Day 18 - Should Stories be True?

http://www.cartalk.com/content/cruisin-grandmas-house

I've used the Car Talk Puzzler linked above in past years. This year I decided to add a personal spin to the story. I changed the girl in the story to a girl I knew in high school. She had a bad accident in her Pontiac Fiero and then her dad bought her a Suburban. I used her as the example in the story totally changing all the details to match the puzzler but embellishing it with details from my high school experience.

A good friend of mine uses stories from his personal life all the time to help teach physics. When I've been in PD sessions he runs he breaks them out and they are great. They are entertaining and very engaging. He paints pictures you can see and then references the characters while making points long after he's finished his narrative. It looks like a powerful teaching tool.

In my example of this I have some moral pangs about changing history in order to teach physics. Is it ok to totally change a story and the present it as true in order to teach?

Day 17 - Loss of relevance?

This is not a picture from my classroom today, but the classroom of a good friend of mine. She teaches our Principals of Chemistry class. Today they were discussing the properties of elements and such. You know, whatever it is that chemistry teachers do. After working some examples together she was walking around the room when she overheard someone say, "I still don't know how to find the atomic hashtag."

At this point my friend said that she felt she'd lost all relevance for her kids. Personally I don't think that's true. What do you think? Are kids really in such a different place today? Some might call this a digital native/immagrant problem, but I've never accepted that dichotomy. Most of my students are not really very good with most internet technologies. They, as a rule, tend to be very good at using the current popular social network, but little else beyond that. 

Some educators would say that if a teacher is not on twitter they can't be relavent to kids today. I couldn't disagree more. I don't know any educator who us twitter the same way our students do. Anway, I'm going to stop typing now before I go on a rant.

Day 16 - Modeling Depolyments

Working through the Modeling Deployments in The Constant Velocity unit. Not much to say other than I really do think when they are used well they really can help students learn. I don't think I did a good job today, I led way too much.

Day 15 - MACUL Board Meeting

This is a picture from my first meeting as a member of the Board of Directors for the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning. I ran for the board last spring, but didn't make it. However, one of the board members had to step down and last week I was asked to take his place. 

It was a good day and I got to meet lots of new people and renew old acquaintances. My only misgivings joining the board relate to the number of days I'll have to miss school. We have an all day meeting every month. That said, I'm looking forward to helping out, plus I really did need more to do as I wasn't really busy enough already.

Day 14 - TI-Nspire

I've always been impressed the old TI-83&84 graphing calculators as tools for analysis in physics. The TI-Nspire is even cooler. Our math department has decided that all students need to have this calculator so I get to benefit from them having it as well.

For graphing data I like this better as students can name the columns with their variables, with the older TIs they would just be L1 and L2. For the novice learners, I think this will be important. My only major gripe is they still can't do a Variable Power Regression.

For the more astute, you may have noticed the Nspire doesn't come in blue. Apparently they do make rubber skins for them to offer a bit of protection. The only other thing to know is they have a built in rechargeable battery. With the backlit color screen it doesn't seem to last as long as a TI-84 with AAAs, which means you need to have a charging cord handy on test days. There will always be at least one student per class who will need it.

Day 12 - Google+ in Electronics

This year I wanted to go back to something that I'd done in the past. I wanted to have students blog throughout the course. When I brought this up I faced stiff opposition from my class. It was very nearly an open revolt. They all wanted to do Twitter instead. We compromised and are using Google+. You can check out our Google+ Community if you want.

So far the posts are not very useful nor inspiring. However, they give me another look where my students are as the progress through the course material. Now that most student groups (is a pair a group?) are posting regularly we'll talk about what a post should look like.

Day 11 - Buggy Cars Day two

On day one of Buggy Cars all groups started with the cars at 0m. On day two I give them a second starting point and even have some of them run their cars the other way. I love the Buggy Car labs, but I do have to say the constant beat of the metronome haunts my dreams!