Mo Physics Mo Problems

I really like cereal. When I was a kid, I used to come home from school everyday and have a bowl of cereal. I was a big fan of Cookie Crisp, Cap’n Crunch, Franken Berry (never Count Chocula), and Lucky Charms.  While Cookie and Cap’n are fairly homogeneous. With Lucky Charms, it was a mix of lame cereal pieces and marshmallows. I mean come on, I can have marshmallows as food! I would sit in front of the TV watching GI Joe and eat a bowl (no milk just munching). Of course, I would eat the nasty oat cereal pieces first and save the marshmallows for last. Back when they were first introduced, Lucky Charms only had 4 marshmallow shapes: pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers. As time has passed, more have been introduced. I specifically remember the addition of purple horseshoes.  Shapes have come and gone, but they don’t taste much different and those oat based cereal pieces have stayed relatively unchanged. Listening to the latest episode of the IMMOOC podc

Last week, I was reaching the end of a unit on forces. We did a few hands-on labs and the centerpiece of the unit was a maker activity in which students designed and built chariots for Spheros that could carry a passenger of at least 200 grams. They then had to program the Sphero to make 3 loops around a small track in the shortest amount of time while still carrying the rider. So when the activity was over, it was time to think of the unit assessment. I spent a day coming up with several different options for learners to investigate forces or come up with examples or find videos from YouTube and apply Newton’s 3 laws to them. That’s when I realized I was ignoring what was in front of my own face. My students were highly engaged in the Sphero activity. Why was I trying to create a whole new scenario when I could use this highly motivational activity to frame the summative assessment? It made me think, how often am I forcing learners to lose the momentum of a positive lea

Two years ago, I posted about what my ideal learning environment would be . The two years since I wrote that, I’ve been able to realize a little of what I thought. The idea of implementing passion projects in my physics courses has helped allow a real opportunity for learners to bring their interests into the classroom as I help find those connections between a learner’s passions and physics concepts. Moving to a more learner centered environment is a very daunting task. As we see videos online and hear stories from radically progressive student centered environments, it seems like an impossible shift to make. That’s why it’s so important for educators to see models proposed by great minds like Katie Martin who are able to get to the fundamentals of what make these experiences outside of the physical, for lack of a better word, “stuff” that first catches our eyes. In Learner Centered Innovatio n, Katie outlines 10 characteristics of Learner-Centered Experiences. A

I was listening to the IMMOOC week 1 podcast on the way into work and was struck by something George Couros & Katie Martin were discussing. It was in relation to the peer review process for Katie’s new book Learner Centered Innovation . They were discussing the idea of feedback as a key during the creation of the book. Since the book is a physical published product, critical feedback after the fact would not be useful to the creation process. But critical feedback along the way, was essential to produce a quality final product. That led me to think about all of those end of course surveys I have taken and used to administer. They are being given after the fact. How does this information help inform the process during the learning process? Simply put, it doesn’t.  The feedback is too late to affect the intended audience. When, George brings up the idea of timely feedback, we need to take it to heart. But, we also need to be aware of the type of feedback we are soli

When I prepare a lecture (yes there is still a place for it in my classroom), it is often filled with questions for my students to answer. Most of these questions I already know the answer to. I cast myself in the role of expert. But what happens when learners don’t care about the questions I am asking them? When they are given the space to ask the questions that they are curious about, will I still be the expert in the room? These are the questions that used to worry me. If I’m not the expert with the answers, what will happen? Over time I have learned that there is no way I could know the answer to every question a student has about physics. I’ve learned to be ok with not being the only expert in the room. We have a vast world of resources at our fingertips. So, while I may not know the answer to every physics question, my learners and I can work together to vet resources and we can co-design provide the experiences that will help them make sense of some of the more comp

"Innovation Ecosystem: the culture, values, vision, and policies that influence the learning context and the development of desired knowledge, skills, and mindsets." Martin, Katie. Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion, and Unleash Genius (Kindle Locations 820-821). IMPress, LP. Kindle Edition. An ecosystem is a combination of many factors that create it but also the many pressure that drive change within it. Those pressure can come from students, peers, and administration. Have you ever heard distant rumblings about what’s going on in your classroom and how others (at any level) may not think it’s not the way it should be done? How does these distant rumblings affect you? I can think of a few situations in which this has happened to me. But, I’d like to focus on one specifically. When I first started teaching physics, I had been teaching our lower general science course for a few years. It was a course with a significant number of students w

As educators, we face change every day.  That change comes from many different sources outside and inside of our classrooms. In the first chapter of Learner Centered Innovation , Katie Martin asks a simple question: In the face of change, there are two ways to react: The primal response: How can I maintain the status quo and protect myself from risk or failure? The evolutionary response: How can I learn from my surroundings and adapt to improve? What do I need to stop doing? What might I start doing? Martin, Katie. Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion, and Unleash Genius (Kindle Locations 602-605). IMPress, LP. Kindle Edition. When asking myself how I face change, my response is dependent on the type of change I encounter. I am open to change in my classroom. I embrace it fully and head on. When asked by my district in 2013  to give learners more ownership over their learning in the classroom, I couldn’t wait to make learning more personal in