Great Task Reflection

I was a little disappointed in the lack of projects relevant to high school physics available on IO or the Galileo network. These sites were made out to be the mecca of inquiry projects that I can use but it seems that most of the projects were not designed for the high school science curriculum.

Jason and I both have a background in physics so we wanted to find a project that was applicable to us. IO and the Galileo network were unfortunately completely bereft of projects that had any relation to the grade 11 and 12 physics curriculum. We found a basic project outline that we were able to adapt from the Alberta Learning's ICT Illustrative Examples website. The projects listed on the ICT website uses very limited technology, our example simply encouraged the use of computerized spreadsheets. Luckily Jason had an idea (and a previous knowledge) to bring some simple circuitry and programming into the project. We were able to combine the project idea with technology and I'm really happy with the results.

We setup the pendulum apparatus in class last week and immediately saw that people were interesting in what we had. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest things about science; the ability to gather and captivate an audience with nothing more that a ball hanging on a string! Our peer feedback was invaluable for the continued development of our project. We found that some of our directions were too vague. Last semester I learned (the hard way) the importance of giving clear and compete directions to students. As we work this projects into the IO template for our IO inquiry project, we will develop clearer instructions for students as well as make a good set of instructions for other teachers that might want to use the project in their classroom. A good IO projects is one that anyone could use, regardless of their educational background. If I were asked to teach grade 4 social studies, I'd look to IO or Galileo for some ideas.