Facing my Fears - a visit to the Physics Department

                            Galileo's telescopes - sourced from the Galileo Museum, Florence

Andrew Taylor and the rest of his department (including Emile) are passionate about Physics!  Emile and I have had great discussions about the Scholarship page, the Moodle pages, and where we could get cool and interesting videos to put on those pages etc. Andrew has explained the formulae for Mass, Force and Acceleration several times, as we discussed his Yr 11 syllabus and interesting ways for boys to learn. The truth is I know (almost) NOTHING about Physics. I now have to admit that I gained minimal marks in 6th Form Certificate Physics. And there may be some truth in the rumour that I spent most of my time in Physics class doing English home work. However, although I don't have the passion for this subject, I was keen to visit classes and see "Physics in Action"

So it was with great trepidation that I visited the Physics department last week. David Wilkinson's class were discussing being upside down with zero gravity in space and the difficulties that presents for eating , drinking (and other challenges!) All good stuff for year 9 boys!
Chris Hill's class were able to explain to me about prisms, white light and why one boy had a rainbow on his shirt. Andrew's class were looking at static electricity and once more everyone was engaged in the experiments and then writing up the explanations. There was some variation in this with some students writing in books, other drawing the diagrams on their laptops and other taking a photo of the board to embed in their notes.

Because I look at the world through an elearning lens, I have been talking to staff how they and /or their departments can adapt elearning ideas/tools/tips/practices to enhance what they are already doing so well. I think there are two aspects to this. 1) eLearning is about blended learning - some written by hand and some using the various tools available. 2) It starts with just changing one aspect of what you do. Using google docs to do a collaborative task eg gathering information in small groups at the start a topic and then sharing the results. Once teachers have mastered a tool/task they can try something else.  The reality is that the learners in front of us are often technology competent. We don't have to know everything about the technology, we do need to know the content of our subject and work out how we can use those elearning tools to enhance what we already do, our core business - teaching learners.