How twitter changed my plans for the week

Wow.  Where does the time go?  And why does it seem like just when things are slowing down, they ramp right up?

Oh well, I'd rather be busy than bored.

So last week as I was perusing my twitter account, I came across a much RT'd post about the Khan academy and numerous pedagogical arguments behind demos and videos and student learning.  I spent about an hour or two reading through posts and watching 1Veritasium's videos on YouTube and it reignited my passion for misconceptions.

I showed some of the videos to my Grade 12 University physics students, and I tried to put them in the most meaningful order.  We talked about each, and I paused a lot during them to check their ideas.  I talked with them (at great length) about preconceived notions and the difficulties in convincing them of something that they already know to be true, but really isn't of course.  When the class was just about to let out, on a whim I posed a question to them with strict instructions that they were forbidden to look up the answer or discuss their ideas with anybody.  Their only homework was to <prepare to gasp> think <gasp> about the answer and be prepared to share it.  The question was "Why are there phases of the moon ie full moon, quarter moon etc?"

Immediately a couple of students dismissed it and wanted to just tell me their answer.  "Sir, that's too easy, I already know why."  One even got so far as to mention shadows before I shut him down.  Another student suggested that they do a video project debunking some misconception.


That night I wondered what I was going to do to challenge their ideas.  You see, I knew most (if not all) of them thought that it was Earth's shadow playing across the moon in various amounts.  What I had to do was figure out a way to present some evidence that they were easily able to understand and that they knew to be true that could challenge their preconceived notion and force them to come up with an alternate theory.  I think I came up with some good ideas.  You can be the judge of that by checking out the work sheet I gave them the next day by clicking here.

At the end of the "lesson", I prompted the students to see who had maintained their initial hypothesis.  Only a few did.  I didn't really provide them with sufficient time to come up with an alternate theory (though I did ask them for one), which I know could have been a valid learning moment for them, but I did not do nevertheless.  Instead, we went through the sheet, we shared some answers, and in the end we modeled the moon orbiting the Earth, with the Sun (me with a bright spot-type light) shining ever forward.

A few interesting things happened.  One student shared that even though he could not use his shadow theory to explain a single discrepant event, he wouldn't abandon it and kept trying to make it fit instead of coming up with an alternate solution.  Students were eager to discuss their wrong ideas and why they held them.  They weren't embarrassed or timid about being wrong; being wrong was the point of the exercise.  It has taken me a long time to convince the students that being wrong is o.k., and that learning from the process or even figuring out why something is wrong is way more important than the result.

Their project due date is May 2nd (other stuff is going on and I didn't want to rush them).  I'll write about the results then.