Category Archives: astro 101

10000 tweets

I recently posted my 10,000th tweet on Twitter where I interact with my communities as @polarisdotca. (That’s “Polaris” for the North Star plus “.ca” in words to show my pride of being Canadian.) It was right in the middle of … Continue reading

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Making memories stick. With Play-Doh.

My boss, Carl Wieman, likes to describe what we do as “looking for the pattern of how people learn science” (as he does in this video.) And the places to look are classroom studies, brain research and cognitive psychology. I … Continue reading

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My brief encounter with iclicker2 ranking tasks

As I’ve mentioned before, the folks at i>clicker lent me a set of the new i>clicker2 clickers. I had a chance to try them out this week when I filled in for an “Astro 101” instructor. I sure learned a … Continue reading

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Peer instruction is worth the effort

Most blog posts, articles or books with a title like this would go on to describe the positive impact of peer instruction on student learning. I even write those kinds of posts, myself. This one is different, though, because it’s … Continue reading

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Why should I use peer instruction in my class?

[Update (June 16): Lead author Zdeslav Hrepic pointed me to a follow-up book chapter [PDF] where he and the study co-authors describe using tablet-PCs to counter the problems uncovered in their study. Thanks, Z.] I’m sure we’ve all heard it … Continue reading

Posted in astro 101, clickers, teaching | Tagged , , | 6 Comments