I’ve done a ton of labs with students this month. We’re learning about waves and there are some fun demos and experiments you can use to illustrate ideas.

My absolute favorite tool is: my cell phone and a ring stand with a claw clamp.

Don’t put a ring on it.

I’m now super mobile and can film some sweet science action to use in videos, post on the website, and just generally have in my back pocket when I need something.

Like today, we were discussing how waves travel faster through some media (solids) than others (gases). So, I set up two rows of dominoes, one spaced tightly and the other less so, and let the science happen.

Can’t see the video? Try looking [here](http://blog.ohheybrian.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/domino3.mp4)

I have a lot of other examples, including a couple which will have their own posts…someday…maybe. If you don’t teach science, ask your friendly neighborhood chemistry teacher if they have an extra stand and clamp. Or, just head over to Amazon and grab yourself a little phone tripod to have. It makes a ton of difference in how you think through teaching a lesson and the more you use it, the more opportunity you’ll find.

My video was rambly this week. I think it’s because I have complete control over my environment, but there’s just not much I can do with it. I have a really small classroom and some big classes, so it gets packed quickly.

It’s easy to fall back into default “classroom mode” where desks are in rows for ease of movement, which is important. If you can’t do what you need to do because the arrangement isn’t working, (but hey, they’re in groups!) you’re environment still isn’t flexible enough to push students into owning their learning.

I’m pretty open about where students sit. A year ago (nearly to the day…wow…) I wrote about seating charts and they’re influence on the environment. I’ve resisted making new charts this semester because I’m shooting for the right balance in the room. This ties more in with the culture, but the physical environment is affected: who sits where, how does their interaction demand attention from the space, etc.

Being flexible with the environment starts the change. Being okay with (sometimes) big groups of kids helps send a message that learning is collaborative. Moving around your space (yes, it’s okay to have a desk and a space of your own) so you work more effectively in the classroom space will also help make that transition. Since moving my desk, my interactions have improved, my rapport is better, I feel more aware, and students expect more interaction from me. All good things.

Ken Bauer has more energy than I know what to do with. I met him two or three years ago (something like that) and ever since, he’s taught courses, advanced in his university position, joined the FLN board, and really just been a great friend.

Ken is running an open course (a cMOOC if you want to get technical about things) on Flipped Learning over the next eight weeks just because. He organized everything, set up the website and syndication, promoted, and is now managing 40+ people going through the course. I helped out last year by hopping into a hangout or two with some folks to talk about the Pillars. But, I wasn’t in the classroom – I was an invited guest.

This year, I’m back in the course because I’m back in the classroom, trying to work out a lot of the same problems I thought I already had answers to. Kudos if you can follow that deeply meta line of thought.

I’m hoping to reevaluate what I think about flipping. Paul Andersen talked about his love/hate journey with flipping last year at the annual conference. We continued the discussion on a boat. I think I’m paralleling his journey now…I like the idea, I’m frustrated with the implementation and bottle necking (some of which is definitely my fault), but I think it’s still the right thing to do.

I want to find balance. I want to rework my understanding of what I do and why I do it. I want to articulate what flipping looks like for me in more concrete terms when I’m asked. I want to see what other people do. I want to be challenged.

I’m really looking forward to the next eight weeks.

I’ve been looking forward to teaching electricity all year. I’ve never done it before and I was excited about the hands-on stuff you can do. Who doesn’t want to play with batteries and light bulbs?

Seriously.

I split the lab into two days. Rather than prescribing circuits, I knew I wanted to make it inquiry-based. There are limited variables with simple circuitry and I wanted students to find the connections and patterns on their own.

Day 1

I put together kits for students with a D cell battery, some Christmas lights I cut up the night before, and aluminum foil to serve as a “wire.” Each group was challenged to make five working circuits.

The struggle was real. The success was even more real. Smiles all around; shouts of joy when the bulbs lit up or turned off when they were supposed to. Plus, lots of shrugging and smiling from me as I avoided answering anything, which was fun.

Plus, I got my favorite answer ever from someone on the last question…

The circuit diagrams were based on a model on the board with unlabeled components, which helped them struggle through drawing a nice, clear design. At the end of the day, most students could draw a diagram based on the apparatus they had built.

Day 2

Time to put the learning to work. I still haven’t taught anything about how to split the voltage across a series because I wanted them to make the leap of faith themselves. This lab required the students to read a circuit diagram to use the voltmeter and ammeter. To simplify (and reduce the stress of lab time) each group had to choose to measure volts or amps. If they finished early, I let them finish taking data on their own rather than swapping with another group.

Again, I refrained from answering direct questions as much as possible because I needed them to not only be able to draw a diagram, but read an unknown given to them. They rose to the challenge and, for the most part, were able to get at least one data set completed by the end of lab.

——-

The struggle was real and the payoff was satisfying. The goal was achievable and success came quickly, which spurred more effort on the harder challenges. This lab is definitely a keeper for next year. To improve, I’m going to make a better connection between the labs…some groups said they didn’t see the pathway I was trying to set up. Either way, it worked great and I’m already looking forward to putting the pieces together next week.

To top off the great day, Batman swung by with a friend.

I gave up using Jetpack a while ago on my blog because I couldn’t control where it sent information. I wish it was more modular in nature because it is helpful. But, I don’t want visitor (read, your) information sent off to unknown folks to do unknown things. So, I turned it off.

I’ve slowly added functionality back since turning it off one plugin at a time. Plugins are nice because all of the data is hosted right with the blog – there’s no sending things to third parties. At the same time, it’s a little more upkeep on my part to make sure a plugin doesn’t break and send the site all wonky.

Right now, I’m using the following:

– Akismet – Essential for spam blocking. As of right now, it’s blocked 17,000+ spam comments since I installed it way back when.

– Email Subscribers – Some folks still like ye olde notifications via email when a new post is published. This plugin lets me set up custom emails for those notifications, which is nice.

– Send email only on Reply to My Comment – I love how straight to the point these guys are. “What does this plugin do?”, “Read the name.” This adds comment notifications back in but allows users to choose when they want those emails. These are also personalized in the settings.

– WP Power Stats – I write for me. But sometimes, it is nice to scratch the “how many people visited this week?” itch. It’s also nice because it shows browsers people visit on, which helps me make decisions about updates.

– Typewriter – This lets me write in Markdown because I like Markdown. Do I need a more valid reason?

– WP-Gistpen – I’ve been posting more and more code lately and this little guy lets me grab snippets from Gist, which is a super-handy snippet repo from GitHub.

Nothing fancy. And only what I want. All managed by me, on this site, with no third party reaching in for that information.

—

This is the third anniversary of Aaron Swartz’s suicide. He was a champion for data privacy and the idea of a free and open internet where ideas are shared. I didn’t hear about him until two years ago, on the first anniversary.

Maybe his story stands out because he did things like co-author RSS (yes, that RSS which syndicates just about everything on the web), start a non-profit (Demand Progress) which successfully, among others, beat the cable lobby for substantial Net Neutrality rules, or maybe it’s because he was my age.

Whatever the reason, data is important, and it’s not something I take lightly any more. Yeah, it would be easier to just use Jetpack, but at what cost? Information is a commodity, but it’s not one that benefits you or me.

The fact of the matter is that we are all responsible for the health of the Internet each day. This is my little part.

We’re working very hard with students on annotating articles in preparation for the new state test sections. The goal is to help them find pertinent information in multiple texts which can be used to construct thorough written responses. We have a standard format…circling unknown words, underlining main ideas, etc, which help students transfer the skill from class to class.

Finding relevant articles means lots of searching online. Once you find text, it helps to format it for use with students. I like giving students wide margins for notes as well as nicely laid out paragraph numbers for reference in discussion and writing. It took a long time to copy and paste each article into a table cell and reformat, so I wrote up a simple Google Apps Script to do it for me.

It works through the document, checking paragraphs (line breaks in Google-land) for text. If there’s text, the script copies it into a numbered row of the table and then deletes the original. What you’re left with is a nice copy of the article to print out and use with students.

Here’s a template document you can make a copy of and play with. If you have questions, send me a tweet, @bennettscience, or leave a comment below.

We’re playing with magnets this week in class. (We’re actually finishing playing with magnets now.) It’s been great and this is by far one of my favorite units to teach because everything is so hands on. We’ve done lab activities every day. Magnets are accessible. They’re approachable by students. They’re easy to put your hands on and learn from.

Play in science is crucial to the learning process. Mess with something, see what it does. Mess around again.

Today, some students were really playing with ideas and others were just playing.

There must be a balance. Finding that balance in allowing for play alongside play is hard to strike because they can switch so quickly. Intentional situations (good design) help maintain the balance. Finding ways to make students think they’re just playing around is a good way to have them really play with ideas.

It’s frustrating when that opportunity is missed.

Months ago, I turned off Jetpack on my blog. I use WordPress and Jetpack is a package of apps which handled email subscriptions, comment management, social media posting, etc. Unfortunately, it also collects a ton of information about visitors to the site for their own use.

I’m not in the business of passing your information along to another company. So, I turned off Jetpack. And off it stays.

As a result, I lost some things, one being email subscriptions. I just activated a new plugin which will handle subscribing to posts via email if that suits your fancy. Fill out the form at the bottom of the page with your name and email to opt in. Make sure you confirm your email address in the confirmation email you get!

As a matter of policy, I don’t collect any information about you without you knowing.

Email opt in is voluntary. Your email address stays private. Always.

If you would like posts mailed physically, send me a tweet, @bennettscience or leave a comment below and I’ll get in touch with you. Completely serious offer.

My wife had been hinting that she wanted to use recipe cards in the kitchen rather than her phone all the time. So, I took a few hours and made some up using Inkscape. They’re clean and minimal and print out as 4×6 cards on cardstock.

The font is a Futura clone, so no need to worry about royalties or licenses.

You can download the Inkscape files if you want to tweak the design (front, back). Or here’s a ready-made PDF for your printing pleasure.

I’m overwhelmed by the feeling of immense blessing and immense wretchedness each year. The birth of Christ – King of Heaven, seated at the right hand of God Himself – born in a barn…the lowest of lows. Entering our world to serve as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, a plan set in motion from the moment the fruit touched the lips of man, as a baby, completely dependent on those he came to save.

Parallel to his birth, Christ dying on the cross as a criminal. Crucifixion was saved for offenders who needed to be examples. Cruel and torturous, saved for the worst of the worst. Broken and returned to the lowest of lows.

From Ann Voskamps’ book, The Greatest Christmas:

… and on a chilled night under stars, there is no grand mass of people whose efforts pry the stars into place.

In an obscure caved barn, down some backstreet of Bethlehem, there is no great host whose good works unlatch heaven & impress God into coming.

Tonight, at the foot of the cradle of Christ, like at the foot of the Cross of Christ, there are no big ­people—​­no powerful, no proud.

Tonight there are only those who tramp to the manger with nothing; there are only the manger tramps, the men who lay down all the ­self-​­made, the women who lay down all the ­self-​­sufficiency, the children who lay down all the wants. We, the manger tramps, who kneel where thrones tremble and demons fall and the self-​­made crumble and the ­self-​­righteous weep.

Tonight there are only the manger tramps, who tramp in with all our poverty of spirit . . . so there can be an abundance of God.

And the bulk of all your worn shreds slip off the weariness of your back.

You have tried to polish enough for Him with these rags.

You have tried to patch together so much for Him.

You have tried to produce too much for Him with these rags.

And ­you—­we—​­who are the manger tramps see it tonight, what He’s written in red on all our filthy rags: “But I did it for love.”

All of conquered heaven and grateful earth echo and throb tonight with the heart cry of the ­God-​Child: “I did it for love.”

What can all the manger tramps do but wrap the vulnerable God in strips of our bare, broken hearts so He can lodge in the intimacy of us?

The greatest Gift laid into our empty hands…Grace is weightless.

Even the winning stars singing it over the manger tramps tonight.

God came because he chose us.

Merry Christmas.

I promised Stacy Lovdahl I’d post this the other day and then promptly forgot. Sorry, Stacy.

I took a graduate course on curriculum development and implementation this semester through Ball State. Not many of the assignments were open-ended enough to make for interesting blog fodder, so I didn’t post much. For my final project, I chose to redesign the course of study for my school based on an inquiry model. There are two components: the redesign document and the theory backing it up. They’re both available as Google docs with comments opened.

Many, many thanks to Michelle Baldwin and Kelly Tenkely from Anastasis Academy for late-night questions about inquiry mapping, standards reporting, and pretty much anything I couldn’t wrap my head around. Check out the work they’re doing…it’s amazing.

The end of the semester is bittersweet. It’s exciting to think of the long break coming up. At the same time, the burden of work to be completed feels futile for many. I’ve been fighting significantly lower effort patterns and I don’t really have a good way to bridge the gap. Part of the issue this year is that I missed an entire week to stay home with the new baby.

Not that I regret that time at all. By any means.

The theme for this week seems to be, “Why should I try? I can’t do anything about my grade now.” In some cases, this is true, and it’s a result of systematic, deliberate choices to not engage at any point along the way.

But.

I’m still responsible for helping my students learn. I’m constantly reminding myself that I cannot do the learning for them. There has to be an inkling of effort to engage with the tasks.

“No, we can’t take a day off.”

“Yes, we do have things to do today.”

“Yes, this will be on the test.”

(that last one kills me.)

I need to take each class as they come and make the most of it.

In October, I wrote about a bookmark application to get the text of a website for analysis in the Lexile analyzer tool. It’s a pain in the keister to copy text from a website, open a document, paste the text, save as a plain text file, then reupload to the Lexile website. The bookmark tool does the hard part for you (the clicks…all the clicks…) so you just download the formatted file and upload it to the Lexile site.

Depending on what you try and analyze, you might get an angry message like this one:

Nerdspeak, engage!

The only reason you’d use ASCII is if you, A) want to support legacy browsers (Netscape Navigator 1.0 anyone?) or, B) need to speed up query time on a string or a database. Modern web browsers are so much more efficient now, most sites use something called UTF-8. I’m guessing ASCII is needed for the Lexile analyzer so it can give you the score faster than it could with modern encodings.

Anyways, I pushed a fix to the applet tonight. It works by taking the text you highlight and encodes it to ASCII before downloading. So, still no conversions. And no angry red messages. And no more worrying about encodings.

You can grab the extension here or take a look at the source for yourself and tinker around.

I wanted to write this down while it’s fresh in my mind (and because it’s late).

I’m finishing a graduate semester on curriculum theory and practice and the final project I chose to complete was a redesign of a school’s curriculum. I decided to really push the boundaries and go for an all-inquiry, mixed age thematic classes. It’s a real swing from the norm. But, I think it can be done (mainly because it is being done).

Michelle Baldwin was kind enough to endure a ton of questions as I worked through some of the stickier points. Mainly, how does one lesson plan and account for mandatory standards in a school where students direct the exploration and topics for learning.

@bennettscience exactly. We still report on standards, but it's my job to look at what the kids are doing and figure that part out.

—Michelle Baldwin (@michellek107) December 6, 2015

What happens is linked back to the standard. Themes exist, but specific demonstrations come organically through exploration and play. The teacher’s job is to find those demonstrations and reconcile it with the student. Preempting the demo via planned assessment activity undermines inquiry.

My wife had our second daughter last week. I’ve been fortunate to be able to stay home with them this week and help out with the newborn and our two year old.

In the in-between times, usually late at night, I’d think about school stuff. In no particular order:

<braindump></braindump>

• I don’t do a good job recognizing culture in my classroom.
• I also don’t do a good job of having performance evaluations for students. Work is limited to the scope I set.
• At the same time, I don’t have a good way to have students access outside content. Many have devices, but many don’t.
• We’re moving into chemistry soon and finding those connections are difficult.
• I don’t want to give multiple choice tests anymore, but I have to stick with the other teachers in the department with the same course. So, how do I evaluate differently but maintain parity?
• When issues with ed tech are brought up, people take it really, really personally (I’m included there).
• Sometimes those personal feelings get in the way of good decisions (yep. Still including myself).

``

I’ve taken a big dive into test analysis lately. Spreadsheets, formulas, correlations, and color-coding have become the norm after an exam to help and identify misconceptions with my students as a whole and on a class-by-class basis.

One of the sheets I created (based on work done by Andy Schwen a few years back) color codes student responses in red if they got the question wrong, like this:

I started wondering if there were significant patterns between classes looking at the scored matrix rather than statistical figures. I grabbed screenshots of each class, dropped the opacity of the image to ~35% and then layered them all to make this:

What made this doubly-interesting is that the darker red areas on the page do not always line up with the statistical figures. For instance, I needed to revisit 2, 4, 9, 11, and 12 based on the statistical analysis (biserial value, if you’re curious). They had discrepancies between students who got it right and did well on the test when compared to those who got it right and did poorly.

Looking at the picture, I also went back and revisited 8, 9, and 17 just because a lot of people missed them. I also looked at number 5 because very few people got it wrong.

Teaching is science and art. Even if the art is doing test analysis.

The language I use around grading is very specific, especially when I’m speaking with students.

“Your grade is based on how much you learn. You must show me that you’ve learned.”

I also have a go-to response when students ask if a particular paper will be graded:

“The paper itself isn’t important. However, the work you do on the paper can demonstrate learning, which is how you’re graded. Second, and more importantly, mistakes you make on paper help me help you.”

Students usually agree with this sentiment. Until grades come around.

“I did all the papers! Why is my grade so low?”

“You haven’t demonstrated learning yet. What would you like to show me?”

“…but I did all the papers.”

The language is the same, but we’re speaking past one another. Until we can make clear the distinction between the process of learning and the demonstration (which can certainly happen in the process), we’ll continue to fight culture.

We’re working on our close-reading skills. Indiana has changed the standardized test format (again) and students will be doing very Common Core-like reading and analysis tasks as part of the new format. (Sidebar: it’s amazing that critical thinking and analysis are terrible under Common Core, but totally okay and great when Indiana copies them.)

This means I need to take time in class to actually teach some serious reading strategies. I’d done similar things implicitly in the past, but it’s now more important than ever to make students are equipped to be successful on the exams coming in the spring.

This activity is the first time students have gone through the process, so it’s taking serious time. The school improvement team has built and tested a model that we’re to use in class with our students so each class gives an equivalent experience.

Today, I grabbed an article from the textbook on Robert Goddard. We’ve just finished Newton’s laws of motion and talking about spaceflight and the apparent paradox of the third law is a good way to round out the chapter. The text is on grade-level, so students should be able to approach it on relatively sure footing.

To start, I read the article out loud while they underlined anything of interest. Our students have struggled with writing coherent responses to prompts because they lacked a basis for their response. Finding points of interest can help build a frame of mind to respond to a question later. Listening to me read modeled the pace they should use when they’re reading alone. We talked about phrasing and hearing their own voice in their heads. Most seemed to see the importance of this because they actually had time to process what they were reading as it was being read. We also discussed points of interest to help those who struggled find a good starting point.

I also found at this point it was important to acknowledge that the interesting point did not (and really shouldn’t) be a direct quote. It can be an idea or a theme. It can be a frame of reference – putting themselves into the shoes of the subject. It helped some who didn’t find anything in particular at the surface interesting to find a point they could dig into later.

Second, they re-read the article silently (modeling appropriate pace) while circling words that they didn’t know or found confusing. I described this as, “figuring out what you don’t know so you can go learn it.” Not knowing something is too distracting. I wanted to embrace the fact that they wouldn’t know some of the terms and that it’s okay.

After finding their words, they grouped up and compared. Words in common were circled and left. Words that were unique (one person, maybe) were peer-taught.

Finally, we regrouped and started going around the room defining terms in common. Before class, I had gone through and identified potential terms, but there were a lot thrown out that I hadn’t anticipated. Doing this as a class promoted idea sharing and helped students to see that they were not alone in confusion.

I don’t know what day of class this is, but here’s what we did today.

We took a test a week ago that did not go well, to say the least. I already wrote about that process. We took this week to slowly go back over ideas and rehash them…not from scratch, but pretty thoroughly. I’ve been trying to be more explicit in the methods of interaction – reading, writing, kinesthetic (lab), drawing, etc. Today was the final day of Newton’s Laws (#thesecondone) and I decided to have them create posters and/or short comics on one of the laws.

These are some of my favorite student pieces:

Yes, this is a brash Sir Isaac Newton breaking a tree with the apple.

Are they perfect representations? No. And there are others that show inconsistency. But, they were talking about the ideas and creating their own models based on understanding. Drawing (sometimes silly) pictures helps to internalize the idea and it opens doors for discussion. It allowed me to enter a conversation about physics at their level and do some intense teaching one on one, which was the goal.

I also challenged myself to creating some stories. I’m a major fan of xkcd, you’ll notice the resemblance because that’s my level of artistic ability:

It was a fun, light day with lots of growth. Tomorrow, we’ll quiz one more time before moving on to work and energy next week.

I gave a test a week or so ago. When I scored the test the first time, I didn’t think I made my key correctly. So, I double checked it and re-scored. Same result.

I immediately implicated myself in the low scores. My test may have been too hard. Perhaps I included things that weren’t taught. I went back and went over the entire test, item by item, and matched each to a set of notes, a lab, and the state standard I marked on my plans.

I taught everything on the test in at least three different modes. I did my job.

So, I turned to statistics to help me out. I ran item analysis on each question, both using Biserial values and Chronbach’s alpha test. It got nerdy fast.

With the exception of a few questions with low Biserial values (which I’d already identified as problematic, this just confirms) the test is reliable. All of the questions were within the accepted range of variance.

This confirms that the test was, in fact, valid and provided reliable results.

I can’t force students to engage. I can provide opportunities to engage and I can prod them that way, but at 15-18 years old, they need to make their own decision. Some classes have made that decision.

Two classes in particular are beginning to thrive. Two don’t know what they want, and two are continuing to really, really frustrating years.

I think it all comes down to the fact that students need to realize that everything they do as an individual affects every other person. That’s what a community is. We’re all affected, including me.

How do you teach that?