2010

Physics and science posters

October 28, 2010

If you need physics posters for your classroom, Zazzle is one place you might look.  Anyone can upload a poster (so if you need to make one, and just want someone to ship you a nice laminated copy, you can do that here). Here’s what a search for Periodic Table (restricted to Posters only) gave [...]

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Grants and Cheap Materials for Teachers

October 25, 2010

I’ve been compiling this list for a little while.  Please feel free to add to it. First, you can always make stuff with string and duct tape, using sites like the Exploratorium Science Snacks. But, if you need money: Grants Donors Choose. This program connects potential donors to classrooms.  As a teacher, you indicate your [...]

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This is a news website article about a scientific paper

October 22, 2010

Want to get meta?  In the spirit of Moser’s This is the Title of This Story, Which is Found Several Times In the Story Itself (if you don’t know that one, go read it NOW) — Martin Robbins (The Guardian) has truly outdone himself by poking fun at what passes for science news reporting on [...]

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American Radio Works — Great radio pieces about education

October 20, 2010

I’m an avid podcast listener — this is how I get my information about the world, listening to wonderfully produced audio pieces while I drive around doing errands.  I recently discovered American Radio Works – a set of documentarians from American Public Media.  They do TV documentaries, but also these wonderful, well-researched and well-produced radio [...]

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Some great stuff from the blogosphere this month

October 20, 2010

As usual, I’m not the only one with witty, elegant prose.  So, a shout-out to some of the great stuff that has been posted out there.  Isn’t the internet nifty? Project Stratosphere. This is a sort of educational citizen-science project.  They’ll   launch a series of small balloons into the high atmosphere to gather data, [...]

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Science activities for Halloween! (Repost)

October 18, 2010

This is a repost from October 2009. Enjoy! With halloween fast approaching, it’s time to take advantage of a frivolous holiday to do some fun science stuff. No post about Halloween would be complete without a reference to the Grossology site. Scroll down for “lab activities”: This gets high marks from one teacher who says, [...]

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What we’re NOT doing to train future physics teachers

October 14, 2010

Yesterday, we had a fascinating, but sobering, presentation from a group of physics educators charged with giving the nation a snapshot of how well we’re doing in training the next generation of physics educators.  It’s a pretty grim picture.  “Students who are becoming physics teachers are doing it on their own,” said David Meltzer, “and [...]

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The disappearance of the final exam

October 13, 2010

Today we have a guest post from Olivia Coleman (who contributes to another blog).  Her post on the decline of the final exam follows on the heels of an interesting article in the Boston Globe — “The Test Has Been Canceled” — which generated quite a bit of buzz on the PHYSLRNR listserv, where geeks [...]

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September 27th – Free Webinar on Effective Use of Clickers

September 17, 2010

I’m going to be offering a one-hour free webinar on September 27th at 11 am MST on effective use of clickers.  This will be targeted to college faculty teaching all disciplines, but those of you in K12 will certainly be able to see how the messages apply to your environment.  Please consider joining us!  This [...]

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How do teachers organize their stuff?

September 13, 2010

Maybe teachers could have used this post during the summer, when you — theoretically — had some time to pay to organization. Still, I collected this short list of helpful tips from a listserv a while ago, and wanted to share. For example, how do you keep your hands-on activities organized?  .  This link will [...]

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131 Tips for New Teachers

September 9, 2010

One of my newly favorite blogs, Free Technology for Teachers, polled their readers for their tips and advice for new teachers.  The result is a neat little Google presentation, included below.  Some sample tips were: Create an “absent” box for absent students Develop a professional learning community; find a mentor Be consistent and respectful Know [...]

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Turn your iPhone into a microscope

September 9, 2010

How cool is this?  That image, below, was taken with a iPhone with a cheap microscope attached onto the camera.  Stunning!  Thanks to Crabfu for creating it, and to Teach42 for bringing my attention to it.

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Teach Physics promotional video

September 6, 2010

I keep meaning to post about this — the PhysTEC project has created a short (5 minute) video on physics teaching as a great career option. They’re suggesting that departments post this on their websites to promote careers in teaching physics. It’s a nicely done little video, and not a bad idea to raise awareness [...]

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Using undergraduates to support your courses — Teaching with Learning Assistants

September 3, 2010

I’m happy to announce that one of the fruits of my labors this summer — a module on Teaching with Learning Assistants at Carleton College’s Science Education Resource Center has now been published! From the site: Learning Assistants are talented undergraduate students, primarily in mathematics and the sciences, chosen for their broad interest in teaching [...]

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Just look down three posts…

September 2, 2010

For all you nice physicists who are hitting the blog because of the shout-out in the AAPT e-NNOUNCER, just scroll down three blog posts to find my listing of all my posts from AAPT. I welcome guest posts about sessions that I didn’t make it to! Just drop me a note at stephanie (at) sciencegeekgirl [...]

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Are standardized tests biased against students who don’t give a shit?

August 30, 2010

Pardon the curse-word, but I just had to share this wonderful little piece from the Onion. And since I would otherwise get taken to task for “taking myself too seriously” I won’t even make any sort of meta-comments on student motivation or other things that we education-types worry about. What’s the point?  It’s just funny.  [...]

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Teacher-tested climate change lessons

August 26, 2010

I was excited to see this recent posting from my institution, CU Boulder. If you’re a teacher looking to teach climate change in the classroom, a group of scientists, science education researchers, and middle and high-school teachers have developed and refined a set of problem-based lessons: Visit them at LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu They say: The result is [...]

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All my posts from AAPT (#aaptsm10)

August 23, 2010

For those of you who wanted them all in one place (and I’m one of those people) here are all the posts that I wrote from the recent Physics Teacher AAPT/PERC physics teacher conferences: Facing Facebook:  Social media in and out of the classroom The Magic of the Middle Division: Changing Classroom Norms Students’ understanding [...]

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Facing Facebook: Social media in and out of the classroom

August 21, 2010

Your students are already using tools like Facebook and Twitter. In fact, they’re often using them when you’d rather they’d be doing something else (like paying attention in class). How can we turn the potential obstacles of Web 2.0 and social media into an opportunity for effective teaching and learning? I recently gave an overview [...]

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The Magic of the Middle Division: Changing classroom norms (#aaptsm10)

August 18, 2010

I’m finally getting a chance to finish my blog posts from the summer meeting of AAPT.  There’s just one more talk that I wanted to share with any of you who couldn’t be there – another delightful presentation from Corinne Manogue of Oregon State University.  Corinne is a colleague, we’ve both been working on creating [...]

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