Upcoming: STAO 2018

I'm excited to be presenting at STAO this year. I'll be giving an updated version of my OAPT talk: Beyond the Traditional Lab: Tips and Tweaks for Critical Thinking. It will have a definite physics slant, but the ideas can be applied to all sciences.

The talk will be on Thursday, November 8 at 3:30 pm. You can register for the conference at www.stao.org.

OAPT Conference overview and sundry nifty physics things I've been working on

I'm writing this on the train back from the OAPT conference hosted at the University of Western Ontario, and it was, of course, amazing. I have so many thoughts and new great ideas to put into practice. Some quick takeaways: 

• thinking about using improv techniques in class to overcome my (and students') implicit bias, especially "Yes, and?"
• "We use mathematics to help us make the physics more precise."
• "Just because I don't have a 'math brain' doesn't mean I don't have something useful to contribute."
• "You're not part of a group, you're part of a team."
• Yes, the students do really need to draw a picture
• Why haven't we been using the rotunda at Jarvis to make super-long pendula?

Also, this happened:

Who's got two thumbs and just won a full registration to #stao2018? Thanks #oapt2018! pic.twitter.com/AMR74RKr4c

— Ms McPhee (JarvisCI) (@ms_mcphee) May 11, 2018

I think I'm going to have to wait until June to do the write-up justice.  I will share my presentation on Tweaking the Traditional Lab below; a link to various files and resources is posted in the resources section of this blog.


(Incidentally, one of the things I always like to mention when I'm introducing myself at presentations is how amazing the PD is on Twitter. The chart on the first slide is a perfect example. Elizabeth Houwen (a math teacher, incidentally) posted it last June, and I thought it would be a great way to get the students to practice unit conversions as well as estimation, and we also got a nice little lab out of it and an anchor chart so they have "reasonable" speeds to compare their answers to. All from one small tweet!)

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I've been busy converting my drill sheets practice sheets, which I mentioned in my last post) into Google sheets, as well as creating new ones. I'm fairly proud of the chemical nomenclature one (in part because I just found out how to write superscript and subscript numbers in Sheets, so the clunky ^3 _4 notation is mostly gone), but I really want to share the electromagnetic right-hand rules ones.

I made these using the =image() function, which allows you to put an image directly into a cell (and not just overlay the image on top). Unfortunately, you can't use the shared url of images on your Google drive (which is odd and annoying).

I'll probably refine the mixed version so that it's a little more clear what you need to find in each question; I'm not sure a student would recognize immediately that they need to find the direction of the action of the magnet for 1 and the location of the north pole for 6.

You can find these and a lot more randomized practice sheets at my course website; click on the practice sheets link under Resources.

Incidentally, sometime between last December and April, Google changed the formatting of "publish to pdf" for Sheets so that it's landscape instead of portrait. There doesn't seem to be a way to modify this, and it's really mucked up my formatting. Everything is spread over two pages, and don't get me started about what it did to my spectroscopy sheets.

Please let me know if you find these useful!

Google Camp and Renewing Math Summit are coming...

There are some fantastic PD opportunities coming up in the next few weeks.

Google Camp 5.0 will be on November 4; sadly it has already sold out, but you can put your name on the waiting list and some of the sessions will be simulcast on Twitter. I'm thrilled to be joining some amazing speakers; I'll be presenting a follow-up session to my Flipping Your Classroom session from March -- I'm going to try modelling a flipped lesson! There will be pre-session homework (if you so choose)! I'm very excited to be talking about EquatIO and Desmos, which are two really amazing ways to take math and STEM digital. As usual during the day there will be a room with helpful helpers available if you've been running into difficulties with GAFE and need someone to walk you through the solution.

More info will be available soon at http://bit.ly/tdsbcamp, 

The TDSB's Renewing Math Summit on the Friday, December 1 PD day is offered to secondary teachers. The focus is on Teaching/Leading in an Equitable Classroom and 21st Century Global Competencies. I'll be giving a session called Rope-a-Slope: Inquiry in Grade 9 Math where a simple piece of rope and a measuring tape and guided inquiry can lead to learning about relationships between variables, slope, direct and indirect variation, and more. The other sessions look amazing as well -- I'd love to be able to attend them all. There might also be a drop-in room to learn more about digital math tools like Knowledgehook, Desmos, Geogebra, etc. 

Registration for TDSB secondary teachers is on K2L until November 23, or they reach capacity.

Join me!

Updated: Fidget spinner math

Update: I've added a link to the data in Desmos and TI lists below.

Yes, I jumped on board the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" boat.

Inspired mostly by Harry O'Malley's site, I brought a fidget spinner^* and my phone to grade 11U math class one day and the students modelled the spin. The above graph is the one of my student's results. It's a bit wonky because in the two days since I had bought it, one of the end caps had fallen off, which made the central bearing ring shift off centre. This made it slow down a lot; the above graph shows a few tries at spinning. The student at the top of the post took an average of the cycles while other students just looked at the first.

To make a good video, mark one of the edges of the spinner so you have a reference point to track. The app I used is VidAnalysis Free for Android (for Apple fans, Vernier has an app for LoggerPro that lets you do the same stuff, if not more). Don't spin it too quickly unless you have much better equipment than I do -- I tried to analyse that lovely first video and got goobledeegook because it's spinning too fast for the video to capture properly.

You then pick reference points (known length and origin of coordinate system) and track your mark. You can skip forward and backward in time to get to the section you want to analyse. I goofed because I forgot that I had made a spin without my finger in the way; by the time I remembered, I had already invested too much time getting the other data. Hence the starts and stops.

I didn't want to take up class time getting the analysis ready, so we discussed what equation we were likely to see, and then worked on other problems. Before the next class, I made the analysis and turned the data into graphs in Google Sheets. The next class, I put the x-distance graph up on the screen and got the students to figure out the model. When they had an equation, I graphed it against the data (if you do this, remember that spreadsheets do trig with radians, not degrees).

It was a really good exercise, considering it's the first time I've officially used the VidAnalysis in class. We had some great discussions about the vertical translation (did I deliberately make the coordinate system off-centre? no, but I will next time because that led to interesting math); how to deal with the increasing period; how the amplitude of our function compared with the actual measured distance.

I've since shifted the centre bearings back and made another, better video analysis. The screen shots are below:

		What I like about this, mathematically, is a) how it shows the spinner slowing down; b) how it shows that I didn't hold the camera completely still -- notice that the "zero line" of the equation shifts up (nice for composition of functions!); and c) the x- and y-distances are essentially translations of each other (sin vs cos). I could have really expanded on this activity and got them to break the functions into different domains.
		The velocities show the same math effects as the distances; this could be used to show that the derivative of sinusoidal functions are still sinusoidal (and how). If only Google Sheets would get their act together and let us connect points in scatter plots.
		More screenshots. What I really like is that you can upload the data as a csv file to Drive. Copy-paste makes it simple to create a spreadsheet. Note that the Free part of the app means ads. I was still giving it a trial run, but I think I will upgrade to the premium version because it's a great little app.

I started the trig functions section by creating a periodic wave using a salt-shaker pendulum (an idea I cribbed from someone on Twitter -- I can't remember who it was, but I'd love to give her the credit). I now wish we had filmed the pendulum at the same time so we could compare our rough model to the data. Future ideas!

I have a graphing calculator assignment that grabs tuning fork data from a microphone; I get the students to model the function and work backwards to determine the frequency of the fork. We didn't get to it this year, but it would go well with this exercise.

If you'd like to use my data, feel free to make a copy of fidget spinner 2, or download the csv file. I'm going to import this into a Desmos activity and graphing calculator lists at some point; when I do, I'll update this post with links. Update:Here are links to the data in Desmos and as TI lists.

^*I meant to use one of the students' spinners in my MCF3M class, but ran into difficulties because that student wasn't in class the day we were supposed to do the model. Since I wanted a permanent mark on the spinner, I decided to not buy trouble and get my own. Plus, they're fun.

I did this exercise with the 11M students as well, but we wound up doing it as a class instead of individually.

#TDSBCamp 4.0

PD on a Saturday? Yes, please, especially if it's Google Camp. Yeah, yeah, fangirl, whatever. There's always so much I learn, even when I don't quite make it to the sessions I wanted to.

The day started with an excellent keynote by Jesse Brown (yes, that Jesse Brown) about how to take advantage of disruption. His biggest point for me was, of course, fail. Building failure into the model is also a feature of the growth mindset, which I'm still struggling to bring to many of my students.

Speaking of failures, I utterly failed to go to any sessions because I decided at the last minute that my presentations needed gifs (and why can't I stop typing figs every time?), but I've been creeping everyone's Slides ever since. There are terrific resources there; you should check them out.

The sessions I most wanted to attend were Larissa Aradj's BreakoutEDU Digital and Arianna Lambert's Digital Breakouts using Google Slides, since I've gotten really interested in making digital breakouts for assignments (and tried one out a few weeks ago -- now there's a failure story for you). David Hann's Manage GMail flow with Tasks will (hopefully) save me bunches of time. Jason Trinh's creating reports with Autocrat is something I will be looking into if/when I can no longer use EasyGrade Pro.

The Demo Slam was amazing, as usual. I really could have used Zelia Capitao Tavares's fantastic figgif-making tool earlier in the day. Larissa's winning Flippity add-on for Sheets is pretty nifty, as was present-even-though-he-wasn't-there Andrew Schmitt's 3D gifs (hah! got it right first try!), but the one I'll probably use the most is the Permanent Clipboard extension for Chrome, presented by Whitney Baker.

Can't wait until Google Camp 5.0!

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I'll end by including the slidedecks (and a how-to video) for my presentations, but one of the things I find when I'm preparing for presentations like this is that I always learn new things. For instance, while preparing for my first session -- which was about how to make a self-marking, non-multiple choice quiz that gives immediate feedback -- I discovered that I need to revise my previous blog posts, and specifically my comments about what query() does (because it doesn't do what I thought it did, for the most part) and because I also learned about arrayformula(). Always learning!







My second session was about tools and tips for flipping lessons. The most important take-away from this presentation, I think, is "What is the best use of face-to-face time with students?"

Part of my session shills for EDpuzzle, which if you remember I learned about at STAO in November. Since then I've jumped in with both feet and lately, I've been plaguing them with suggestions for new features.

Teachers learning about flipped learning & @EDpuzzle at #TDSBcamp. #edpuzzleworkshop #TDSB_TLT pic.twitter.com/61rNjAk6Er

— Ms McPhee (JarvisCI) (@ms_mcphee) March 4, 2017

What did I learn through prepping for this presentation? I reread Flipped Learning by Bergmann and Sams and remembered the post-video reflection forms one of the teachers uses. I had let those go by the wayside since using EDpuzzle in favour of embedded quizzes, but I think I will start reintroducing two/three-question reflection forms as exit cards.

STAO Saturday

Another day back in the wilds of Etobicoke for more STAO goodness.

Session 1: Flipping It with EDpuzzle with Adam Mills.

When I started flipping lessons two years ago, I made a conscious decision not to use a special flipping platform because I'm not keen on having kids sign in to access materials. I also want parents/guardians (or anyone else, frankly) to be able to freely access any of my materials and, in particular, without having to go through me to sign in. However, in Friday's session on blending learning tech, Mathieu Morin mentioned that EDpuzzle was integrated through GAFE. I was already planning on attending this morning's session, but now I was even more intrigued.

So.. it turns out that it's just integrated with Google Classroom, which I don't use, but there are other benefits to using it. The most important for me is that you can embed questions, which is great for making the lessons more interactive. I realized that I make my students "log in" to their webquizzes anyway, so this shouldn't exactly a huge difficulty, and the videos are still hosted on YouTube. I'm going to experiment with using this platform a bit more. I'm liking the possibilities for POE.

Now if only EDpuzzle would get back to me about why neither I nor my students can see the closed captioning option, that would be terrific.

This session took place in the Playground, so afterward I got a chance to look around a bit. The secondary curriculum committee had some great electricity demo boards, including this one with a balloon fuse on the short circuit.

(He asked me if I noticed the light changing, but I was too busy cringing at the balloon popping.)

I also saw something I really want for the next gift-giving opportunity:

Totally adorable, programmable, and only about $50.

I think next year there should be better signage for the Playground, because on Friday I thought it was just another session room and walked on by.

Session 2: Flipping the Learning: Transformational! Part I: What It Is and Looks Like with Meg O'Mahoney.

Yes, I was all about the flipping today. While the previous session was more about playing around with EDpuzzle, this session focused on the nitty gritty of flipped learning -- which is apparently not the same as a flipped classroom. The platform Meg uses is sophia.org, which has a lot of PD about flipping and would be worth checking out just for that.

Some of my takeaways: while you can use already-available videos, it's better to make your own (or at least have your own voice) since you are their teacher; students love it when you put your face in the video; and make sure they are doing something to stay engaged during the video.

Now where is Part II?

Session 3: Innovative Classroom Science with Sarah Chisnell

Science North has developed lesson plans from K to 12 with the idea that we should give students something to do so that learning naturally follows. The activity we looked at was building a telegraph for the grade 9 electricity unit. So what if they happen to learn something about electromagnetism early - that's just a bonus! I really like these lesson plans, especially if I put them together with yesterday's design strategies.

For the record, our prototype sort of worked. I call that a win.

Session 4: Disrupting "Inquiry" for the Sake of Learning with Dimitrios Melegos

So many great specific ideas from this session, including giving a pre- and post-lab attitudinal surveys (with 10 tricky T/F questions about the content, graphical analysis) to track learning; having a post-lab reflection; sharing past exemplars and results; getting them to write a research proposal "on a napkin"; giving them opportunities to share their results with the class.

One thing I really want to give my students is the opportunity to incorporate "playtime" with the probes, so the students know how they work when they design their own labs. Dimitrios suggests using the cookbook procedure to get them to practice.

I also really like the idea of presenting their results to the class or writing up a summary report, because I rather dislike marking lab reports. Is there anyone who doesn't?

All in all, another successful STAO. I can't wait to start incorporating... everything.

STAO Friday

The Science Teacher's Association of Ontario's annual conference is one that I try to get to every year, because I know that I will always come away with new ideas. This year's conference took place last weekend (right before my marks were due) and as usual, I came back brimming with inspiration.

Session 1: Inquiry-Based Learning in Senior Chemistry with Minor Tweaks in Your Lesson with Blunky Ng

Thanks to construction on Lawrence, my bus was slightly late so I arrived to a standing-room only, spilling out the doors session. I don't teach chemistry beyond grade 10 (for good reason), so I probably won't use the specific labs she mentioned, but the main gist is: instead of starting with the theory and then doing a lab to confirm, start with the lab (without telling students what the lab is about). I already do this a lot in physics, but can I do more? The answer is, naturally, yes. I also think I could be doing this more in grade 9 and 10 science.

I didn't manage to get to STAO last year, so I don't know if the hour-long break is a new development, but it's much welcome. I had plenty of time to explore the exhibit hall, which they moved to the main floor instead of tucking it away, without worrying about missing a session. Sadly, I didn't notice the new Playground room and so missed out on helping to build the Rube Goldberg machine.

If I was truly clever, I would have gone across the street to get some lunch.

Session 2: Intuitive Physics and Why It Matters with Richard Epp and Rohan Jayasundera

Richard and Rohan teach first year physics at the University of Waterloo, and they talked about how they teach students to think intuitively about physics instead of just pattern-matching problems. We want students to learn to build their intuition so they can trust it; they can then take that into other areas.

My main take-away from this session is that I need to teach dimensional analysis right at the beginning of the course instead of waiting for the dynamics unit. It ties in nicely with the idea of Reversing the Question, which I want to try with the big-5 kinematics equations. Also, there is a fantastic intuitive approach for developing the equation for circular motion I'm really looking forward to using.

Session 3: Crazy Demos with John Caranci and Steven Fotheringham

John was my Physics Honours Spec. instructor and if you've never seen him in action, I highly recommend it. I'd seen pretty much all of these demos before, but this was a great opportunity to film them while he was explaining them. I also now have to go find an aluminum tube for an extension to the falling cow magnet demo.

And practice with my chain and ring. A lot.

Session 4: Putting It All Together: Blending Learning Approaches to Foster 21st Century Learning with Mathieu Morin

The MOE has put out a draft of its 21st century competencies document, and the gist is that we want to shift from just covering the content to focusing on deeper learning. Mathieu led us through his journey into adding all the acronyms to his class, starting with the basic class website, through flipping the class to make time for IBL, PBL, etc.

Small takeaways: watch one video in class and teach them the Cornell note-taking method; Office Mix is a plug-in to create videos from your PowerPoints; look to academia for ideas for thematic projects for PBL and "dumb it down" for high school.

He was the first, but not the last, person this conference to say something along the lines of "Don't try to flip all your lessons at once. I did and it was foolish."

Session 5: Using Design Thinking in Your Science Classroom with Bluky Ng

The difficulty I always have at this conference is there are too many choices; I usually want to go to more than one session at any given time.^* In this case, I got lucky since there was a typo and the Innovative Classroom Science session I had planned to attend was going to happen on Saturday instead, so I bookended my day with another great session with Bluky Ng. I like the Crazy-8s setup for brainstorming; turning it into a gallery walk with students posting additional ideas is great. Obviously I want to do this with the sci/eng club, but I also want to incorporate it into the physics and other science courses. I really like the idea for the grade 10 climate change: design something that will help a specific country reduce its effect on climate change.

As for the sessions I missed because I can't be in two places at once? Fortunately, STAO makes the presentation resources available to members on their website.

More on Saturday's sessions tomorrow.

^*Invariably, all the physics sessions are at the same time. Why?