One day down: Deakin and Christian College

Yesterday was my first day on the ground, so to speak. I first met with Russell Tytler at Deakin University and then visited Amos Freeman's Year 12 physics class at Christian College in Geelong.

GPS malfunction aside, the drive was ok. I got a little bit turned around at one point and the roundabouts are tricky when one is used to driving on the opposite side of the road. I'm getting used to driving on the left faster than I am the location of the windshield wipers/turn signals, which are opposite what I'm accustomed to. Luckily it was raining so it wasn't such a bad thing to turn on the wipers every time I wanted to signal a turn!

Deakin was really interesting, and it was great to hear about the research that Dr. Tytler is working on. We also compared notes about our respective education systems and he filled me in on how the PhD degree works in Australia. It's completely different than in the States. No courses, just different research and assigned readings, etc.

I spent the afternoon with Amos and his year 12 students. Got a solid idea of how the physics curriculum works (years 11 and 12 with the VCE exam after year 12). It goes much deeper into some topics than the NYS Regents curriculum I'm used to- especially circuits. However, it doesn't really touch on waves or Modern physics at all. And it's done over the course of two years... Classes are either a single or double 50-minute period, and the year 12's get 2 double periods every week while the year 11's get 1. The class I observed was fairly small: about 12 students. It was the first day back from a 2 week holiday so it took a little while to get them thinking again (made me feel a little bit better that my students aren't the only ones who behave like this), but by the end of the period they were firing on all cylinders.

I really liked something that Amos had them do regarding the right-hand rules. He introduced the rules, explained how they work, and then did a demonstration to check that experimental results matched theory (having a support technician would be amazing by the way). Afterward, he asked the students to write down their own definition/interpretation of the rule in their notes. I thought this was a better way to do it than have the teacher write the rule on the board, but I also thought an interesting addendum would have been to share what each student wrote if there had been more time.

All in all, it was a good day. I neglected to take pictures while I was at the school, but I snapped this bleary picture on the way back in an attempt to show what the countryside looks like. I promise to do better next time around!