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Physics 640: Physics Pedagogy
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Welcome to Physics 640 entitled Physics Pedagogy. Our Masters of Art in Physics Education requires one advanced education course, and because of the difficulty teachers have had in finding a suitable course, we have developed this course in collaboration with several people in physics and science education. In previous emails I have already told you that 1) This is a pilot course and is not well developed. We expect you to help us decide what works and what doesn't. It will be frustrating for you at times, because it will seem that we don't have our act together. We have spent a reasonable amount of time on developing the course, but we ourselves have disagreed about some things. I can almost guarantee there will be times when we will be tardy in putting up assignments. We will occasionally give you evaluations to fill out. I will try to set up an anonymous email address where you can send messages without fear of retribution (as if that would ever happen!). I am serious when I say we want and need your feedback.2) This course will require a lot of technology from you. There will be weekly assignments that you will be required to produce in digital electronic format. All your assignments will be uploaded into a website. You will be required to use programs like Word, Excel, Power Point. You will be expected to produce artwork using electronic drawings if necessary and almost certainly will be expected to take digital photos of your work. All these will need to be inserted into reports in a nice, neat electronic manner. No assignments will be accepted by fax, mail (overnight, weekend, or any other way), hand delivered, etc. Karyn Traphagen will contact you about the use of the program Open Portfolio that we plan to use for you to submit your work. It is more complex than WebAssign, and Karyn is our expert. 3) At the present time we do not plan to have any exams, nor will we use WebAssign. There will be homework assignments (normally projects like lesson plans, reports, demos, labs, assessments, etc), not numerical problems to solve. You will be critiquing each other's work, so your assignments must be completed on time. We will count off if they are late. This means you will need to work in a timely manner. You should take the deadlines seriously. Remember that your entire grade depends on the homework assignments and your critique of fellow students’ homework. 4) The course is designed for high school physics teachers to learn something of the results of science and physics education research. It will include discussion of nature of science, labs, demos, physics education research, technology, and other subjects. Most of the curriculum resources are available to you by downloading directly from the class website. We will be sending you at least two CDs for the course. This is the first one. The second CD will be sent later in the semester. Please let me know if you have questions. Although several people have participated (some considerably) in the development of this course, I am ultimately responsible for its quality and content. I will take the blame and give others the praise. Good luck, Steve Thornton |