be a very useful tool for us but takes time to get all the logistics down and for me to get following everyone. And you to follow me. We will catch up on this today. I also rely a lot on email, so you should get int he practice of checking you gmail accounts fairly frequently. I wanted everyone to blog about science and sent out some questions; some people completed the assignment although several did not. NO WORRIES - we can do that this AM.
This week will be spent looking in detail at the idea of science as practice. Today we will explore questions related to science as practice using a questioning technique called Question Formulation Technique. This is a new tool for me and I am both excited and nervous about using it. Wish me luck. We will then do a bunch of activities that build on our knowledge about science practice, read a couple of articles and do some more blogging. It will be busy! And fun. This is also a new approach for me so you will have to be patient with any glitches that come up.
On Thursday we will conduct some investigations that force us to track our progress through the scientific method. Our aim is to make it clear that science process is a strategy to answer questions (about the natural world) with a general aim to build evidence to support "stories".
See you at 11 AM. I look forward to continuing our learning adventure.
Be well
Matt
I hope everyone is well. Nice to have some rain this AM although it makes me wonder how I will bike this AM without getting totally soaked! Wish me luck.
A note about our efforts with technology - be patient! The blogging will be a very useful tool for us but takes time to get all the logistics down and for me to get following everyone. And you to follow me. We will catch up on this today. I also rely a lot on email, so you should get int he practice of checking you gmail accounts fairly frequently. I wanted everyone to blog about science and sent out some questions; some people completed the assignment although several did not. NO WORRIES - we can do that this AM.
This week will be spent looking in detail at the idea of science as practice. Today we will explore questions related to science as practice using a questioning technique called Question Formulation Technique. This is a new tool for me and I am both excited and nervous about using it. Wish me luck. We will then do a bunch of activities that build on our knowledge about science practice, read a couple of articles and do some more blogging. It will be busy! And fun. This is also a new approach for me so you will have to be patient with any glitches that come up.
On Thursday we will conduct some investigations that force us to track our progress through the scientific method. Our aim is to make it clear that science process is a strategy to answer questions (about the natural world) with a general aim to build evidence to support "stories".
See you at 11 AM. I look forward to continuing our learning adventure.
Be well
Matt
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