Mo Physics Mo Problems

  With all of the new updates that were released to the Flipgrid Camera in August, I updated The Creator's Guide to the Flipgrid Camera. You can access it at bit.ly/flipgridcamera My favorite new addition is the ability to add Backdrops to the camera. This is a built in green screen where users can choose from a gallery of backdrops or upload their own image! I won't spend more time in this post because I'd rather have you check out the guide and then play around with the new camera! So again, check out the guide at bit.ly/flipgridcamera and share it as you see fit.

With the holiday break only a few hours away, I decided that I should probably get one post in before the end of the year. I haven't posted in a while because I haven't really had the energy too. It's not that I haven't had things to share. It's just that I haven't had the energy to take the time post anything more than a tweet.  At my high school, we are currently in-person everyday. But, students had the option to attend class virtually. In person, we are socially distanced (at least 6 feet) in class and wear masks at all times. This means no sharing of materials, no working in groups, and no physical labs. This has challenged the way I teach even more than when we were all asynchronous virtual in the spring of this year. These restrictions could easily have led me down the path of a sit and get classroom. This is what I spent so much of my 20 year in education moving away from. So, it has been a struggle knowing that I am not giving my learners the science ex...

  One of the summative assessment options I love is something I've termed Evidence of Mastery or Mastery Defense Presentation. In this, students will present evidence from the unit to show that they have mastered all unit outcomes and present it to me face to face. When we do this face to face, I can then asks them questions or have them elaborate on points that they may not have covered. It takes time, but it gives me a clear idea of a students understanding of a concept. Due to social distancing in the classroom, I didn't have a good workflow for this in our 1st unit this year. I've brought this summative assessment option back and using Flipgrid to leverage it.  Traditionally, I had students construct their own slideshow presentations from scratch. This time around, I decided to make them a template of what I wanted them to specifically present to me. I put in space for them to present work that they had done in the unit. Specifically in this unit, it was graphs from lab...

  This year, our students have the choice to be in person or virtual. So in my physics classroom, roughly 20% of my population is virtual. This has resulted in me making major changes in terms of labs (not sharing materials for in person and coming up with solutions for virtual students.) But this week is our first unit assessment. One assessment structure I used last year during virtual learning was so effective, I decide to use it again this year. This structure was a bingo choice board in which students submit responses using Flipgrid. What I love about Flipgrid is that it provides such a wide variety of expression options. So when I tell students to create a video using Flipgrid, they have so many options in terms of creation. They can use audio, they can add text, they can capture video, they can upload video, they can upload images, they can add emojis. In addition, they can annotate live over everything. On the Bingo board students choose the content of the video. On Flipgri...

I recently posted about the collaboration Megan Peschke and I have created a shared Flipgrid grid between her kindergartners and my high school physics students. We conducted introductions which took on a life of their own. We have moved on from hellos to address to science content. My students are currently in a unit on sound and waves. Flipgrid was a great way to share learning during our energy unit. So, my students are sharing their learning with me and the kindergartners. The one major online interactive hub for exploring sound that is easily accessible across devices and different age levels is Chrome Music Lab . If you are not familiar with it. It is a free set of interactive labs created by Google exploring different aspects of sound.  This exploration and sharing took place over a couple of different activities. In our physics class, these activities were part of a series of applications of concepts students had learned during flipped interactive lectures conducted in P...

I have been lucky to do many collaborations with Elementary School teachers with my physics classes. I’ve had great collaborations with Jessica Ebert , Kate Sommerville & Angela Patterson , and Katie Spadoni . Our transition to Virtual Learning has put a halt to any ability to have a face-to-face collaboration. But, my experience with Flipgrid and a new friend has allowed me to start a new collaboration between High School Physics students and a class of kindergartners. It all started when  I had this Twitter conversation with someone in my district. Now, I’ve only met Megan Peschke face to face twice. (And, I only remember one of them. I’ll leave it to her to tell the story of that one.) Well, the idea was launched in that conversation of using Flipgrid as a place to create a connection between the two classrooms: My 2 sections of Physics and her Kindergartners. I’ve been using Flipgrid with great success with my Physics students all year and it has really taken off during o...

In this new landscape of Virtual Learning, I've lost many of my favorite activities and labs. But thanks to ideas from my Professional Learning Network and the support of my administration, I feel like I've been given the freedom to think differently. To not simply retrofit activities and assessments into a virtual model, but to try something different and leverage the change in instruction and environments. In a recent podcast, Kasey Bell presented 12 practical tips for remote learning that forced me to rethink what I was trying to do . It was a fantastic episode that moved me to question my current practice and try something different. So, I took a tip from another one of her episodes on Choice Boards . As we finish our energy unit, I wanted to create a more unique opportunity for learners to demonstrate mastery. So, I created an Energy Bingo Board. I would not consider this a true choice board for a couple of reasons. But, I'd like to discuss the design of the ass...

Summative assessment can be a bit tricky in distance learning when relying on traditional pencil and paper test. One of the assessment options I have allowed students to use in the past was an evidence presentation in which they created a 1 on 1 presentation demonstrating their mastery of the unit standards by presenting artifacts from the unit. I'm trying something similar with my students as we wrap up our momentum unit. This unit was done completely via distance learning. We had several different activities and I made sure that students had opportunities to cover our main 4 science skill outcomes as they related to momentum. I can plan and carry out investigations I can analyze and interpret data I can use mathematics and computational thinking I can construct explanations The goal for the summative assessment is for them to provide evidence for each of these 4 outcomes. I didn't want the technology to be the barrier. So, I choose Flipgrid which is a very simpl...

This week my building principal gave me the opportunity to provide virtual PD for our district on 3 tools that I think are great for supporting virtual learning: Pear Deck, Scientifically, and Flipgrid. I created informational slide decks and recorded one of the webinars I did for each of the three tools. I won't go one much more, but wanted to make these resources available to all. If you have any questions about the tools feel free to reach out to me on twitter @mo_physics or email at mohammam@elmbrookschools.org Please note that these webinar videos were the first presentations I've ever done using Google Hangouts Meet so please forgive the informal nature of the presentations. They are the raw video from the session. I could easily have spent hours making them perfect, but I figured the true purpose was not aesthetic perfection but timelessness of the information. Pear Deck Use Student Paced mode to provide asynchronous instruction or formative assessment in ...

In August of 2019, Flipgrid launched a bunch of new options to their camera. These include adding text to videos, live drawing, uploading images, editing multiple clips together, camera filters, and whiteboard background. The updates are amazing! If you and the learners in your classroom haven't tried them yet, you need to get on it. Flipgrid has added some updates to the camera since August. So, I've updated my original guide to reflect those changes. Please click here to get access to the guide.  The quick link to the guide is bit.ly/flipgridcamera I have also taken the annotated screenshots and put them into a slide deck if you are interested in training students or staff in how to use the new camera. Please feel free to make a copy of the slide deck and edit to your liking.  I hope you find these resources useful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

This will be my 6th year using Google Sites for student portfolios. A lot has changed along the way and I’m excited to iterate again with a feature that I feel has always been lacking in my portfolio process. That piece is reflection. Whether it be a portfolio to document growth or a portfolio to showcase the best work, the ability to reflect is essential. But, the ability to provide multiple forms of reflection has been a bit cumbersome. In all the time I have been using Google Sites, typed text responses to prompts has been the form that reflection has taken. After learning more about the amazing things educators are doing with Flipgrid, I have realized that not only is it a tool that can be used for sharing ideas, it is a great tool for video reflection. These video reflections can be kept private between the student and teacher. What I did not realize was how these videos created by students can easily be added to their Google Sites portfolio by the student. So what is the proc...

The new Flipgrid Camera has many incredible features that can be utilized in the classroom. If you are unaware of these features, read about them here on the Ditch that Textbook blog post. In this brief post, I will touch on some possible applications in the classroom. Student Generated Keys By using the whiteboard background, students can work through the problem solving process. Not only can they show their work visually, students can talk through the problem solving process. The key here is making use of the pause feature in the recording for simple breaks. If students don’t have touchscreens and drawing is too difficult with a trackpad, encourage them to use text boxes. Check out this amazing video by Jen   Saarinen! Student Introductions At the beginning of the school year, many students are asked to complete worksheets explaining who they are in terms of who they are as a learner and person. Many teachers have innovated this process by having students introduc...