First Teacher meeting

I met with Deanine Lilley, 8th grade physical science teacher at Jack Jouett Middle School on Monday, Sept. 14th to discuss my TIP placement and project.

We decided that we could split the project into two parts. The first part would focus on using flip video cameras with students to design, create, and film a short documentary tutorial on how to take data using various digital probes from Vernier Software. This project will be done with one of her honors classes in early October. Each group will get to use a flip video camera and be assigned a particular digital probe to explain in a short, under five minutes, presentation.

Deanine is very good to work with. She is going to reseve a set of digital probes from the county, and also can use some of the ones that she has in her lab. This should provide enough different types of probes for each group to hopefully do one of them. Jouett also has a classroom set of flip video cameras, so we are in great shape in getting to use them for this project.

This group is her group with "personality" as she describes them, so they should be very much motivated to be involved with this project. I will work on a lesson plan on this to match with SOL's as well as the Technology standards. I will go in on one day to explain the project, and then we will do the filming that Friday, the first week of October. Then, I will go back the next week and we will edit and show the films to this class. Deanine will then use these for her other classes to introduce data collecting options. I will need to determine some examples of how to use the probes for practical data collecting in reasonable projects that we can do in her class. I have some ideas.

The second part will involve using motion sensors in early November. Again, students will be in groups using the flip video cameras, but they will be investigating various aspects of motion and recording their results for comparison on flip videos. They will be required to record moving objects under different conditions and then compare the displacement, velocity, and acceleration of objects with the motion sensors as well as the video recordings. This will provide visual confirmation of their data, such that they should be able to show a video and a graph of the motion simultaneously on the screen to actually SEE the change in displacement, velocity, and acceleration of different objects in their setups. We will have a selection of objects/vehicles for them to use with the motion sensors so that each group can report on the results of their object to the rest of the class.

These projects should help students understand data collection and motion better, and also provide an opportunity for students to put their own individual or group ideas into action during the videos. The results will then be available to Deanine and other physical science classes in the school for use in explaining these concepts in the future. We are not sure about whether we can post any of these due to AUP guidelines as well as if students think that they will be useful in ways beyond the physical science class. However, the possibility does exist that they could be shared with some other county physical science teachers. We will investigate this, as well as the possiblity that some other teachers may want to replicate this project for their own classes in the future.

It was a good meeting, and we look forward to working together more in the future.