Week Fourteen October 19 – October 25, 2008

UTEP-UMCE News – Dr. Bill Robertson, Fulbright Scholar, UTEP Assistant Professor

Week Fourteen October 19 – October 25, 2008

The following is a summary of the activities that I have been engaged in during the week of October 19 – 25 as they relate to the work I am doing here at UMCE as part of my Fulbright Scholarship.

Physics Instruction at Liceos

On Monday, October 20, I worked at the 2 local high schools implementing the physics project from la UMCE. The first school, Liceo Juan Antonio Ríos, has approximately 15 students in the project. The second school, Liceo Capitán de Corbete Pedro Gonzáles, has 2 sections of students, the first with approximately 30 students and the second with 35 students. We worked with the student teams on the process of using Modellus and Excel to solve physics problems that have elements of distance, time, velocity and acceleration. The student teams are doing very well and a number of the students are really engaged and leading the efforts for each class. Since this is not a standard part of the curriculum, these students are in this part of the course by choice and I believe are gaining from the experience, as both Claudio Pérez and I are as well.

This is also a great way to gauge the differences in the approach and curriculum as the university level and at the secondary level, which has been invaluable for me. My goal is to be able to take this approach and integrate it in a number of ways back at UTEP. I have two practical ideas that I think could be implemented directly as a result of this experience. The first idea I have is to develop a Master’s level science education course that would focus on physics instruction and to use this as one module within the class. The second idea is to use this approach in Spanish with students and teachers in both El Paso and Juarez, as part of the workshops for collaborations, such as Ciencia de Sabados.

Physics Project Update

On Wednesday, October 22, I attended the regular physics project meeting and each group went through the progression of their classes. The main thrust at this time was the need for each team to update their field notes on the progress within each of the units and to post all evaluation and content materials in the online platform of Moodle. There was also a general discussion of the need to post student products to use for future examples in class and as references for students. This is something that I strongly believe in and use quite effectively, I believe, back at UTEP. When you are able to show other students the types of products and work you are expecting and also share with them actual products that other students have developed, the frame of reference for the students expands and the quality of the work increases.

Mechanics Class

On Thursday, October 23, I attended the class on Mechanics in order to assist with the presentations on the Newton’s Laws of Motion. At the beginning, the students were lead through a series of open ended questions to get them to think about the ways these laws are manifested in their real lives. A following brainstorm activity gave the professors a good initial indication of some of the conceptions and misconceptions the group might have. From there, the students were presented with a problem they needed to experimentally work through that consisted of using a spring scale and various weights in order to calculate the amount of distance the spring actually moved. In this way, they would use this approach to discover the relationship that is also purported in Hooke’s Law. After the experience, the groups were ready to discuss the ideas and to receive instruction on the content. This idea matches so well with the approach I take in the classroom and I also believe to the fundamentals of constructivism, which really state that you first provide an experience before you provide the content and you allow the students the time to discover it on their own. This was also done in a 3 hour block and would be useful for both university level classes and a secondary block style class.

Personal Transition to Work in Spanish

I have been working hard on my Spanish and this week I continued with my work translating a couple of articles I am working on into Spanish with the hope of getting them published in a Spanish science education or technology journal. I find this a process I have to work at with great effort, and regular time, and have taken the steps that also come from the ideas of Publish and Flourish, in that you put in a regular time each day to write, not only to read and revise, but to write. As with all writing, I find having someone read it over and give ideas on edits important, and I have a network of people both here and at UTEP to help me in this capacity.