Science Education

Next Generation Science Standards, second draft published

January 11, 2013

The second draft of the Next Generation Science Standards were released this week. You can find them all here: www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards You can search them here: www.nextgenscience.org/search-standards-dci I have exported pages containing all DCI Arranged Standards - Public Release High School only.

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Results of online grading survey

December 3, 2012

Last week I posted a survey of online grading practices. I announced the survey through several email lists I participate in [1], as well as on my Facebook "wall". The survey was open for five days, and resulted in 164 responses. I make no attempt to pass this survey off as statistically accurate representation of [...]

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Survey of teacher use of online grading systems and their implementation

November 28, 2012

If you teach at a middle school or high school, please take a couple minutes to answer this survey. I will post results here in mid-December 2012. (Apologies for the multiple scroll bars.) I've reached the capacity of the free Survey Monkey site (100 responses!), so I'm making a copy of it. If the survey [...]

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Grading labs: A faster method using pre-printed return address labels.

May 18, 2012

Grading tends to be the biggest time consuming task for teachers. For those teachers who want students to complete lab write-ups that truly reflect discover and learning, providing feedback on labs can be an even more daunting task. This year I started using a system that has significantly sped up grading the mechanics of the [...]

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Newton's Laws and shopping carts falling out of truck

April 21, 2012

Watch the following video, the try to answer the questions below it: What is happening to the truck and the carts when the carts start following off the truck? What causes the carts to fall off the truck? While the truck is moving, the left row of carts doesn't fall off the truck. Can you [...]

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Modeling Instruction: Review of acceleration lab

March 15, 2012

I've been using Modeling Instruction in my physics class for the past five years, and keep wondering how to handle the problem of students who miss the whiteboard sessions (where students share their results and we reach class conclusions). These sessions are critical for student growth, as this is where they are challenged to look [...]

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Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol workshop at AAPT conference

February 5, 2012

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 [...]

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"You can't put something on the final we haven't seen!!!"

December 7, 2010

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 [...]

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Spreadsheet for calculating slopes at points on quadratic functions

October 17, 2010

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 [...]

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End of the year teacher evaluation for my physics students to complete

August 10, 2010

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 [...]

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