Can iPads Make a Difference in Physics Education

post from Physics Buzz on 10 September 2012 05:18:50 PM. © Physics Buzz

Technology fads have pervaded our culture in recent years, even if they are short-lived. Some technologies ? such as smartphones, Facebook and Netflix ? have endured. Other fads, however, have fallen into obscurity. Don't just take my word for it; go check how many MySpace friends you have left.

Classrooms have tried to keep pace with our increasingly wired lifestyles, adopting what seems like the best technology to engage students. I remember when my high school statistics teacher complemented his lectures with an enormous touch screen TV to combat senioritis and waning interest in students. The touch screen presentations lasted no more than a week.

But some tools may prove their staying power in the classroom. Earlier this year, two physics education researchers equipped high school physics classrooms with iPads, and they recently revealed their promising results online. Simply providing students with shiny iPads isn't enough, though; the key to engaging students is how you implement the technology.

Valerie Otero and Ben Van Dusen (who's profiled on Physics Central) from the University of Colorado Boulder headed the research in 5 high school classrooms. Several primary themes emerged from the research, indicating that the students gained more personal meaning from physics after using iPads in their class.

Emerging Themes

One fascinating shift that the researchers noticed was from the students' reliance on teachers as an authority to reliance on evidence from their experiments. For instance, one experiment required the students to cut a PVC pipe to produce a certain frequency of sound. Before they had iPads, the students had to rely on the teacher to determine pitch by ear. Several iPad applications allowed the students directly engage with evidence instead of relying on an authority figure. By numerically determining the frequency of the sound waves, the students conducted their science experiments independently.

Students gained more autonomy through the ways they compiled their solutions to homework problems as well. Throughout the course, students used screencasts ? video captures of their work on the iPad ? to complete their lab reports. With screencasts, the students could also overlay their own narration to create multimedia solutions to their problems.

After solving problems this way, the students felt that they had a say in how to approach the problems instead of relying on the teacher's approved method, as the graph below indicates.

When asked who determined the steps to take for solving a problem, students felt they had more control when using the iPad as opposed to traditional lab reports. Image Courtesy of Valerie Otero and Ben Van Dusen via their arXiv paper.
From "Ghetto" to Golden

Overall, the students were quite happy to play with iPads during their physics classes. 60 percent of the students said that the using iPads in class was "much more enjoyable" than traditional learning, and 20 percent said it was "a little more enjoyable." Their enthusiasm eventually spread outside of the classroom.

One prospective student to the high school initially thought that the school was too "ghetto," but he changed his mind when he found out the school had the "physics classes with the iPads."

In this setting, iPads seemed to engender greater engagement in physics among the students. This research didn't provide conclusive evidence that the students better understood the physics though (although that didn't seem to be the purpose of this research project).

Early indications suggest that iPads may have a lasting impact on students' appreciation for physics, according to the researchers. As they continue to monitor the students' use of iPads, the researchers hope to see how it can bridge the gap between a students' personal experiences and the physical world around them.

You can read the full research paper online.

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s-make-difference-in-physics.html

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DMAA supplement, dimethylamylamine, now banned in
the UK

post from Sciencebase Science Blog on 10 September 2012 04:57:18 PM. © Sciencebase Science Blog

Back in April, the US Food & Drug Administration ordered supplement manufacturers to stop supplying bodybuilding and weight-loss products with DMAA, 1,3-dimethylamylamine, methylhexanamine, also known as geranium extract. Ingestion of the compound is thought to carry a risk of cardiac arrest or stroke as well having been linked to other problems such as harm to [...]

DMAA supplement, dimethylamylamine, now banned in the UK is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

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DMAA supplement, dimethylamylamine, banned in UK

post from Sciencebase Science Blog on 10 September 2012 04:57:18 PM. © Sciencebase Science Blog

DMAA supplement, dimethylamylamine, banned in UK is a post from: Sciencebase Science Blog

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when things just keep going downhill

post from weird thingsweird things | exploring science, technology, the strange and the unknown on 10 September 2012 04:12:49 PM. © weird thingsweird things | exploring science, technology, the strange and the unknown

Please excuse the lack of posts ladies and germs, it wasn’t exactly planned that way. In fact, the new posts for the weekend were supposed to have been scheduled but with some recent travel and moving, the posts never got queued up for publication. Again, sorry about that, my bad. But before we get back [...]

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New book: Deceived Wisdom

post from Sciencebase Science Blog on 10 September 2012 04:12:28 PM. © Sciencebase Science Blog

My new book Deceived Wisdom has now been typeset and is on schedule for print publication in a couple of months. It will also be on Kindle and other e-formats. Order now to avoid the holiday rush. If you’re in the UK, you can grab the free extended sampler for Kindle device, app or computer. In [...]

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Short Video Series: 2D Made Easy

post from Canadian BioTechnologist2.0 on 10 September 2012 03:51:56 PM. © Canadian BioTechnologist2.0

For more information, visit http://www.bio-rad.com/pdquest. Filed under: Bio-Rad Product Highlight, Bio-Rad Workshop Tagged: 2D Gel Electrophoresis, Bio-Rad Laboratories

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Your profession is your passionPass it on!

post from American Biotechnologist on 10 September 2012 03:37:16 PM. © American Biotechnologist

Bookmark It Hide Sites $$('div.d4638').each( function(e) {[...]

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UPLB and LENTE co-organize public forum on
election laws reform

post from University of the Philippines Los Baños on 10 September 2012 03:02:50 PM. © University of the Philippines Los Baños

The Office of the Chancellor and the College of Public Affairs and Development, in cooperation with the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), organized a public forum, "The Next Step Before 2013: Reforms in Election Laws," on Sept.5 at the NCAS Auditorium.

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Could dust devils create methane in Mars
atmosphere

Story Source

Methane on Mars has long perplexed scientists; the short-lived gas has been measured in surprising quantities in Mars? atmosphere over several seasons, sometimes in fairly large plumes.

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Key molecules found forming long-term memories

Story Source How does one's experience of an event get translated into a memory that can be accessed months, even years later?

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