Argentine Rockets and Quotes

Today I got the chance to see some rocket launches when I visited a school called Normal Mixta. It was really fun to hang out with the students in a more informal setting.

Mounting the rocket onto the launcher

Close-up of the rocket

Troubleshooting a broken pump

All set for launch

I shot some video. Nothing spectacular, but it gives you an idea of what was going on. By the way, I shot one of the videos using the high-speed setting on my camera. Pretty neat.

Normal speed

High Speed

Headed back inside. Notice the unicorn mural- JC that's for you!

Some of the students from Normal Mixta

This afternoon I went to visit a nearby public school. It was my first visit to a true public school, and it was really interesting. I found the students to be very engaging and interested in what I was doing.

Group Photo

Quote of the day: A student in a class I visited today spoke excellent English. After completing my questionnaire, she told me that she wrote in English so it would be easier for me. I was just looking through the results, and two things caught my eye.

First of all, one of my questions is whether or not males anturally tend to be better at physics than females. I was not suggesting that there is a difference, rather I was looking to see what students' impressions were. Next to the question this student wrote "What's wrong with you? Not cool!"  I was thrilled to read this, and can't wait until next week when I can explain my intentions in person.

Also, at the end in the comments section she wrote: "...your Spanish sounds funny but we like you anyway." I'll take it so long as they can understand me and vice versa!

Other notable heartwarming quotes:
"I think that making these tests is a great idea, since nobody thinks about their values anymore (that sucks) and I hope we have another of these tests soon."

"I really like the idea of trying to improve physics education here, because some of my classmates and I find it to be a difficult and tedious subject."

"Welcome to Argentina, I hope that it treats you well and that my questionnaire helps with your project- I am happy to help. Good luck! Take care!"

Emilliano and I

Thanks everyone!

Ask and ye shall receive

Earlier this week I went to visit another school, Colegio San Luis Gonzaga. Like some of the other schools I have visited, it is a private Catholic school for girls. I learned that Gonzaga is the oldest school in the province of San Luis, and it has an excellent reputation. Though I had a great visit this morning, that isn't the topic of this post. Rather, I wanted to comment on the way that my visits have evolved here.

About a week ago I wrote to a friend that I was a little bit frustrated because I hadn't been as successful as I had initially hoped in visiting schools. Soon after I received responses from not one, but two teachers that I had been hoping to work with. I now have a standing invitation to come help out at the university school, and I've been invited to give a physics lesson at Gonzaga next week. There is also talk of having me come visit the English classes to give a presentation as a native speaker, which would be neat too. I spent Monday afternoon at Aleluya helping a teacher with a lesson involving video analysis, which is something I have a lot of experience with. It's a really powerful tool for teaching physics, because the students can capture their own videos and analyze the physics behind them. Talk about a solid connection to physics in the real world!

The Ah-ha moment of the day came when I was meeting with some of the administrators at Gonzaga. We were discussing my project, and they asked what other schools I had visited. I rattled off the short list, and said that I'd been hoping to visit others but it hadn't panned out. The preceptora (I am almost positive that that was her title, but if you happen to be reading this please accept my apologies if I got it wrong) offered to contact her husband, who works at another school here in town. By the time the Director of Gonzaga's secondary school had finished showing me around, she had set up an appointment for the following morning for me to meet her husband and the physics teacher at his school. She also offered to contact any other school that I might be interested in visiting.

My mentor at the university has been great helping me meet local physics teachers, but the ones that he knows seem to be teachers who also work at the university or teachers who have gone through his master's program. There are a load of other schools out there, and I am thrilled to have an "in" so I can get a broader perspective on how physics is taught in the public sector. I am really impressed by the way this worked out. Now all I need to do is kick this sinus infection and I'll be back in business!

Interlude

Yesterday I left home for Argentina. I flew out of the Adirondack Regional Airport on this plane:

There were 6 passengers and two pilots. I've flown on this flight before, and sometimes there is only one pilot. Then a lucky passenger (usually the heaviest), gets to sit in the copilot seat. I got to sit there once, and it was cool. I don't know of many other commercial flights where you get the chance to talk to the pilot and see all of the instruments when you're flying. You also have to weigh all of your baggage (including carry-ons and latop bags) and report your own weight so that they can make sure that the plane is balanced. 

Anyway, while we were flying I decided to take a video of Saranac Lake from above as we flew over. The only option I had was an ipod, which actually took a decent video in the end. It was really shaking, mostly because the flight was bumpy. I can share the whole video if anyone is interested, but the part I liked the best was this bit: 

The deal was that when I looked out the window all I could see of the prop was a massive blur. However, when I panned forward with the camera it picked up the individual blades of the prop, almost like a strobe light would capture a moving object in a dark room. If I had been able to get to my bag I would have shot a high speed video for comparison. Oh well, maybe on the return trip. 

So the question I pose to any students (or other interested parties who happen to stumble across this post) is this: how fast was the prop rotating? What might you need to figure this out? Think about frame rates, etc. (2nd generation nano). Would this video look the same if the plane were moving at a different speed? What if we hadn't had a tailwind- any difference?

Unfortunately, my next flight was delayed and I missed the connection to Buenos Aires. The next one doesn't leave until tonight, so I've got a day to kill. I'm hoping to get some work done and maybe visit the Air and Space Museum near Dulles- so check back for more stuff soon. Hopefully my next post will be from Argentina.

Something new

This post will hopefully kill two birds with one stone: I want to get down some thoughts that have been percolating so I can go back and check them out before next school year and I thought that they might be of interest to some of y'all, so here goes nothing.

Lately I've been thinking about something called Standards-Based Grading (SBG). The idea is that rather than evaluating students' performance on a given set of assessments, you give them opportunities to demonstrate what they know. They're scored on whether or not they master certain skills, and they can try multiple times to master each skill. Lots of people have been discussing SBG lately, I would recommend reading through the links below if you're interested (I also borrowed most of the images from links these people provided).

http://tinyurl.com/88g3tqo

Think Thank Thunk

Action-Reaction

dy/dan

MeTA musings

Physics! Blog!

Always Formative

Student Perspective





I really like the idea of SBG, but I don't think that integrating it into a Regents course is as easy as snapping your fingers. I think it has to be done carefully and intentionally (and possibly with student input). I envision a grading breakdown that is a combination of traditional scoring and SBG. It might look something like this:

http://xkcd.com/937/

Current:

Class Participation	20%
Homework	25%
Labs	25%
Quizzes	5%
Tests	25%

New:

Class Participation	20%
Labs	25%
Assessments	10%
Performance	45%

By assessments I mean timed problem-solving sessions. I don't like teaching to the test, but I feel that there is a necessity for students to be able to perform under pressure (to a degree) and since the majority are going to be sitting for the NYS Regents Exam in Physics in June, I feel that this element is necessary. It shouldn't be the over-riding factor in their grade, but I think it should play a role. What do you think? Bueller?

I've considered doing away with the separate lab grade... maybe someday. If I were given blocked-ish periods with the same students in class and then lab (or vice-versa) then I could do this more easily. In fact, I would lean toward eliminating the lab report requirement of my class because I would finally have enough time for students to put together meaningful representations of what they're learned. Maybe this last bit is just a fib and I should can it right now... I'll have to think about that. I'm interested to see how Shawn Cornally's collaboration experiment goes: http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/

Emma back when she was a puppy

An idea I had on my morning walk with dog Emma was to let the students determine the breakdown on the first day of class. There would be stipulations: the lab percentage is set in stone, and all of the others have to make an appearance with at least 10%. All of the different sections would have to agree on a common breakdown as well- no willy-nilly bickering about how section placement determined their grade in the course. Maybe this isn't a good tone to set for the year and shows that I'm not in control. Or maybe it's genius in disguise because it shows that by relinquishing control initially, I get students to buy into the system because they made the decisions, thereby gaining more control in the end. And then I will conquer the world! J/K... or am I?

http://tinyurl.com/7t6nnfb

Stay tuned for updates, and if you have an opinion about any of this stuff, leave a comment below!