Wolverhampton City Learning Centre (CLC)

On Monday, I worked with Year 9 students from The Northicote School in the first day of a three day project focussing on Science and Maths.

We used a variety of technologies to explore two of the key principles of the Key Stage 3 Science curriculum; energy and forces.

• The use of voting systems
• Film-making
• The use of simulation software to explore scientific concepts and to test hypotheses
• Live blogging/chat
• Video games

Here is an outline of the day, with some examples of student work. I believe that the day was successful, and hope that the mix of different activities may encourage others to explore similar ideas.

Use of the Senteo voting system

I began the day by using Senteo voting systems to assess students’ current understanding of some key principles in energy and forces. Students voted anonymously on each of 10 multi-choice questions. This established a picture of gaps and misconceptions in the students’ understanding. At this stage we did not go through the questions and correct answers.

Film-making as an explanatory tool

The students were divided into groups of 3, and each group was given one of the questions to consider more closely. The students used Smart Notebook to create an annotated explanation of their reasoning. Slides were exported as images, then dropped into a simple iMovie project. The students then narrated explanations to form short films. (This task could, of course, have been carried out in Windows Movie Maker too).

Here is a sample film:

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

We watched back the student explanations, and peers voted on the quality of the answers in the films (”Good” / “Dodgy” / “Incorrrect”). By looking at the films, and at the previous responses of the class as a whole (as recorded by the voting system), we explored and analysed the questions, trying to correct misconceptions and add more precision to the use of scientific language.

Use of computer simulations

To explore and reinfoce the relationship between forces and energy we used one of the Sunflower Learning simulations:

Students were asked to formulate and present their ideas on the relationship between forces, energy, velocity and acceleration in the simulation.

In preparation for Day 2 of the project, in which students were to use Maths in Motion to design and race virtual Formula one cars, we now looked in more detail at some of the design considerations of an F1 Car:

• Shape / aerodynamics
• Front and rear wings

The students were challenged to use Phun (a “2D Physics Sandbox”) to create a test to demonstrate the effect of shape on air resistance. They had to consider how to make the test fair - i.e. how do I change the shape moving through the air without altering the mass of the object? The simplest solution was something like this:

Two equal-sized, equal mass objects dropped at different angles. The object on the left reaches the ground first …

Use of live blog/ chat to explore the role of wings

Using the free website CoveritLive.com, students now participated in a structured online live blog / chat. The topic for the conversation was “wings” - how do aeroplanes fly, and why do Formula One cars use inverted wings on their front / rear?

What is CoverItLive?

CoverItLive is a service designed to “live blog” an event; a conference keynote speech or sporting event, perhaps. One individual, the blogger, records the event. Other people can comment on the event, but the lead blogger can choose whether to accept their comments, and when to insert comments into the record of the event.

Why use CoverItLive?

Well, partly because I was intrigued to see how students reacted to it! My feeling was that the service provided some of the immediacy of using a chat service while allowing the teacher to direct the discussion towards specific learning purposes. When commenters (the students) submitted comments on the discussion, I could choose when to slot their contributions into the “script”. Thus, I could wait for contributions from different groups before “revealing” the contributions to the rest of the class.

At the end of the exercise, the class had a script to take away and analyse. Here is a link to the finished script:

• Northicote Day 1 - Live Blog

In practice, I felt that using the service worked well. If I were to repeat the exercise, I would probably give the students clearer guidelines on when and how to comment - there was little too much of “This is really cool, sir!”, which made it tough to track the comments in real time … which lead to “why haven’t you published our comment, sir?”.

Using MissionMaker to access student understanding

To finish the day, we revised key concepts of energy and forces using a CLC-designed MissionMaker game:

The end of a successful day!

What the teacher said:

Excellent resources, some of which can be taken back into school. Excellent activities that kept pupils engaged and interested in a difficult subject. Pupils were able to explain difficult scientific concepts and apply them to different situations.