Jim's posterous http://weathertation.posterous.com Explore... Discover... posterous.com Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:49:06 -0800 Who is the leader around here? http://weathertation.posterous.com/who-is-the-leader-around-here http://weathertation.posterous.com/who-is-the-leader-around-here I have continued to think about the conditions of the twenty-first century. If I were a better blogger and writer I would have split the last post into two posts and had the whole list, but that is not the way I role. I think conditions is the right word, because the skills we need are not different. The conditions under which we are called to use those skills are. Here is my list of conditions, to date.
  1. Everyone builds capacity (since I wrote that I thought may be everyone improves would have been better).
  2. Everyone leads.
  3. Everyone is in charge.
  4. You have to know what you do not know.
  5. Everyone needs to be reflective.
  6. Feedback is instantaneous.
  7. Everyone has to manage their connectedness.

So who is the leader around here?

Teachers need to lead students, not boss them around. This can only be done if you yourself are moving somewhere and going somewhere. It can only be done if you are exploring, feeling out how what the world is like in the context of your subject. Teachers need to be leaders among their peers. They need to take charge of a grade level or department goal and lead the group in the direction that the school mission statement directs. Teachers also need to build into the others on their teams the capacity to lead where they do not have the right resources to lead. Teacher need to graciously accept that there are times when they need to be led.

Who might they be led by? Other teachers. Administrators. School boards and parents. Most importantly they need to build the capacity of leadership into their students by following their students. I hate to say that we need to build leaders, because I have a mushy feeling that there is no such thing as leadership. There is just doing and not doing. That said we need to create people in schools that are doing and keep doing right from the start. Then they will lead, students, teachers, and administrators. One of the best ways a teacher can do this is to follow the lead of a student.

Everyone needs to lead, and everyone needs to be open to being led. This is the twenty-first century.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:11:42 -0800 Let the students write the standards. http://weathertation.posterous.com/let-the-students-write-the-standards http://weathertation.posterous.com/let-the-students-write-the-standards This year we throw students into an inquiry on day one of a unit. We go for a few days, even a week with a goal for the inquiry but almost no physics words surrounding the goal. Eventually we invite the textbook and a problem set into the classroom. The day after that we give the students a list of standards, some from lists I made with another teacher, some from the state and some from other physics teachers who have published their standards.

I cannot say enough good about what I learn when I let the students write the standards. This week we gave them these to filter through their experiences:

  • Predict how the electric force between charged objects varies when the distance between them and/or the magnitude of charges change.
  • Explain why acquiring a large excess static charge (e.g., pulling off a wool cap, touching a Van de Graaff generator, combing) affects your hair.
  • Charged objects can attract electrically neutral objects by induction.
  • Draw the redistribution of electric charges on a neutral object when a charged object is brought near.
  • Identify examples of induced static charges.
  • Explain why an attractive force results from bringing a charged object near a neutral object.
  • Determine the new electric force on charged objects after they touch and are then separated.
  • Propose a mechanism based on electric forces to explain current flow in an electric circuit.

They gave us this list to choose from after running these through the filter of their inquiry, readings, and listening in class.

  • Be able to create enough static electricity to make a balloon stay in the air for more than 30 seconds.
  • Be able to use Coulombs law for real life situations.
  • Calculate the force when you're given the two charges and the distance between the charges.
  • Predict how the electric force between charged objects varies when the distance between them and/or the magnitude of charges change.
  • Be able to use Coulomb's Law to determine force when given a graph.
  • Know how to use Coulomb's Law in context.
  • Know what causes static electricity.
  • Be able to identify/recognize induction and conduction in real-life events.
  • Be able to calculate force, charge, and distance using Coulomb's law.
  • how to eat bacon w/o getting shocked by it's magical awesomeness
  • Understand the relationship between force and charge and how it relates to electronic fields
  • Being able to present this relationship to the class through an experiment
  • Coulomb's Law: be able to apply it in situations that you could encounter daily.
  • Be able to explain what makes something negatively charged, positively charged, and where the energy goes once touched against something.
  • Be able to shock someone.
  • Each individual should be able to conduct their own electrostatic experiment and be able to measure the force.
  • Be able to understand your static electricity knowledge by giving a demonstration of static electricity.
  • Know how to use Coulomb's Law in real life situations.

We loved all the highlighted ones, laughed at the bold one and picked the blue ones. We have crafted more lessons based on these student chosen standards so that they can make progress towards these goals. There are things we never would have thought of in here that motivate students to really dig into the topics. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:48:26 -0800 How many hits on YouTube should a student video get? http://weathertation.posterous.com/how-many-hits-on-youtube-should-a-student-vid http://weathertation.posterous.com/how-many-hits-on-youtube-should-a-student-vid For the last unit of physics this semester we worked with the local utility to produce a list of businesses that had used municipal dollars to reduce their energy use. The students then went out in groups to interview the business owners and had to make a short video promoting the energy saving changes the businesses made.

I am a physics teacher. My goal was not making videos, my goal was awareness of the program and the rather active community of energy savers our small town has. I wanted awareness for my students in the context of their study of energy and awareness for the community at large. The project also dovetails with a local video contest going on. So instead of all kinds of rubrics about the quality of the video my co-teacher and decided that one of the standards for the unit would be, "Students video will get X hits on YouTube." We negotiated X with the students. We opened with 200, and they talked us down to 90.

I found this to be a remarkable tool. In many of the conferences I had with groups making videos I would say things like:

  • Do you think people will want to watch it to the end?
  • Do you think your title is good enough to make someone watch?
  • Would you want to watch this 90 times to achieve the standard?
  • Would you watch a YouTube over 3 minutes?

All of the crazy detail questions that you get are answered by the students when you put it in practical terms. I loved how this turned the conversation immediately to things that great video makers do and away from my standards as a teacher. Plus now I have had people in the community talk to me about their energy use and how it can change.

Some notes: I know they could do the 90 views themselves. In this case go back to one of my goals, that the student be aware. If they watch their video 90 times, they will be aware. Even if they take the effort of putting it into an automatically rotating play list. Most achieved 90 by posting to their Facebook with they please watch this my teacher made me get 90 YouTube views. Meets my goals and theirs.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:13:00 -0800 What makes you groan during lab presentations? http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-makes-you-groan-during-lab-presentations http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-makes-you-groan-during-lab-presentations

One of my other hats has me thinking about the professional development of all of our teachers 7-12. This is a really fascinating job that is challenging in so many ways I cannot begin to describe it. As a part of that I am part of a group exploring how to better teach writing at the secondary level in a technology rich environment. Once a month this year I am learning about Writers Workshop with a group of volunteers from our faculty.

In the workshop model students are expressing themselves within a context that the teacher provides but in their own words and their own context as well. To translate to the physics audience they create their own data from their own questions and then apply general techniques to analyze that data. It is really cool.

So one of the coolest parts is all the research that teachers of writing have done on giving feedback and actually getting kids to learn from that feedback. Some highlights:

  • limit the negative (Seriously, many recommend stopping after finding two problems. If you find more and even point them out the students wont bother to even fix two. So if you go on and highlight more they will not learn anything, but if you do less and stop highlighting they will at least learn the two things you point out. I cannot tell you how powerful this insight is.)
  • be specific with the positive (good verb, not good job)
  • talk to students rather than write
  • give as much feedback as possible before the final product
  • spend very little time on the final product (once you grade it the process is done therefore the learning is done)

So here is how all this work with writing has changed my physics class. Every inquiry unit ends with a presentation of the research the students have done. I have put very limited requirements on these presentations, but I do provide an increasing long list of guidelines. I thought to myself,  these presentations have not been changing much over the years in spite of me providing this list. So this past unit instead of just spending time going through the list again and giving some time in class to work together on their presentations I picked the two that annoyed me most. Bad procedures and bad graphs. I made a mini lesson about procedure (no more than 7 minutes) and then set them to applying what they learned to their data. Next day same thing with graphs.

Results: actual improvement in the quality of presentations. Students even pointed out the improvements in other students work. So here is my question to you: what makes you groan during lab presentations and how can we work together to make a list and improve them, one skill at a time?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:55:49 -0800 Moodle User Groups http://weathertation.posterous.com/moodle-user-groups http://weathertation.posterous.com/moodle-user-groups On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:36 PM, Nate wrote:
Hi Jim,

I am a member of the Yahoo PowerSchool User Group and learn a ton from it each day.  Have you joined any Moodle User groups that you would suggest? 

Thanks,
Nate

I mainly do two things. First, I subscribe via RSS to the moodle.org forums that interest me. Second, I also subscribe to this moodle RSS feed bundle. That bundle might seem like too much, so the two blogs I always read in the bundle are MoodleNews and Around the Corner. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:57:26 -0800 Twenty-first Century: Now is the time to increase capacity, everyone's capacity. http://weathertation.posterous.com/twenty-first-century-now-is-the-time-to-incre http://weathertation.posterous.com/twenty-first-century-now-is-the-time-to-incre The last two days I spent a lot of time listening to a consultant from ISM. I really know very little about ISM, it was a gift opportunity. I also know little about consultants, I am rather new to the administrator gig and in fact still teach physics for one period a day. So what this all leads me to say is I am not sure what grains of salt to put on what parts of what I learned. I will say this, consultants can say whatever they want and that in and of itself is fun.

He started with a presentation on twenty-first century skills. I think about this a lot because my school and my classroom are places where people think these skills are developed. He had a lot of lists of the skills, the most intriguing one was from a presentation that I had delivered a while back that was buried on our website. He did his homework. He went on to say that he thought that twenty-first century skills were something different. They were less skills, because as he pointed out, everyone in the room full of administrators had most of the twenty-first century skills without having been educated then. He thought that the expectations were different in the twenty-first century.

I have some thoughts on some of his list, but first he said that the rule for the twenty-first century academic administrator is to build capacity in their faculty. As is so often the case I had never heard it put so succinctly before, but I think this is true. As a Technology Coordinator before and an Instructional Specialist now I have been building capacity in teachers for a long time. However, I wondered in my reflection on the point if it was not broad enough. I wonder if we must all be capacity builders in school, and really in all of our life.

All of us need to increase our capacity and the capacity of those around us. Somehow somewhere even those of us who went to college have lost or not maintained the ability to increase our capacity. We want to be told what we need to do to get the job done. I spent probably ten years as a good teacher not changing too much, reflecting for sure on what went right and wrong but not really doing much more than tweaking around the edges. The last few years my curriculum has been new each year and probably not repeatable. This year I am spending time developing units that I know will not be compelling to students next year. I am confident that the experience of making lessons that are reactive, local and relevant will be and awesome tool and open the doors I need open for future classes to succeed. I am building my capacity to respond to the people around me and support them where they are at. Never done. All can improve. No finish line.

Schools needs to be a place filled with capacity builders. Administrators need to imagine what their teachers and students could be and support them to be that. Teachers in turn tended to ask their administrators for help building capacity. They need to spur their colleagues on to better capacity and they need to build it in their students. Teachers need to build capacity in their administrators by supporting their work, and helping where needed. Students should be expected to build capacity in all the people around them as well; other students, their teachers and administrators. We will know we are building capacity into our students when they start to build capacity into us. School should be a place where everyone improves.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:36:38 -0800 How do we make the world new? http://weathertation.posterous.com/how-do-we-make-the-world-new http://weathertation.posterous.com/how-do-we-make-the-world-new I collect quotes about imagination. I think imagination is one of the most powerful parts of being human. I encourage it in my children, my students and my teachers. I am not sure of this but as I ponder what makes a master teacher I think imagination appears somewhere in my list.

Today the chapel speaker used this Emerson quote:

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
I wanted so to replace the word worship in this quote with imagination. The words are not mine to do that with. And I am sure that Emerson was much more careful in word choice than I am. So here are the questions this quote generated for me.

  1. So what do imagination and worship have to do with each other?
  2. How do they both contribute to the new creation that the future is?
  3. How might we add worship into the curriculum, because certainly I would like my students to imagine and create a beautiful world.
  4. Since, as Emerson points out, they will create a new world no matter what how do I get them to use the tools in my class to imagine better, create better and worship better?
  5. What other actions create the world new?

Do you have any more questions. What new worlds will your students create?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:46:29 -0800 Science vs. Engineering http://weathertation.posterous.com/science-vs-engineering http://weathertation.posterous.com/science-vs-engineering I have read a couple of article lately exploring the difference between science and engineering and how to walk that line as we design inquiry labs. I loved this line from The Science Teacher in an article called Science and Engineering.

Explore and apply: Instructional design should involve labs in which students first explore a concept by studying the relationships between causes and effects (Marek, Maier, and McCann 2008). Once students have developed an understanding of how important variables affect an experimental situation, they can be challenged to use the engineering model and apply their newly formed conceptual understanding to generate a product or maximize an output. In this manner, the science model is employed early on in the exploration phase of the lesson, and the engineering model is used in a subsequent phase of the lesson as an application of student understanding.

I am going to try to add this distinction into my inquiry design. I find that is tend towards engineering experiments in physics class because the have definite easy to describe goals. Even if I design the inquiry around a big engineering question I should always ask myself: where in this unit is the science inquiry?

The whole article is worth a read, sorry it is not free on the internet.

Have you found any other useful distinctions between science and engineering? Do you have a checklist of that you go through when designing an inquiry?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:25:00 -0800 PeteSearch: What the Sumerians can teach us about data http://weathertation.posterous.com/petesearch-what-the-sumerians-can-teach-us-ab http://weathertation.posterous.com/petesearch-what-the-sumerians-can-teach-us-ab
Media_httppetewardent_syqga
via petewarden.typepad.com

Please read the post linked and think about the data we collect on students.
How can we make grading a more neutral act?
How do we convince others that they do not have the power or should not have the power?
How is the data I collect corrupting me?
How is the data our schools collect corrupting them, and in the process making them less valuable?
How do we be more open that all data collected has it base in subjective humanity?
Do we regularly look over the data we collect and try to find where it is giving us bogus information?
(Via Nat Torkington http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/four-short-links-3-january-201-1.html )

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:04:15 -0800 Imagination Produces Empathy http://weathertation.posterous.com/imagination-produces-empathy http://weathertation.posterous.com/imagination-produces-empathy I collect thoughts about imagination, mainly because I think there is too little of it. Here is a passage from Wendell Berry's Hanna Coulter.

It is hard to live one life and imagine another. But imagination is what is needed. Want of imagination make things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don't know and have compassion for them at the same time?
 
I love the picture. As I play with how to best teach physics one of the powerful motivators is to imagine ourselves using our new talents in physics to change lives for the better. This has produced powerful images for students that truly motivate them through the harder parts of learning physics.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:44:00 -0800 "It is very difficult for a set of metrics to fully measure what you value." http://weathertation.posterous.com/it-is-very-difficult-for-a-set-of-metrics-to http://weathertation.posterous.com/it-is-very-difficult-for-a-set-of-metrics-to This video, a talk from Adam Mosseri about being data informed is great. It is worth the thirty minutes. At 13:00 in he says the line that makes this post's title. He then shows two examples from Facebook where the data sent them in wrong directions. These are my summaries of the reasons:
  1. Most of your data is generated by your power users, so if you aim for increasing pure engagement you will market to this group only.
  2. When you optimize for one piece of data you will eventually ignore anything that is not measured by the data.

I think that both of these points contain great truths for teaching.

Bonus quote, "The greatest risk is taking no risk at all." (29:20)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:31:00 -0800 The Physics of Osmos Contest « The Physics of Osmos http://weathertation.posterous.com/the-physics-of-osmos-contest-the-physics-of-o http://weathertation.posterous.com/the-physics-of-osmos-contest-the-physics-of-o

Welcome to the Physics of Osmos Contest!

Students in grades K-12 are invited to explore the endless physics embedded within the beautiful game Osmos.
Create a one-minute video illustrating the physics concept that you discover in the game. The top student entry will win a $500 gift card to Amazon.com. The top three runners up will also receive prizes.

 

To submit your entry, follow the instructions below.

  • Download and install the Osmos free demo. (Or purchase Osmos from the App Store.)

  • Experiment with your gameplay to illustrate physics concepts using Osmos as your virtual lab.

  • Review the official contest rules

  • Create a video illustrating a physics concept.
    (If you want to record your screen, try Jing or ScreenChomp)

  • Upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, or Screencast.com

  • Complete the submission form by 11:59 PM PST. December 18, 2011.

Winners will be announced on December 25.

via physicsofosmos.wordpress.com

A good friend of mine came up with this contest idea. I think this will motivate a certain type of physics student. Give it a try.

By the way this idea is part our ongoing conversation around the question, what would a compelling online physics course look like. Lots of questions and no answers yet.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:24:42 -0700 What is your real world? or In this problem assume no friction. http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-is-your-real-world-or-in-this-problem-as http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-is-your-real-world-or-in-this-problem-as I have to drop a connection on the crowd. I was reading John Burk's post with the same title as this blog post and loved the comment his student dropped on him. I felt my head nodding in agreement. Reflections like that would make my day as a teacher. Later in the comments another teacher takes issue with the post. @adchempages has been all over the physics blogosphere with his message. I know he gets his students to achieve their immediate goals, he is famous on the AP Chem list serves.

A few days later I read this post trying to define where the real world is. It brought back to focus that my world is what I prepare kids for, and that is probably the same for teachers everywhere. @tkamps sent me this link to an edutopia blog series. I love the graphic in the last post. I love how everyone has a role to play. I love that the roles all have their basis in the same ideas. This is the world that I live in, and therefore the world I teach. I can see how other teachers who live in other worlds with other commonalities in the pyramid would value different outcomes. They are doing the same thing I am, getting kids ready for the world as they live it.

Our principal just sent home the monthly news letter. It begins with the transcript of a speech given by a student to members of the community, mainly business people.

So why do I love this place so much? What makes it unique?

First of all, the teachers. There are some incredible people here. I think what stands out about them is the conversation they want to have with all of us -- they aren’t simply there to tell us some information and then get on with their day. They want us to question and doubt and, as my English teacher would say, “wallow in complexity.” They care about what we think and want to hear what we have to say -- and want to see us pursue our individual passions. Just one example of this is an independent project that was required in my Physics class last year. We spent the last couple months of the semester researching a topic of our choice and presenting it in a way of our choice, so it was completely open-ended. Physics is really not my thing, but being able to incorporate my interests into a project definitely worked for me: I was able to combine my love of English with the excellent technology resources we have here, by reading three books by great physicists and then blogging and ultimately creating a website to show what I had learned. Another cool thing about this project was that I was able to focus on debates of religion versus science, which is probably not something I would be able to explore or discuss as fully as I did at other schools. And in the end, though I did learn a lot about Physics, I learned the most about how to create an effective project, all because of the wonderful balance of freedom and mentoring that I received from my teacher.


This is why I teach. I love exploring the world God has given us. I love to give students the tools to explore well, the passion to continue to explore and perspective on what they can bring to the exploration. I love that the school I teach in reflects those values as well.

P.S. I marvel at the people who can teach, blog, and keep up their family life. I am so past due for a blog post that I am embarrassed to even visit the space.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:26:37 -0700 Welcome Physics Teacher http://weathertation.posterous.com/welcome-physics-teacher http://weathertation.posterous.com/welcome-physics-teacher Welcome to those who came because you saw my article Introducing Rotational Motion With EXIF Data in The Physics Teacher. I am not the most prolific blogger in the physics world. If you want that see this post. I am also not the most on fire blogger in the physics world, or the most interesting. But if you landed here because of The Physics Teacher magazine, I am happy you stopped by and would love to have you look at some physics posts or some of my favorites.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 05 Sep 2011 04:09:00 -0700 Interior Table Borders In Moodle 2.1 Course Content http://weathertation.posterous.com/interior-table-borders-in-moodle-21-course-co http://weathertation.posterous.com/interior-table-borders-in-moodle-21-course-co

AddingBordersToTables.mov Watch on Posterous
I have had several questions about the interior borders of tables as we have moved to Moodle 2.1 from 1.9. In the new HTML editor is not as clear how to edit table properties and the default table border color for interior borders seems to be set to white. Once you have a table there are a lot more options, but you have to right click on a cell when editing a cell. Then you get a whole menu of options. The screen cast allows you to see how to change the default color of you borders to black in the table you are working on.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:02:55 -0700 Transition to Moodle 2: The Switch Role To Menu Has Moved http://weathertation.posterous.com/transition-to-moodle-2-the-switch-role-to-men http://weathertation.posterous.com/transition-to-moodle-2-the-switch-role-to-men
Course_peterson_physics-2

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Bob

wrote:

HI, Jim,

Any way to toggle between teacher view and student view in Moodle when I'm logged in? Am I missing something?

Bob

I searched and searched for the relocated location of this incredibly popular and important peice of a moddle course that allows a teacher to see what a students would see. This setting has moved from a menu at the top to a menu in the side bar below the Edit Settings link. See the attached screen shot.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:31:12 -0700 2,500,000 Attempts http://weathertation.posterous.com/2500000-attempts http://weathertation.posterous.com/2500000-attempts I am upgrading the schools Moodle server this week. We were using Moodle before Moodle was cool. The very first course ever created in our Moodle was Peterson Independent Research in Physics.

I love Moodle. It is the perfect mix of teacher and school terms, ease of use and student flexibility. It is the glue that holds together our one-to-one MacBook program. Teachers feel comfortable moving their lessons into Moodle. They get it right away. They have this blank nice looking page, and they add familiar items like assignments and resources and quizzes.

At my first ever whole faculty training on using the Moodle quiz module I spent the first hour trying to move the teachers off from the idea that you had to use it for quizzes. I had them brainstorm other uses for it. I showed them ideas I had been using in my classroom with pre-assessment and formative assessment.

Wednesday I am pulling the plug on Moodle 1.9.9 and moving to Moodle 2.1. This is not an upgrade for the feint of heart. As part of this upgrade there is huge change in the way the quiz engine works, and I was presented along the way with a statistic. In all the years we have had Moodle it has stored every quiz attempt ever taken. This sits in our database, and the total attempts at quizzes are 2,500,000.

Our school mission is, "Equipping minds and nurturing hearts to transform the world for Jesus Christ." My question: would we have advanced our mission more by giving 2.5 million quizzes, or if we had instead applied our learning to make 2.5 million edits to the Wikipedia?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:12:06 -0700 We are always the bad people. http://weathertation.posterous.com/we-are-always-the-bad-people http://weathertation.posterous.com/we-are-always-the-bad-people I teach at a Christian school. One of my great pleasures this year was having a first hour class, which meant leading devotions. I had a great year leading devotions, for a lot of reasons. The main reason was my students were great. They loved a great conversation. Another reason was the book our Principal gave us for devotions this year, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. We would wrestle regularly with what we though of Sarah, and just when we felt like throwing the book out the window she would hit us all between the eyes. Either way it was fun and we learned a ton.

At one point I read the parable of the prodigal son to supplement the devotional. During the subsequent conversation I asked, "Find a parable where we are the good people."

Katie replied, "We are always the bad people."

What a great discussion followed as we tore through the Bible Gateway and our memories looking for parables where we are not the bad people. In our Calvinist tradition guilt is a big part of life. It was a great day discovering together that we are not always the bad people, or more importantly and more commonly that we are always the people loved by God.

Inspired by these great discoveries we went on to discover great physics.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:56:27 -0700 Did I do the homework is different from did I understand it. http://weathertation.posterous.com/did-i-do-the-homework-is-different-from-did-i http://weathertation.posterous.com/did-i-do-the-homework-is-different-from-did-i I am cleaning out my trove of recorded students quotes from last year in preparation for next year. When asked about her homework Leah said, "Did I do the homework is different from did I understand it." I love honest students. We had a great discussion after this.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:52:00 -0700 What Does A Physics Student Teacher Do To Get Ready http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-does-a-physics-student-teacher-do-to-get http://weathertation.posterous.com/what-does-a-physics-student-teacher-do-to-get On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Luke

wrote:

Mr. Peterson,

I just came to the realization that the school year is almost here.  I remember from somewhere that you guys start on the 29th-ish, but I'm guessing you might want me to start coming in before that.  So I've got just a couple questions about that.

1.  When should I start coming in?
2.  What should I be doing (e.g. professional development) during the week before school starts?
3.  What should I be doing now to prep for the semester?

Thanks, and enjoy the rest of you summer!


Awesome letter to get from your fall student teacher. After some of the details here is what I wrote. What would you add?

As far as professional development goes take no more than 20 minutes a day (35 minutes if it is after lunch, more minutes either time if you are enjoying it) and read all posts (except 
ones about teaching calculus) from this blog. Make sure before you read any posts you watch his TED talk. That does not count towards your minutes. He is the most on fire physics teaching blog at the moment. There are other blogs to consider as well. Teacher blogs will do for you every day what these books did for me. If you really want to go overboard get a twitter account and follow this list.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/347350/CIMG0218-2-1-1-1.png http://posterous.com/users/KPf88dOczD Jim Peterson Jim Jim Peterson