Week 4 Reflections

I wish I could say this course is getting better. It's not. Maybe I am what was referred to in one source (I don't even remember which), as a "linear sequential thinker". At any rate, I am finding this course less and less valuable and even more frustrating as time goes on. (OK, It's past 1am. Maybe I'm tire too.)

I can't even count the number of hours we've spent on this course this week, and dare not think about the impact it is having on my other courses. I need to remind myself to keep thinking positive.

This week we had an on-line collaborative group meeting, an in-person collaborative group meeting, and numerous telephone calls and emails to put together the Newsletter project along with all day Friday working on that project. Thanks to Amy for assembling it from our input over the weekend.

Today, the day was spent evaluating websites. They were gold-plated websites, yet I had to go through a 50-point checklist for each one, including evaluation summaries and a summative reflection on the experience. Here is the reflection....

Web Site Evaluation Reflection

This is a reflection after evaluating three physics websites for teachers (and secondary students) using evaluation criteria listed in Kathy Schrock’s Critical Evaluation Survey: Teacher Sites (Schrock, 2008). All three sites were substantial bodies of content very likely to be used by a high school physics teacher, and offered to his/her students. They were published by reputable national institutions intended to take physics education technology to the next level in the richness of the learning experience. The evaluation exercise forced me to take an organized metacognitive look at the sites. Whereas I previously would have been satisfied with their content, the evaluation exercise lead me to examine the sites in a way that lead me to confidently use and recommend these sites while maintaining the highest professional standards. It also helped me understand the particular strengths each web site offered. For example, the PhET site (Podolefsky, Adams, Reid, & Harlow, 2008) lends itself to the richest and strongest inquiry based learning experience of the sites evaluated. The Teacher’s Domain (Teacher’s Domain, 2008) site had the most to offer in terms of directly connecting the content with the associated learning standards for specific grade levels in New York State. The examination of the MITOpenCourseWare site (Lewin, 1999) led me to appreciate the power of direct instruction available through the resources no high school could hope to have available otherwise. The credentials of each of these sites are of the highest caliber. The evaluation lead me to a position where I feel I can confidently use these materials in my classrooms, my own professional development, and with my future colleagues.

References

Lewin, W. (1999). Video index for lecture 10: Hook., MIT Opencourseware | Physics | 8.01 Physics 1: Classical Mechanics, Fall 1999: MITOpenCourseWare.

Podolefsky, N., Adams, W., Reid, S., & Harlow, D. (2008). Wave Interference [Electronic Version]. PhET: Physics Education Technology. Retrieved September 21, 2008 from http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php.

Schrock, K. (2008). Critical evaluation surverys and resources [Electronic Version]. Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators. Retrieved September 21, 2008 from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html.

Teachers' Domain, Amplitude, published August 9, 2007, retrieved on September 21, 2008, from http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/lsps07.sci.phys.energy.amplitude/