Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - Video Question Sets

First and most importantly, a third season of Cosmos is in production for a Spring, 2019 release. I believe the appropriate term of art here is "Squee!" My Close, Personal Friend, Neil deGrasse Tyson will once again be hosting. The complete title is Cosmos: Possible Worlds. Cosmos aficionados may refer to it as Cosmos 2019 or Cosmos: PW. I look forward to its addition alongside Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) and Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980).



In other Cosmos news, I have created video questions sets: student sheets and answer keys to accompany Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Each of the 13 episodes gets a two-sided sheet of questions that students can answer while the episode plays. Question types vary, but are intended for quick, short responses.

Some video question companions launch into deep, probing questions that take students out of the presentation. Not these. The goal of these questions is to help students maintain focus on the episode while it plays. I leave the deep questions to classroom instructors.

I've added this set to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store: The Lessons of Phyz. My question sets for the now-extinct high school adaptation of The Mechanical Universe are already posted there. Who knows what will be next.

In any case, here's a direct link to the Cosmos set:

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - Video Question Sets

I have used these sets in my AP Physics 2 course and in my Conceptual Physics course. We watch approximately one episode per unit as part of the ongoing skepticism and critical thinking component of the course curriculum.

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