Welcome to Physics!

Hello and welcome to Physics!

I'm so excited to have each and every one of you in class this year--and, I am looking forward to getting to know each of you (and learning about your passions, motivations, and all the amazing things that make you uniquely you!).

To help us practice writing, communicating about science, and arguing with evidence (among other things), you will each be creating your own Blogger Blog that you will use to post homework assignments.  You will also be responding to posts on MY blog and conversing with your peers about physics and other interesting things!

We will have a class discussion to establish a set of guidelines for our digital work, to protect our safety and to make sure we only post the best representation of ourselves.  As soon as we've had a chance to discuss this, I will post our class guidelines for you to reference as you set up and maintain your blog.

To help get you started, check out this link for tips on how to set up your blog. 

Blog Assignment 1:  DUE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2
* Set up your personal blog using your district gmail login
* Create your first blog post in which you answer the following question:
How will YOU make a difference in the world?  (Explain)
* To turn in your work, login to Edmodo, click on "Turn in" for "Blog Assignment 1" and then paste a link to your published blog site.

Coursera: Fundamentals of Tinkering

While helping to sort materials in preparation for the RAFT grand re-opening, I had the opportunity to help set up the new Tinkering area...however, I was rather clueless about what Tinkering actually meant--was it engineering?  Was it being a Maker? Was it simply playing with electronics?  I was rather clueless!

Serendipitously, I stumbled across Coursera, a site offering free MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) including one about the Fundamentals of Tinkering offered by the Exploratorium.  You can also check out their book:  The Art of Tinkering by Karen Wilkinson Mike Petrich. 

So...what is "Tinkering"?  And, why should we engage in it?

My best definition of "Tinkering" is, it is a mix of exploring, engineering, art, science and design.  It is playing with tools and equipment, trying things out, testing, playing--but without one specific product goal or specific learning goal in mind.  It's where you get to test and try, to "fail" and try something new.  It's trying out and building familiarity with tools and equipment, while problem-solving and thinking about possibilities.  And it's FUN!!!  This is the experience I think we often loose in the classroom because we're always in an all-fired hurry to get things done, to learn something specific, apply it, test it and move on.  But Tinkering is where we connect, on a personal level, with our work.  We need more of it. Both in school an in our everyday lives.

 This course introduced me to a slew of new ideas for my classroom, and for sharing science, engineering, art and technology with my family and friends.

Some of the course highlights:
Highlight #1:  Soft circuits (similar to the work from our CU Teach Engineering PD experience):
  (1) Create circuits out of paper with conductive ink or copper tape.  For example, create an interactive greeting cards, pop-up books or, an interactive circuits notebook with LEDs that light up.

Paper Circuit Examples from Exploratorium's Fundamentals of Tinkering Course (Coursera)

 (2 ) Create sewn circuits out of wearable materials to which you add circuit components using conductive thread or other conductive materials.  For example, create a t-shirt or hat that has LEDs that light.

Sewn Circuit Examples from Exploratorium's Fundamentals of Tinkering Course (Coursera)

These projects can be simple, with just batteries, LEDs, snaps (as switches) and conductive thread, or, they could incorporate arduinos and microcontrollers to program specific activities.  One of the things I thought was coolest from this unit was programmable paper, used to create mobile origami and paper art.  The engineer, Jie Qi, who created these also developed "Circuit Stickers"...another set of materials that can be utilized to create interactive paper projects. 

Programmable Paper Projects by Jie Qi Examples from Exploratorium's Fundamentals of Tinkering Course (Coursera)

Highlight #2:  Circuit Blocks
Another really cool tool for teaching circuits is to build "circuit boards"--blocks of wood that each hold a single circuit component, with ends connected and soldered to nails, which can then be connected into circuits by clipping alligator clips to the nails.  These are awesome!  You can add in combinations of batteries and bulbs, fans, motors, and the motorized innards of toys/stuffies.  I think these are great not only for little people but also older ones.  I also think it would be awesome to have my physics students create sets of these to share with elementary schools.

Circuit Board Examples from Exploratorium's Fundamentals of Tinkering Course (Coursera)

  Highlight #3:  Scribbling Machines
Scribbling machines involve adding a motor to some kind of structure that can hold one or more writing utensils (pensils, markers, paint brushes, etc).  By weighting the motor in various ways, the machine will sketch patterns.  This is a very basic robot of sorts.  Similarly, small motors (eg, from phones, pagers, electric toothbrushes) can be added to other objects (eg, toothbrush head) to make the objects move.  Students can then decorate these little robots to add a bit of personality.

Scribbling Machine Example from Exploratorium's Fundamentals of Tinkering Course (Coursera)

In general, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I took away from this course.  Because I joined the course rather late, I did not pursue the certificate of completion.  I would highly recommend this course to anyone in STEM education, at any level--it was a wealth of information and ideas, especially having access to all the Tinkerers at the Exploratorium and the other creative individuals within the course community.

Great Resource for Integrating Engineering: TeachEngineering.org

As a mentor for CU Teach practicum students, I had the opportunity to participate in a PD experience through a new branch of the program, CU Teach Engineering.  The new program sends Graduate Engineering Fellows into classrooms to work with teachers on implementing engineering lessons/activities while learning about classroom management and practicing communication with varying audiences.

We completed a circuits lab in which we used copper tape with LEDs to create pop-up, interactive greeting cards.  (Check out the Sparkfun Tutorial for this).  In addition to this activity, which could easily be modified to work for nearly any age, elementary to high school, we learned about a great database of other engineering activities:  TeachEngineering.org.  Perhaps you've heard of this site...but it was new to me!

They have a plethora of activities, which you can search for by content area, time commitment, level of engineering design and more.  All lessons are peer-reviewed by both teachers and engineers, are standards-aligned, and are generally low-cost to implement.  Teachers can also submit lessons, or volunteer to review lessons.

Check it out.  You'll probably love it too!

Current Work in Progress: Aligning Secondary Science iPad Processes with Revised Blooms...and NGSS

Mary Beth and I are currently working to prepare our workshop for InnEdCO (formerly TIE Colorado) and have been building a few resources for secondary science teachers.  First, building off the work of Kathy Shrock, Andrew Churches and others, we have created our own version of aligned iPad processes and the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy Processes--but have tried to focus on the types of activities that we incorporate into our own classroom.  As we were working on this, we also started integrating iPad-friendly Web 2.0 tools, as there is a growing wealth of HTML and iPad friendly tools available.  But as we were adding in the Web 2.0 tools, we also decided to add in the non-iPad friendly apps--because many of these inspired our search for iPad apps with comparable function.  And now?  We have a whopping list of iPad activities, apps and Web 2.0 Tools to peruse when thinking about learning experiences that target different levels of Bloom's.

Please check out our Bloom's-iPad Process Alignment  


After completing our first draft of Bloom's Aligned iPad Activities/Processes, we realized that, while this is a great instructional tool, as many of our schools shift to standards-based grading focused around the Next Generation Science Standards, it might actually be equally or more useful to develop an NGSS-iPad Activities/Processs Alignment.  As a starting point, we chose to focus on aligning our iPad activities with the Standards for Practices of Scientists and Engineers.  We just completed our first (very rough) draft, but have not yet added in accompanying iPad apps (or Web 2.0 tools).

Please check out our NGSS-iPad Process Alignment

We would love any feedback, suggestions, critiques or simple comments that you'd be willing to share--please help us to make these documents useful and relevant to our teaching and learning community!

Teaching to Learn--Just one of the ways that students can own their own learning

One of my primary foci with implementing a 1:1 iPad environment was to establish a community where students took on the role of teachers.  This idea stemmed from my experiences as an undergrad in the Pioneer Leadership Program at DU where we focused on the impact of Service Learning and has evolved with the integration of tech into my classroom.


During my second year as a teacher, the juniors and seniors in my Conceptual Physics classes developed physics lessons to share with elementary students in local elementary schools--they used backward design and developed a short 10-minute station lab mini-lesson that they then got to implement and later reflect on. The experience was more fun than powerful, but my students loved getting to be the experts.

The following year, ING provided funds* for our students to visit the elementary students three times. Again, we began preparing for these experiences by investigating what makes a lesson successful, then exploring backwards design in which students had to first identify their learning targets, then develop activities to address these. The element that I add to the lesson design this second year was a focus on formative assessment--getting my students to think about what their students had learned, and what evidence they had to show their students' learning and/or growth.

In designing their first lesson (on Newton's Laws), students again focused more on making sure the students had "fun", and developed engaging, hands-on mini-experiments.  After the field trip to the elementary classroom, students debriefed the experience by participating in a summarizing discussion.  Students shared that they felt they'd made a difference, that their students had enjoyed the activities and were excited about science, and that they thought they'd learned something.  But when I again asked, "what did your students learn, and how do you know?", there was a shift in the atmosphere--suddenly, the elation that students felt about successfully implementing their lessons turned to confusion (and frustration) about not being able to clearly identify what their students had learned.

As my students embarked on preparations for their 2nd and 3rd lessons (on Energy and Static Electricity), they exhibited a clear shift in focus--from wanting to have fun, to wanting to make sure their students learned something.  With that came discussions and brainstorming about formative assessment and how to measure understanding.   Suddenly, my students were vested in the project in a very different way than at the onset--they felt they were agents of change and truly wanted to have an impact in their students lives.  Needless to say, students were much more intentional with their lessons and observant of their students during the next two field experiences.  And, they were much more vested in learning the content material themselves prior to teaching it.

The following year, I decided to try something new--rather than having them develop lessons to teach elementary students, I shifted my focus more to the work of the Learning Assistants at CU Boulder, and decided to establish a community where my students could instead contribute to teaching their peers.  To do this, I tasked my students with developing Screencast tutorials (voice- and written-video tutorials, similar to those of Khan Academy) to teach how to solve problems**.  With these screencasts, we began assembling a digital collection of content-specific student tutorials which we stored on Dropbox so that students could access them anytime, anywhere.

Importantly, the Learning Assistant model at CU incorporates 3 major activities: learning content; learning pedagogy; combining content and pedagogy to facilitate lessons.  Although students were learning content, then putting it into practice with their tutorials, I wanted to incorporate a focus on pedagogy.  To do this, students began watching and evaluating peer tutorials in order to answer the question, "What makes a good screencast?"  Individually, then later in groups and as a class, we began to identify exemplars, and to develop a rubric for evaluating these tutorials.  Students decided that it was incredibly important to integrate creative tidbits and sought novel ways of engaging their audience.  They focused on the needs and interests of their audience in shaping what information they provided, and in what ways to deliver it.  Similar to the shift in focus that I'd seen in my students when creating lessons for elementary students when challenged with thinking about what their pupils had learned and how they knew it, I again saw a shift in focus for my Screencasters--they now felt vested in a different way, and wanted to be agents of change to support their peers' growth.   And, again, I found that students were more concerned with learning the content material themselves in order to be able to teach it to someone else--having an authentic audience changed the level of accountability.  In both types of activities, students also had the freedom to be creative, they had choice over how to implement their lessons and they had reason (authentic audience) for deeper metacognition.   Through creation of their teaching tools, my students provided me with a much better understanding of what they themselves had learned.

But what brought these learning experiences to the front of my thoughts?  My friend and fellow 1:1 iPad integrator, Mary Beth Cheversia, and I have been preparing our workshop for the 2014 InnEdCO conference.  We've been working to align our iPad activities with both the Revised Bloom's (and Bloom's Digital Taxonomy) as well as with the NGSS Practices of Scientists and Engineers.  And, this morning, she sent along an article from Mind/Shift--"Four Meaningful Ways Students Can Contribute" by Katrina Schwartz.  The author shares the work of Alan November, who suggests four "jobs" students can take on in order to be agents of change within their learning community, hopefully leading to increased motivation and engagement.

These four jobs include:
1) Tutorial Designers
2) Student Scribes
3) Student Researchers
4) Global Communicators and Collaborators

While my students often take on the role of Tutorial Designers, I am going to focus on how I can integrate these other three jobs to engage more students.

How about you--what jobs do your students have within your learning community?  How do you make learning more meaningful for your students?


* If you are looking for grant money for a project, the ING Unsung Heroes program awards grants of $2000 (and more) to 2 teachers from each state each year.
** The app we use, almost exclusively, for creating screencasts is Explain Everything.  Initially, I'd chosen this app because, three years ago, it was the only one that would export tutorials as single movie files to Dropbox (and later, to the camera roll for export to anywhere)

Highway 21 Inspiration: Blogging as a Classroom Literacy Experience & Digital Portfolios

Each summer, our district offers a Tech Conference (Highway 21) in which teachers, tech specialists & tech educators lead workshops and lessons teaching about how to effectively implement technology in the classroom.  It always provides a nice refresher of cool new tech tools and strategies, and this year was no exception.

Unquestionably, my favorite session was actually the first one I attended, led by Chris Moore, a 5th grade teacher, who maintains a class blog to post assignments and activities for his students, and also requires his students to create their own blog (using Blogger), through which they build a digital portfolio.  Chris modeled how he uses blogging, commenting and comment mediation as literacy experiences--while helping his students to grow into responsible Digital Citizens who have amazing 21st Century Skills.

It was Chris' workshop that really motivated me to dive back in and start planning my tech integration for the 2014-15 school year, including development of my own personal blogs--one for sharing my tech experiences (here) and the other for posting student assignments and modeling Digital Citizenship for my students (still a work in progress--not yet live).  I'm psyched to begin implementing blogging within my classroom!

In addition to Chris' workshop, the other that I most enjoyed was by Madame Sabre, a language teacher at Thornton High School who has started having her students build digital portfolios using Weebly.  I too have started doing this, and it was nice to see how her students have utilized Web 2.0 tools to really demonstrate their language proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking.  The tool I'm most curious about is ThingLink.  She has her students find or upload photos on ThingLink that relate to a specific time period.  She then had students record audio in French using SoundCloud to discuss important aspects of the photo that relate to the time period.  Her students can then create "hotspots" on their ThingLink photos that link to their audio recordings.
 This seemed like a tool that could be used in a plethora of ways in science too...now to see what we can do with the iPad app!

Got to Start Somewhere!

Three years ago, as I was submitting the grant proposal that would ultimately establish a 1:1 iPad environment in my classroom, peers and mentors advised that I record our learning and thinking along the way.  I wanted to.  I tried to.  As a "slightly"-overwhelmed 3rd year teacher who suddenly had a boatload of technology with few solid ideas of how to effectively integrate it into the classroom, I got so caught up in the excitement and chaos that very few of my experiences ever made it into my journal or blog.  I tried to go back and record our experiences, as that first year was the one in which my students and I truly learned the most, but there was simply too much to write--which of the hundreds of experiences was the most pivotal in transforming our learning?  Really, each little experience built into a magnificent and beautiful revelation regarding my role as a teacher and learner in my own classroom.  And finally, I conceded that I was just going to ride the wave and forgive myself for not taking note of each gold nugget we discovered.

Fast forward to the present...while I am far from being an expert, I do have lots of ideas to share.  And, since this is officially my first summer "off" (ie, not teaching summer school while also attending the normal load of PD) since I was 14, I finally have time to actually assemble my thoughts into slightly more cohesive commentary.  So, let the adventures continue.  I'm hoping that this blog will be a place where I can share ideas, discoveries, trials and triumphs.  Please share your ideas too--I will probably always learn considerably more from my students than they do from me....and I'm sure that I have immense amounts to learn from you as well!