SMU Virtual Coding Workshop
Objectives
Participating teachers will:
- Apply physics principles to reduce or explain the observations in data investigations.
- Examine simulated and experimental data. Identify patterns within the data and consider the causes of those patterns.
- Create, organize and interpret data plots; make claims based on evidence and provide explanations; identify data limitations.
- Develop a plan for taking students from their current level of data use to subsequent levels using activities and/or ideas from the workshop.
Day 1
9:00 Pre-Workshop
- Welcome & introductions
- Registration and create/login to Google account
9:30 Working together
- Norms, APS STEP UP poster & Fermilab norms poster
- Video: Pair programming how-to (YouTube) (Amara w/Sp subtitles)
- Video: What Most Schools Don’t Teach
- A look at the Data Activities Portfolio
10:15 Coding activities
- Introduction to Jupyter
- Skills: run, edit, & save a notebook
- Probability
- Task: Simulate flipping a coin and make a histogram of the number of heads for each trial.
- Skills: generate random numbers, create and format a histogram
11:15 All hands meeting
- Share observations, challenges
- How do you think your students would handle these tasks?
12:00 Break
- Lunch
- Create/update your Quarknet.org account
13:30 Muon Mass activity
- Muon mass
- Task: measure the invariant mass of a muon
- Skills: calculate invariant mass given its 4-vector (energy and x/y/z-momentum), make a mass plot
14:30 Try another coding activity
- Position graphs
- Task: analyze Position graphs
- Skills: modify a loop, define a function, format a plot
- Velocity graphs
- Task: Analyze Velocity graphs
- Skills: modify a loop, define a function, format a plot
- Projectile in Air
- Task: Model the motion of a projectile in air
- Skills: modify a loop, define a function, format a plot
- Quakes
- Task: Identify patterns in global seismic activity
- Skills: read in a large data set from the web, visualize complex data
- Global Temperature
- Task: Describe the differences between land and water on temperature
- Skills: read in a large data set from the web, visualize complex data
- Tides
- Task: Identify patterns in tidal height over time
- Skills: read in a large data set from the web, visualize complex data, manipulate time series data
15:30 All hands meeting
- Share observations, challenges
- How do you think your students would handle these tasks?
Day 2
9:00 Welcome back
- Recap from yesterday
- What stood out? Any new thoughts?
9:30 More coding
- Try more of the coding activities linked in yesterday’s agenda
12:00 Break
- Lunch
13:30 Change from student hat → teacher hat!
- NSTA Position Statements are great. Adam mentioned the one on professional development.
- Where might these (or your own) coding activities fit into your course?
- Start developing a coding activity and integrate it into your course plan.
- See Adam’s CODINGinK12.org site and the UCI Machine Learning repository for data sets
15:30 All hands meeting
- Share observations, challenges
- Closing thoughts? Where to next?
Day 3
9:00 All hands meeting
- Recap from yesterday
- What stood out? Any new thoughts?
- Each teacher shares their work from yesterday (3-5 min each)
9:30 Share out
- Each teacher shares their work from yesterday (3-5 min each)
- Teacher hat work time until lunch
10:30 Implementation plan
- Create an implementation plan.
- The format should be whatever is useful to you. How do you sketch out your lessons? Do you use a form from your school or district?
- You can use this as a guide for your implementation plan.
12:00 Break
- Lunch
- Get help on coding issues
- Finish your coding activity
13:30 Continue developing your implementation plan
- open teacher hat working time
14:30 Share plans for implementation in groups of 4
- 5 minutes of each camper “Driving” one notebook; 5 minutes of feedback/questions
- Briefly decide upon ONE activity (of the four) that you want to “showcase” to the whole group
- listen and watch as a student might, and author can write # comments/feedback into the notebook
15:30 All hands meeting
- Showcasers share their work (3 min each)
- Share observations, challenges
- Closing thoughts? Where to next?