LMS as a text

I recently read a blog posting from a fellow physics teacher and it was asking for a physics textbook that had a number of things in it that are currently online and available. Most of those requests have a free version online somewhere. I think that he has a point about having all of these things available in one place for the students to access simply and efficiently. It was Frank Noschese's blog "My vision for a Physics iBook" that got me thinking of the Learning Management Software (LMS) that I use in my classroom.

I have been talking to my students about the anxiety they feel going into a test and they did not like the LMS (Haiku) that we have. So I got to looking at it over Christmas vacation and did a little housekeeping. I moved some stuff around and made it more intuitive. I also agreed to be more faithful about putting things on the calendar. They agreed to be more faithful about filling in the Wiki that we have for the class. I told them this should be clear enough to study by so that they can use it to review for tests. We do have a text that is web based and a number of them stated they did not even know there was a text.

Now that I have been thinking more about the LMS and how I could use it to better instruct and engage the students, as well as looking at Frank's list of things he wants in a Physics text, I think that an LMS, properly used, is the ideal virtual text book. I have the capability to embed videos and flash, while allowing the students to hold an asynchronous discussion about their experiences. I can utilize the quiz and polling features to get a quick sense of where they are in the class, even for those who do not speak up. I really have a hard time getting some of the students to let me know where they are and therefore, I cannot address their needs properly.

All of this and more can be gotten from a good LMS. Plus the added benefit of allowing the teacher to guide the students through the subject in the path that best works for their class, using the resources that best fits the teachers plan. But the best thing is that the students build the text and the understanding themselves and it is tailored to their needs and class style. So, If you have an LMS and you hate it or you feel that it is not a benefit for your classroom, try taking a look at the things that you are trying to accomplish and the functions of your LMS and I think you may be surprised at how much overlap there is.

Media literacy is the thing!

As teachers we are faced with many competitors for our students time and attention. They are checking facebook and texting friends, and we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that our class is the most important thing in their lives. Frankly, it isn't any where near the top most of the time. We are given around 200 minutes a week to help them to understand our subject and how it connects to the wider world. We try to get them to think and apply knowledge. We try to get them interested in science, or history, or math and hope that they will use the knowledge and skills they have learned in their lives at large.

That being said, I propose that we take up another teaching task that should make their lives more informed and more full. I think that we should teach media literacy, or the skill to discern valuable and verifiable information from the vast volume of information that we are bombarded with every day. As we all have heard of the Kahn Academy, so have our kids. It has also been pointed out that some of the information in the KA videos is not entirely accurate. If our students are watching the videos for extra help, they should also be able to question the authority and the facts that they are presented with.

I do believe that a good teacher already does this in class and gives the students a base line to measure things by, and the students will be able to discern a valid source from an invalid source. It is important for a student to be able to do this in order to become an informed member of society. To simply take a KA video at face value, which seems to be what most of the country is doing, is folly because there are experts in the fields that Sal Kahn is lecturing on who have more accurate information and a better way to help our students understand. It is very important that we help our students to question the validity of the sources of information that they are using.

Learning is your responsibility !

In my class today I had to give my students a scolding. We just finished quarter grades and comments and during that time I surveyed the students about what they felt was good and bad about the course. I also asked them to say what they wanted more of. This being an AP class, I have some very motivated students and a majority stated they wanted to do more difficult problems in class. So today I decided to do one. We were walking through a particularly difficult problem and I asked for a number which could be found by simply plugging into a calculator. I waited and waited and found that there were only three students even attempting to find the answer.


At this time I stopped those three people and began to rant to them about their lack of attention and participation. I said to them that their participation in class is required and they are the ones in need of the understanding. If they were waiting for me to pour it into their heads, they will be waiting for a long time. They cannot sit and wait for the understanding to flow. They have to attempt to solve problems and form opinions and participate in class.

If they don’t take control of their learning, they will never learn anything and they need to keep that in mind when we are having a discussion. I have to get out of the front of the classroom in order to force them to drive their learning and stop waiting for me to pour in information.

Letting them struggle.

Today in class we were looking at four specific questions that are essential in understanding motion and Newton's 3 laws of motion. Those questions are :

1. What is Mass?
2. What makes things Move?
3. What is a force?
4. What makes something change its motion?

We started looking at a video of a plane dropping a flare and seeing it as parabolic motion. One of the students stated that the flare had a horizontal velocity and a vertical velocity. So we looked at the horizontal velocity and I asked why it had that particular velocity and it was pretty unanimous that it was the velocity of the plane before the flare was released. So I then asked what made it continue with that velocity and I got several different responses, most common was the plane's force on the flare was still acting. Someone also stated that the flare was slowing down. So we went back to the video and it showed no evidence of slowing down horizontally during its descent.

We then moved on to a hover puck on the table in front of the classroom. Again they were insisting that the force of my hand was causing the puck to move across the floor. So I called someone up from the class and asked them to apply a force to the puck. She pushed it, and then I asked her to do it again but without touching it. She acquiesced that she could not apply a force without touching it, and I thanked her for thinking so highly of me that I could apply a force without contact. We then opened up the discussion to what was required for a force to occur. We came up with four requirements for forces.

1. A push or a pull
2. Contact is necessary
1. Exceptions: Gravitational, Magnetic, and Electrical forces.
3. An agent to apply the force
4. An object to feel the force

If a "force" doesn't fit all of these requirements, it cannot be a force. So we revisited the hover puck to look at what was applied to the puck and if there were any forces involved in keeping the puck moving, discussing all of the scenarios that they brought up.

So I finally asked a different question. "Are there any forces being applied to the puck as it is freely moving across the table?" The answer to that was generally a "no" and so I then reasked question 2 from the beginning of class and someone stated "Nothing!" I asked others to clarify that and I didn't understand how "nothing" could be a real answer. I got several clarifications to my satisfaction, and we concluded to the following statement: "Why couldn't you just tell us that?" I replied that I had in the previous class and they didn't believe me or didn't remember and asked if they would forget now. I got a resounding "NO!!" and this time I believe them. There is no explanation for an object's motion. We only need to explain things when motion changes.

They struggled and they understood. They listened and they forgot.

Great model application

Kind of a review of what I tried this morning that seems to have worked.

We started by reviewing the models that we have covered so far in the class. I asked what we have learned about motion so far and what models we have derived. The students began by listing some of the big ideas that came out of the models we have derived and so I steered them away from ideas involved in creating the models to labeling the model. We determined the first to be about constant velocity and so named it that. (I probably should have done that particular step in formalizing the model with a name earlier, but now I know that when we finish with a new model, we need to formalize it with a name.) We then noted the equations the we developed and the graphs we used to develop that math model. Then we did the same with the Constant Acceleration model, listing its equations and graphs as well.

We are moving into projectile motion so I gave a quick demo throwing a ball back and forth with a student. I then asked the class to discuss what restrictions we placed on previous models. I did not ask them to compare the previous models to the demo, but the first statement was about the fact that our previous models have all been 1D motion. There were a few other great observations relating graphs and our observations being "ideal" which I did not address immediately, but will return to when time permits. Then we moved on to Video analysis of projectile motion because the Sonic rangers would not take into account the second dimension.

During the discussion of the results in the lab, the students determined that the horizontal velocity was constant and the vertical acceleration was constant and "g". So I asked them incredulously if we could separate the vertical motion from the horizontal motion and there was a resounding "well I think so?" So I asked them what their graphs told them about the motion in either direction. They went back to their data and were more confident that this separation could happen. So they decided that we could apply both of our models to this new motion.

Let them do it!

You just have to step back and get out of the way sometimes. It seems that students who are driven to learn will do all of the work if their teachers just get out of the way! I simply had to show my AP class a phenomenon today and told them to explore it and they went of to figure things out. All I did was to come around and ask a few questions about why they were doing things and what they were finding. They were still worried about being wrong when I was asking them questions but much less so when I simply told them to explore. Some of the students wanted to know what they were supposed to be measuring so I simply returned the ball to their court by asking what they could measure.

The most important part of the lab was the discussion afterwards. This is where I slipped a bit. I questioned them and had them talking to me and answering my questions. I have since thought "What about I ask what questions they have about the experiment? Then they can group a few groups together and discuss what they found with each other and ask each other questions. Maybe put a few questions on the board and have them discuss them." I should do this before taking down the lab equipment so that they can see and demonstrate what they were questioning. Then come back together as a class to pull it all together.

I am seriously thinking of running my next new topic in this manner. It seems that they are then allowed to fail and question themselves but with the support needed to bring everything together. They want to learn, I just have to learn to get out of their way.

Edit: I just spoke with a colleague and he started his class getting out of the way. So far, in fact, he left the classroom while I stay to observer the girls in action. It was a genetics class so I could not possibly interfere or answer any questions and the students took over and started asking each other questions and hashing out any misunderstanding from the webcast the previous evening. When they ran out of questions to ask each other, he came back in to make any adjustments and things started going back to teacher led discussion. Still a lot of discussion but more focused on the expert in the room. Perhaps the nature of Genetics?

What I learned today.

This post is inspired by edu180nyc.org as tweeted by Frank Noschese. Their's is a website devoted to simple things learned during the day. The people who post are teachers, students,and as evidenced by the latest post, hipsters and apply to be able to post. It is a good practice to get into, I think, to go back over your day and find something that you learned. I am actually thinking of using it in my class a bit, but that is for another day.

Today, I learned, or rather relearned, to let things go and not over think them. During my first period class, I felt I was working very hard at helping my students to reach a solution. I felt I was working too hard. That rubbed off on them and they then over thought the whole situation and couldn't come up with basic answers that I know they had. It began to degrade quickly and in the end we never got to the point I wanted them to see.

By my third class of the day, I had made some changes. We were looking at a graph and had to switch between them to make sense of things. I started asking what the original graph looked like and then proceeded through. After the second graph with no end in sight, I simply told them we would have to look somewhere else for the answer to our problem. So we moved on to the third graph because the first two didn't suit our purposes. The third graph did the trick and they actually connected it to the first two. I finished with time to spare and so we went on to other things.

Therefore, I learned that if I simply let things lie and move forward as if we had made a mistake, then things will work out. And maybe it is not such a bad idea if they stray down the wrong path once in a while.