Robots & Calculus - Part 1

As part of SL Math I have to teach Kinematics, last year I sort of rushed through it. I was too easily convinced by the smiles and nods that learning was happening. In calculus, I've never felt like my students accomplished much more than simply learning a series of steps to get the right answer. Sure they can solve the problems and most of my kids got very good IB scores last year. But! I wanted more.

Too often in SL Math kinematics is window dressing and an excuse for context on a calculus problem and rarely more than that. As a physics guy I see kinematics as the driving motivation behind differential calculus. So this year I swore I'd actually walk the talk. In come the robots!

My school, like any other, has its problems, but we are blessed with dreamers and an administration that are willingly to fund those dreams. 4000 euros later we have lego robots coming out our ears. Our school already supports two FTC teams, one middle and one high school team, so it wasn't a stretch to find more funding for robots.

The students were given about 40 minutes to create their "car" with the two stipulations that it had one motor and allowed for easy removal of the NXT brick (so other classes could use the brick).

And now for the calculus...

Part 1 - Constant Velocity

I pre-programmed 7 functions for the students. The first 3 are constant velocity functions. Student's used Logger Pro's video capture and analysis features to create position and velocity graphs and equations for each function.

Students wrote each set of equations on the board so as a class we had more data from which to make conclusions. I proceeded  to math-teacher-ninja them to see that the slope of the velocity equations was virtually zero when compared to the other parameters. Then the jump to see the similarity in the slope of the position and the constant value of the velocity was quick and easy. Leaving the students to conclude (written in my 2-grade hand writing):

If s(t) is linear then v(t) is constant.  Velocity is the slope of position. 

What more could a teacher ask for?

After these conclusions the students worked some very simple problems. Working with equations, graphs and most importantly writing rules to go from linear position to constant velocity and vice versa. I dangled the idea of the integration constant in front of them, not looking for full understanding, but trying to raise awareness that information was lost or is missing when moving back and forth between position and velocity.

Next up: Linearly increasing velocity in Part 2. Coming soon...

The Class I Always Wanted

In high school and college, being the nerd that I am, I always dreamed of a fantastic course where I and other students simply got to ask cool questions and where we were given the time, resources and space to find the answers. I dreamed of learning to program something that I wanted create - not being told what to create. I dreamed of building a robot or a contraption that did nothing useful but was fun and challenging. I dreamed of a true nerd elective where problems came first and solutions came second, where problems came from creativity and solutions came from a desire to learn and not from a lecture.

Next year I get to create that course. I get to teach a Nerd Elective! The course was created on the premise that many students at my school were not being challenged with the current math and science structure. We have the beginnings of a robotics program and the resources to support it. The stage is set. Now all I have to put the structure together and create the environment for the students to thrive in...

The Plan So Far...

• I will give a brief intro to some ideas: Lego robots, iPad app development, Flash programming, Kodu Game Lab (maybe) and anything else I can find in the next 5 weeks. 
• Students will create their own question or project including time frames with goals, deadlines and expected challenges. 
• Students will work alone or hopefully in groups of 2. 
• Final choice of projects and deadlines will be supervised and negotiated. 
• Projects MUST be interesting to the STUDENT. 
• Student will create a record (blog?) of there work including discoveries, progress and challenges.  

What I need...

• Framework to foster creativity and maintain accountability. 
• Rubrics to grade student work?
• Reasonable expectations for students. 
• More project platform ideas. 
• General advice. What am I not thinking about? 

What Santa brought me.

Santa brought a new toy for me this Christmas, one I didn't think I had much of a chance to get. I made my case as to why I should get one. But I thought my plea might have been ignored. Its not something that I really needed. Though I have used it a lot (I'm using it now). My friends and students are envious though I'm not sure they'd all make use of it...

What is it you might ask? A new bike? A new pair of skis? Nope. Just good old nerd candy. A new laptop. A free laptop from Google, a Cr-48 to be exact... And yes I said free.

For those who haven't heard Google has been working on an operating system based on their browser Chrome. Thus the name Cr-48. There's not much to it, which seems to be the point. Google was also very clear that the product was not going to be perfect, but that it was giving them out as a trial...  You can find all kinds of nerdy tech details on the interwebs. You can even still apply to get one for free, I'd guess teacher folk have a darn good chance at getting one.

When I heard about the new computer my internal geek wanted one. I realized it could be a pretty nice 1:1 laptop solution for schools. The computer would likely be cheap, they are not for sale yet or maybe not ever, its a lightweight processor, no hard drive, no CD or DVD, but it does have wireless and 3G. The fact that they are cloud based means if a student breaks one they simply have to pick up another and log-in again to have their files back. No more long wait times for the server to push the files down... I had this problem at my first school. The quick start up time matched with the 8-9 hour battery (no typo there) means it could work great for students going from one class to another all day long.

There is no desktop, no real way to download programs or games and thus no way to get a virus or download something that will ruin the performance of the computer as so many of my former students did. All the programs you can run are online apps from the Chrome App Store that work in a browser tab. I already use Google Docs and Sites for most of my school work. I realized a few months back that virtually all my time in front of a computer was doing work in a browser. I do my grades in a browser, I create class materials in a browser and I have become addicted to Google Reader after Dan Meyer mentioned it in a post. It seems like the Cr-48 was a near perfect fit.

The jury is still out. But if Google keeps working on the OS they might have something. For me they need to figure out the printing. I haven't played with their CloudPrint but I don't think its going to work for me, based on what I've read. My other major concern is the lack of support for Vernier probes. I need Vernier probes. I'm sure Vernier is capable of making a cloud based Logger Pro, but its not there yet and that's a problem if the Cr-48 is to be a viable 1:1 solution. There is hope as there is a single USB port...

I also miss my music. There are online solutions, but I haven't gotten that deep into the Kool-Aid just yet.

The Cr-48 is also not capable of running some of the Java based simulations from the PhET folks. As those require a file to be download and installed (I never liked that anyways). It does run the Flash based sims, but maybe a bit sluggishly (I've only tried one so far).

There is great potential...