Chemistry with Rising 9th Graders
I spent three weeks this summer teaching chemistry to rising ninth graders in an academic program designed for students who are transitioning from public middle schools to independent high schools....
View ArticleREAMDE: When does gamification work?
While I’ve been too busy with the start of school to post anything on this blog, I somehow found time yesterday to start reading Neal Stephenson’s new novel, REAMDE. Once I got started, it was hard to...
View ArticleJunot Diaz on Accreditation vs. Education: Not getting *expletive* by mistakes
Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, spoke to our school community this past Friday night. He was a riveting speaker whose talk has already generated...
View ArticleSeeing is (not) believing
I’ve seen research cited that suggests demonstrations are not always effective because students often remember what they think they are going to see, rather than what they actually see. That is, prior...
View ArticleA Slinky Saves the Day
About a week ago, Derek Muller ( of Veritasium Science Videos) posted a series of three videos on what happens when you drop a hanging slinky. The videos use some high speed video footage to observe...
View ArticleA Little More Slinky Goodness
Back to the slinky drop. The last of the Veritasium videos shows a slinky with a ball attached to the end being dropped (as opposed to the slinky stretched only by it’s own mass). This particular video...
View ArticleConfusion Regarding Newton’s Third Law of Motion
Recently on the Modeling Instruction listserv there was a discussion about difficulties that students have with Newton’s Third Law and how teachers might best address these difficulties. It appeared to...
View ArticleGetting girls to take physics
I know I said my next post would be about ways of teaching Newton’s Third Law, but that was a long time ago. I’ll get to that over spring break. For now I’d like to expand upon something that I...
View ArticleTeaching as a short term career
This morning I ran across a New York TImes article titled At Charter School, Short Careers by Choice. The gist of the article is that some charter school tolerate or even encourage young teachers...
View ArticleJob Opening at St. Andrew’s – what’s it like to work here?
Recently, my colleague, John Burk, announced on his blog a job opening in our department. John does a fantastic job of describing the school and what working here at St. Andrew’s is like. I’d like to...
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