Physics 641: Physics Pedagogy
An On-line Course for Teachers of Physics

Week 9 Assignment: In Depth Exploration of Resource

You will already have ranked three of the activities on the Resources page as your choices for one activity to do an in depth exploration. The Instructor should have already told you which resource will be the one you should do. If not, contact the Instructor immediately.

The resources from Weeks 7 and 8 that we have provided in the Readings could be evaluated on several criteria. We have chosen the following:

1. Quality of learning activities.
2. Concept maps. (For information on concept maps in physics, click here. )
3. Usefulness for addressing alternate conceptions.
4. Quality of support from vendor/program director.
5. Ease of integration into my classroom.
6. Assessment.
7. New criteria of your choice.

You will add a seventh criteria of your choosing to this list. Explain at the beginning of this assignment why you think the seventh criteria you have chosen is important.

Your assignment is to use all seven of the criteria to evaluate the physics resource you have been assigned. This should be at least a 1000 word paper in Word. You should give both strengths and weaknesses. You will be the only person assigned to this particular resource, and you are trying to give a realistic assessment of this resource to your peer high school physics teachers to help them decide whether they want to invest time in this resource. This will be HW17 in Open Portfolio.

Assignment 2 - due March 28, 2006, before 5 a.m.

Choose at least one unit or lesson from your assigned resource and modify or add additional material to improve the unit/lesson for a high school physics class. This will be one lesson plan for a single class period of one or two hours. Give appropriate credit to the originator and indicate that you have modified the resource for your use. You will submit a complete lesson plan on this activity in Word into Open Portfolio as HW18. Include appropriate drawings and/or photos as appropriate. This lesson plan will be shared by all teachers taking this course in the future. There is no minimum length to this assignment. It is certainly appropriate to include an assessment and/or evaluation. It would also be appropriate, if you choose, to give a pre-lesson assignment to prepare the students for the activity. At the end of the activity, please give appropriate answers to all the questions asked throughout the lesson plan.