Physics Teachers Resource Manual (pdf)
Chris Deyo headed up a curriculum writing workshop for physics, undertaken in Oakland Schools, based on the new Michigan standards. They produced a comprehensive 14 unit document. Each unit has at least six activities that can be done with students and everything is already aligned with the standards! You can find the document on the Oakland Schools Science Resource site (scroll down).
Open Source Physics
Out of the November-2008 Physics Teacher. Open Source Physics has a collection of tools for computational physics. I've only scratched the surface, but I think it will be a center point of the honors physics course I'm designing for next year. The one piece to catch my attention first was the Tracker program. This is a java based video analysis tool. It also includes the ability to mathematically model motion. You can overlay the model right on the video. So you could model a perfect projectile path and show how an NBA player seems to float when they dunk a ball.
PhET
Java-based physics interactive science simulations put together by the University of Colorado. You can launch them from the web or download stand-alone copies. There are simulations for almost every topic. They can be used in lieu of physical lab equipment, but they work much better used in conjunction with hands-on labs.
Physics Resources by Topic
A physics professor's collection of resources arranged by topic, including learning objectives, background information, equations, example problems, LiveScribe explanations and simulations.
Physion
Physion is a 2D Physics simulation software. It can be used to easily create a wide range of interactive physics simulations and educational experiments. Teachers may find it particularly useful since it can be used as a virtual physics laboratory through which they can demonstrate some basic physics concepts in the classroom. It also runs Java script, if you are inclined to program. Windows and Linux.
Phun
Cool 2d physics simluation engine. I tried to show this off at one of the meetings, but I had some technical difficulties. Here's a short video I created to show off a little of what it is capable of. It's no replacement for Interactive Physics, but it's free and pretty cool. It is available for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. There is even a Windows version that can be run from a folder, so you won't need the ability to install it, I know some school computers are pretty locked down.
MIT OCW
I'm sure by now everyone has heard of MIT's OpenCourseWare project. They are putting lots of their course materials online for free. Of particular interest are the classes that have the full lectures online in video format. Could be very useful for both new and old teachers looking to brush up a little.
Physics I Classical Mechanics
Physics II Electricity and Magnatism
Physics III Vibrations and Waves
AP Physics - They've taken their videos and organized them for use in high school AP physics classes. They've even chopped up the full lectures into shorter segments making them much more useful for high school teachers.
The Physics of Musical Instruments
This is a 119 pg PDF file."The Physics of Music and Musical Instruments covers the physics of waves, sound, music, and musical instruments at a level designed for high school physics. However, it is also a resource for those teaching or learning waves and sound from the middle school through college, at the mathematical or conceptual level..." Written by David Lapp.
Arbor Scientific
OK, I'm not going to make a habit of listing vendor websites, but Arbor has been a long time friend of the DMAPT. They also offers lots of great free resources for science teachers. The first is their CoolStuff Newsletters, if you haven't seen them you have to checkk them out! They've set up their archives so that you can browse by subject of interest. This is definitely a great place to go for ideas for labs or demos. I also recommend the "Next Time" questions from Hewitt's Conceptual Physics. There are over two hundred of them on the site for free, separated by subject area!
Quest - Online Learning and Assessment
I use this for homework for my physics classes. It is a service provided by the University of Texas - Austin. For Michigan High Schools it costs $180 for a year subscription. This includes unlimited student and teacher accounts and classes for that school. You can create assessments, assignments and even learning modules. The huge test bank has problems ranging from basic high school conceptual to calculus-based upper level undergraduate. A majority of problems have many variations and you can allow for multiple attempts. There are multiple choice and many numerical answer problems. The site scales multiple attempt so that guessing still results in about a zero grade. Students get a pdf of their version of an assignment, and they can leave and assignment unfinished and come back to it any time to finish before the due date. You get great statistics on skill and items, and students can create custom reviews based on their performance. -Scott
onlinecourses.com
This project is a free and comprehensive resource that is a collection of open college course that spans videos, audio lectures, and notes given by professors at Harvard, Princeton and MIT. They offer highly relevant courses such as iPhone Application Development from Stanford and Cyber Humor from Oxford.
Physics Flash Animations
Interactive animations to show almost anything.
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
60 Symbols
By the same folks that brought us the Periodic Table of Videos. This series looks at 60 symbols/ideas in Physics and Astronomy. They are very high quality and informative.
Wolfram Demonstrations
Lots of cool simulations/demonstrations from Mathematica on a variety of subjects, including physics. You'll have to download the free Mathematic Player to view them.
Hippocampus.org
Teaching with the power of digital media. Good videos and interactive lessons with animations and follow-up questions.
Compadre.org
A network of free online resource collections supporting faculty, students, and teachers in Physics and Astronomy Education.
LaTeX Editor
Make equations and this editor will make the LaTeX Code.
Kahn Academy
With a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 240 practice exercises,we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment