Robin and Thomas go for another ramble … and for a walk in the country as well.

They start by chatting about using self made simulations to enhance your teaching (especially now that students are limited in their access to practical work). Thomas had put together a cracking simulation to find resistivity on a wire in Excel.

Thomas has been looking at ranking questions, where students are asked to rank their answers in order of confidence, and he catches up with James de Winter who recommends TIPERs: Sensemaking Tasks for Introductory Physics which is available via Amazon from the link below. James is adamant as to the value of this book, so if you are writing your note to Santa, don’t forget. I’m sure you’re on the ‘nice’ list aren’t you?

The question that arises from this discussion is: where is the support for teaching in terms of resources? We have highlighted lots of excellent examples of resources and sharing, but we wonder where the collation might come from. If anyone fancies a project collating physics resources for teachers, how about popping a bid into the IOP’s challenge fund?

And finally, an appeal for ‘how to teach’ magnetism – tell us how you teach it. Don’t assume we’ve heard your tip before, chances are you have a new spin on a classic.

Finally, yes, Thomas did make a simulation of lead thickness and gamma absorption in another spreadsheet.

Links

• The Ranking Tasks book Thomas mentions is Ranking Tasks in Exercises in Physics, O’Kuma, Maloney and Hieggelke, Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0130223557. He got it through eBay.
• If you are interested in TIPERs you can support the podcast by buying it through this link: TIPERs at Amazon or the rather ugly box below…
• Best Evidence Science Teaching
• Our Resources site – resources.physicsteachingpodcast.com
• Thomas’ Resistivity Experiment Simulation Spreadsheet
• Thomas’ Radiation Absorption Simulation Spreadsheet
• IOP Challenge Fund
• IOP Spark

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Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions – on our Facebook Page: https://fb.me/physicstp .  You can also message us via our website contact form at the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, Twitter @physicstp, email using  the address given in the podcast (if we remember), you could even email us an autio file if you are feeling really keen.

Music

• Season 5: Crescents by Ketsa.
• Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
• Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
• Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License