#tesSciGCSE your revision challenge hash-tag!

TES Science is going to help learners doing their GCSE exams by setting one challenge a day until the day of the last Science exam on the 24th May. These challenges will be sent through Twitter using the hash-tag #tesSciGCSE and we are hoping you and your learners will engage with this exciting daily challenge.

Taking part is easy:

1) Follow @tesScience

2) Search for #tesSciGCSE and save that search

3) Read the #tesSciGCSE challenge that will be posted each day

4) Reply to the challenge by tweeting your answer including the text #tesSciGCSE in your tweet

What’s in it for me?

If you are a learner, this is a great opportunity to do some revision wherever you are and any time during the day and you could win a £25 book voucher, if you answer most challenges correctly!

If you are an Educator, you can get involved by letting your learners know about this challenge and offer to moderate one of the days of tweets!

How does it work?

It is pretty simple. The people who are moderating the challenge will check your tweets and favourite the best answers, as well as sending probing questions back to help you learn your topic better. The person that gets favourited most wins the book voucher!

So, who’s in it? The first challenge will be issued on Tuesday 8th May 2012 and we will focus on Yr10 GCSE Science. Spread the word!

The ASE Conference 2012

I was privileged to be at the ASE Conference last week and meet so many great Science Educators in the flesh! In particular it was lovely to meet so many who regularly tweet at the #ASEChat.

It was also great to run, for the third consecutive year, my Modulated Laser Pen workshop which is always very well received and attended. This year, as usual there were quite a lot Norwegians and several from other parts of Europe, which shows again how good the conference is to attract educators from so many parts of Europe!

Coming back to the workshop, it consists in building a modulating circuit to add in series to the laser diode in a laser pointer and the whole kit costs less than £20, but the IoP provides it for all participants free of charge! The receiver is simply a small photovoltaic cell plugged into a Radio Shack mini-amp through a Jack lead. You can find the instructions to make your own and some teaching ideas in this resource I uploaded on TES (just click here). Most parts can be found from Rapid Electronics and the mini-amp from Amazon.

Another cause for celebration and enjoyment was the 10th Anniversary of the Institute of Physics Teacher Network, which has run very successfully for all that time and of which I have the privilege to be part as the Network Coordinator for the area of Gloucestershire!

The Virtual Sky – Android apps for the Physics teacher!

It’s been a while since my last post on Android apps for the classroom and I thought the upcoming BETT show 2012 would be a good excuse to write something about a few really interesting apps I have used to create resources about the Solar System. Another reason for blogging about this is to inform you about a series of workshops I will run on the ASUS stand at the BETT Show on the use of Android devices in Education. So, if you are going at BETT and if you are interested in how Android apps can be used in the classroom, join me any day from Tuesday 10th to Friday 13th January 2012. You can download the resources to run some of the activities described in this Blog post from this TES weblink. We will demonstrate other TES resources that can be used with Android devices at ASUS workshops and I will represent TES as the TES Science Lead starting this January, but this gives a good idea of some of the activities we will consider!

The resources in the link above were created with the ASUS Eee Pad tablet in mind, but they would work very well with other Android devices.

Google Sky Map

This app is just great! It lets you point your Android device at the sky in front of you and it shows a map of the stars and planets for that particular place and time of the year. But the most impressive feature it the Time Travel function, which lets you set a particular date and time in the past, or future, to see what the sky would look like. So, for example, you could ask your learners to describe what stars and planets Prince William and Kate would have seen on the night of their wedding. You can also search for a particular object in the sky, so if you want to find the position of Mars, you can can type Mars in the search and an arrow pointing at the planet will appear and you can then follow the arrow with your device until you find the object you searched for!

My Solar System

I have already blogged about this app, but I have added it to this resource because it gives good opportunities to develop Numeracy Skills in your learners by comparing magnitudes, orbital period, etc…

Solar Sizer

This app is even simpler than the previous one, but it is a great way to visualise the size of the planets to scale.

Have a look at the resource I uploaded on the TES website and leave a comment with your thoughts about it, please.

I hope to see many of you at the ASUS stand during the BETT Show.

 

Live online revision clubs!

After a long period of hybernation the Croesy Physics online channel is about to become active again with a very exciting project that will see Croesyceiliog Yr13 Physics Students collaborating with learners at John Cabot Academy in Bristol to create and broadcast live online revision clubs!

Helen Rogerson (@hrogerson) is John Cabot’s Head of Physics and she will support her students once a forenight in creating and broadcasting their sessions from Bristol, and I (@asober) will do the same with my students from Cwmbran. We will take it in turn to broadcast on our Croesy Physics Livestream channel and we would love to see many of you watching live and engaging with our students. In fact, there will be a 10 minutes Q&A session at the end of each event for the people who are watching from other schools, or from home. People can ask questions using the Livestream chat on the online channel, or by using the twitter hash tag #croesybot.

Our live revision clubs will be broadcast live every Tuesday between 15.15 and 15.45 and our first event will be on the 15th November with the topic “The Motor Effect”

Each session will also be available on demand after the event and we hope that our service will become a really useful revision tool for our learners as well as for students in other schools across the world!

Please support our efforts by watching, chatting, sharing, tweeting, etc…

For help on setting up a similar activity see these resources I have uploaded on the TES website.