Science Teaching tips from Lee Trampleasure – Page 7 – Bringing over 30 years of public and private high school teaching experience to help you.

September 10, 2012

How to assocaite .cls (class) files with GradeMachine in Windows 7

If you are installing GradeMachine in newer versions of Windows (7 for sure, I’m not sure about XP), the program will not automatically “associate” the .cls (class) files with GradeMachine — the result is you cannot double-click on a .cls file and have GradeMachine open for you. The following steps, in Windows 7, will correct this problem, and let you...

Grading software Comment: 1

May 18, 2012

Grading labs: A faster method using pre-printed return address labels.

Grading tends to be the biggest time consuming task for teachers. For those teachers who want students to complete lab write-ups that truly reflect discover and learning, providing feedback on labs can be an even more daunting task. This year I started using a system that has significantly sped up grading the mechanics of the lab, allowing me to spend...

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 3

April 21, 2012

Newton’s Laws and shopping carts falling out of truck

Watch the following video, the try to answer the questions below it: What is happening to the truck and the carts when the carts start following off the truck? What causes the carts to fall off the truck? While the truck is moving, the left row of carts doesn’t fall off the truck. Can you explain why they don’t? At...

Physics/Science Education Comments: 0

March 15, 2012

Modeling Instruction: Review of acceleration lab

I’ve been using Modeling Instruction in my physics class for the past five years, and keep wondering how to handle the problem of students who miss the whiteboard sessions (where students share their results and we reach class conclusions). These sessions are critical for student growth, as this is where they are challenged to look for patterns in their data,...

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 0

February 5, 2012

Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol workshop at AAPT conference

At the AAPT Winter Conference, I attended a workshop on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) (emphasis on “reformed teaching” not “reformed protocol”). Below are my notes on that workshop. [This workshop runs 8:00-5:00 on Sunday, and I’m live blogging this so, if you’re reading during this time, reload the page for the most up-t0-date content.] Intro question: What does...

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comment: 1

December 7, 2010

“You can’t put something on the final we haven’t seen!!!”

Today as a finals review “warm up” (although it ended up taking the whole period) I presented the students with four beakers of water: One with ice, one at room temp, one on a hot plate “low” (about 37C) and one boiling. I used Logger Pro to show the four temperatures on a projector screen (a sensor in each beaker)....

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 2

October 17, 2010

Spreadsheet for calculating slopes at points on quadratic functions

On the Physics Modeling email list there has been a discussion of finding tangents to a parabolic curve using an Excel spreadsheet. The primary way we use this is when students graph position vs time of a ball rolling down a ramp. Students discover that the relationship can be modeled as a parabolic equation, x = at2+bt+c. If they can...

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 0

August 10, 2010

End of the year teacher evaluation for my physics students to complete

At the end of each school year, I have my students complete an evaluation of the course. My goal is for them to reflect (1) me, (2) the class, and (3) themselves. I find the evaluations extremely valuable. Scary at times, but valuable. This last year wasn’t one of my best, and the evaluations showed that to me. But I...

Physics/Science Education Comments: 3

July 15, 2010

Using a TI-83 or TI-84 graphing calculator in high school physics classes

This summer I’m leading a workshop at the American Association of Physics Teachers meeting entitled “Using graphing calculators in the classroom.” Featured in the workshop is my handout titled “Analyzing data using your TI-83 or TI-84 calculator.” You can download a PDF version of the worksheet here. The handout has calculator screenshots and uses TI fonts to show the exact...

Modeling/Physics/Science Education Comments: 4

July 13, 2010

Welcome…

…to my blog. I write about science education, radical/liberal politics, accessible web design, web support for small “brick and mortar” businesses, and a little about my life. Since I write about such a broad spectrum of topics, you may want to click the category link (on the right) of the topic you are most interested in.

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