Fizzics

Both S3 classes had a brief glimpse at their survey results today. These were raw results, not filtered by class, so each bar chart shows 40 respondents rather than the 20 you would expect for a science class.

I realised that I had done something stupid in questions 8 & 9, with results that are sufficiently interesting for me to share them. Question 8 asked pupils to rate themselves using the statement

“I know that electrical energy transformed each second =IV”

From the image below, we see that only 50% of my S3 pupils are confident that they know this.

To help non-physicists see what is interesting, I need to explain that

energy transformed each second = power

current has the symbol I

voltage has the symbol V

Armed with this, have a look at the details for question 9 (below) and the responses I received to the statement

“I can perform calculations involving power, current and voltage.”

These two questions are asking the same thing, yet an extra 35% of the pupils felt that they had achieved the learning outcome.

The reason for the difference lies in the language used to express the question. What does this tell me? I think it tells me two things - three things if I include checking the questions before I set them!

First of all, the learning is not as secure as I would like. While pupils might know the relationship that exists between power, current and voltage, they lack a sufficiently deep understanding to put this relationship into context.  The second point is that the language we use to frame a question plays a critical role in determining whether or not pupils can provide an answer. How much of the assessment we put children through is a true assessment of the subject area in question and how much is a test of their ability to unpick the language of assessment to identify find the real question underneath?

Someone replied to a message I posted on a mailing list for Scottish Physics teachers. I had sent out an appeal for questions to put to the UK Google team about the roll-out of Google Apps for Education. Today’s reply confused me. It seemed to centre on reasons not to use Google Apps but OpenOffice.org instead - something to do with IT people at LA level not liking online collaborative tools.

I responded by saying the purpose of my original post wasn’t to bash M$ products but to highlight the opportunities we now have to stimulate collaboration among pupils. I suggested different tools, including alternatives to Google such as Zoho and wikispaces.

I couldn’t bring myself to add Twitter to that list for one good reason - Twitter spam. I’m not sure if it can really be called spam but I am beginning to pay the price for following people I saw as being influential. It’s not that they’re not influential, it’s just that they can tweet about everyday boring things as frequently as they tweet about interesting things.

I follow someone because I have an expectation of what I will find in the content of their tweets, forgetting of course that they have a personal life that is every bit as tweet-worthy as their professional life. I should probably feel more guilt about reading social stuff, it’s like sneaking a look at someone’s text messages when they leave their phone lying around. But I don’t, I just exhale and ask why on earth they felt the latest 140 character installment was worth tweeting.

Will Richardson sums it up nicely by talking about the signal to noise ratio of Twitter. I might follow his example very soon by actively unfollowing and coping with the guilt that I miss something worthwhile in the process.

One of the two S3 classes has now completed the surveymonkey self-assessment survey on their current unit. I ran the survey as a “kiosk” by setting up a laptop with internet access on a table at the back of the classroom, well away from prying eyes. In a 50 minute lesson, I found I could get 10 pupils to complete the survey. It didn’t take 5 minutes each but I got them all to watch me go through the first two screens of the survey with them on a whiteboard each time they came to class.

I thought I had been smart by setting up two different collectors, one for each class, but it seems that the results are being lumped together as 40 respondents rather than 2 groups of 20. Luckily, I still have the custom data field with the unique identifier to help me sort them back into class sets of data. One of my concerns has been that each class has had a different experience with me and I want to see if this is born in the self-assessment. I’ll share some data over the weekend once the pile of prelim marking is out of the way.

I tried traffic lighting during one of the more conceptually difficult units of standard grade physics with my S3 class last year. The results were encouraging, not because they all considered themselves “green” but because the whole class engaged with the activity and I was able to do quite a lot with the responses I received.

I have two S3 classes this year and I thought that I would see how they thought they were progressing by repeating the activity. The first class I tried it with said they thought it was a waste of time. They thought I had my own opinion of their progress and whatever they thought about their own performance would not change my mind. The second class reacted differently to the idea. They were interested but privacy was a major issue for them. How could they express their true thoughts without revealing any potential shortcomings to their peers. They told me that one of the MFL teachers makes everyone close their eyes and she has pupils raising their hand when green, amber or red is read aloud. They don’t like this approach either.

Today, I decided to spend some time coming up with something different. I have signed up for a free basic account at SurveyMonkey and have prepared a series of 10 questions (the most you can have on the free account) for self assessment. As I don’t know their email addresses, I have had to use a partially-supported method involving a unique identifier at the end of the link to the survey (more about that here). I am going to try the web survey technique this week. I’ll share the results once I figure out what they mean.

Since November, I’ve spent my Sunday evenings talking to other teachers about establishing a blog and podcast to help pass on ideas for bring more ICT into the classroom.  EdTechroundup is a geographically diverse group (Joe Dale is based in the Isle of Wight and I’m in the Highlands of Scotland) but we share a common goal to bring practical advice for those at the chalkface and membership of the group includes primary and secondary practitioners.

Our first show, hosted by David Noble and myself, features an interview with Joe Dale on 5 uses for a classroom blog, an introduction to the resources at classtools.net and a discussion on the problem of web blocking in schools.  The podcast is now available on iTunes and further information is available on our blog.

If you are interested in joining the ETR group, check out the latest information on our wikispaces page for details of our next meeting.

Is the utilisation of social networking in education a good thing? The question forms the basis of a debate at The Economist right now. Ewan McIntosh is standing up for social networking sites and the collaborative peer assessment that they can deliver in the classroom.

As someone who uses a blog in his own classroom, I have to declare a foot in his camp before the first shots were fired. Kids are more likely to share information among themselves and let their friends see their work than hand it to me for comments and feedback. There’s a confidence issue in our classrooms. How many times have I had to cannibalise a jotter so pupils have a piece of paper to draft work so they can prepare a 2nd draft that they are happy for me to see? I’m not even an English teacher and yet kids are reluctant to show me any of their written work when I ask them to write up an experiment.

I am starting to see that launching a class wiki is an inevitable step if I am to succeed in having my pupils improve their report writing and develop a nose for quality. The whole business of social networking in the classroom seems to be a glowing example of social constructivism but Danah Boyd isn’t so sure*. She makes the point that children use social networking sites to stick together with their friends, rather than look beyond the walls of their own circle and truly “network”. I think she is on to something and, if her observation is valid, it suggests that a pupil’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky) may not extend in the absence of a more knowledgeable individual. How do we ensure that any social software we use in our practice keeps pupils engaged while maintaining its functionality as a tool for learning?

*via Will Richardson