Return to Modeling Instruction home page
Mark Schober's website is a goldmine! It is a coherent course: includes modeling syllabus, worksheets, projects, readings, etc. for an entire year of high school physics (the 9 mechanics units, electric charge, sound & music, 3 models of light, and Six Flags Amusement Park physics). Accompanying each unit for the entire year are: key ideas, online simulations, practice problems, and relevant web links. Mark is a Modeling Workshop leader, and he helped develop the "models of light" workshop materials.
Mark Schober's and other expert modelers' improved paradigm labs for mechanics units 7, 8, and 9 (central force particle model, energy model, and impulsive force model) are among 260 compilations at archive of teacher contributions to the Modeling listserv.
American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA) website has instructional resources by modelers that anyone can freely download (click on Resource Room), and easy ways to join this grassroots professional organization. Members are welcome to contribute instructional resources; Matt Greenwolfe and Sherry Brown can help you upload them.
Amusement park physics: The St. Louis Area Physics teachers website has resources for Physics Day at Six Flags. Included are downloadable files for the actual activities, and sample data taken using accelerometers and barometers. Also video clips and activities to help prepare students for Physics Day. Modelers Mark Schober, Rex Rice, & Bill Brinkhorst ran Physics Day at Six Flags for many years. They designed the materials to be "modeling friendly."
Two QuickTime movies of Larry Dukerich's classroom teaching (on mechanics and sound waves). streaming format
Other Modeling Workshop websites:
University of Wisconsin
at Oshkosh
University of New England.
Click on "modeling". For the user ID and password, contact Professor
James Vesenka.
Arizona State University: middle school Modeling
Instruction graduate STEM degree program (Colleen Megowan and James Middleton)
Modelers' blogs:
GLOBAL PHYSICS DEPARTMENT: A professional learning community online: curriculum, textbooks, pedagogy, and physics humor. Peer coaching.
Paul Bianchi’s physics standards for standards-based grading: NY state curriculum, reworked in a modeling fashion -- a work in progress, started in fall 2011. Comments are most welcome.
Tim Burgess' website has many research studies of 9th grade physics.
Jerel Welker’s website on math
modeling. Jerel team-taught integrated physics and pre-calculus with modeler
Jim Rynearson (1997-’98).
LAB-Physics (formerly Learn Anytime, Anywhere Physics) developed at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Modeling Instruction course on the web)
An NSTA book, "Exemplary Science in Grades 9-12", is available in paperback for $20. Three of the fifteen programs in 15 chapters are about Modeling Instruction! Earl Legleiter (from Kansas) contributed a chapter on his use of Modeling Instruction in physics. Carmela Minaya (from Hawaii) extolled her experiences with Modeling Instruction in chemistry. A chapter by Prof. Julie Luft of ASU features Teresa Potter, a rural Arizona modeler.
Energy in the Human
Body: a free six to 12-week research-based biology modeling
curriculum (and video clips) for middle school, including assessments, lists
of misconceptions, and video clips of classroom instruction. NSES content
standards addressed include cells, organs and systems; nutrition and energy
flow through ecosystems, and interactions between organisms and environments.
Authors: Mary Anne Rea-Ramirez, Maria Cecilia Nunez-Oviedo,
and John Clement, a leading science education researcher at the University
of Massachusetts. Available on a CD; email Jane.Jackson@asu.edu.
if interested.
MUSE: Modeling for Understanding in Science Education for grades 8 to 12 in astronomy and advanced biology. MUSE and Modeling Instruction are compatible. (An expert modeler uses MUSE biology materials in his 10th grade integrated science course.) See the publications, too.
Model-Assisted Reasoning in Science (MARS) is a middle school science curriculum project of Drs. Kalyani Raghavan and Mary L. Sartoris at the University of Pittsburgh. Objective data on 1300 students, overviews of modules, National Standards addressed, evaluation results, references, contributors, and a slide show.
Modeling Designs for Learning (MoDeLS) is a middle school and upper elementary program at Northwestern University and several other universities. It is developing a learning progression for scientific modeling practices. A synopsis.
Tools for Ambitious Science Teaching is a middle school and early high school program at the University of Washington (Mark Windschitl and colleagues) that develops teacher resources for model-based inquiry.
Introductory Physical Science, an outstanding 9th grade textbook, is a resource in our Physical Science with Math Modeling Workshop. A review
Robert Karplus' textbook: Introductory Physics: A Model Approach. 2nd edition edited by Fernand Brunschwig in 2003. Outstanding for conceptual physics in grades 11-12 and college. To order, email FBrunsch@gmail.com A review in The Physics Teacher. A review by two modelers.
Robert Karplus' chapter 4 on energy and Energy flow diagrams (view a list of URLs) (download) Types & forms of energy are just names. Key issues are, as Karplus says: Where and how is energy stored? What changes occur as energy is transferred from source to receiver?Teachers' Guide for Robert Karplus' textbook.
Fernand Brunschwig developed chapter summaries, teacher notes,
more homework problems and answers, tests and quizzes, interactive computer-based
demonstrations. Teachers who wish to contribute materials should email him
at FBrunsch@gmail.com.
Robert Karplus et al: Workshop on Physics Teaching and the Development of Reasoning
Matter & Interactions web site includes lists of items for desktop experiments on electrostatics, circuits, and magnetism; weblink to Bruce Sherwood's two distance graduate courses at North Carolina State University for physics teachers. Bruce Sherwood and Ruth Chabay do physics education research .
Spiral Physics by Paul D'Alessandris, Monroe Community College, is a wealth of free online research-based conceptual/quantitative activities for calculus-based physics and algebra-based physics. Dwain Desbien, an expert modeler at Estrella Mountain Community College, uses Spiral Physics extensively.
ISLE (investigative science learning environment) is a model-based instructional method developed by Eugenia Etkina and Alan Van Heuvelen at Rutgers University for physics courses for prospective teachers, science majors, and physics/engineering majors. ISLE is based on Eugenia's Ph.D. work in Russia and Alan's multiple representations that resulted from his sabbatical with David Hestenes. Eugenia contributed the method of instruction - going from observations to models, to predictions, to testing. ISLE is similar to Modeling Instruction but has less emphasis on discourse.
Scientific Abilities: model-based activities & labs, rubrics, multiple representations, video problems, research papers by the Rutgers University PER group.
The Role of Models in Physics Instruction, by Eugenia Etkinia, Aaron Warren, and Michael Gentile, is an excellent introduction. (6 pages, TPT 2006). It's in the section called "Scientific Abilities". Many other research-based papers on model-based instruction. Three of special interest to modelers are:
200 digitized labs, model-based: Physics Teaching Technology (PT3) Resource at Eugenia Etkina's website. Award-winner from Science Journal!
PhET: Free online educational simulations of physical phenomena
Molecular Workbench has hundreds of interactive, visual simulations and activities for teaching physics, chemistry, and biology. The model-based activities are primarily of interactions of atoms and molecules, or rule-based genetics. Most simulations require Java 1.5+ for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X 10.4 and newer. Also, if you want to build your own interactive simulations (molecular, mechanical, and discrete-element), download free open-source software that includes a report and assessment system for collecting data and measuring learning.
V Python Free open-source computer simulation software; contributed programs in physics, earth science, etc. V Python is used in the two model-based AP-C/university physics textbooks, "Matter and Interactions", by Bruce Sherwood and Ruth Chabay. Comments by Matt Greenwolfe, Gregg Swackhamer, Martin Mason & Aaron Titus.
World in Motion / Physics ToolKit: Free! Mitch Johnson recommends this for online instruction. He wrote, "Students must use lab skills to set up and mark the video and interpret results. Then I use applets to reinforce their lab results."
Ramp n' Roll applet: motion of ball on a ramp (& worksheet)
The Scale of the Universe This interactive animation is a modern version of the classic POWERS OF TEN video. It takes you all the way from the (estimated) outer reaches of the universe down to the Planck length. Humans are in the middle. Click on different objects as they zoom by to learn more.
Teaching
with Models
(SERC Pedagogic Service) discusses modeling in geology/earth
science. Dozens of examples of models for K-12 courses in biology, chemistry,
environmental science, geoscience, math, physics!
Conceptual
models.
Graphical/mathematical
and statistical models.
Model-Eliciting
Activities (SERC Pedagogic Service) are activities
that encourage students to invent and test models. Discussion and many examples.
For
statistics courses.
For
k-12 math or engineering courses. Click on: Case Studies
for Kids - Archive site of MEAs for kids
MEDIA (Modeling: Elicitation, Development, Integration, and Assessment) project: collaborative research, mostly in engineering, of seven universities to implement models and modeling as a foundation for undergraduate STEM curriculum and assessment.
CASE: Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education, by
Shayer and Adey. A modeling-friendly program of biweekly interventions for
middle school.
History
and evidence (UNESCO article)
Many
links that answer questions about CASE
Research for Teachers (RfT: United Kingdom). Summaries of contributions by leading thinkers, including Shayer and Adey, Rosalind Driver, John Dewey, Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner, Donald Schon, Carl Rogers.
Research in Physics Education: Richard Hake’s webpage. SDI labs (low-tech and modeling-friendly), normalized gain, FCI research
PER User's Guide, an extensive new website in 2012.
NSTA books on research (to be published in 2012. Julie Luft led this effort.)
Ken and Pat Heller's research on cooperative learning, at University of Michigan. Click on Research, to get to several important resources. Many context-rich problems
TIMSS video study has a dozen reports on research about the need for a coherent storyline in K-12 science courses.
YouTube videos on LabPro, LoggerPro, motion detector (download)
Lee Trampleasure's video on developing the constant acceleration particle model (Unit 3 ramp lab): a whiteboarding session for students who miss class.
Derek Muller's videos that straighten out naive conceptions, & his PhD dissertation:View. (Download.)
Effective Tech for STEM videos (collection & links. This website was created by Frank Noschese, a modeler in New York, for an inservice that he led.)
Eureka! videos (view a list of URLs) (download)
200 digitized labs, model-based: Physics Teaching Technology (PT3) Resource at Eugenia Etkina's website. Award-winner from Science Journal!
Physics review websites (view) (download)
Physics for Future Presidents. Search on YouTube for Richard Muller's Physics 10 course for non-science majors at UC-Berkeley. You can view all 25 lectures; each is 1 hour 15 minutes long. It begins with energy and includes "what is most important". (View an introduction.) (Download an introduction.)
Teachers
Clearinghouse Newsletter for Science and Society Education is
archived at the AAPT "Physics and Society Education" (Physoc) website.
The editor is John Roeder, a physics modeler and PTRA leader; he co-founded
the newsletter in 1982.
Video on electric fields, cell towers, and wi-fi, by Bruce Sherwood of NCSU (2008). It helps city staff, residents, and company representatives in discussing issues. (Scroll to the bottom of the page.) Alternate URL
Carl Wennings' publications
are valuable to share with principals and department chairmen.
Carl directed the physics teacher preparation program at Illinois State University
until 2008. He organized Modeling Workshops for 100 Illinois physics teachers.
Minimizing resistance to inquiry-oriented instruction: The importance of climate setting. Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online (JPTEO) 3(2), December 2005, pp. 10-15. (#11 on Carl's list)
Whiteboarding and Socratic dialogues: Questions and answers. JPTEO 3(1), September 2005, pp.3-10. (#12 on list)
Engaging students in conducting Socratic dialogues: Suggestions for science teachers. JPTEO 4(1), Autumn 2006, pp. 10-13. (with Thomas W. Holbrook and James Stankevitz). (#5 on list)
Assessing inquiry skills as a component of scientific literacy. JPTEO 4(2), Winter 2007, pp. 21-24. Also, see the Scientific Inquiry Literacy Test (ScInqLiT) - (PDF); contact Carl Wenning wenning@phy.ilstu.edu for password. (#4 on list)
Assessing nature-of-science literacy as one component of scientific literacy. JPTEO 3(4), Summer 2006, pp. 3-14. Also, see the associated Nature of Science Literacy Test (NOSLiT) - password protected PDF; contact Carl Wenning for password. (#6 on list)
"Hal's Picks of the Month" is a part of the Chemical Education Resource Shelf. Hal Harris, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, is a great supporter of Modeling Instruction. Hal wrote, "The books I suggest are not necessarily intended for students to read, but are books (and sometimes articles) that I think would enhance the teaching of science. Hal's Picks are never textbooks."
This page maintained by Jane Jackson - jane.jackson@asu.edu
Updated May 14, 2012
Return to Modeling Instruction home page
Copyright © 2012 and earlier years, Modeling Instruction