Think Outside the Bottle Taste Test

So last week my students involved with Think Outside the Bottle volunteered to participate in an event this coming Monday (tomorrow) at the state house. Originally there were going to be a couple speakers, but when we volunteered to do the taste test they agreed that we ought to be the main event. Gah! 

That's exciting, but - moment of honesty - it's a little scary. There will be a bunch of press folks there. (I thought I was done with media for the year, but apparently not). So here we go. It's exactly during class time, it's definitely all about sustainability and conservation of matter and energy, and it's something the kids are completely pumped about, so I'm willing to go with it. 

Hopefully I don't make a fool of myself or the kids in the process. 

Renewable Energy Presentations are Beginning!

Today was the first day of renewable energy project presentations. Apparently my intern has been talking about my class in her science methods course, so the teacher approached me yesterday wondering if she could bring her class to see my presentations, so of course I agreed. So we had a troop of college kids in my somewhat small 7th period class today.

The presentations went really well. The kids had great calculations, conclusions, and for the most part were very into the work they had done.

Afterwards the college kids said the presentations had been "college level work, like I'd expect to see this in one of my classes", which I plan to pass along to these students. We talked about how to modify this to a lower level physics course. We talked about how I had the lower level students create their own rubric for their presentations.

The teacher wondered if I had published about any of this work, and I said I had (so I showed them the Science Teacher article), but even so the teacher later asked me if I'd be willing to work with her on writing another article about my work. Ha! How exciting.

Anyway, I'm just glad to have a bit of closure (just two more classes to go - but they won't be ready for at least another week or so, and frankly I don't have that kind of patience). :P

Renewable Energy Curriculum - Authentic Community Applications

Fairily soon my student teacher will be done with her soloing period, and that will mean I (finally) get to be back in my classroom with kids. It's been a really long time, and I miss them :_(
Ok, maybe not that much. heh heh.

But when I get back, we'll be working on renewable energy projects. The idea for these project is "study a real-life energy system, and make a proposal to the people who have influence over that situation". The rubric for this assignment includes

*Energy and Power Calculations (the content-related criteria)

*Evidence that they have contacted an expert in the community about their topic (notes from a phone call or an email)

*A presentation to the class and then later to the people of influence preferably using power point.

I have a student who is all about putting a wind mill on top of National Life (or at least the hill National Life is on), and so I can imagine that will be his topic.

I'm thinking we could either have "independent projects" (or groups of two) for this, where everyone's kind of working on their own deal, or we could pose the same question to each section, and groups in one class could work on solutions to the same problem. Or I could have all my sections of the same course work on the same problem/question.

Right now I'm leaning towards problems divided up by section, and so have everyone in the same section working on the same problem. I'll elicit their ideas for problems, I'll also put out some ideas of my own, and then I'll let them "choose" the issue they want to tackle as a section. And by "choose" of course, I mean, choice with my ultimate approval. (Aww, just now it was like I'm the Governor and they're the congress and I have veto power!). Except that my classroom is a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy :P