Daniel+Brown's+thoughts+on+learning

//**This will be much shorter than my other page that has all class notes. This page will only have reflections on what we are learning.**//
Parks said something that really got me thinking yesterday. He said he did 3 weeks of modeling in 2001 or so and then 3 more weeks of modeling for E&M in 2003 or so. He said he did the second set of three weeks because he still had a lot of questions as to what modeling really was. That surprised me because after three days in the workshop I felt I had a handle of the style of how things are done so far. If after three weeks of modeling at ASU and a couple of years of using it he still had fundamental questions, it makes me see that perhaps I have missed much or most of what we have done. I need to be in student mode more here.
 * Day 3**

Unit 3 Worksheet 4 did #3 and 8 and we all white boarded one of them and presented. A lot of poignant thoughts came out of it. I liked one of the last points given.
 * Day 4**

Most students want to take an equation they really don't understand, put #s into it and get an answer they really don't understand. I agree with this statement. This approach takes a graph of concrete motion we used in a lab and begins to connect concepts to the graph. Then second we connect the equation to the graph so that the equations have a conceptual meaning from the very beginning. We obviously work MANY fewer math problems this way but they have multiple representations of each problem and likely understand them very well. I like the way the math not only comes from data, like any lab, but the math comes from lab data represented in multiple ways so that the graphs and motion maps are as valid a tool as the equations, not an afterthought that adds a little icing to the cake of the math. Here we often use a graph as the end of the conversation, for me as a teacher they have always been a tool to get an equation. Now I am seeing a lot of value in this.

So what are the key components of modeling that I need to take away? The style of group presentation (white boarding) has been the most powerful tool so far and watching them form ideas in their groups is perhaps the key idea. This gives students a chance to figure out a great deal of learning for themselves and equally as important (and most lacking in my teaching) they get to see and hear other students learning differently then they do. This happens in my classroom with peer tutoring on math problems often, conceptual physics questions as bell ringers less often, but something is qualitatively different is the atmosphere of the engagement in my class. It is still teacher driven and fairly brief typically (2-10 min.) rather than the gradual deep development of ideas that occurs in modeling. I need to think on this a lot more. I also like the multiple representations and concept maps, but I have done those before and can include more without using modeling.
 * Day 5**

The key reason I see that I would //not// want to employ the modeling approach at this point is the lack of active engagement of each student during much of the class discussion time. This is true even though I like the discussion time so much as I mentioned above. I am frustrated at the pace today. We spent almost an hour developing the idea that a spring scale can measure the strength of interaction. It took so much time because of all the questions people asked. We did not go on until all questions were answered the to full satisfaction of each student. And my chief concern was how little concrete evidence I see of the engagement of most of the class most of the time. I wonder how much I could include the ideas of white boarding with some modification to increase active engagement or to stop a bit more often to add in formative assessment to bring up engagement. I am not even sure why the lack of visible evidence of active engagement from //everyone// bugs me so much, but it really does.

I will have to mull this over much more.


 * Day 10**

Life has been too overwhelming. Not enough time to reflect. Where are my thoughts today? This has been a powerful two weeks, but three things are dominating my thoughts and making it hard for me to see it all clearly.

1) I am having great difficulty seeing through 20 years of physics learning and teaching. I have so loved the math, concepts and traditional presentation of physics because I learn that way. Now I am having trouble of seeing myself teaching modeling because there has been so much history. When I think of teaching motion of think of all the things I have taught in the last 15 years and I am unable to see myself doing it yet.

2) Then I am very uncertain of my timing and that makes me afraid of losing control of the calendar. I have become so good at moving as fast as I need to when I have to but these thoughts on teaching are reminding me of how little my students learn when I cover fast. This fear is a smaller block for me than all my history mentioned above, but losing control of the schedule is a real fear.

3) I am having trouble remembering the focus of modeling is the students building the models and more than a new set of classroom tools with management styles. It is not inquiry taken to an extreme or a new organization of content. It is a pedagogy that helps students to learn by organizing all physics so that they internalize and organize their knowledge in a way that they can solve problems the way a scientist does. They memorize little, and test problems against working models with a set of tools that include multiple representations.

Big questions: do students like physics better when taught this way? Do they go on more often to become a scientist or engineer? Or does this teaching style turn off students that "learn like me" and are likely to normally go into these fields? This would not be an argument not to teach this way at all, but would be a consideration. Perhaps a reason to minimize it in AP physics. Another group of questions would be, do students learn physics better? Do they remember more a the end of the year? 6 months after the end of the course? 6 years after the end of the course? To what extent have I changed their style of thinking and processing and to what extent have I just filled their head with more content? I am fairly sure that using traditional teaching I have done very little to change their style of thinking.