Notes form Last Meeting

Our meeting Saturday was lots of fun for me, and we had some great discussion about the efficacy of group quizzes and two-part tests. If you would like information about the group quizzes, or the IF-ATs (immediate feedback assessment technique, http://www.epsteineducation.com/home/about/), please email me.  (Also, someone left a coffee travel mug – you can pick it up at J.D.’s [you can use the contact form on this blog and we'll put you in touch with J.D.]

Our next meeting is November 19 at Pima Community College West Campus. It will be in our new physics lab. Chien-Wei Han and his colleague Jorge will lead us in a workshop on Arduinos in the classroom. You can buy an Arduino on Amazon for $25 or so, or a kit for $80 or so, and Chien-Wei will have some for us to use if you don’t want to buy or bring your own.

We are thinking of subjects for future meetings. Some suggestions are : using online physics sites; improving your students’ AP scores;  group dynamics; CASTLE workshop; using Mathematica in your class; Video physics labs; using google docs etc.; making a solar oven; using VPython with your students. You are welcome to send more suggestions.

I hope members of our group will volunteer for some of these topics, or maybe you have a topic you are dying to share with the group. I’m trying to focus more on professional development for our group, and would love to hear your ideas.

Fritz’s books:

The Now, by Robert Muller, author of Physics for Future Presidents)  It’s about time. And the creation of time.

Our Mathematical Universe, by Tegmark

Computer Age Statistical Inference: Algorithms, Evidence, and Data Science (Institute of Mathematical Statistics Monographs) by Bradley Ephron and Trevor Hastie

The Master Algorithm, by Pedro Domingos

These last two books are about Artificial Intelligence, a subject about which Fritz knows a lot. In fact, he might give a presentation on it.

Other news:

There is a Math Teacher’s Circle. They meet once a month or so to investigate an interesting math topic. If you would like to sign up, go to https://goo.gl/forms/QvUrwBu7hgxIy7aE2.  More information at http://ime.math.arizona.edu/ttc/.

Thanks,

Karie

Meeting Moved/Changed for This Saturday

Hi TAPT-ers,

We have had a change in our activity scheduled for Saturday, October 22^nd. Chris Ubing was scheduled to give a Mathematica workshop, but he has had to cancel.

Instead, we will have a workshop on group quizzes and group tests. I gave a short talk on this at both the AP reading professional development night, and the recent AZAAPT meeting, and teachers were very interested. I will show the IF-AT (Immediate Feedback Assessment Test) and I’ll have some samples that you can use to get started in your classroom. These are inexpensive forms and most high school teachers I’ve talked to have been able to ask their administration to purchase enough for the year.

In addition, I’ll show what I’ve been doing to increase exam scores and understanding using a group test extension. The basic method is to extend one of your exam questions to something deeper and more conceptual, and then let students think about the questions in groups. I’ll give some sample questions that I have used, and will discuss the Physics Teacher article that this comes from. Demian Quiroz gave a TAPT 10-minute talk about two years ago, and that started my interest in it, and it’s been very successful. This is one of the best methods I’ve found for team-building in class, and for making your exams learning experiences.

Since we don’t need the laptops or equipment in my lab, I thought we would meet at our usual spot, J.D. Garcia’s home. There is plenty of room to work. We’ll have our usual potluck breakfast, and then have a working, professional development time from 9:00 - 11:00. 

To get the most out of this, you could bring a recent or future exam that you would like to modify, and/or a quiz that you would like to modify to use the teamwork methods.

Professional development credit is available. Let me know if you would like me to bring a certificate for you.

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Hope to see you Saturday,

Karie