The APS DPP is Coming!

I will give you a few moments to catch your breath before providing the details. For those of you who are not excited after reading the headline, here is why you should be. The American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics offers one of the best educational outreach programs of any professional society. They know what professional development is useful to teachers and how to make teachers feel as important as they really are. If you have been lucky enough to attend one of their meetings when it was in your area then you know what I am talking about. This year's meeting will be in San Jose, California. That makes it worth the drive for thousands of science teachers from Sacramento to San Luis Obispo. They offer 3 days of educational outreach at their annual meeting, Science Teacher Day for teachers and the Plasma Science Expo for students.

Science Teacher Day will start at 8:00 AM on November 1 at the San Jose Hilton, registration is open now. This event will be popular and registration is limited so do it early. After an introductory breakfast, it is off to Plasma 101 for Session 1. Plasma 101 has two levels, one for middle school teachers and one for high school teachers. The remaining workshop presenters can now build on what was learned in Plasma 101. After Session 1, teachers pick 2 from the 6 workshop choices that are offered in Sessions 2 and 3. These workshops are full of ideas that can be used in the classroom to teach topics like the electromagnetic spectrum, properties of light, Newton's Laws, astrophysics, and plasma physics. They are appropriate for both middle and high school teachers. The workshops are conducted by the same scientists that are participating in the conference. You can read the workshop descriptions on the APS DPP Outreach website. After the workshops a white-tablecloth luncheon is served and the teachers are treated to a keynote talk by one of the scientists. All teachers go home with a goodie bag filled with educational materials. Here is what one teacher had to say after the Salt Lake City Science Teacher's Day:

Following Science Teachers Day is an open house consisting of educational exhibits by many of the institutions that participate in the conference. This Plasma Science Expo is like a hands-on science museum where each exhibit is staffed by working scientists. Teachers are invited to bring their classes to San Jose's McEnery Convention Center on either of these two days, November 3 and 4. It is open to the public for free on November 3 from 6:00 to 8:30 PM. Just like Science Teacher Day, registration is required and limited. There are some funds available to help pay for buses and substitute pay, so register early.

As part of my role as a Faculty Scholar at LLNL, I have attended the APS DPP conference in Denver, Dallas, Chicago, and Salt Lake City to help conduct one of the workshops. I was able to stay for the Plasma Science Expo in Chicago to help staff the LLNL booth. I work with Don Correll, the former head of the Fusion Energy Program at LLNL and Steve Allen, a magnetic fusion scientist at LLNL and General Atomics. In addition to being leaders in their field, they are both committed to helping improve science education through outreach activities like those at the APS DPP meeting. I am excited about working with them again in San Jose after a 5 year hiatus. We will be conducting the Light and the Nature of Matter workshop at the Science Teacher Day. I hope to see you there. If you have questions, see the links in this post or contact Deedee Ortiz-Arias at dortiz@pppl.gov or (609) 243-2785.

NGSS Evidence Statements

At the recent American Association of Physics Teachers Summer Meeting in Sacramento there was an NGSS strand of workshops. (Dan Burns and I presented about Crash Cushions as well) Someone mentioned that they were not looking at the colorful NGSS boxes but the Evidence Statements to lead their NGSS implementation. I had not heard of these so I looked them up and they are indeed helpful.

You can search for the Evidence Statements here. You can search by Grade (I chose high school), Discipline (Physics is with Chemistry under "Physical Science") and then click "Submit" to see all of them. Depending on how your particular school or district has divided Physical Science into Chemistry and Physics the Performance Objectives you need to look at may vary. For my district I printed pages 16-27 and 30-41.

This is a screenshot of page 16 of that full file so let's break that box down. [more description is available here in a 2013 NSTA graphic called "Inside the NGSS Box] If you're already familiar with the basic box breakdown you can scroll down below the image.

The "HS-PS2-1" title means "High School Physical Science;" 2-1 is for that specific Performance Objective within this grade level discipline.

The Performance Expectation is just that, a description of what students are expected to be able to do (perform). There are often Clarification Statements and Assessment Boundary descriptions that clarify how students will be assessed. For example, these statements in this example assure us our students will only be asked about one dimensional motion and nothing approaching the speed of light. 

The Science and Engineering Practices section details the skills you students should be able to apply to this problem. [Spoiler: your students will probably be using more than just these skills.] These are practices that you may want to focus on to learn this concept.

The Disciplinary Core Ideas section details which concepts are being assessed in this Performance Expectation. I like to write in my extra learning objectives into this section. For example in my forces unit I have additional learning objectives about Newton's First and Third Laws of Motion because I think those are important too.

Finally the Crosscutting Concepts section describes major themes that students should be exposed to in all their science classes throughout their years. 

But ah ha! There's the new stuff. On this document there is a table titled "Observable features of the student performance by the end of the course:" that are called Evidence Statements. I find the title awkwardly worded; and have not been able to find a list of just these statements without the boxes above. 

From the NGSS website: "NGSS Evidence Statements provide educators with additional detail on what students should know and be able to do. These are statements of observable and measureable components that, if met, will satisfy NGSS performance expectations."

Within the 17 page "Introduction and Overview" document (which I do actually recommend reading) I found this:
"The evidence statements, as described here, describe what teachers or assessors would observe (not infer) from successful student performance of each performance expectation (PE). The evidence statements can serve as supporting materials for the design of curriculum and assessments. In the NGSS, each PE is accompanied by a foundation box with associated practice, core idea, and crosscutting concept. The evidence statements expand this initial structure to include specific, observable components of student performance that would demonstrate integrated proficiency by using all of the necessary tenets of the practice to demonstrate understanding of the disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) through the lens of the crosscutting concepts (CCC)."

That first line says it all, Evidence Statements "describe what teachers ... would observe (not infer) from successful student performance..."

But I want to do what I want to do! [Yes I can hear you yelling at your screen.] These Evidence Statements are meant to clarify, to aid you with your lesson planning, not replace them. From the same document: 
"...the evidence statements are written to provide more clarity about what the PEs ask students to demonstrate, these statements are not sufficient to replace lesson plans or assessment items; asking students to simply perform the PEs verbatim would not be useful for instruction or assessment." 

So if you've felt like you've been guessing how to get your students to a point where they could meet those Performance Expectations, you know have a bit of a road map. That's a bit of relief in the last few days of July.

The NCNAAPT Fall 2013 Conference is November 15-16 in Concord

The Northern California and Nevada section of the American Association of Physics Teachers will be gathering for its Fall Conference in Concord, California on Friday and Saturday, November 15 and 16.

The main meeting is on Saturday at Carondelet High School. Friday's social activities center around the Joint Genome Institute in very nearby Walnut Creek.

For the locations map and full program, follow the link below.

NCNAAPT Fall 2013 Conference Details

AAPT SM13 Personal Jumblepost

This will be the reservoir for the union of the sets AAPT SM13 and Dean Baird. It will evolve a bit in the near term and will require a bit of patience while I get it all together (hence references with no links). And it may appear to be a wee bit random.

First and foremost: my groupie pic with my former student and current physics teaching "neighbor," Jessica Scheimer. We're showing off my bootleg AAPT SM13 T-shirt design. (Click to embiggen.)

W42 Skepticism in the Classroom went very well indeed, despite the absence of my co-conspirator, Matt Lowry. Dean Baird's SitC Page. Matt Lowry's SitC Page.

Evidence of the High School Share-a-Thon will go here once I am made aware of it.

Bruce Mason prepared a list from the Video Share-a-thon (CKRL05).

There's an App for that Crackerbarrel session info

Demo Show Ballet
Photographs I recorded from the second balcony. (Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ200)



High speed video of the dancers: Vid1 Vid2 Vid3







Other high speed vids from the show

Voodoo Doughnut

This Saturday: SkeptiCal in Berkeley

The unusual scheduling of this year's AAPT Summer Meeting in Portland squeezed me out of attending The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas this year.

But I can still get my "skepticon" on at SkeptiCal13. It's happening this Saturday, June 15, at the Berkeley Marina Doubletree.

Great speakers, including Eugenie Scott, D.J. Grothe, Julia Galef, and James Randi (via Skype).

A busy day is planned. Check this schedule.

I am registered and raring to go.