Physics Resources for the Flipped Classroom

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

Physics is not only interesting, but also helps us to understand how things work – whether it’s understanding kinetic energy in a looping roller coaster, or why your singing voice sounds so much better in the shower.

At Curriki, we have thousands of resources for teaching and learning physics. Here are a few of our favorites that can be used as part of the Flipped Classroom:

Coaster Creator
Learn the physics of roller coasters with this free, online game that allows students to explore kinetic and potential energy. Per Curriki Member Anna, “This is a great visual aid for students to understand potential and kinetic energy. In addition, it is engaging students to create a roller coaster on their own in order to experiment on what factors affect the change in energy.”

Full Physics Course from Sal Khan
You’ll find about 100 straightforward 10 – 15 minute tutorial videos comprised of simple graphics and personable narration, covering all topics in a complete high school or college course in Physics.

Physics Videos from STEMbite
These short video clips are created by online science and math teacher, Andrew Vanden Heuvel, from Michigan, USA. Using Google Glass he makes  bite-sized videos highlighting the science in our everyday lives. The extensive Physics collection features such engaging topics as the physics involved in tennis, playrooms, and even singing in the shower!

The Physics of Sailing
Inspired by the America’s World Cup, Curriki just announced a new project-based learning (PBL) course that will be available shortly called The Physics of Sailing. Thanks to a grant from Oracle Corporation, the project will be developed by Curriki’s PBL team with contributions from sailing experts from Oracle Team USA.

Do us a favor please and share this with someone who’s interested in physics.

When is the Best Time to Test?

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki 

In the U.S. it seems that testing requirements in public school systems only increase, never decrease, due to mandates such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. The educational-industrial complex promoting standardized testing loves this.

Standardized testing is done primarily after learning, and thus it is a style of testing to determine if learning has occurred.

This type of testing happens with a significant time lag, on time scales of weeks or months after the learning happens.

Standardized tests do not enhance cognitive abilities, according to this article from the Huffington Post.

A large testing industry has grown up around this type of after-learning evaluation. But is this the best way to test? To what degree does it improve learning? Or is it really just an evaluation methodology for sorting students while in school, and toward college or future career alternatives?

Testing inside the Learning Loop

Wouldn’t it be better to “test inside the loop”, while learning is happening? This provides the opportunity to accelerate learning and to quickly identify shortcomings. Learning becomes more individualized since testing which is intrinsic to the learning process allows for quick review, adjustments and corrections. It also facilitates the coaching role that teachers increasingly are assuming with flipped learning and project-based learning methods.

Quizzing during learning helps students focus. See this article discussing experimental results, from a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/testing-students-during-video-lectures-improves-learning/

Now we are talking about time scales of minutes, hours, or the next day. Feedback is immediate, students see how they are doing right away. And they can re-read the specific areas that cause them trouble, and ask clarifying questions. On the other hand, as soon as they have the content sufficiently mastered they can move to the next lesson right away.

That’s what coaching is, in any case. It’s about real-time checking and feedback within the learning process. And it’s already established that individualized coaching can provide a two standard deviation boost in performance. Every teacher does this with his or her students, checking for understanding, but in traditional classroom environments, the feedback is limited. Many students choose to not respond in a group setting  when they don’t understand something.

There are over 54,000 resources freely available on Curriki which can be used to support more individualized learning and project-based learning (PBL). Here’s a video about PBL, which generally employs testing embedded within the learning process. In this case testing is used to enhance learning itself, not simply measure what was learned afterwards!

Images: Wellcome Library, London, CC-BY 2.0 license

6 Teaching Techniques

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki 

An interesting blog titled “6 Teaching Techniques You Should Know!” was recently posted by Examtime, discussing important teaching techniques expected (and in a number of studies, proven) to encourage greater student curiosity and engagement. These are:

1. Flipped classroom

2. Design thinking (Case method)

3. Self-learning

4. Gamification

5. Social media

6. Free online learning tools

We believe Curriki is an important resource to support most or all of these techniques.

The flipped classroom encourages students to prepare for a lesson’s content ahead of time, before they cover it in the classroom. This allows for deeper understanding as the material is covered in class, and greater support of individualized learning. The abundance of resources on Curriki can be used by students as part of this preparatory phase at home.

Design thinking or the case method involves brainstorming, group activity, creative thinking and analysis. Curriki provides supplementary resources across the full range of K-12 subjects that can be pulled into this process.

Self-learning is enhanced when students reach out to a variety of information sources beyond the course textbook. Natural curiosity can lead to other ways of looking at a concept and can help to reinforce the learning objectives of a course’s core curriculum.

Gamification is of course a great way to build engagement in a topic, if the game is well-designed and relevant. Curriki has game resources for math, science, engineering, health, language arts and other subjects.

Curriki is a social media site! We have over 700 groups for collaboration and sharing of ideas, and the underlying Curriki philosophy of free, open educational resources makes collaboration much easier. For example, resources can be modified or enhanced, and these enhanced resources can be shared with others via Curriki.

Free online learning tools? Well that’s what we are, a repository of over 52,000 free online learning tools and resources, available to anyone with Internet access. Nine million people have already visited Curriki. Please let your friends and associates know about the extensive set of educational resources available here on Curriki.

Curriki and Big Trends in Education

Janet Pinto

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

A recent blog at gettingsmart.com suggested 25 trends that are shaping education today, and noted “the inherent disruptive potential of recent and current education initiatives or technological advancements”. Here is the list presented in the article:

1. The Internet
2. New Learning Models
3. Khan Academy
4. BYOD/Smartphone Integration
5. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses)
6. Service-Based Learning/Place-Based Learning
7. Growth of “Home-schooling”
8. Flipped Classroom
9. Project-Based Learning
10. iTunesU
11. Learni.st/MentorMob
12. TED-Ed
13. 1:1 iPads
14. MITx/EdX
15. Social Media Integration
16. 1:1 Laptop programs
17. MIT OpenCourseWare
18. Non 1:1 laptop-iPad programs
19. Apple Textbook Initiative
20. Professional Learning Communities
21. Teach for America
22. Charter Schools
23. Gender-Specific Classes
24. Race to the Top
25. Common Core Adoption (i.e., one set of national standards)

While the list is perhaps a bit of a grab bag, and my list might be a little different (and so would yours) it’s still a rather reasonable list of major trends. I was struck by how relevant Curriki’s open educational resources are to so many of the trends on this list.

Beginning at the top of the list, our delivery method is exclusively over the Internet, and Curriki content is especially relevant to new learning models. Khan Academy resources are available on Curriki. Devices are often the clients for accessing the resources in and out of the classroom. Curriki resources are used around the world in home schooling environments, providing otherwise hard to find curricula and content. Resources on Curriki are very appropriate for use in the “flipped classroom” context and in project-based learning more generally.

One-to-one laptops and tablets (iPads) are learning clients that Curriki is well suited to support. Curriki uses social media integration to build communities of educators. And many of the resources on Curriki are developed in line with individual state standards, and now, increasingly Common Core State Standards, such as our newly introduced Curriki Algebra 1 course.

So that’s Curriki being relevant to at least 10 of the items on this list. Accessing free, open resources on Curriki is one excellent way to align with many of the major trends  in education today.