Meeting/Workshop this Saturday - Arduinos

Dear Physics Teachers,

We meet this week, November 19th, for a workshop on “Using Arduinos”. The workshop will be at Pima Community College in room F130 - I’ll send directions later in the week. Chien-Wei Han, Physics Instructor at Pima, will be leading the workshop. We have some Arduinos, or you can bring your own.They are widely available online or from computer stores around town. I ordered one from Amazon, and have seen them at Simutek on Ft. Lowell.

We’ll start at 8:30 and plan to end around 11:00 or so. I’ll bring coffee and cookies.

If you are using your own computer, you will be able to download the software needed at the workshop. Or you can use one of our computers. 

Here’s a little blurb about Arduino from (http://www.innovatemyschool.com/ideas/item/832-why-arduino-is-great-for-the-classroom.html):

The Arduino board is designed for artists and hobbyists – in other words people who are not necessarily roboticists or ‘geeky’ by nature, but are interested in making things that move, interactive models and projects that react to the environment and have some degree of sophistication and elegance.

If we think about young students, the majority of them will fall into that category. Most kids are usually interested in model making and it's okay to admit to liking it amongst their peers. Imagine making a board game with an electronic score keeper, or an interactive house model - gender and self-image safe projects that can be done with an arduino.

Because of this target audience, getting little models or prototypes working with arduino is really quick, easy and efficient – you plug the board into your usb port, write your code – which is simplified, yet has massive capabilities at the same time – hit download and, wahey, it works!

We all know how frustrating it is when, in any lesson involving technology, you can’t get past the first hurdle of getting something started up - arduino doesn’t have that issue.

Usually there’s no problem with the hardware (we have had the very occasional issue where it loses the usb port, but this is easy and quick to resolve) and no nasty bugs or strange error messages that stop it working for apparently no reason – if anyone has used the MPLAB IDE from yesteryear you’ll know what we’re talking about – there’s no need for an external debugger and all in all it is brilliant value for money.

It’s great for robotics because, essentially, a lot of hobbyist robotics projects are concerned with hardware control and reacting to sensors, which the arduino is designed to do and does well (yes you can use a raspberry pi to do this but, seriously, isn’t that a slight overkill?)

It's ease of set up and use, intuitive, simple software and low cost, makes it ideal for kids who want to start programming and a fantastic resource for classrooms.

It allows your students to focus on debugging their own hardware and code. They don’t have to worry about first learning how to use a complicated piece of software, or set up lots of hardware, just to write their first program - it's also one of the reasons that Lego Mindstorms is popular in classrooms.

The new computing curriculum states that students should be programming in at least two different languages. The arduino uses a simplified version of C, which is a hugely popular language, very different to Python - which is just as important to learn and the raspberry pi is good for this.

Recertification hours will be available. If you email me in advance, I will have a certificate ready.

Hope to see you there.

Karie Meyers, Ph.D.

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.

. 

Hope to see you Saturday,

Karie

Meeting Tomorrow

One last reminder about our meeting tomorrow. We have a great speaker lined up. Dr. Jonathan Tullis, Director of the CAMEL (Cognition and Memory in Education and Learning) Laboratory at the U of A, will give a talk on the latest findings of cognitive science and learning. Here is his summary:

Cognitive Techniques to Improve Student Learning

I will provide an overview of a variety of different instructional techniques grounded in cognitive theory that can bolster student learning and performance.  Examples of effective cognitive techniques include testing, spacing, scaffolding, and self-explanations.

We meet at 8:30 am at PAS 218. PAS (Physics and Atmospheric Science) is on 4^th Street between Park and Highland. You should be able to park at the Sixth Street garage or the Tyndall Avenue garage. A parking map is here.

Only the West-facing doors of the PAS building will be open. Breakfast will be served at 8:30, and we expect the talk to start around 9:00.  

Please don’t be late - the room is awkwardly furnished and anyone who comes in late has a difficult time getting seated.  We want the best experience for our speaker and our audience.

Many thanks to the U of A Physics Department for sponsoring this event, and for buying us breakfast.

All are welcome. Feel free to attend even if you've never come to TAPT - I think it's going to be a great talk with many take-aways that teachers will be able to use right away.

See you tomorrow!

Karie

Kick-Off Meeting September 17th

TAPT-ers,

J.D. has snagged another great speaker for us for our fall-semester kick-off breakfast. We will meet on September 17th at the University of Arizona, room PAS 218, at 8:30am for breakfast and a talk by Jonathan Tullis, Director of the CAMEL (Cognition and Memory in Education and Learning) Laboratory at the U of A. Professor Tullis is a former physics teacher who now studies Cognition and Learning. Breakfast will be provided by the U of A Physics Department. Thanks, U of A!

I’ll send directions and parking information in a future email. It is a football Saturday, but it seems like the parking structure will be open in the morning. I’ll send more information in the next week.

This is from Professor Tullis, about his talk:

Cognitive Techniques to Improve Student Learning
I will provide an overview of a variety of different instructional techniques grounded in cognitive theory that can bolster student learning and performance. Examples of effective cognitive techniques include testing, spacing, scaffolding, and self-explanations.


Hope to see you all there. Everyone is welcome. If you have colleagues who might enjoy the talk, feel free to let them know about it.

Best,
Karie

Saturday's Meeting Notes

TAPT,

We had delicious baked goods at our last meeting and we decided on a format of some talks and some workshops for this semesters’ program. Here are some dates we plan to meet this semester:

September 17^th: This will be our Kick-off breakfast, kindly sponsored by the U of A Physics Department. J.D. is working on a speaker, possibly in the area of the neuroscience of learning. We’ll meet for breakfast in the PAS building.

October 22^nd: Chris Ubing will teach a workshop on using Mathematica as a teaching tool. The workshop will be at Pima Community College West Campus, 8:30 – 11:00. Recertification hours will be available.

November 19^th: Another workshop is planned. Depending on leader availability, topic will be Using Arduinos, or Physics websites update. More details to follow.

December 10^th: Planning meeting/holiday cheer at J.D.’s house. Breakfast potluck with a holiday theme. At this meeting we will decide on more workshops and activities for the spring semester.

Also please note: the AZAAPT meets September 24^th in Phoenix. Details to follow.

We had a lot of ideas for workshops, and those given above sort of floated to the top through a combination of people available and most popular ideas. Some other workshops that could be offered in the next semesters: 

• Group tests and quizzes/group dynamics in the classroom
• TAAA overnight at their Chiracaua site– still in the works
• CASTLE workshop
• Solar energy and making solar ovens
• How we learn
• Videophysics: analyzing video motion graphically
• Google apps tutorial
• Best practices for getting/keeping girls in physics

Any other suggestions are welcome; just email me, or Chris Ubing, ubingc@cochise.edu, who has volunteered to be our co-organizer. Yay, Chris! Also, Chris will start a Facebook page for us!

Fritz’s book report:

The Gardener and the Carpenter, by Alison Gopnik – I think the author is the wife of a friend of Fritz’s.

Are we Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? By Frans DeWall . The name says it all. This author also wrote The Bonobo and the Atheist, which Fritz also brought along.

Universe and Life, two anthologies edited by Brockman. Big topics.

The First Chinese American, by Seligman.

Hope to see you all at the next meeting, at Pima. And I hope everyone’s school year started off great.

Karie

Karie Meyers, Ph.D.
Physics Instructor and Chair, Physics and Geosciences
Pima Community College West Campus
Office E224
phone 520-206-6695
kameyers1@pima.edu

Reminder: Planning Meeting this Saturday

Tucson Area Physics Teachers,

We will have our planning meeting Saturday, August 20, at J.D. Garcia’s house [use contact form to ask for directions]. We start at 8:30 am, and aim to end about 10:30. Bring all your ideas about meetings for this semester. We’ll set dates and discuss speakers. Bring a dish to share if you have time; if not, there’s always enough food, so just bring yourself.

Everyone is welcome, new, old, and friends of physics teachers.

Hope to see you there!

Karie