Text Set #2: Electricity

Electricity and Magnetism by Elisha Gray
Grade level: 9-12
In this book, Elisha Gray introduces the historical contexts of electricity and magnetism. Without using pages of equations, Gray develops the important concepts of electricity. There is also a chapter on harnessing water power in Niagara Falls. I think reading an excerpt from this text would be useful when teaching electricity, or using it as a resource for projects.

NV Energy: How to read your meter
https://www.nvenergy.com/home/customercare/readyourmeter.cfm
Grade level: 6-12
This is a website which explains some of the mystery revolving your electrical meter. This year in my class, I used one of my electrical bills from KUB. It's a good example for real world application. Most electrical companies use 'weird' units (such as kWhr) and in class we can find out what that is in SI units.

PHYSICS: An USBOURNE Introduction
ISBN: 0-86020-711-0
Grade level: 5-8
This book is a child-friendly approach to traditional physics. It includes nearly all areas of physics on a couple of pages per topic. It's written in cartoon-y almost comic book like style. It has explanations of natural phenomena and explains real world applications. It also includes several student friendly experiments. Even though it is targeted to younger students I have found some great demonstration ideas here. It is also a good resource for students to use for ideas if they are doing a project. The sections for electricity and magnetism are especially good because it shows the concepts through observable phenomena, not form a theoretical perspective.

101 Classroom Demonstrations
Grade level: 9-12
This is a book of demonstrations for physics. It not only explains how to preform the demonstrations but also the concepts behind them. Useful for students to read along with a topic to help reinforce the physical consequences of a topic. Any chance for students to relate academic material to real life is beneficial.

Hyper Physics: Electricity and Magnetism
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/emcon.html
Grade level: 11-12
This website is a good reference for the electricity and magnetism unit. It is organized as a concept map by topic. There are some 'physics calculators' for particular topics. This is where a student can type in a set of values and it solves for the missing quantity. It provides reference formulas for each topic and explains the relationships between variables in words. The other reason I picked this is because related topics link to each other, so there are multiple avenues to get to a certain topic or page. This can really help students reinforce the relationship between topics in the material. (Especially in physics, there are lots of connections.)

PHYSICS4KIDS: Electricity
http://www.physics4kids.com/files/elec_intro.html
Grade level: 5-8
This website has an excellent set of pages for electricity. It includes diagrams (which really convey complex phenomena) in an age-appropriate manner. Even without having chemistry, it explains the different between conductors and insulators. It even shows the relationship between force and distance graphically, showing an exponential (which they may not realize) without using in equations!

MIT: The wonders of electricity
http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-wonders-of-electricity-and-magnetism-9964/
Grade level: 9-12
This website's main focus is a video demonstration lecture at a museum. The video is appropriate for all ages but the text on the page is more at a high school level. The text on the page explains some of the demonstration outcomes without explanation (which is in the video.) A good activity I could do with this resource is having students read the text, and speculate on how the demonstrations might be preformed and why, and then watch the accompanying video. Then, students could compare their speculations to how the preforming completed the demos.

Physics 1501: Electricity and Magnetism
http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node83.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is a course website that has been done very well. It includes notes for each topic that read like a condensed textbook. (I know that sounds so awesome, haha) but it really is. This is a great resource for students who forgot their textbook one day, or would just like a supplementary text. The thing I like about how this website portrays this unit is that it teaches Electricity and Magnetism separately, and then shows how deep their connection really is. Also includes really good diagrams. Does not include very much Electrostatics, unfortunately.

Galaxy.net: Electricity
http://www.galaxy.net/~k12/electric/
Grade level: 9-12
This is a reference of demonstrations for electricity. I really like projects in physics that students get to chose their own experiment. This is a good resource for students to find demonstrations and experiments to do. It also includes teacher notes so students can see the 'behind the scenes' emphasis on each aspect of the experiments.

Berkley: Physics Applets
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/physics/appletindex.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is a webpage of physics applets. It has includes alot of PhET simulations for topics in physics. It has the longest list for electricity and magnetism and even includes a simulation for superconductivity (which is an advance topic.) Students can use this webpage as a reference if they ever want to view a simulation for a concept.

CalTech: Physics Applets
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~phys1/java.html
Grade level: 10-12
This is another webpage of physics applets. Gives students more options for their choice of applets. Could use in a project where students have to find their own simulations/ applets for a topic to share with the class. A project like this would also help me find the most effective applets to use with my students.

Reflection #10

Sinatra: Teaching Learners to Think, Read, and Write more effectively in content subjects

This reading was about teaching students to more effectively learn content material. It starts out by emphasizing the amount of different ways you can graphically organize material from an expository text chapter, or a unit of material. It also outlines a shift in teaching style that would be more beneficial for students.

I really liked the different concepts map included in this article. I know when I’m studying for a big test I organize my ‘study guide’ on un-lined paper in the form of a graphic organizer. I have not used this type of strategy in class. I teach mostly juniors so many of them have study skills that work for them, but definitely not all students do. When reading this article I also consider the limitations for drawing concept maps. I would need to emphasize to students that our concept map is not a end-all be-all but that we constructed this map in a specific context.

(For us, this could be in a unit which ignores air resistance. Our map for a later unit could include some of the same topics/concepts/nouns but with new and different relations.) Similarly, recognizing differences in concept maps throughout the year may also reinforce those constraints. For example, the acceleration in freefall is 9.8 m/s^2 only when there is no air resistance. It is an approximation when air resistance is ignored.

The article also notes that this strategy is useful for all age groups-- but may benefit low achieving low income students the most. I thought this might be a good opportunity to purposefully pair specific students together. If some students are already experienced graphic organizers I can pair them with a student who has lower reading comprehension or study skills.

Web Resource Review #2

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

Hyper Physics

This resource can be used for students from ninth grade to college level. It is basically an interactive concept map. It includes all major topics in physics and a couple of related application topics.

(thermodynamics, mechanics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, sound and hearing, relativity, nuclear physics, condensed matter, light and vision).

Some of the topics include value calculators where students can put in certain values and check their answer to the hyperphysics calculated answer. This also explicitly shows students what units should be used for each equation. Hyper Physics is really most useful as a reference. If students are working a problem that requires information from a previous topic they can refresh their memory using hyperphysics. The fact that it is laid out as a concept map can also help students organize their knowledge as we move through units.

One of the cons could be since it does include some calculus for certain topics, students could see unfamiliar symbols and quickly feel overwhelmed.

The site is not very commercial. It is maintained by Georgia State University and only has one column of ‘ads’ on the side. (Ad is for a live study group)

This website also has links to example problems (still building, not very big yet), and Physics concepts applied to other sciences: geophysics, biology, and chemistry.

Reflection #9

One of our readings this week was on Adolescents' motivation to read by Pitcher et al. These researchers surveyed and interviewed adolescent students to investigate their motivation to read what types of text and the influences affecting their motivation. One thing that stuck out to me was the influences Pitcher et al discovered to have the biggest impact. Some I thought were expected such as: reading material relevant to students, students being given a choice in what they read, and using different types of texts that students are already reading themselves (online material, magazines, etc). Some of the influences I had not already considered were teacher talk and modeling books and authors, teachers enthusiasm for reading and assignments, and modeling strategies for comprehension. These influences all make sense I just did explicitly consider them before. Modeling comprehension strategies I have read about as something teachers should do but it reinforces that idea to see it as a result of student interviews. As for the teacher enthusiasm I guess I figured all teachers should have this. Of course we are here for the students, but teachers should love their content areas too.

When I was browsing through the CCSS website one thing I thought was interesting was in the Algebra standards. It wanted teachers to use authentic math models for physical phenomena to teach algebra skills. This is really cool and all but the example it gave was V=IR. Very few students coming into high school physics have a good conceptual model for current, voltage, and resistance. Therefore, unless introduced and taught correctly I think teaching these topics too early or out of context can be harmful to students. This is also reflected in statement by Steve Robinson (reading not assigned in this class).

"Of course, knowing the subject matter is also important, and teachers who lack that knowledge can do serious harm. I would even go so far as to say that many of my students would be better off if they never had a science teacher before me because they have to unlearn so many bad things from elementary school teachers who were
afraid of science."