I just finished marking this semesters’ exams. I had tried something a little differently with my Astronomy class. It was a small class, and we’ve been experimenting with different things as we’ve gone along. For the final, I thought it would be interesting to give an ‘open everything’ exam. Notes, books, internet. If you have access to it, you can use it. I obtained a cart of netbooks for the exam, but many students brought their own laptops, and a few used their mobile devices.

A few interesting things happened.

1. Students took way longer to do the exam than I thought. I think that they spent more time searching for answers, than they did actually putting down their answers. I think that they were looking for confirmation of what they already knew rather than trusting their knowledge and simply answering the question. It makes me think that I need to reconsider the format of this type of evaluation.
2. Some students chose to hand-write answers rather than use the technology. Sometimes old-school is preferred for some tasks.
3. I was simply using the tech as a substitute, and I need to consider better ways to ramp up the integration to make it more purposeful in that context.
4. The reaction of the kids to the exam was the most interesting thng, and I think that as they’ve never had this kind of approach before that it will take time and more of this kind of thing before they get comfortable with the idea. Like I said, they relished the idea of using the internet, but they used it as a crutch rather than as an augmentation to their own abilities.
5. The one thing that stood out, was that the students with the better tech skills were better able to transition to this kind of assessment, the ones that were not as strong in using tech approached it differently. Interesting.

Just a few things to consider for as I move on into next semester.

One of the things I want to do in my return to the classroom is to use more inquiry-based activities for the science students. Today I had them engage in an activity in physics where they were challenged to find the acceleration due to gravity. We’ve done a few other labs involving acceleration, and they’ve used a few different techniques and pieces of equipment. Each group designed and carried out their own investigation. I’m keen to see how the different approaches pay off. In the spirit of equality, I decide that I’d play along as well, and I downloaded two apps from Vernier, Video Physics and Graphical Analysis. Each app was $4.99 (yikes!) but I was very interested in how they’d work.

I used the Video Physics app to video a student as they dropped their weight against a wall. Then, using the app, I was able to plot the path of the object as it fell. That took about 2 minutes to figure out. Then I was able to see the graph of the motion with one tap.

With another tap, I was able to send this data to the other app, Graphical Analysis. There, after about 5 minutes of fussing around, I figured out how to select a section of the line, and fit a linear equation to it. This equation (y=mx+b) also gave the m-value, which was the slope. Since this was a velocity-time graph, the slope was the acceleration due to gravity. My value came out to 9.593 m/s^2, which is pretty close to the accepted value of 9.8 m/s^2! Not bad for a few minutes with 2 new apps!

So, I think I’m a fan of these apps for physics. Now, how can I get a 6 or 7 iPads for my science classroom?! If you’ve got an iOS device, like physics, and have $5 to drop, try these out. I’d recommend the Video Physics one for sure. I’ve already used it to analyze the launch of a toy rocket at science club this week. Too much fun.

My favourite picture from the last few weeks.

I restarted a 365 project this year with taking a photo-a-day. I talked at the start of the year about the reasons for stopping and restarting. So far, I’ve not missed a day. I mostly use the suggested photo from Today’s Posting, but not always, I’ve taken liberties with my shooting and done more slice-of-life photos than photos-as-art photos.

The real change this year has been the move to the iPad as my photo editor of choice. I looked back through the 70+ photos from 2013, and I haven’t edited one of them on my computer.  In fact, the majority of the photos have been taken with my iPhone 4S, rather than my DSLR. The ease of the workflow has been astounding. For the phone pics, by setting up Photostream between my devices, any picture I take is automatically zipped over to the iPad, where I then edit and upload using a few choice apps. If I take pics with my Canon Rebel DSLR, I simply pop in the camera connection kit, pop in the SD card and upload to the iPad, then proceed to editing.  Most pics have been edited on the iPad in my favourite easy chair, for the most part.

As for the apps, this is where I’ve noticed the speed of the workflow increase significantly. Rather than firing up Photoshop or Aperture or iPhoto on my computer, I simply launch one of a few choice apps. I like the official Flickr iPhone app for use on the phone, but they don’t yet have an iPad specific version. The two that I find myself using most often are Flickrstackr and Camera! Awesome.  Flickrstackr is great for basic photo edits, and uploading to my Flickr account. In fact, if they had commenting features added in, Flickrstackr would be just about perfect for photo managing and social networking on Flickr.  Camera Awesome has become my go-to app for filters and effects. I’ve bought the add-on packs to have a few 100K of options for filters and effects. It’s pretty easy to find one that fits the pic that you’ve taken.

There are a few others that have been useful and I’ve played with a bit including Photoshop Touch, iPhoto, ColorSplash, Snapseed and Dipic.

So photo taking has become fun again. Combine the ease of a great camera that goes everywhere I go in my pocket, and the ease and fun of editing and uploading and I’ve got a process that’s a ton of fun.

40 mm lens for my DSLR.