Brilliant CPD – Medical Physics August 27, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: cpd, glow, glow meet, IOP, medical physics
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I went along to Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow tonight for an IOP event in the medical Physics Department.
About 70 physics and biology teachers from around the west of Scotland attended the event, staffed by some brilliant folk who had given up their time to give us an insight into the work they do in MRI, Nuclear Medicine and Electro-physiology.
At the end of the tour, our hosts asked us for ideas of what could be done with pupils in relation to the work done in the Medical Physics department. Immediate answers included S2 subject choice, SG Physics ‘Health’ unit, and careers options for senior pupils.
It was also suggested that the department could put together some resources, including video and presentations detailing their work and the career paths of some of the staff.
It occured to me at this point that a Glow Meet would be an ideal way to acheive many of these goals. It was also suggested that any materials could be hosted on Glow.
So, some time soon, when I get the chance, I’ll be contacting Glow towers to see if we can maybe sort something out.
Thanks must go to Ronna Montgomery and the Medical Physics team for the whole event. Another brilliant CPD event and a great opportunity to share great stuff on a national level via Glow.
#makeuseofglow August 19, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: #makeuseofglow, glow, PLN, support, training, twitter
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I gave a quick ‘showcase’ demo of Glow at our staff in-service yesterday. Despite a technical hitch – the projector failed 10 minutes into it – I got to show all of my colleagues a few of the things that I think make Glow an valuable tool in education. Encouragingly, a few people have spoken to me since, and their feedback has, on the whole, been positive.
Most have expressed interest in making some use of Glow, and some asked for help in getting started. Being a Glow Mentor, I’m more than happy to help, though I am quite concerned as to how this can best be achieved.
The most precious commodity that we have in our profession, it seems to me, is time, and there simply isn’t enough of it to allow us all to do all the things we might like to be able to do. I’m pretty convinced that making effective use of Glow, and embedding it in my practice, will free up some of my time in order to do other things better, but I get the distinct impression that for many of my colleagues Glow is perceived as an ‘extra’ – something else to be added to the pile of things to do, rather than a means of dealing with some of it.
Lacking inspiration of my own, I put out a tweet seeking advice on encouraging staff to think of Glow as integral to delivering their subjects, rather than as an ‘extra’. I’m hopeful that my PLN will give me some good ideas, responding to the tag #makeuseofglow .
I’m also hopeful that time will be made or found in order to allow me to support and train my colleagues, and to allow us all to share our successes (and failures too).
Please feel free to add any ideas you might have by leaving a comment, or by replying via twitter to @drewburrett using the tag #makeuseofglow .
Signalling Challenge June 24, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: Challenge, Physics, SG, Signal, Telecoms
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image from www.athropolis.com
As an end of term activity I thought I’d have a go at getting my S3 class to try some old fashioned telecommunications methods, with an outdoor learning/group work/challenge slant.
So we’ve got 4 teams, sending the same message – ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ – by four different methods -
- International Flag Code (on A4 sized flags)
- Morse Code (using a signal lamp)
- Semaphore (using two A4 sized flags)
- SMS text (using the pupils’ own mobiles)
The challenge will take place over the full length of the school campus – a few hundred metres – and the messages being sent will be both timed and checked for accuracy.
To try to even things up a bit the SMS team have to relay their message between all 4 members of the team, as it seems pretty obvious that they’ll be quicker.
To provide the flags for the flag code I made up a powerpoint, which when printed out double sided as slides gives the pupils flags with the letters on the back. The powerpoint is available on my ‘S3 & 4 Work’ page.
Results will follow….
Must blog properly soon…. March 11, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: blogging, edonis, experiment, glow, teachmeet
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Been ages since I last posted, or at least it seems that way. I’ve been busy. Too busy.
Apart from the apparently endless cycle of reports, I’ve done a few things I meant to blog at the time, but didn’t get around to.
In no particular order, I have -
- Attended Teachmeet Perth CfE – another load of great ideas shared, with a few passed on to colleagues
- Started lesson summary blog with S3 Physics here as a task for the TLC I’ve become involved in at school
- Tried combining Video & Interfacing with some S2 Chemistry
video on left of reaction of magnesium with acid
graph & table on right show temp rise to peak when reaction finished
- Joined Edonis – really interesting project on using web, social media and PLNs
- Revamped National Physics Glow Group
I must try harder to blog about things as I do them.
How many times have I said that now?
10/10 for trying. January 30, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: AH, AifL, coursework, peer assessement, S2, S6, tagcrowd, visualisations, wordle
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I thought I’d have a go at combining some written work with a bit of peer assessment with my two S2 classes, and rather than just doing it to them, tell them the whys and wherefores of what we were doing.
Having given them the task of writing up a piece of practical work, with several specific success criteria to be met, I then got them to look over each others’ work, and we went through assessing it.
The pupils came up with examples of what would be necessary to meet the success criteria, and we came up with a ‘marking scheme’ that ended up (more by happenstance than design) to be out of ten.
Once we’d gone over a few quibbles and ironed out a few misunderstandings, I asked them to have a go at commenting their class mates work – in a ‘two stars and a wish’ format.
After this, we went round the room looking at what people had written for ‘stars’ and wishes’, and used the responses to build up a visualised collection of each using tagcrowd.com (I’d have preferred to try wordle.net , but it still doesn’t work with our firewall).
The images below show these collected responses.
Having produced these visualisations, the pupils were quick to realise what they represented, and also what they could see from comparing them -
- how many more stars there were than wishes
- how straightforward it would be to achieve the wishes when we next do something like this
And, for me, the clincher -
- how little they got from just marking things out of ten
The pupils had been, on the whole, very fair in their assessments of their classmates work, very positive in their praise of those parts worthy of ‘stars’ and encouraging in the comments used for ‘wishes’. Most agreed that this way of doing things was more useful than just looking at their mark out of ten, though a few maintained that they wanted to know who they’d done better than.
This type of comment started a discussion about ‘being better’, where one pupil pointed out that they should all be trying to be better than themselves, not competing with each other. There wasn’t a great deal more to say after that.
Pleased with the outcome of these endeavours, I’m going to try the same type of thing with my S6 AH Physics pupils as they write up an experiment we did last week for their LO3. This time the criteria will not be agreed by the pupils, rather dictated by the SQA, but I’m hoping some quality feedback on their work from their peers will lead to fewer draft/re-draft iterations before their work meets the required standard.
Wonder if they’ll be as positive about the process as my S2 pupils were….
Space Topic – Gas Sampling Apparatus January 11, 2010
Posted by drewburrett in Uncategorized.Tags: apparatus, demonstration, experiment, space topic
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I’m currently planning a new Space topic for S1, as part of my department’s CfE development. I’d like to do something on sustaining life in space, looking at providing space travelers with clean air, clean water, food and communications during various types of missions.
I’ve yet to decide on a format for the unit, but I’m aiming to do a rich task with the pupils planning how to provide for each need on four different types of mission – Earth orbit, Lunar habitation, Interplanetary travel (e.g. Earth – Mars) and Mars habitation.
There’s not a great deal of scope for practical in most Space topics, and this is a great opportunity to do some cross curricular work in science – it ties together some biology, chemistry and physics. I’d like to do some practical to demonstrate some main points – O2 production/CO2 removal by photosynthesis and chemical ‘scrubbing’, hydroponic plant growth, water purification and signal delay.
ALBA interfacing gas sensors can be used to show CO2 and O2 levels in real time for photosynthesis in plants – link.
Using that experiment as a starting point, this is a bit of kit I’m thinking of putting together to demonstrate the CO2 and O2 content of ‘fresh’ air, exhaled air and ‘scrubbed’ air (using LiOH or similar to remove CO2 from exhaled air).
For each sample I think I could do the following -
- Clean air – with the exit valve closed, pump air from the room into the container, inflating the bag, whilst the sensors display the CO2 and O2 levels.
- Exhaled air – with the exit valve closed, use air from balloons inflated by mouth to inflate the bag, whilst the sensors display the CO2 and O2 levels.
- Scrubbed air – with the exit valve closed and some LiOH in the bottom of the bag, use air from balloons inflated by mouth to inflate the bag, whilst the sensors display the CO2 and O2 levels.
I’m expecting there to be some problems with this, but would very much appreciate some constructive criticism from the Physics/Science community. Suggestions regarding safety concerns, possible pitfalls, or just better alternatives would be gratefully received.
Please click on ‘Leave a Reply’ below to add your thoughts.
Thanks in advance.
AMENDMENT 12/01/10 –
On advice of Graham Dane, from St Augustine’s in Edinburgh, who responded to a posting on SPUTNIK (Scottish Physics teachers’ email forum), I’ve had a rethink about the third demo. Rather than have LiOH pellets in the bag to scrub the oxygen, a separate piece of apparatus will be used as a CO2 scrubber, before the sampling jar.
I’ve got this made already, but can’t test it until we can source a suitable jar to house the sensing part of the experiment, above.
Graham also pointed out that removing the CO2 would affect photosynthesis, so I might well have a fourth demo to take a stab at.
Not without a suitable jar to house it all in though. Off to the local sweetie shop to procure an empty jar or two…..
Glow live Moon Bombing! October 9, 2009
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Off sick today, watching the NASA LCROSS mission to find water ice on the Moon.
Wondered if I could add the feed from msnbc.com to a Glow Group.
It turns out that I could.
TeachMeet SLF09 September 24, 2009
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Went to the Beeb at Pacific Quay last night to take part in TeachMeet SLF09, a truly inspiring gathering of colleagues across the education sector.
Thanks and congratulations to Ollie Bray and everyone else involved in making it all happen.
There were many excellent examples of great ideas being shared, from Stuart Meldrum‘s cut-price visualiser, to Nick Hood‘s critical thinking activity. It was enlightening too, to be involved in a discussion about assessment and examinations and what the future might hold.
I especially enjoyed the presentation from Neil Winton which I have embedded below. It speaks for itself to a large extent, but the genuine enthusiasm, conviction and humour with which Neil delivered it, brought another unique dimension.
Recording CPD in My Glow September 23, 2009
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Found myself at an IOP meeting the other night – another great bit of CPD.
On the way home on the train I got to thinking about all of these events that I’ve been to over the last wee while and how I really ought to make a record of what I go to, if nothing else because I’m *supposed* to.
It occurred to me that there must be a way to do so in Glow, probably best to put something into ‘My Glow’. So that is what I did.
Using the ‘Form’ web part, it was easy enough (though not possibly as easy as it *could* be) to add a CPD log to my ‘My Glow’.
Blogging AH Physics Investigations September 21, 2009
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Candidates must keep a daily account of all work undertaken as part of their investigation. This is the evidence of their having completed the specified unit of the Advanced Higher Physics course.
This ‘daybook’ is entirely separate from the “write up” which is a formal document that constitutes a proportion of the candidates overall grade for the final examination.
Traditionally candidates have produced daybooks of varying quality, including varying quantities of material, which (and I may be alone here) are only really looked at if a centre is moderated by the SQA.
The only requirement, that I can see, from the SQA is that the daybook is available in a paper format.
This got me thinking – why could candidates not use a blog to record their day to day progress?
I’ve asked the Scottish Physics teaching community – SPUTNIK – and while there is interest, nobody can confirm that a blog would be an acceptable format in which a candidate might complete this piece of work.
I’m reluctant to encourage any of my candidates to embark on this course of action without first knowing that this format will be admissible. This being the case I’ve contacted the Qualifications Manager for Physics at the SQA, Andrew Shield.
Watch this space – and maybe a few others.
