Misconceptions Assignment -- part 2

So, I believe my last post (about a month ago) was in reference to an assignment on misconceptions.  It was quite well received, but thanks to google and the 'quicker is better' mentality that is prevelant today, about half of the reports dealt with the infamous "penny from the CN Tower" misconception.

I'll summarize the results of my little misconception assignment experiment.

1. The students enjoyed it, and so did I (in theory)
2. In practice, the students didn't challenge their preconceived notions.  They tackled items that they had already come to understand and didn't really include any personal commentary about what they used to think about the concept or why they found it challenging originally.
3. Also in practice, kids love to see themselves on video and think quality video editing and stylish end-titles make for good physics.
4. Lastly, and this is to be expected but is still unfortunate, students just don't know how to ask the right questions.  They really led their subjects.  Sometimes, the question was posed in such a manner that there was only one answer possible, or the question itself was so confusing that the subject couldn't fairly answer it.

So, how could this assignment be salvaged or work better in the future?

1. Outline my expectations more clearly and build success criteria with the students instead of handing out a rubric and hoping against hope that I get some real gems.  In short, I didn't specifically outline my wishes for the assignment, and not surprisingly, I didn't get what I was hoping for.
2. I will definitely have students write anonymous critical analyses of one another's work, with focus on questioning technique and on the explanations offered to the subjects afterward.
3. They will comment on whether the misconception was clearly introduced and whether sufficient evidence was offered to challenge the misconception.
4. Finally, I might have to do something about assigning specific misconceptions to students.  I originally avoided this because I wanted students to be passionate about their personal selections and to choose something that had personal meaning to them, but that didn't seem to work.
   

It's been too long

Where have I been and what have I been doing?  Too much educational reading can get in the way of one's passionate writing about education it would appear.

I have much to say, but I don't have the desire to say it all at the moment.  What inspired me to write today is the current buzz about physics education, modeling, and inquiry.  I guess I'm upset about the all or nothing approach to educational practices.  Is there no value to socratic lecture, or investigation, or guided inquiry?  Of course each method of instruction has some merit, and yet people want to overload and employ a single approach to accomplish a complex task.  Did you know that if one breathes pure oxygen at depth while scuba diving it is toxic?  The answer isn't always 'more of a good thing is the best thing'.  Perhaps a new way to look at differentiated instruction is to actually differ instructional methods for everybody regularly.  Newton was a genius because he could decipher observed phenomena without the benefit of instruction.  I am not so lucky.  Are your students as gifted?

This sounds like I am defending lectures, and maybe I am, I don't know.  What I do know is that all of my students, without exception (and there have been some potential Newtons amongst them), have at some point needed some help and a direct explanation of the concept with reference to some real life examples of where the concept could be seen and/or is useful, has helped them.

Blech.  Edited out some garbage at the end there...  Some of you are wondering 'How bad must the drivel he edited out be if this is the stuff that he kept!?'.  Touche.