North Dakota Bound, cowritten with the fabulous Rachel Golding.

I’m taking my students to Six Flags for Physics Day. It’s April 24 in Georgia. If you’re outside of Georgia, know that Six Flags parks all over the country host similar outings in the spring.

Because we’ve been studying the Physics of Superheroes, our trip to Six Flags is extra special. Students will (in addition to all the great theme park physics we will do) get to ride the Batman and Superman roller coasters.

I’m starting my planning with the sweet physics day workbook, available for download from the Six Flags site.

Today, we watched The Science of Watchmen (6min), which introduced the students to several wave principles of energy. Then, I introduced them to light waves and early experiments to determine the velocity of light.

Here’s my first entry in Dan Meyer’s “What Can You Do With This?” meme.

The artifacts: Two photos taken from a tourist’s turn on the London Eye, one from eye-level with Big Ben and the other from well above the famous London landmark.

What meaty, mathy problems can you dream up out of these photos? Tune in next time for the questions my students asked (and answered).

Do yourself a favor and pop “Fermat’s Room” in your DVD player during math class.

“In this psychological thriller, 4 mathematicians are imprisoned in a shrinking room; with the walls closing in, they must try anything to escape this fatal puzzle.”

Group the students into fours, name them after the characters in the film (Galois, Hilbert, Oliva, and Pascal), and pause the DVD whenever a new puzzle is presented. Start a timer. Then watch the kids work.

“Fermat’s Room” is available at Blockbuster but (sadly) not yet on Netflix.

I’m a huge Wikipedia fan. An xkcd comic this week caught the sentiment of a lesser-known part of Wikipedia perfectly.

Haven’t heard of “Simple English”? Oh, it’s a wonderful concept. Simple English Wikipedia uses “only basic words”, perfect for non-native English speakers — and for my younger students.

As might be expected, Simple English Wikipedia isn’t as complete as (regular) English, but I’ve found it incredibly useful when looking up encyclopedic details on topics that can get complex really fast.  Science, math, and technology are just some types of topics that I specifically direct my students to. Here’s a great comparison:

• Pythagorean Theorem in English
  (assumes you know what “right triangle” means)
• Pythagorean Theorem in Simple English (explains a right triangle as “One of the angles of a right triangle is always equal to 90 degrees. This angle is the right angle. The two sides next to the right angle are called the legs and the other side is called the hypotenuse. The hypotenuse is the side opposite to the right angle, and it is always the longest side.”)

In my work with middle school students, I’ve found the Internet is an unfriendly place to read. Poor writing/editing and writing for an advanced audience are two major ways authors make life difficult for students aged 12 to 14. Simple English (in Wikipedia and hopefully applied elsewhere) helps my middle school students but let’s face it, simpler writing makes life easier for us all.

Carl in the driver's seat of the maglev train

American Maglev Technology makes magnetically levitated trains. My physics class and I had the opportunity to learn from the engineer and CEO today during our visit to their test track about an hour from our school. We had an amazing time!

The tech tie-in is that we set up in advance to use Twitter to capture updates from our experience. Below is a sampling of student comments.

Credit for the idea of Twittering a field trip goes to Dale Basler in his post “Journal via text messaging during field trip”.

The Twitter experience worked out better than I expected. That said, I remain unconvinced that this technique beats giving each student a little notebook with a pen. Maybe it’s just infinitely cooler. And maybe that’s enough. Either way, if you want to try Twittering a field trip, here are my top 5 tips:

1. Set up a Twitter account for the class and individual accounts for each student. Have students add their phone under Settings > Devices so they may text message updates. Test this out before field trip day!
2. Talk with the students in advance about being discreet. Mine understood the importance and respected our hosts. In fact, I never noticed my kids Twittering during the trip.
3. Alert your field trip host(s) that the students will be taking notes on their phones so they’re prepared to see the kids tapping away (do step #2 well and step #3 could be a non-issue).
4. Students may forget to Twitter. Encourage them to send updates during the bus ride home.
5. When you return, log in to the class account and star the best updates. The Favorites page will display all starred tweets. This will let you filter out extraneous updates, especially from students using Twitter regularly.

My friend and colleague, Dana Huff, has a presentation highlighted on Slideshare.net today! A huge congratulations to her for being recognized for a great slide deck.

“Using Blogs and Wikis for Professional Development” provides a wonderful introduction to more than just blogs and wikis. She also covers professional uses for Facebook and an addictive little tool called Twitter.

My friends at Georgia State (especially those in the IT class) should check this out. You can get great tips for using the web to keep you razor-sharp as a teacher.

Seven tips for middle school students who will be reading and commenting on blogs.

1. Assume it’s public

Some blogs are private so that only the class can see them. Others are public and the world can read what you say. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell how the blog you’re commenting on is set up. That’s why I suggest you assume everything’s public.

2. Use the “2 Minute Rule”

In person, my rule is that you must be listening to a conversation at least 2 minutes before adding anything. This is kind to the people who in the conversation before you got there and it helps you make the best comments possible.

Online, you need to read the entire conversation before responding.  Same deal as in person.

3. Do unto others

Be kind, be constructive. You can use the sandwich method to leave a good comment: start with praise, go on to your constructive criticism, and close with praise.

4. Build on previous comments

Read not only the original blog post but also the comments. Then attempt to add to the conversation with statements like, “I agree with Peter when he said his favorite rule was the 2 Minute Rule.” Go on to explain why. The “why” is the more important part. No one learns from a “me, too!” response but we can all learn from additional explanations you can add.

5. Quote me on that

If you’re responding to one part of what was said, copy-paste the relevant text so we’ll know what you’re talking about.

6. Edit, edit, edit

I like to read all my online writing out loud to see if it sounds right. Then I’ll remove unnecessary words and correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

7. Protect your identity

I suggest you use a screen name or your first name only. When leaving a blog comment, your email address is usually given only to the site owner so use a real one.

What tips would you add to the list?

Thanks, Cool Cat Teacher (Ten habits of bloggers) for inspiring this post!

The beginning of every semester finds me in a quandry: how detailed should my syllabi be? How detailed are your syllabi?

Here’s the geometry syllabus I just finished.

The syllabus is way more detailed than any I’ve ever written. What drove the uber-detailed syllabus? One of my weaknesses has always been long-range planning, so I’m taking the opportunity to plan the entire semester at once with this class. I’ve chosen home study assignments, created a portfolio project that spans the semester, and scheduled assessments.

Syllabus highlights:

• Assessments on average every other week (8 total)
• Semester-long portfolio project to be turned in at exam time (counts as an additional assessment)
• Weekly home study assignments (approx. 10 problems per week)

The possible benefits include time saved planning during the semester and students will know what’s coming along. I think the risk is that the course might move along too rigidly to allow for student differences or truly experiential learning.

I want to see your syllabi! What do you like about your syllabi? What do you wish you could change?

Grant, a student of mine, wrote a physics lab for his final project. He set up a pendulum with 2 choices of arm length and asked the rest of the class 1) for an object swinging on the end of the arm, when during the period is acceleration greatest? and 2) which would swing with a higher velocity — a Wiimote on the longer- or shorter-armed pendulum?

To gather data, Grant connected a Wiimote to his computer over Bluetooth. He then showed us how the Wiimote works:

Then he connected the Wiimote to his Apple laptop to display acceleration (in 3 axes, no less!) using DarwiinRemote.

Grant used a few web resources in devising his lab, here they are:

• Hacking the Wii remote for physics class
• Wheeeee! It’s a Wii remote in physics
• Measure your 0-60 time with a Wiimote

Oh, you wanna know the answers to Grant’s questions? 1) acceleration is maximized on the downward swing and 2) the Wiimote records a higher velocity when swinging on the long-arm pendulum.