July 2009

How we talk about what we learn (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 29, 2009

This PERC talk was from Anna Sfard about how we construct meaning socially How we talk about things, says Sfard, matters.  How we talk about things changes what we see, and also what we do. How do we talk about math or physics?  How do we talk about learning math and physics? We need more [...]

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The construction of causal schemes (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 29, 2009

This is the from PERC (Physics Education Research Conference). This talk was by Andrea diSessa (Berkeley), who developed the theory of phenomenological primitives (or p-prims). diSessa’s recent work is looking at how students’ intuitive ideas help them construct meaning.  For example,  Newton’s Law of cooling says that the rate of change of temperature of something [...]

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Cognitive and Neural Aspects of Learning (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 29, 2009

This is the beginning of the PERC (Physics Education Research Conference).  This talk was by Michael Posner, about how brain science informs us about effective classroom learning. Brain research gives us insight into the process of how people learn and understand, including techniques like fMRI.  Neuroimaging contributes to our understanding of how we should teach. [...]

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Pre-service and In-service physics teacher training (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 29, 2009

Today’s session is about pre-service and in-service teacher training There is very little research to direct teacher training programs, which are treated as practical programs, and even less in physics.  A lot of work has been done in what’s called “pedagogical content knowledge” or “PCK” — you can see my previous posts here and here [...]

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Frank Oppenheimer and the world he built (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 29, 2009

This morning’s plenary was by KC Cole on her new book Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up . As anyone who knows one whit about me recognizes, this talk about Frank Oppenheimer and his creation of the Exploratorium was deeply significant to me.  I was a postdoc under Paul [...]

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Interactive lecture demonstrations (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 28, 2009

Today’s session is about using interactive lecture demonstrations to effectively improve your students’ understanding of concepts. As I mentioned in my previous post, while students like demos, they don’t get the things we want them to get unless they predict the results of the experiement or somehow get involved.  David Sokoloff showed how they have [...]

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Discrepant events (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 28, 2009

This session is about how using discrepant (or “surprising”) events to teach physics There’s quite a bit of evidence showing that students don’t really get what we want them to get from demonstrations, but they do like them.  They get a lot more out of them if we ask them to predict the results of [...]

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Sustaining instructional reform (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 28, 2009

This session is about how some institutions have sustained change in their courses, and what are the central features of changes that stick:  Eugenia Etkina (Rutgers), Steven Pollock (CU Boulder), Charles Henderson (Western Michigan). The NSF will provide money to create reforms, but individual institutions have to figure out how to make them stick.  How [...]

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Recruiting and keeping women in physics (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 27, 2009

This session is about the state of affairs regarding women in physics and how we can address it. Well, no surprise, there’s still a big disparity between the number of men and women in physics — we lose women from physics at every major transition — from HS to college, college to graduate school — [...]

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Preparing Undergraduates for Graduate School (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 27, 2009

This session is about how we prepare our undergraduates for graduate school — what to consider, and how we’re doing. One thing to consider, in thinking about the goals of our undergraduate majors, is that we actually don’t want to prepare all of our undergraduates for graduate school.  Physics is a liberal arts degree, allowing [...]

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Teaching in Urban Schools (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 27, 2009

Teaching in Urban Schools – Katya Denisova – Science Coordinator, Baltimore Public Schools. This was a talk about factors to consider when teaching science in schools with high poverty levels.  Baltimore has a large poverty rate (30% of kids under 18 live in poverty if I understood her statistic right, though that seems high), and [...]

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Eliciting student ideas with little toy cars (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 26, 2009

Today’s session is all about using diagnosis, or assessment, in your teaching (“Designing a Diagnostic Learning Environment in the Pre-College Classroom”; Lezlie DeWater, Eleanor Close, and Hunter Close). In the last post I talked about one way to elicit students ideas, using a video and brainstorm.  This time, they gave us a bunch of pull-back [...]

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Eliciting student ideas (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 26, 2009

Today’s session is all about using diagnosis, or assessment, in your teaching (“Designing a Diagnostic Learning Environment in the Pre-College Classroom:; Lezlie DeWater, Eleanor Close, and Hunter Close). Formative assessment is assessment that happens before or during your teaching, to help students learn.  Summative assessment is what we more typically think of as assessment — [...]

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I’m off to AAPT!

July 25, 2009

And for those of you who have read me for a while, you know what that means…. Liveblogging! I really like to write out nice summaries of the good talks and sessions I go to at conferences — it helps me remember and digest what I’ve learned.  So stay tuned, I hope, for a series [...]

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I’m on Science again! Moths jam bat sonar

July 24, 2009

I’ve got another interview on the Science podcast, from last week — an interesting little story about how tiger moths emit a sound that actually jams bat’s sonar, to keep from getting eaten. Here’s the link. I come in around 13:40. Of course, I had to ask, how did they manage to tether a moth [...]

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Crazy color illusion

July 21, 2009

As usual, geekgirl is a little groggy on the uptake, so I’m posting this after all the cool kids already had their fun with it (ie, The Bad Astronomer, Richard Wiseman, Blog of Phyz and Buzzhunt). The trick?  There is no blue in this pattern.  It’s green.  The same color as you see next to [...]

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Helping young women stay in science

July 19, 2009

Hey all, I think sometimes I overuse my wonderful readers for their great ideas but, well, if you didn’t have such good ideas, then I wouldn’t be asking you questions all the time!  Ah, the burden of greatness. So, here’s the question of the day.  I’m working on a book proposal for a survival guide [...]

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The Chemistry of Kissing

July 19, 2009

Since I’m woefully behind in posting on my own blog, I’m grateful to Sarah over at a Schooner of Science who wrote up an interesting article on the Chemistry of Kissing.  I was meaning to write something on this topic for a while, actually, since there was an interesting symposium at the AAAS Meeting in [...]

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PhET for Kids?

July 14, 2009

For those of you who use or know of our PhET interactive simulations site, we’re trying to roll out a redesign of the site that’s geared for grades 4-8.  But we’re struggling with a name.  Any ideas? PhET Kids was deemed “too baby-ish” by some actual kids PhETmania (so far our favorite) Fresh Science by [...]

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Why I’m so quiet…

July 14, 2009

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog-o-front, and my apologies gentle readers!  I’m juggling a lot of things for the next month, and then I’ll be posting more regularly.  I also just moved (!) and am without internet access at the new abode.  Which, of course, doesn’t bother me.   Any more than I would [...]

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