Download - Clemson/Shodor Building SMET Laptop Courses
Clemson/ShodorBuilding SMET Laptop Courses
Steve Stevenson
Dan Warner
Introduction
• Opening Remarks
• Powerpointlessness
• Simple, effective, web-accessible tools for teaching lower division
• Developing modules/classes
• Play time
Shodor Connection
• This class is the outgrowth of fourteen years of teaching workshops to college faculty.
• The subject is computational science and engineering.
• Our motto is “Simple problems, well done.”
• Shodor has a huge online repository.
Segue to Shodorhttp://www.shodor.org/talks/modelingSX
Interactivate
Interactivate available from anywhere and we’ll make it available for CU laptops.
Interactivate
Categories
Segue to Dan
Segue to Steve
Our Approach to Development
• Inquiry-based / problem-based learning.
• Evidence-based reasoning
• Performance-based assessment.
Inquiry/Problem – Based
• Keep it simple, s-----.
• Make it a seminal problem, historically interesting but still an attention grabber.
• Pose problem with some rough edges so the students must first pose the question.
• Hold off on software until problem posed.
Simple, Effective Exercises
• Use Rabbits and Wolves to generate data– Experimental design– Observations– Plop and Histogram
• Function Flyer as a qualitative exploration of quantitative model.
Simple, Effective Exercises
• Birthday Exploration– Birthday month distribution from class.– Plop– Keep asking questions by changing data:
E.g: What happens if we add data higher than mean?
Evidence-Based Reasoning
• The answer is not done until the paperwork is done. It’s not enough to say the answer is 43.
• Exploration!
• Observation!
Performance Based Assessment
• Students can work at a high level with partners.
• But detail work must be done individually.
Hints
• They’re smarter than we give them credit for, but they’re more unsophisticated in science than we realize.
• Guided exploration but there will be a few bloody noses along the way.
Some Interactivate Tools
Function Flyer Function FlyerData Flyer Data FlyerHistogram histogramPlop Plop Rabbits and WolvesRabbits and WolvesFire Fire!
Some CSERD Resources
Resources - Activities - Colors of Stars
• The model is fairly simple for this, but it illustrates a key misconception about what is meant by "red hot", "white hot", etc.
Resources - Activities - Space Ship Pilot
A game-like immersive environment in which the user can pilot one of two crafts, a space shuttle in a dock in space, or a boat on water. The idea is to look at Newton's laws with and without dispersive forces.
Resources - Activities - Pendulum Motion
• Comparison of small angle approximation solution of simple pendulum to real solution. The results for a pendulum starting nearly vertical are very counterintuitive, and nothing like the small angle approximation.
Resources - Models - Newton-Rhapson calculator
Solve coupled nonlinear equations using Newton-Rhapson method.
Resources - Models - Superposition of Waves
• New model, being developed for Capital University. Untested, but if people are willing to look at something new and give feedback, that would be nice.
The End…of the Beginning