At the AAPT Winter Conference, I attended a workshop on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (emphasis on “reformed teaching” not “reformed protocol”). Below are my notes on that workshop. [This workshop runs 8:00-5:00 on Sunday, and I'm live blogging this so, if you're reading during this time, reload the page for the most up-t0-date content.]

Intro question: What does good physics learning look like?

My responses:

• Student engagement: hands on; notetaking; calculators/computers use; students doing things, not just passive
• Teacher engagement: focus on different groups of students; listening to students; circulating around the classroom; during lectures responding to students questions, circulating.

My partner and my negotiating of the top three:

1. Students making and recording observations.
2. Teacher circulating
3. Students solving problems.

Other groups’ results (not complete):

• Vendor and customer haggling in a market–>discourse. [I really like this one] Teacher runs the market.
• Students engagement [I think this word is overused without a common definition]
• Student verbal reasoning
• Students designing experiments
• Students working on open ended questions
• Teachers guiding students through Socratic questions (although avoid “Socratic hammer” of step-by-step leading questions)
• “Avoid plug and chug” [I'm concerned with the oversimplification of this statement]
• We had a discussion of the role of lecturing–avoiding getting caught into the “All lecture is bad” dogma, but retaining that lecture should be minimized (a subjective term if there ever was one).
• We had another discussion about the role of writing. I felt that is was important that some student writing was going on in order for them to better retain the information; others felt that sometimes they didn’t want their students worrying about taking notes, but rather just focus on the discussion. We addressed different learning modalities; in the end I think we could all agree with: Being prepared to write! (even if not all students write during the course of a period).
• PGA boards (post game analysis whiteboard)
• Body language/noise level of students.

Metaphors for teaching

• Market
• Jazz or blues
• Learning envelop
• Canals

Wrap up of morning introductory discussion

Our first video:

As a class we watched a ten-minute video of a college level lecture, taking notes and scoring it on our own. Over lunch, we met in threes and came to a consensus on our scoring on each of the 25 rubric items (ranking 0-5).

Our group got “stuck” over the question “The metaphor ‘teacher as listener’ was very characteristic of this classroom.” We were trained to mark zero only if it was not observed. We discussed whether asking a question and responding to the answer qualified as ‘teacher as listener.’ I argued that if zero is only scored if it didn’t appear, then listening did occur. Others felt that just because you ask a question, especially if there is only one right answer, that is not truly engaging in listening.

The workshop leaders emphasized that this is a constructivist tool, and the school that implements it needs to define what some of the terms mean to them. This seems like one of the strengths of this instrument: members of the institution need to agree on what are the goals of the institution.

Next video a class for pre-service elementary teachers

In transit lingo, “multi-modal” trips are those that use different modes to get to a destination. A common version is bike to bus/subway/rail, either taking the bike on the vehicle or locking it before one gets on. Today I had a wonderful trip that was multi-modal by accident.

The “out” trip was planned as multi-modal: I live in Berkeley and had a mid-day meeting in Redwood City. These cities are on opposites sides of the San Francisco Bay, and I decided that I would take two trains (BART subway and CalTrain diesel passenger/commute train) and ride the short distances between destinations and stations. I left home and rode five blocks to my local BART station, where I brought my bike on board and held it while sitting. Not too uncomfortable, not too crowded. When I arrived in SF, I got off at the first station (swiping my “Clipper” “smart-card”), then rode about eight blocks to the CalTrain station. I swiped my Clipper card while waiting, then when the train boarded I got on one of the two bike trains–these trains are specially equipped with bike rack space on the bottom level (the trains have two levels of seating). There were plenty of bungee cords at each bike rack,  and I bungeed my bike to the rack and chose a seat upstairs where I could keep an eye on my bike.

Getting off the train in Redwood City, I almost forgot to swipe my card, but there had been enough reminders on the train that I think it had been embedded in my brain and I remembered just as I was about to ride off. Good thing: They charge you the maximum amount when you “tag on” and give you a refund when you “tag off.” I got $8 back

My ride was about eight blocks to my meeting. We had a good meeting (what would you expect from a bunch of physics educators?), but it went a bit longer than expected (what would you expect from a bunch of physics educators?). So I started about an hour later than I had planned.

My return trip was not planned as multi-modal. I planned on a 50 mile bike ride home.

Dirt road along levee in East Bay; Dumbarton Bridge on right in background.

Although my destination was north, I had to back-track a couple miles to make it to the Dumbarton Bridge (our only E/W bridge across the bay that has a bike lane). The bike lane is wide enough for two bikes to pass comfortably, and has a “Jersy barrier” between it and the traffic. A bit loud, but a  nice ride none the less.

On the other side of the bridge,  I ventured onto a bike route from Google Maps that I had not taken before. It turned out to be a dirt road, along a levee that separates the bay from the abandoned salt evaporation ponds (now nature conservancy areas). It was nice to be in the midst of our megalopolis yet still feel away from it all. I have a 7″ Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) that has GPS and Google Maps, which helped me believe I was on the right course.

Three pelicans in the protected waters.

After about 30 miles, I had made it to Hayward and realized it was getting later than I wanted, and that I was more tired than I wanted. Luckily, the BART line runs up the East Bay, and after about three miles “inland,” I arrived at the Hayward BART station. This was in the midst of rush hour, but BART revised their bike rules several years ago (or was that a decade or more ago), and restricted bikes only on the most crowded trains. The Richmond/Fremont line, which includes Hayward and Berkeley, has no restrictions on bicycles, so I was able to board the train and zip home.

I thank my local train/subway agencies for the forward thinking to provide reasonable bicycle access on the trains. My trip would not have been possible without them, and I would have been limited to public transit without the bicycle portion.

On the northern California Coast

[I wrote this back in August of 2010]

Well, I’ve been back for a week, so it seemed like time to write reflections on my Portland to Berkeley bicycle trip.

Why?

Why did I do it? Was it turning 50, the old “mid-life crisis” reaction? Maybe, but probably only a small amount. I’m pretty satisfied with life (career I love, good friends and family, the body working pretty well). Was it “because it was there”? Probably a bit. I had started to think about riding up to the AAPT conference, but summer plans (and prevailing winds) pointed me in the direction of a return ride. And, hey, with two months off every summer, why not spend a couple weeks on my bike? In the end, why I did it is probably a lot like why I’m a vegetarian: “All of the above.”

Athletic accomplishment?

Many people are impressed with my ride, thinking it’s quite an athletic feat. I’m not so sure it’s that hard. One of the riders I met on my trip (Ineke, who is quite a commute/around town rider, but not a big cycle tourist) hit it right when she said “It’s not so much about the legs as it is about the mind.” Dalton, a 17 year old girl riding from Washington state to SF with her dad and 14 year old sister, also had a hint about what was going on when she asked me “Do you ever feel like just quitting?” I told her that I did often, and that seeing all the other riders on the Pacific Coast route is a great encouragement to complete my trip.

How much preparation did I do for the trip? Not that much. I rode a few 30-70 mile rides over the past year, and several 20 mile commutes home from work (in the fall I was great at 1-2 times/week, but this fell apart when it started getting dark early, when it was raining, and when I got a sore throat). Other than that, my bike is my primary means of getting around town, so I am on it almost daily for 2-10 miles of errands and commute from the subway to work. I think that being familiar with and comfortable on my bike, especially in traffic, is probably the best preparation I had for my trip.

So, can anyone jump on a bike and ride 900 miles? Probably not. But I believe that one doesn’t need to do as much preparation as many would expect, especially if you are willing to plan your days as not that long, and are willing to take each day “slow and steady.”

Equipment

In Oregon, my first night

I tend to overpack for just about anything, and while my tour was not a complete shift from this, I did cut down from what I might have packed on another day. My bike and packs weighed in at around 110-120 pounds (depending on how stocked up on food and water I was at any give time). My bike with racks, fenders, kickstand, etc. weighs close to 40 pounds. Not sure of the empty weight of my bags (two sets of panniers, one rear rack, one handlebar rack), but I clearly was carrying a lot of “stuff” in my bags.

Tent: I only have one tent, a wonderful self-supporting two-person tent. I could have saved some weight here, but it was nice to have the extra room inside. I didn’t need it so much on this trip (no rain), but if it had rained, being able to put my bags inside is a great plus.

Stove etc.: I have an older MSR “Whisperlight” stove that burns white gas. The fuel bottle connects to the stove, so the stove itself is minimal in size and weight (you could easily put it in a small shoe). It burns hot, and can burn just about any liquid fuel you can find (although white gas can be found in almost any sporting goods store in the US). The stove does take priming (big flames at first), and I had a bit of “stove envy” when I saw other cyclists whip out their compressed gas stoves and have them give off nice blue flames on the light, but I’m trying not to replace good equipment I have just because there’s something “better” available. I have a “cook set” that contains two pots, a pan, and two plastic cups. The pan I never used, and I had another cup so the cups I didn’t need either. I have a stainless steel insulated coffee mug that fits nicely in my waterbottle cage (and holds drinks hot for hours!), so there’s another cup. I think next time I’ll leave the pan and plastic cups at home.

Clothing: I pretty much rode with just my wool outfit: long-sleeve and short sleeve jerseys, cycling shorts, and leg warmers. I had an extra pair of shorts and tights that I never used, but I think they were important to have (a cyclist needs to be able to care for her/his bottom in any conditions, and if it rains it’s great to have a pair of dry shorts to change into). Perhaps the street shorts, pants, and sweat pants were a bit much–but the shorts were great for swimming in.

Making friends and acquaintences

Highway 1 on the Pacific Coast is probably the most social bicycle tour one can take. You can find a state campground with hiker/biker campsites about every 30-50 miles, and during the summer there are plenty of cycle tourists riding southbound (and a few northbound). Nights turn into social gatherings for those so inclined. I met several people who I have kept in touch with over this past year [I'm writing this section in June 2011], and will have a chance to visit with Morris this summer when I’m in his neighborhood in Arizona for three weeks for a teacher training.

Beachcomber Cafe, Trinidad, CA

My blog from the trip

I blogged my trip on CrazyGuyOnABike.com.

Today as a finals review “warm up” (although it ended up taking the whole period) I presented the students with four beakers of water: One with ice, one at room temp, one on a hot plate “low” (about 37C) and one boiling. I used Logger Pro to show the four temperatures on a projector screen (a sensor in each beaker). I asked them to use the skills they have learned in this class to analyze the relationship between temperature in F and in C. Half the class I told to set C as the IV, half F as IV.

The four beakers, with projected temperature readings behind

One student in particular was emphatic that “it’s not fair to put something on the final that we haven’t done in class.” I told him and the class that they have the skills to analyze this relationship, even if they haven’t seen it, and told them that applying their knowledge in a new situation shows real understanding. I said that the final will contain mostly the type of physics problems we’ve been working on, but that there will be one relationship that they haven’t seen before. (I use Modeling Instruction curriculum that focuses on analyzing experimental data to develop physics concepts/models.)

I gave them a couple minutes to write down the temperatures in C, then switched the readings to F. One student pointed out that the temperatures readings kept changing. I agreed, and asked which digits seemed constant: All agreed that the “ones place” was constant. Since I don’t worry too much about sig figs in my class, I suggested that this might lead us to decide to round off to the ones place in their results.

The students settled down to work. Here’s what I noticed as I went around:

1. I had the beakers labeled 1, 2, 3, 4. Some of the students put 1, 2, 3, 4 as the IV (even though I had assigned each group what their IV should be). For the next period, I changed the labels to A, B, C, D and confusion did not appear.
2. My students use TI graphing calculators for processing data. They first create a graph of the data, then decide if the relationship looks linear or quadratic. I found a couple groups that were doing quadratic regressions instead of linear, and upon talking with them they admitted that they used quadratic regression “because the DV numbers were so large compared to IV.” However, their “a” value (in y=ax2+bx+c) was in the 10-5 range. We discussed that this number was so small compared to the others, that it could be considered zero, and when we looked at their “b” and “c” values, they matched the y=ax+b values that other groups got.

When we did whiteboard presentations, we first looked at those with degrees C as the IV. I asked my students who had completed chemistry (not all have) if they remember the conversion equation, and a couple in each class did. They give the “F=(9/5)C + 32″ solution. I then asked them what 9/5 is in decimal, and, tada, it’s 1.8 which is the slope they got in their equations.

When rounded to two sig figs, almost all groups got 1.8 and 32 for slope and y-intercept (a couple got ± 1).

One whiteboard with F on Y axis, C on X

I then said, “So this equation is great for us Americans who go to a foreign country and need to convert from C to F. But what about foreigners who come here and want to convert from F to C?” I then rearranged the equation (probably should have had them do it, but was short on time), and the results were the slope and y-intercept the “T F is IV” group got.

One whiteboard with C on Y axis, F on X

At the end I asked how many felt comfortable that they had successful at analyzing this relationship, and most were positive about it.

It was a good day!

Lee

A new food cooperative opened on November 15 in Berkeley. The Berkeley Student Food Collective is open to anyone, student or not. Both members and non-members can shop, members receive a discount in exchange for work hours. I’ve shopped there a couple times, and the store is quite well stocked. It’s just a small storefront, so don’t expect to get eight types of rice and thirty varieties of coffee, but they do have a fairly decent selection of produce, bulk, packaged, and refrigerated items.Stop by the store, 2440 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA.

In the early 80′s I was a member of Cooperative Connections at UC Berkeley, another small cooperative. We were in the basement of the student union, so we had a bit less public exposure. I wish them well, and encourage Berkeley folks to shop there, student or not.

Here’s a animated logo I created, showing the ’80′s and ’10′s logos morphing:

On the Physics Modeling email list there has been a discussion of finding tangents to a parabolic curve using an Excel spreadsheet. The primary way we use this is when students graph position vs time of a ball rolling down a ramp. Students discover that the relationship can be modeled as a parabolic equation, x = at²+bt+c. If they can calculate the slope (velocity) at various times, they can then graph velocity vs time, and discover that this relationship is linear.

I have created a spreadsheet that will allow students to enter the their (1) quadratic function values, (2) Independent Variable range, (3) a chosen Independent Variable value and (4) the increment above and below it. The spreadsheet will then calculate and graph the “tangent” at that point (not exactly the tangent, but if they chose a small enough increment, it will look like a tangent).

A screenshot of the spreadsheet is below, and you can download a copy of the spreadsheet here.

With the batch of Spare the Air days in the San Francisco Bay Area in the last few weeks, I came up with an idea that would probably save a lot more gas than trying to get people to carpool and take transit (not that I’m suggesting we stop this, but I’m not sure how many people really switch on STA days). My thought would be to change the speed limit to 55 on Spare the Air days.

I’m not sure how legal this would be (with all the permanent 65 MPH signs), but at least all those huge fancy digital boards that CalTrans has could read “Today is Spare the Air: Please drive 55″.

Do you like the idea? Call the Bay Area Air Quality Management District: 415-749-4900

At the end of each school year, I have my students complete an evaluation of the course. My goal is for them to reflect (1) me, (2) the class, and (3) themselves. I find the evaluations extremely valuable. Scary at times, but valuable. This last year wasn’t one of my best, and the evaluations showed that to me. But I also got feedback that showed it wasn’t as bad as I might have feared (not that it was a horrible year, just that I think I wasn’t at my peak). With so many students, the bulk of the evaluation is multiple choice, but there is space for students to write comments about particular questions, or comments about issues not raised in the questions. I use bubble-in sheets so I can scan them and export the results to a spreadsheet, which allows me to get in and really sort through the data.

I’m attaching it here for anyone who might like to use it as a skeleton for their own: Word format and PDF format.

Frank Noschese has me thinking that this year I need to give the evaluations a few times during the year.

This summer I’m leading a workshop at the American Association of Physics Teachers meeting entitled “Using graphing calculators in the classroom.” Featured in the workshop is my handout titled “Analyzing data using your TI-83 or TI-84 calculator.” You can download a PDF version of the worksheet here. The handout has calculator screenshots and uses TI fonts to show the exact keys that students press.

The worksheet is organized in the order that students would use their calculators:

• Introduction/Setting up your calculator
• A: Data is stored in lists
• B: Entering data into a list
• C: Graphing two lists
• D: Manually setting the scale for your graph
• E: Fitting an equation to your data
• F: Using the Table to solve for variables
• G: Finding the slope at specific times on a curve
• H: Filling a list using a formula that includes another list
• Notes.

The worksheet is “copyleft,” meaning that anyone can use it for free, including modifying it, so long as if you redistribute it the “copyleft” registration moves with it.

I’m leaving today for the American Association of Physics Teachers summer meeting in Portland, Oregon. I’ll be presenting a workshop at the meeting (see next post), then riding my bicycle to Eugene then down the coast back to Berkeley. You can follow my cycling exploits here: www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=RrzKj&doc_id=7183&v=V