hearting my job

Last week I had a really good period with an exceptional group of students. It was so amazing that it made my entire day, even though the rest of the day wasn't all that great (except for lab, which I always love, and tacos at lunch). I wasn't even all that psyched about the activity beforehand, and it took a ton of time and effort and set that period back a day and a half behind the other periods. However, the grins were well worth it, and I can't wait to do it again.

We started the year with the polar bear game (aside: I learned this at a CIPT workshop years ago, but just did a quick search and found this blog entry. I use it to the same end, although I emphasize how me model physical behavior and then refine our models when they fail to make accurate predictions. I also can't say ice-hole without smirking or worrying that if I say it too quickly it will come out wrong. So I say polar bears around a hole in the ice). Next we we hit the circle lab, which was cool- this was my first year doing it. After that we went to the tried and true Modeling Instruction pendulum. After finishing it and looking at the results, this particular section wasn't convinced and thought that with a larger pendulum we might see results with different bob masses or amplitudes. They were borderline obsessed with figuring this out, and kept asking me how we were going to do it. We had a good discussion about different possibilities and how they could run such an experiment, and I promised to look into using either the gym or the auditorium.

It didn't work out for us to use the gym, so the auditorium it was. I spent one morning scoping out different spots and finally found a place I liked that was directly below the catwalk. I built a seat in the shop one day, and then went in early on the day of the experiment to rig up the pendulum using my climbing gear. The effective length of the rope was somewhere around 30 feet, but since it was constant the students decided that they didn't need to waste time measuring it. We started by figuring out which students were interested in being bobs, and then we chose the order randomly. We used a video camera to capture footage to measure period more accurately with stopwatches, though in hindsight I should have either moved the camera further away or shot high speed video. They measured the mass of each student using a bathroom scale and then they swung back and forth a few times, all starting from the same point.

After we finished changing the mass, we talked about how to change amplitude. I wanted to use a bowling ball, but they decided a person would be more exciting. I responded that it wouldn't be fair to choose just one of them for such an honor, and then they decided that I should do it. I reluctantly agreed, more because I wasn't sure how much the trajectory would change on the longer trials. As the earth rotates the path of a pendulum appears to rotate, though in actuality it's the room that is spinning, not the pendulum. In this case it was worrisome because we were swinging down an aisle whose entrance was bordered by concrete block walls.

To paraphrase one student, "I had fun not only doing the experiment and figuring out if mass made a difference, but also watching you [me]. Your face would change from excited as you swung forward to terrified as you swung back toward the walls. it was priceless." The shot above shows the excited portion of the swing. I never hit the walls, in fact I don't even think I cam close.

We spent a whole period conducting the experiment. Afterwards I tracked all of the students' motion using LoggerPro and figured out the period for each one. The next day in class we watched one of the videos and then I showed them how to track points and determine out period. They were a little bit daunted by the idea of doing that for each video, and I think most were relieved when I explained that I'd already done it (side note: most all of them will do this themselves at some point in the year, so it wasn't a big loss that they didn't all do it). Here is a graph of the data they collected:

I'm not the first person to use a human pendulum, my grandmother showed me an article about a professor at a local college doing the same thing in his lecture. It's a lot of work, but I would heartily recommend it for anyone who is interested. since I have the webbing all set, next year it should be a snap to rig, so long as I don't undo the knots for something else.

Onto other topics... I've been putting together some handouts for kids to use during class as we work through examples. I have had issues with Word and images in the past and have switched to LaTeX. It works well, though it took me a little bit of troubleshooting to get images to show up where I wanted them. I'm going to include a smattering of Context-Rich Problems which I'm hoping to have the kids tackle using the GOAL problem solving technique (adapted as IDEA by colleagues in South America, see here). I also have some Goal-less problems lined up, and of course ranking tasks, can't wait to see how they work.

I had my first student come in for a re-assessment on Friday afternoon. Last year he was always been one to argue about his scores and whether he should have received more points on a problem. He's also been quick to point how that since I count a 4 as proficient on my grading scale, it's basically the same as a 5. The distinction that a 5 shows perfect command of the material while a 4 is just ok seems to be wasted on him. So anyway, I wasn't sure how the re-assessment would go, especially since the request he submitted using my google form wasn't the most reflective I've ever seen (he explained that he looked over his "nots", for one). He took the re-assessment and asked me to tell him how he did. I was looking at it and trying to figure how where he went wrong when he spoke up and said that he was pretty sure that he made a mistake at a certain part. I agreed, and we talked about what could have been done better. He left without arguing and that was that. If this is the effect that SBG can have, I'm all in!

Welcome!

Greetings! Maybe you're one of the loyal Ansarino in Argentina followers from the blog I kept during my participation in the Fulbright DAT program, maybe not. Either way, I am thrilled that you found your way to this site.

 My hope is to be able to use this blog to give back to the online teaching community. I don't necessarily mean those who deliver teach science and math from a distance, but rather the dedicated group of teachers who share their experiences (both good and bad) in the hope that others can improve their own teaching, or at least start a discussion to that end!

This year I'm trying some new techniques, not the least of which is Standards-Based Grading. I borrowed ideas from lots of other bloggers.... Shawn (here too), Kate, Kelly (again here and here), Frank, Brian, Jason, etc. To be honest, I started looking into SBG last winter. I read a lot and finally ended up with something that I think will work for both my students and me. Without the resources these folks took the time to share I would be left grading as I always have and hating it, mostly because all that the students worry about is their test scores rather than understanding the material I want them to learn.

I'm rolling this out with my AP Physics students with the help of BlueHarvest. Students are going to have an assessment every Wednesday. I think... we're still discussing this as a class. Every "C" day (we have a 6-day cycle, A-F days, lab meets twice every cycle, periods are 38 minutes long) the students will have either one or two periods to work on their independent experiments. These are probably the highlight of my class. Anyway, I decided to go with a grading scale from 0-5. My syllabus explains a lot of it in more depth. You can see it and a rough draft of my learning targets (aka standards) here: AP Physics homepage.

I am not sure if the kids have bought into it yet. When I was explaining it I told the kids that theirs is a science class which inherently involves experiments. This is just another experiment, and as the class progresses it is very likely that my grading scheme and practices will evolve. I think that they interpreted this as "if we ignore it, he will abandon this crazy notion and go back to the way things have always been." I hope that this doesn't happen and that they start to buy into it. I created a practice standard for students to see the different types of feedback they can receive on Blue Harvest. this started some neat conversations, and I finally got all the kids to change their profile pictures. Well, one simply downloaded the default image, mirrored it 180 degrees, and uploaded it again. it's a different image. Another had issues trying to get a file small enough. He sent me feedback on other standards (which I haven't even assessed yet) to show he can log in. I changed his profile picture for him, though I gave him a picture of a truck, and he loves Cadillacs. I am hoping that it pushes him to change it himself. p.s. he just changed it to a basketball player.


Regents Physics will still be graded using the old system. I could have gone whole-hog, but my time is limited this year as never before, and I didn't want to get in over my head. I consoled myself that if SBG goes really well I can always adopt it partway through the year. The only big change I made is that I gave kids an out for their formal lab reports. I've always struggled requiring them anyway. The out is that once they've mastered the skill of writing them, they no longer have to do them, just an informal writeup. I think it will make them try harder, I just hope they don't give up when they shoot for the bar I set and fail the first time around.