CESI Blog

CESI  (the Computer Education Society of Ireland) have just set up a forum for teachers at all levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) to promote the use of ICT and also to facilitate those who have ICT related questions.
They may end up having a blog for the more philosophical issues, and keep the forum for queries. Either way, it’s well worth subscribing.

Obviously you can unsubscribe at any stage.

Sign up here

It was set up using Googlegroups, and seems to be working very well.

Which got me to thinking:
Why is this facilty not available for teachers of Junior Cert Science. Particulary for clutz like me who have to teach a biology dissection, or for that matter for a Biology teacher who has to teach Electricity for the first time.
If nothing has been done by next September I may have a go at setting it up myself.

Afterall, if John Hegarty can do it for CESI, it can’t be that hard! 🙂

And then why not have one for a school science department themselves? What an excellent means of having an ongoing discussion between teachers who just don’t have the time to sit down with each other during the day.

One step at a time perhaps.

Congratulations Scifest winners!!!

 

I mentioned that I was trying to promote Scifest as a means of getting students to do real science as opposed to the learning by rote and following cookbook recipe-type so-called experiments. So after promoting it among second, fourth and fifth years, I ended up with about eight groups, of which seven pulled out when they realised the presentation was going to be held on a non-school day.

Which left us with ‘The Power of Poo’, a second-year entry from two girls; Georgina Gilsenan and Philippa Tuthill. This highly original project involved inserting a couple of radiators into the middle of a dung-heap, pumping water through the pipes, and noting the rise in temperature. The results obtained may not turn the planet off its axis, but there was a serious amount of science involved in controlling variables. They even tried two different dung-heaps; cow and horse!

And it won!
In three categories!
Best Junior Project.
Best overall Physics Project.
Runner-up in Best overall Project.

Unfortuantely I had to leave early in the afternoon and so wasn’t there for the prize-giving ceremony, and so don’t have any photos of the girls receiving their prizes, but if I talk nicely to their parents they might lend me some to put up here.

The irony is that after prodding and poking each of the other groups all along the way, only for them all to pull out, this was the one project which I had almost nothing to do with apart from submitting the entry.  There really shouldn’t be any teacher’s name associated with it – it really was all there own work.

Not that it will stop me shamelessy exploiting the publicity in school as a means of promoting the project again next year, with hopefully a little more commitment.

Learning to podcast

This is a short audio about forces for my Second Year students revising for Summer Exams. I did a bit of podcasting a few years ago but have forgotten how I made the pieces accessable. I also need to learn how to jazz these things up a bit.
This piece is hosted on the wordpress site itself, but I’d like to make it accessable via itunes. I tried this and five days ago received the following

Your podcast feed, [ https://ozymandias1.wordpress.com/feed/ ] was successfully added and is now under review.

Since then, nothing.

forcesone

Fun with the Van der Graff and Animoto

A study of concentration

We had the usual fun with the Van der Graff today. The weather was rather accommodating, and it tallied nicely with the last class before the long weekend.

I have never got a student’s hair to stand up dramatically, but i was drying the canvas belt with a hairdryer when I realised I could help things along a little by aiming it upwards into Fania’s hair. It loosened up the hair very nicely and the show was much more impressive as a result. I also got a student to hold up a mirror so Fania could see for herself what everyone else was laughing at.

I have seen a few examples of Animoto and how it does a pretty cool job of presenting photos, so I thought I’d head on over and check it out.

It really is pretty impressive, and very user-friendly. There might be a couple of thinks I would change, but then again that may just be me not familiar with the program.

It allows for automatic uploading to youtube, which was a pleasant surprise. The free version limits the clip to 30 seconds, so I might just invest in the longer version to check it out.

This is a clip I uploaded last year

 

When is a kilogram not a kilogram?

Many physics students will be familiar with the fact that the prototype kilogram is kept in a high-security vault in Paris. What I didn’t realise was that the mass of this specimen is changing, albeit very slightly.

So here’s the question; if this is the one and only true version of the kilogram, and it loses mass, doesn’t it still stay a kilogram?

And doesn’t that mean that other copies, which would have been correct originally, are now wrong?
(I think in fact that they may all be losing mass slightly.)

Something very unscientific about all this . . ., no wonder physicists are embarassed about it.

Seems a bit like when kids make up the rules of a game, and when it turns out that these don’t suit the leader of the gang, he just changes them.

Which seems as good an excuse as I am likely to get to show Eddie Izzard – Do you have a flag?
 

 

More youtube and some Flickr

Decided it was time to see what I could do with Flickr, so I spent the day taking photos of Junior Cert Science demo apparatus. The plan is that I will show this to students and they will have to name the demonstration. Hopefully it will help the second-years revise for Summer exams. It must be rather daunting to have to go from a year of short class tests, to a set of formal exams which require knowledge  taken in over the whole year.

Students can hopefully access this themselves if they wish, although I may  print it off for those who don’t have the facilities.

Bloody nice spectrum though innit?

Thanks Conor!

Of course there’s still the bread ‘n butter leaving cert material:

 

The Photoelectric Effect

I have been trying to get this to work for years, without success. And then recently I tried it again and lo and behold it worked like a dream!
Part of the problem was that if the day was even slightly humid the gold leaf electroscope wouldn’t hold its charge.
Secondly it had to be charged negatively, and I was never sure if I was charging it positively or negatively.
Thirdly I didn’t realise that I had to sandpaper the zinc in advance to remove the oxide layer.
Fourtly I don’t keep a list of questions related to demonstrations which I can’t get to work, so I only remember that there is a problem when I go to teach it each year, instead of asking an expert.

And I apologise for stating that this is “the most important least impressive experiment in the history of science”. It is actually rather impressive.
If I do say so myself.

Excellent resource for Power points

I don’t tend to use Power-Point much. ‘Not sure why; guess I can never stay still long enough to give a formal-type lesson. I did however use Education Using PowerPoint a few years back and was very impressed. It’s a very extensive set of resources, put together and managed by Will Richards. A complete set (including resources for Junior Cert) will set you back £50 sterling (€75?). And naturally, having been designed for the British GCSE and A level system, may have to be adapted somewhat.

Still, if Power Point is your thing, this does seem like a useful resource.

If you do end up purchasing, please get in touch and let me know what you think.

Do you teach a modern language? If so subscribe to Joe Dale now!

 

 

There are a whole lot of education blogs out there, but one of the very best has to be Joe Dale’s “Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom“. He gave a presentation at the CESI conference this year and people had to be turned away at the door.

Every subject needs to have a Joe Dale; someone to keep us up to date on best practice in relation to ICT issues, and who you know is a full-time teacher who practices what he preaches.

Here’s my contibution to the ‘Modern Language’ database:
Eddie Izzard – Learning French

‘Course you can’t show this wonderful clip unless you have Youtube.
Don’t mention the war

Is there an equivalent Science / Physics Teacher blog out there?
Patricia Donaghy has done her part; http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com/ is a registration page for educational blogs where you can go and search by topic.

I guess over time more teachers will get the hang of this sharing lark.

 

Queerer than you can suppose: Dawkins on ted.com

 

I’m not RIchard Dawkins biggest fan (I know; like he’s worried); for someone who holds the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science he seems to take enormous delight on slighting those he disagrees with – particularly in relation to Creationism.

However it is in relation to extolling the wonder of science that he excels. Consider the following as part of the job description:

The goal is for the public to appreciate the order and beauty of the abstract and natural worlds which is there, hidden, layer-upon-layer. To share the excitement and awe that scientists feel when confronting the greatest of riddles. To have empathy for the scientists who are humbled by the grandeur of it all.

Take any of the wonderful ideas Dawkins speaks about in the clip above and have fun looking for it in a Science syllabus.

Thanks to Peter Kinvara for pointing me in the right direction to find this in a comment on a related posting

The clip is obviously from youtube because for some reason ted.com doesn’t allow video embedding.