My district bans a Jewish surname...

...from emails sent to district-managed student accounts. Here's the story:

In COVID-era Distance Learning, I have found Socrative to be a useful platform for administering student assessments. Among its useful features is the ability to send students their own individual scored test, showing which questions they answered correctly and which ones they answered incorrectly. The results can be sent to student email accounts with the push of a button. [You are correct to assume the instructor had to enter those email addresses into Socrative. But it's a one-time investment.]

This is a great feature for when we do Test Correction Journals.

But in my very first attempt to leverage this feature, it failed. I had, of course, tested the feature before using it with students. And it worked. But when I sent my students their test results, students insisted they did not receive them. I tried it using Chrome, I tried it using Firefox. Nothing worked. I had to create a privacy-respecting, individualized way to tell students which specific test items they missed. I created one breakout room per student, joined each one—one at a time, and announced which items they missed. While class time was burning.

I quickly came up with a functional workaround for the next period, but it fell short of what I needed it to do. And why didn't the student email solution work? 

Students suggested that the district blocks third party emails from student accounts. The vendor, Socrative, meets all legal privacy standards. District tech services said they do not block third parties. Further investigation indicated the emails were blocked because they contained objectionable content. That offensive content appeared in the following question. TW: "Objectionable Content."

[Secrets of the Psychics] Psychologist and former palm-reader Ray Hyman found that he had the greatest success with clients when he  

A. gave a straight-up reading in accordance with palm-reading guidelines 

B. told clients the opposite of what he saw in their palms 

C. imagined that he lived in an earlier era 

D. assumed his clients were skeptical of palm-reading and his abilities

There it is: the objectionable content, clear as day. What's that? You didn't see it? Look again. "hymen" is right in there. Prurient anatomical terminology titillation that would offend any community's standards of propriety. High school students must be protected from such filth.

Okay, not "hymen" exactly, but "hyman," a simple misspelling of a highly salacious, practically pornographic word. Okay, not "hymen" or "hyman" exactly, but "Hyman," a not uncommon Jewish surname. I presume my college hall mate's name, Steve Hayman would trigger that comprehensive filter, too, lest bad actors use simple misspellings to skirt content filters. 

Some might judge the content filtering of Jewish surnames (that are not anatomical terms) as anti-semitic. I'm confident the San Juan Unified School District doesn't intend it that way, but here we are. "Ray Hyman" triggered a full and immediate IP ban due to the district's sweeping content blocking protocols. 

I was given no reason to hope that this filter would be removed by my district's tech services, now that they are aware of the embarrassing error. It seemed as if the onus was on me not to include terms that would trigger bans, and I should just know what all those terms are.

The filtering is clearly far too aggressive and highly impractical. Blocking my instructional program (without notification) for the "crime" of including a Jewish scholar's name? That's beyond a bad look.

It's indefensibly paranoid and ignorant, in my assessment.

UPDATE: This is apparently just another instance of The Scunthorpe Problem, or as Tom Scott calls it, The Peniston Problem. 

How to teach a class you've never taught before

Short answer: work hard.

Oh you wanted specifics? Keep reading.

One of the intricacies of education is that we can do the same thing year after year but nothing is the same or we can teach a completely different class and everything is still the same. Here are two examples:

I taught Physics every year for ten years. In that time period there have been new national and state standards implemented, two major bell schedule adjustments changing the number of minutes per day and week, furlough days have come and gone, new rallies and school traditions take instructional time, I have changed rooms four times, decided to forgo homework and gotten a new textbook twice. While I have taught "Physics" for ten years the class I would teach now is not the same as when I started.

I have also taught Conceptual Physics seven times in ten years. Several times there was a year in between in which I did not teach it. The population changed from freshmen only to freshmen and English Language Learners to open to all students to freshmen and special education only. The book has not changed but I have also had the same schedule and calendar changes I experienced for Physics. Because the class was meant to sere students that need additional support many of the pedagogical approaches and project based learning remains the same.

It can be hard to teach a course you have taught before with textbook or schedule or population or calendar changes. And then you may have to teach something completely different. Physics teachers often have to teach non-Physics courses because of traditionally lower enrollment in Physics classes compared to say Chemistry. In some schools they are the only Physics teacher and thus teach multiple levels. We tend to have more preps (different classes to teach) and change them up more often than other science disciplines. In your career you will probably at least once have to teach a brand-new-to-you course that makes you feel like a new teacher all over again. That's what happened to me this year with AP Physics C.

While I would love to say I met the challenge gracefully with my years of experience that was not always the case. Sometimes the workload crushed me. It definitely left my family neglected, our house in disorder and our lives chaotic. But as the end of the year approached I found that it got easier, not because the curriculum did but because I had developed a process. I found, through absolute trial and error, what helped me and what did not. I realized I went through the same steps in the same order at the start of each unit and it started to get (incrementally) easier.

And thus I decided to share, not because it is innovative or particularly amazing but because it could be helpful. I know someone out there, experienced or not, will be told in the coming weeks that they will be teaching (gulp) some class brand-new to them. It is daunting, makes you question whatever skills you thought you had and the workload downright sucks. So if some of this process helps you, great. If not, hopefully it helps lead you to your own.

Start with what you are given:
If you are inheriting the course from someone else you may find that you have also inherited a few filing cabinets worth of material. Or binders. Or shelves and shelves of "teacher resources." It is time consuming but worth it to go through this materials and do a first sort of what is and is not useful. Ditch the floppy disc versions of your textbook's teacher materials; ditch multiple copies of supplemental materials (unless there is more than one teacher). Check with your district about district copies of these resources, they may wish to consolidate extras in their warehouse for potential future use. You don't have to read every piece of paper left for you in a file cabinet now, you don't have to decide to adopt everything they left for you but you may want to keep it to give yourself the option.

As I moved into my new room this year there were eight total file cabinet drawers left for me for Physics and AP Physics. In my first sort I kept one copy of everything. I wanted to be able to read the labs he wrote but figured even if I decided to do the same ones I would probably be retyping it. I wanted to be able to see what his tests looked like, but knew I didn't need a class set. I kept a copy of his handwritten lecture notes so I could see how he implemented material, even though I planned to make powerpoints. I kept the manila folders, overheads and single sided paper to reuse as scrap paper. In the end, I filled four full size recycling bins with the paper I discarded, that was just the double-sided stuff. What I kept fit in two 4" binders in page protectors. I separated the stuff by unit, or at least by what I thought was by unit at the time. I was left with no digital files, except for uneditable pdfs I was able to download from  his website before the district took it down.

As the year has progressed I started every unit going through what I was left. I looked over and digitized the lecture notes (you can copy it into a tablet or just scan it) to see how the material was presented before. If there was a worksheet that I wanted to use I would retype it as it was at first. I then did the worksheet myself and edited it how I wanted to for my own kids. Basically I took a look at what was done before as a guide, not to follow exactly but just for comparison. It provided a place to start, so I didn't have to start from scratch. There were plenty of worksheets, labs, etc. that I took this second look to and tossed aside. If you are lucky enough to start a new-to-you course that someone else teaches, start with everything they have. You can change things but it is invaluable to see how someone else teaches it, for better or worse.

Textbook resources:
While you may or may not use your textbook, electronic or print, your district has probably adopted one. Looking through it can be helpful if you have to learn or relearn material. I would read and take notes on each chapter, so that I could experience how the material was introduced just like my kids would. Most publishers have digital teacher resources now, either for download or on their website. My publisher has answer keys, lecture powerpoints, test banks, image galleries, simulations and more. So as to not re-invent the wheel, for each unit I started my lecture powerpoints using the textbook ones as a base. As the  year progressed less and less of the original remained but it saved me time when I had so little. While using pre-made resources is not ideal, you should personalize your curriculum for yourself and your students, it is not the worst starting place. In later years of teaching the course you will probably use your own materials more and more.

Find reliable resources:
No class should be taught by textbook alone. Finding a few trusted and reliable resources for your class is important. This may be a professional networking site or another teacher's website or even social media. I found helpful materials on a wiki page, PrettyGoodPhysics, that will sadly need to relocate. There were a few YouTube Channels that provided consistently good tutorials by subject for myself and my students. Sometimes it would be for a different course (AP Physics 1, 2 or Honors Physics) but good video lessons are good video lessons regardless. I recommend Flipping Physics, Dan Fullerton's APlusPhysics, Mrs. Twu's video tutorials and  AKLectures Physics series. If I needed to review a topic, or more importantly to learn what to emphasize for my students, it was very helpful watching other teachers teach it.

Social media turned out to be one of my greatest resources this year. I was able to find other physics teachers I did not know on Twitter and could follow or use hashtags like #APphysicsC to find resources by course. I was able to share data that didn't make sense and tag the equipment manufacturer who would often very quickly respond with suggestions. I once tagged @VernierST in the middle of a class period about weird looking data and got a response before my students left that period. They would continue to work with me for days as I tried to troubleshoot. Other teachers could jump on the thread and make suggestions or share sample data in the worst case scenario that nothing worked. I could share pictures of student work that made me scratch my head, asking more experienced teachers how I could prevent such incorrect problem solving in the future. As other teachers shared pictures of labs or demos they were doing I could save the picture for future use. I've even reached out to individuals to ask for their lab write-ups, ask follow-up questions or for advice. And they respond! Teachers usually like to help other teachers and many have been amazingly generous, sending me full curriculum guides, sample lecture notes, etc.

And perhaps most importantly, they don't judge much. On Twitter and on the College Board AP Physics C list serve I have posted problems that I cannot solve, or conceptual issues I still have that are preventing me from teaching it to my students. More experienced teachers have been able to respond with suggestions, solutions or alternate ways of approaching the problem. Everyone was patient as I usually started out my requests with "Since it's my first year teaching #APphysicsC..." And since I was putting that question out to anyone who could answer, people that could would and I would crowdsource some great solutions.

I also collected textbooks. Luckily we just adopted new AP textbooks so we had a textbooks from all the big publishers who had sent materials during the adoption process. I currently have six textbooks on my table, and I would often flip through all of them. For each chapter I would look through them to see if the example problems were different, how the material was grouped or arranged and to see what was emphasized. If my adopted textbook emphasized a type of problem that didn't appear in the other textbooks it helped confirm what was outside of the scope of the class.

Ask for help:
You know you should but it may still be difficult to admit that you don't know everything (yet) about your new course and you need help. Sometimes it was about the scope of the course, as my textbook includes a lot more than what is included on the AP Physics C exams. Sometimes the problem I tried to do out of the back of the chapter or on a worksheet I found was coming out wrong or I didn't have the answer to check it. Whatever it was I found that there were a few people I could ask for help. Most I knew personally through NCNAAPT but some I had met through my AP summer training or interactions online. I tried to spread out my questions, rotating through my "will help me" rolodex so that I did not take advantage of those willing to help me. I tried to figure it out by myself and not have to ask unless I was really stuck. My friends seemed to know this and did everything they could to help me when I asked.

Get trained:
I am a firm believer in proper science teaching professional development. Not all PD is good, don't get me wrong, but there are some consistently helpful training opportunities I always enjoy. For new teachers PTSOS and the Exploratorium's New teacher Institute of course. The national AAPT Summer and Winter meetings and your local AAPT meetings are full of the best-of-the-best resources shared among physics teachers. I find that the down-time in between workshops with other teachers can spark the best conversations and lead to lots of good shared ideas.

If the new-to-you course is an College Board Advanced Placement one you can also take a sanctioned AP training. They can be pricey but are often offered throughout the year. I had a hard time finding summer training for AP Physics C last year and had to travel to Texas to attend one. While it was helpful, I did not feel that one was enough to be comfortable teaching the course. I asked my district to send me to another one this summer and I'm crossing my fingers that there is more to learn.

Practice Practice Practice:
I found that, much like my students, I benefited from lots of practice. While I wouldn't do every problem in my textbook, I would probably work through twice as many as my students. I tried to do every conceptual question and did the ones that another AP Physics teacher using my book assigned. I figured that this more experienced teacher had probably already weeded out the problems that were too hard or awkward and these problems would be good for my students. Sometimes these still tripped me up and I decided early on that if I couldn't do the problem, I would not assign it to my students. By doing more problems I was able to see patterns in how the questions were asked or what they were asking for as well as improve my own problem solving technique. This also meant when it came to assessments I had more problems that I could solve then I had given to students to use.

One particularly helpful resource was an online workbook of released AP multiple choice and free response problems arranged by subject. This meant that I could look through the simple harmonic motion section and see all the problems ever asked on the AP exam about SHM. I could pick and choose the problems I wanted, combined with the textbook's test bank, to make my own tests. Sometimes working through all these extra problems seemed time consuming, especially if I wasn't going to assign them all, but overall it really helped my understanding.

Get organized:
This is easier for some than others, and I am not saying that everyone has to be a super clean desk all the time, but, if you are collecting new resources for a new class that doesn't do you any good if you can't find the cool thing your saved when the time comes. The easiest method is to create a folder for each unit and throw it all in there. At the start of the year I made a folder for each section of the AP Physics C objectives so that when I found a few resource I could sort it appropriately. This meant that prior to the start of the unit I would have maybe half a dozen to a dozen files before I really started to build the unit. As the unit progressed I would sort what I was using from the extra resources I wanted to keep from the assessments I would give. Since I tended to save everything I could get my hands on I would end up with a lot of files. For example, I started my magnetic field and forces unit with 5 digital files and two weeks later, before I've even written their test, I have 150.

Take care of you:
At the risk of sounding like a spa commercial, you need to take time out for yourself. Even though I was part time, developing new curriculum this year became my life. It was not unusual for me to work 12 hours a day, as in actual sitting down work, not just being awake for that long. I neglected my hobbies, cleaning, my health, because the work "had to get done." It will be the most work you've done outside of your first year to develop a new curriculum. Apologize to your family up front. However, do not lose yourself to it. Prior to this year I was trying to work on life-work balance and I failed miserably this year. I wish I had taken more breaks, spent more time with my kids, etc. but I didn't know how to get all my work done and do everything else. It got better as I developed this process and that's why I'm sharing. Hopefully having a game plan will help you develop your new-to-you course without drowning in your work. A burnt out teacher is not a helpful teacher.

To summarize:
1. Start with what you are given.
2. Try textbook resources.
3. Find reliable resources
4. Ask for help
5. Get trained
6. Practice Practice Practice
7. Get organized
8. Take care of you.

That's it, just 8 easy steps! (Totally sarcastic by the way)

It will be tough but by trying to focus on what I knew worked for me, I've almost gotten through it. As I can almost see the bright light on the other side believe me when I say you will too. Good luck!

Mechanical Universe High School Video Questions

Some of us are old enough to remember physics lectures. I may have even dabbled in that art during the first five years of my career. But its appeal faded as I placed increasing emphasis on more active learning techniques. The closest I get to lecture is guided discussion into a topic. 

We spend more time in laboratory, demonstration, and experimental activities these days.

But I do not banish all exposition as an enemy of learning. I outsource that task to the likes of Paul Hewitt (via Conceptual Physics Alive!) and The Mechanical Universe, especially the High School Adaptation. 

The High School Adaptation was originally released in oddly-grouped quads. For my purposes, I rearranged the episodes into sets that made more sense to me.

I couldn't show episodes of either series until I had question sets to accompany them. Active engagement in an otherwise passive activity, I suppose. The question sets I wrote for Conceptual Physics Alive! are distributed by Arbor Scientific. (You can get seven sets for free at the link.)

The sets of questions I developed to accompany The Mechanical Universe High School Adaptation episodes is now distributed at Teachers Pay Teachers: The Lessons of Phyz.

When I create a set of video questions for in-class viewing, I try to produce two different worksheets to diminish any wandering eyes tendencies of side-by-side table partners. I use a heavy font to increase legibility in low light since videos are often shown in diminished classroom illumination. The questions are to be answered while the video is playing.

The questions are also varied in type: fill in the blank, multiple choice, matching, and short answer. There are often illustrations involved in the questions. Importantly, these are low-level questions. They are not deep; they do not involve synthesis. They are not prompts for paragraph-length reflections. Their purpose is to keep students connected to the lesson in real time.

Too many video question sets I see strike me as impractical for real-time responses. They shoot for the upper reaches of the Bloom's Taxonomy mountain. I love high-level questions and use them as much as I can. But not during video play. Other question sets are wire-to-wire fill-in-the-blanks from the text of the narration. That's a bit extreme at the other end. I prefer to mix it up a bit while keeping it simple.

In any case, here are the sets of The Mechanical Universe High School Adaptation questions I've posted to TpT.

Set 1: Motion and Forces

The Law of Falling Bodies · The Law of Inertia · Newton's Laws · Moving in Circles

Set 2: Gravity

Kepler's Laws · The Apple and the Moon · Navigating in Space · Curved Space and Black Holes

Set 3: Conservation

Conservation of Energy · Conservation of Momentum · Angular Momentum

Set 4: Heat, Vibrations, and Waves

Temperature and the Gas Laws · Harmonic Motion · Introduction to Waves

Set 5: Electrostatics

Electric Fields and Forces · Equipotentials and Fields · Potential and Capacitance · The Millikan Experiment

Set 6: Circuits and Magnetism

Simple DC Circuits · Magnetic Fields · Electromagnetic Induction · Alternating Current

Set 7: Light and The Atom

Wave Nature of Light · Models of the Atom · Wave-Particle Duality

And now the bad news: If you don't already have the High School Adaptation edits of The Mechanical Universe, you can't really get them anymore. Intelecom had the distribution rights once upon a time, but it appears they have since dropped it from their offerings. If you're a card-carrying member of a library that subscribes to the Hoopla media service, you're in luck.

So much for my schemes of early retirement...

Making engagement visual

At semester's end, it's possible to look back and see how student engagement in the course manifested itself into semester grades.

Students who perform well on tests and labs naturally percolate to the top. But those who don't excel in those objective measures have alternate routes to good grades in my courses.

During the semester, "extra credit" (credit toward the final: CTF) is awarded in dribs and drabs for various tasks and in-class competitions. Completing paperwork associated with the beginning of the school year and team performance in our egg-toss competition are typical first-semester sources. The credit is accumulated through the semester, but only becomes active as an addition to the final exam score. Some teachers add in extra credit as it comes in. That leads to disappointment when final exam scores are low. Adding it to final exam scores at the end of the semester leads to delight similar to finding money under the cushions of the sofa/couch/davenport.

More importantly in my Physics (PHY) and Conceptual Physics (CP) courses, students can earn back points lost on unit tests. The process is called Test Correction Journal. Students write "journal entries" for each item they missed on a unit test and reflect on why they were drawn to a wrong answer over the right answer. Later, a quiz is given consisting of questions from the original test. If they get 10 out 10 on the quiz, they earn back half the points they missed on the test. If they 9/10, they get 90% of half the points they missed, etc.. A 60 can turn into an 80 and 40 into a 70. A 90 can turn into a 95. The more help you need, the more help TCJs provide.

Neither CTF nor TCJs depend on rapid assimilation of course content. But they do depend largely on engagement. Sometimes students who miss many items on a unit test cannot finish the journaling process that we begin during class time. They need to come it at lunch or after school during an approximately two-week window to finish the journal. Only students with completed journals are allowed to take the quiz that will earn their missed test points back.

Students who disengage from TCJs create and expand a gap between themselves and those who are engaged. My engaged students earn only As and Bs. But Cs, Ds, and Fs are given every semester, as many students elect to disengage.

The listings below are actual student data. Each is a period, sorted by points earned. I used Excel's conditional formatting to color the cells in a spectrum from top-score green to bottom-score red, with yellow in between. The next column colors CTF points on a same basis (green good; red bad). Then (for PHY classes), it's the TCJ column with the same color scheme. The last column shows the final exam raw score out of 50. The top number in each column show the maximum value possible.

The pattern is fairly consistent, with anomalies here and there. Nothing to shatter the Earth here. I just wanted to see how well the seemingly nebulous "engagement" tracks to overall class performance. Teachers know this pattern is really the only one that's possible. Students don't always have an intuitive understanding of it. Some will see the evidence and reject it nonetheless.

Those students believe it's possible to get a top score with minimal engagement. It's mathematically possible. It just never happens. They may also fear that investing in full engagement will not be rewarded in a top score. Yet we don't find a red Points value followed by green CTF and TCJ columns. That's actually much less mathematically possible, given what TCJs do.

March for Science: Dean's Whys and Wherefores

When murmurs of The March for Science began circulating, I raised my antennae. When the date was announced, I booked a hotel room in DC and burned a bushel of frequent flyer miles to reserve round trip flights on Southwest.

I harbored a strongly-held personal opinion that I needed to be part of it. In the early days of planning, it wasn't obvious that there would be satellite marches. The groundswell of support made satellites a reasonable speculation. Still though, I wanted to be at ground zero.

As the days and weeks passed, others have been eloquent about why this march needed to be held. Why a fist needed to be raised. Why voices needed to be heard.

There were also the predictable backlashes to this backlash. Every call to action--real or virtual--is guaranteed to produce axe-grinding finger-waggers. "You need to not do that thing you intend to do; instead, you need to take up arms for my cause. If my cause wins, the world will be free of all problems—this one included!" This is the internet-generation's version of "Follow me; I'll make your crops grow!" I cast those aside and pressed on.

Another flavor of marginalization that often arises among the complacent comes in the form of the innocently dismissive question, "What do you hope to accomplish?" No matter how insightful the answer, the follow-up will be to suggest that you could accomplish those goals without a high-profile march/protest. Valid responses to the question vary, and bear a modicum of uncertainty. The question is intended to put participants on the defensive. The hoped-for change will not materialize immediately at the conclusion of the march, so the march was pointless.

As a seasoned debater, I never take such obvious bait. Instead, I prefer to turn the question around. I know—with absolute certainty—exactly what would be accomplished by not marching. Acceptance of an Administration that has made an enemy of science. Sweeping budget cuts for research. Denial of settled science. Ceding leadership in science and technology to China and India. Tacit approval for going full bore in the destruction of the environment in the US and around the world.

Science is undeniably the single best method that humans have developed to determine the truth of the reality in which they live. It's success is unmatched by any other method ever devised.

Right now, science is under attack. And it's losing. The American voters spoke in November, and the minority elected the anti-Science narcissist actively favored by Vladimir Putin. The Vice-President and the Secretary of Education are Creationists. The President thinks Climate Change is a tactical political concoction of the Chinese. The chief of the EPA has long been an enemy of environmental protection.

So we march to support the principles of science. Principles that helped make the United States a great nation.

A nation makes an enemy of science at its own peril. Some nations have done so. They are not nations many American is eager to migrate to.

My friend, Neil deGrasse Tyson, says it much better than I do.



In my next post, "The Day Of," I'll tell the story of my Earth Day 2017 in Washington, DC: The March for Science.

EnCorps Encore

The EnCorps STEM Teachers Program contacted me in early 2014 to ask if I could present at one of their programs. After learning more about their mission to recruit, help transition and support experienced STEM professionals in their efforts become teachers, I agreed.

I was impressed when their executive director, Elaine Guarnieri-Nunn, came to Los Gatos High School to meet with me. She described the EnCorps program and we discussed my own transition from an aerospace engineer to a high school science teacher. I recalled it being difficult to get accurate information about what was required to become a teacher. I remember resenting being told by the math credential department at San Jose State University that I was not qualified to enter their program with "only" a BS in aerospace engineering and eight years of experience as an astrodynamicist.

I also remember considering changing my mind about becoming a teacher because of the murky bureaucracy I was trying to navigate. I can't help but wonder how many potentially great teachers have changed their mind about leaving their current profession by the unnecessary and burdensome requirements and financial costs of the credential process. Programs like EnCorps can help them navigate these difficulties and inspire them to continue.

My first Encorps program was the Northern California Spring Institute held at Microsoft in Mountain View California in 2014. One of the sessions gave teaching job application tips. It included mock job interviews conducted by a local middle school principal. There was a session on using maker activities in the classroom, and breakout sessions for prospective math and science teachers. 

I was in charge of the session for science teachers. I presented Peer Instruction and other techniques for making classroom instruction interactive to about 20 EnCorps participants. The day included time scheduled for the EnCorps participants to network. Hearing them talk about what they were going through brought back memories of my own experience. It sounded like things had not improved much for those wanting to change careers to teaching. The existence of the EnCorps program was a ray of hope.

I didn't hear from EnCorps again until early this year when their new executive director, Katherine Wilcox, asked me to present at their Summer Residential Institute in June. I agreed to do a breakout session for science teachers. This program was much more extensive than the spring institute. It occupied three days and participants stayed overnight in the rooms at the Clark Kerr Campus at UC Berkeley. 

After looking over the program, I decided to attend all the sessions on Saturday. The Garden Room was packed at 9:00 AM with over 150 professionals interested in teaching STEM subjects. The first session was about some of the more recent ideas on pedagogy with some insights into teacher credentialing programs. The co-presenters were Rick Ayers and Kevin Kumashiro from the USF School of Education. I found myself saying "I wish I would have known this when I started" over and over during their talk. Their friendly disagreements about some of the finer points of pedagogy demonstrated that teaching is more of an art than a science. 

The next session was about project-based learning. It was presented by a highly enthusiastic Bob Bachmeier. He is the Sacramento coordinator for Project Lead the Way. This is an engineering curriculum that is finding its way into many high schools, including mine. Bob explained the many benefits of having students learn by working on long-term projects that are relevant, authentic and challenging. We got a taste of this approach with a quick bridge building activity. 

Bob inadvertently demonstrated how to resume teaching after a disruptive event when two hawks flew into the room. They screeched, collided with the windows, and swooped low over our heads. The large doors were opened, they found their way out, and Bob immediately picked up where he left off!

For my session I selected things I wish I knew about when I first started teaching. I also was asked to incorporate elements of NGSS. I started out with scientific models. To demonstrate the essential elements of scientific models I brought my collection of Mystery Tubes. These are large, sealed PVC pipes with four ropes extending from them. Students are asked to develop a model of the inside of of the Mystery Tube by making observations and conducting experiments. It is the kind of activity that can engage middle school students and adults. 

I had difficulty getting them to stop experimenting so we could move on to a discussion of whiteboarding with this and other class activities. I then passed out clickers and demonstrated Peer Instruction with a short lesson on Newton's Third Law. This proved especially effective for the participants who were interested in becoming biology teachers. They started out not being able to respond correctly but by the end were confident of their answers. I finished with a quick look at online homework and my experience with WebAssign. It took me many years to learn about and implement all of these effective techniques but it only took them ninety minutes. 

There was a math breakout session run concurrently with mine by Lybroan James from the New Teacher Center. This organization applies the growth mindset to teachers, believing that every teacher can become an effective teacher. My only regret of the day was not being able to attend Lybroan's presentation.

The last session was presented by Aaron Vanderwerff and his team from The Lighthouse Community Charter School. They described their Creativity Lab, a maker-based instructional component to their curriculum. To demonstrate their approach they challenged the participants to form teams of five and construct a chair from cardboard that could hold 180 pounds. This gave them a good idea of how engaging this form of instruction can be. 

The session shattered the idea that some of these future teachers might have about spending their class time enthralling students with lectures. Changing perceptions about the teacher's role in the classroom might be the most important achievement of the EnCorps program. The teaching profession has always had a respect problem because many people think they know what teaching is about because they watched people do it for many years. This can create a perception that teaching techniques are static and that there is little left to learn about pedagogy. This one day of the three-day program did a lot to dispel these myths.

At the end of the day there was a reception that included food, adult beverages, and lots of great conversation. Encorps recognized the achievements of their graduates with awards and the potential of their future teachers with scholarships. With the critical shortage of STEM teachers and the increasing need for STEM graduates, it is good to know there are organizations like EnCorps addressing these needs. If you are considering becoming a STEM teacher or you know someone who is, I urge you to have them contact EnCorps today.

Failure & Success as seen with Strandbeests

The Exploratorium Museum of San Francisco currently has a large exhibit called Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen. The exhibit has consisted of several of these large machines on display, daily demonstrations of several machines and special events including an After Dark (adults only night) with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame.

Savage spent three days making a strandbeest of his own live at the Exploratorium in front of whoever would like to watch. He unveiled his creation at yesterday's After Dark event. I was unable to go (those darn kids) but watched video today.

I was so happy to see Savage admit failure and his own limitations. He had designed his machine wrong at first, adjusted it and it worked but not the way he wanted. Even at his unveiling he admitted it wasn't quite the way he wanted, and then he just hopped up on the machine in a "Well I wonder if..." way. He surprised himself and the audience when the machine worked as he had hoped.

His enthusiasm is contagious and his honest answers to audience questions is very reflective. This is a great video to show students that even their media heroes have failures, and grow through embracing them. He even jokes that he fully expected to see headlines the next day saying he had failed "...and that's okay!" It will make a great addition to an engineering project introduction.

Hearing Savage discussing "The Imposter Complex" that many new and veteran teachers experience is uplifting; "He struggles with it just like I do!"

The Exploratorium has a lot of resources online, links to the demos of the Tinspider walking, and more. I was able to see the machines in passing during the Summer Institute for Teachers and I do hope to get out to the museum this summer and really seeing the machines in detail. If you're in the area I highly recommend it.

A cursory examination of Perusall

I have been an admirer of Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur ever since I got a copy of his book, Peer Instruction, back in the late 1990s. I found that the more I implemented his teaching strategies in my physics class, the more my students learned.

I was excited when I heard he would be speaking at the teacher outreach event in San Jose hosted by the Optical Society of America. Most of his talk was from his famous “Confessions of a Converted Lecturer” speech that I have seen before. However, toward the end he announced a new initiative called Perusall.com. He said for Peer instruction to be the most successful, students need to do some preparation before coming to class. For most classes, this means reading a textbook or similar resource. The problem arises when only some students actually complete the reading assignment. Perusall was developed to solve this problem.

Students log in to Perusall and read their textbook or any pdf reading their teacher uploads. They can print it out or download it. As they read online, they can highlight text and graphics that confuses them and ask questions. They also can highlight and add comments that others might find interesting or useful. They can link to other resources that they think might be helpful. They are put in groups of 20. Their peers can see their highlights and click on them to see the question, comment, or other information. They can respond if they want to. As Dr. Mazur described this I thought, what a nightmare to grade. He then revealed that Perusall uses artificial intelligenence software to automatically grade comments. Each comment is assigned a 1, 2, or 3 depending on how it relates to the highlighted text. The instructor can download a spreadsheet that has the scores for each student.

After hearing this I knew I would have to try it. Perusall is mainly meant for use by colleges as an online textbook purchase. This wouldn’t work well for me because I recently purchased new physics textbooks. I couldn’t ask my students buy it online. I decided to select readings from the open source physics textbook found on Open Stax. I asked Perusall for an account and they set me up for free. I uploaded my first reading for our circular motion unit. I perused the help files on Perusall and uploaded some so students could more easily find them. I gave out the login information and waited to see how my students would respond.

The response was very positive. The comments started appearing right away and they looked thoughtful and helpful for the most part. As we did more assignments, they got better at pleasing the artificial intelligent agent and got higher scores. I posted some example “3” and “1” comments so they could see what was deemed good and not so good. One problem is they don’t see the score of a comment until the assignment ends. I found I could release the grades early, allowing them to get feedback and respond to it by adding more comments are editing the ones they already did. I wouldn’t do this for every assignment but it did help them improve their skills for this new learning tool. I made short screencast showing the comments on the circular motion assignment:

I did not do any formal research about the effectiveness of Perusall on my student's learning or engagement. I do know that most of my students actually did read the assignment and posted hundreds of applicable comments. Mazur did research of Perusall use at Harvard and found that it was effective. He also said they ended the study early because the students without Perusall were complaining when they saw what their friends were doing in the other physics sections. This study has not been published.

Perusall is such a new and different tool that I thought it would be a good idea to let you try it out. You can join a class I set up for physics teachers and others that are interested. Just go to Perusall.com, create a login with the 3 options or using your email address, then enter the access code: BURNS-2858. Your assignment will be to read and comment on a physics education research paper by Joe Redish called "Changing Student Ways of Knowing". I will make it due on 9/1/16 and release the grades after that and several times before. I also uploaded some of the documents I made available to my students that give more information about using Perusall.

If you would like to give Perusall a try I urge you to contact them and ask if you can use it at no cost like I have been doing. Any public domain textbooks or articles in pdf format can be used. 

When heroism doesn't help

Our instincts as science teachers is to celebrate our rock stars of science. Physics teachers shine a spotlight on Galileo, Einstein, Newton, Faraday among others. We praise their discoveries and praise the advancements they made for our understanding of the universe. We want our students to consider individuals who invented calculus or connected electricity and magnetism as nearly as important as a Kardashian. Hope springs eternal.

We are not going to stop doing this. Nor are my selfies with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye coming down any time soon. However,...

Researchers found that students perform better in science where they read stories about how famous scientists struggled rather than when they read stories about what those scientists achieved.

The story from Shankar Vedantham's "Hidden Brain" ran this morning on Morning Edition and can be found on NPR.org.



It is a rare person for whom math and physics are easy subjects. Those who have achieved great accomplishments in those fields are not necessarily fundamentally different from anyone else. What might set them apart is their response to the challenge. Many see a challenge and choose not to engage. They looked at the daunting obstacles and directed their mortal abilities toward overcoming them. They were not genetically predisposed toward genius. They saw the mystery and believed it could be unraveled.

NGSS is child's play

Join any teacher conversation group and you will inevitably hear one or more of the following:
"Kids these days are so lazy!"
"They can't get off their phones!"
"Kids today can't THINK!"

There are people on both sides of this argument, saying kids these days are or are not lazy. There has been a bit more research about the critical thinking component; I like this article from The Huffington Post which mentions quite a bit of that research. There is a well documented connection between the ability to argue and true understanding of the material. Being able to think about a situation from more than one perspective allows students to argue effectively and respectfully. 

That's probably why one of the new Next Generation Science Standards Science & Engineering Practices is "Engaging in Argument from Evidence." The 9-12 portion includes:

• Compare and evaluate competing arguments or design solutions in light of currently accepted explanations, new evidence, limitations (e.g., trade-offs), constraints, and ethical issues.
• Evaluate the claims, evidence, and/or reasoning behind currently accepted explanations or solutions to determine the merits of arguments.
• Respectfully provide and/or receive critiques on scientific arguments by probing reasoning and evidence and challenging ideas and conclusions, responding thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, and determining what additional information is required to resolve contradictions.
• Construct, use, and/or present an oral and written argument or counter-arguments based on data and evidence.
• Make and defend a claim based on evidence about the natural world or the effectiveness of a design solution that reflects scientific knowledge, and student-generated evidence.
• Evaluate competing design solutions to a real-world problem based on scientific ideas and principles, empirical evidence, and logical arguments regarding relevant factors (e.g. economic, societal, environmental, ethical considerations).

If you look at that list in its entirety you might, (okay, you will) get overwhelmed. But don't be! Try looking at just one or two at a time and they are much more attainable. For instance, my 5 year old completed most of "Construct, use, and/or present an oral and written argument or counter-arguments based on data and evidence" the other day. And that's not bragging, allow me to explain:

My kids love magnets and have this mixed set of sticks with small neodymium magnets and ball bearings. In typical kid fashion whichever piece my 5 year old daughter had my 2 year old son wanted and vice versa. He was usually color oriented; my daughter was more focused on particular pieces of their mixed set. I finally asked her why and she said, "These yellow ones are stronger than those." I asked her how she knew and she said "It just feels stronger." 

Sometimes I can't help that I'm a teacher, and we set up an experiment. I had her collect all the different kinds of magnetic sticks she could find (green, red and yellow below) and a ball bearing. We drew two lines on a pieces of scratch paper and put the ball bearing on one. We started with one magnet on the second line and I had her slowly move it towards the ball bearing on the other. At some point the magnet got close enough to attract the loose ball bearing. We marked that position and repeated it for all the different kinds of magnetic sticks. There was one trial during which the ball bearing moved (which is also when it got wet) and she said, "Mom, that doesn't count, it moved." *so proud*

In the end we got this simple set of data that showed how the magnetic force varied with each different type of magnetic stick. I was surprised that the results were fairly consistent. I asked her "Which magnet was strongest?" and she answered "The red one, because it pulled the ball more, from farther, the others had to get closer, so they aren't as strong. I thought it was the yellow but its not."

So she constructed an argument for the phenomenon she was seeing based on the data we collected. She accepted a result different from her initial opinion based on her experiment. You might even count her description to me as a presentation of her argument! Not bad considering it all stemmed from a sibling squabble. 

How does this apply to your classroom? Focus on what your students know based on what they have done. Ask them to explain what they are seeing, have students discuss their findings with each other. 

Bottom line, "kids today" can think and critically think with your help.

The Carousel of Physics

One of the most satisfying experiences in teaching is to hear from a former student who is making a big splash in the world. As a physics teacher, I like to learn about former students who are finding success in that field. However, nothing beats being contacted by a former student who is teaching science.

I had this wonderful experience again last week when Kristen (Turner) Ritter sent me an invitation to the Maker Faire Bay Area on May 20-22. Kristen is a Teacher Coach at Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy in Goleta California.

The 80 seniors in the DPEA are presenting their capstone project, the 3D Arcade, at this year's Maker Faire. According to Kristen, "viewers can use tablets to interface with 15 individually unique games. They can manipulate balls and other mechanisms to overcome obstacles and solve problems. All of the arcade games have been created to be fun and engaging while demonstrating various concepts of physics." To back this claim up, she linked to last year's project, the Carousel of Physics:



If you think that was impressive, take a look at this video of the Waves and Oscillations Sector:



After seeing this amazing project I was not surprised to learn that the Director of DPEA, Amir Abo-Shaeer, is a MacArthur Fellow. Amir and his team have created a unique project and design based program at DPEA that I am sure we could all learn from. We have a project-based learning program at Los Gatos High School called New Tech. It is the kind of thing that can get more students to look forward to going to school.

I have been in contact with Kristen since she decided to become a teacher after graduating from UCSB with a physics degree in 2006. When she was given a physics teaching job and needed advice, I was able to help by showing her the many resources that generous physics teachers post online like Dean Baird's Phyz Website. I also sent her a "care package" of items from our PTSOS workshop including a copy of Paul Robinson's Conceptual Physics lab manual. Older editions of this must-have resource can be downloaded for free from the publisher.

It never ceases to amaze me how high school physics teachers are always paying it forward to the next generation. We can all take some pride in seeing what they accomplish like the Carousel of Physics.

I am disappointed that I didn't get to see the Carousel of Physics when it was at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I will certainly not miss the chance to see the 3D Arcade and chat with Kristen and her students. I hope to see you there, too.