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There is this class I teach - we call it Physics for Elementary Education Majors. And that is just about describes the course. I teach this just about every semester, it is really a good course. We are currently using the excellent curriculum - Physics and Everyday Thinking. Check it out.
So anyway, it is the end of the semester. Surprisingly, we made it through the whole book. What to do on the last day? I was going to just go back over some of the material that they hadn't seen in a while, but the students had a request.
I know it is difficult for them. The class is built on collecting evidence and building models from this evidence. This is tough because it is something different than what they are used to (for lots of reasons). However, their request for direct answers started a discussion (like we have had many times) about what is important. Is it important for you to grab some science factoids (or factorites) to keep? Or perhaps it is more important to analyze things and make your own little factoids.
I was thinking about Feynman's essay about the names of birds and what the name means. Here is part of that essay:
This is the key I was trying to get to - that the facts like the density of the Earth or how many planets there are (there are 8, just saying) are really unimportant when compared to critical thinking. So, I decided to show this Feynman clip:
In the clip, Feynman essentially talks about why the "why does...." questions are kind of silly in a way. The sad thing is that many many of the elementary and middle school textbooks focus on the answers of "why" instead of building ideas. But the video started a nice discussion and ending with most students agreeing that Feynman was kind of an ass.
It was nice that they could see someone else say some of the things that I say.
They enjoyed that video, so I figured I would show another one. I was looking for the Dan Meyer video where he talks about being less helpful, but I accidentally got to this one.
Even though this is mostly math-ish, it really works well for these education majors. Dan is clearly not an ass (although I would claim that Feynman isn't either). Hopefully, after this clip students can start thinking "why do we do the things we do?"
This leads to the next video. Why is education the way it is? So, I showed this Sir Ken Robinson video about education.
Brings up some great points.
Just as a note - the next class period I found the Dan Meyer video I was looking for. Here it is (but it is too long for class).
Be Less Helpful - CMC North 2009 - Dan Meyer from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.
It would probably be best to skip ahead to the Clever Hans part (at around 5:20). I stopped the video after the "be less helpful" part. This is the video show. Great discussion afterwards. One student pointed out that she noticed something like Clever Hans while doing classroom observations. She said the teacher was reading out multiple choice answers and giving subtle cues for the correct answer. I doubt the teacher was aware this was happening.
One more thing. Although these are great videos, they probably wouldn't be too useful at the beginning of the semester. The students (in the class) need some time to experience different types of learning so that the videos can have more meaning. Also at the end, one student said "why is this class so different? Why do we learn here by collecting evidence instead of you just telling us the answer. Why aren't other classes like this?" My answer is always "hmmmm....I don't know."
Oh - somehow the students found out I have a blog. In case they come back and see this - hello students!.
