Category Archives: technology

Wikipedia as textbook

Posted on October 30, 2012 by

I’ve been kicking around some ideas to avoid (for the students) the incredibly high cost of the texts I was planning on using next semester in Modern Physics and Theoretical Mechanics. I wanted to get some of the thoughts down … Continue reading →

Posted in physics, teaching, technology | 49 Comments

Three teaching technologies

Posted on February 18, 2012 by

Three different technologies have affected either my actual teaching or my thinking about future teaching this past week. Screencasts For the first time since teaching in what others call a “flipped classroom,” I’m teaching a class that I’ve already developed … Continue reading →

Posted in lab, mathematica, physics, teaching, technology | 12 Comments

Online communities

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

I just received an interesting email from someone I’m working with who’s interested in forming a virtual community of elementary school teachers: Hi Andy, I was really intrigued by some of the things you said about establishing a sense of … Continue reading →

Posted in blog, technology, twitter | Leave a comment

Shooting method for hydrogen

Posted on May 7, 2011 by

This semester I’m teaching the lab portion of a course called Applied Math. My colleague in the math department teaches the lecture and I have a 1.5 hour lab once a week. One of the cool things about it is … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, physics, teaching, technology, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

>Grading with my voice

Posted on December 11, 2010 by

>A few people have asked me for some more detail about how I use screencasting to grade papers so I thought I’d post this. As a physics professor I don’t grade nearly as many writing assignments as my colleagues in … Continue reading →

Posted in screencasting, teaching, technology | 10 Comments

>Recording students

Posted on November 18, 2010 by

> This semester I’m trying two approaches in my teaching that both involve recording students. One has students using screencasting to turn in their homework and the other has students making pencasts of their group work. Screencasting Homework I’ve been … Continue reading →

Posted in teaching, technology | 3 Comments

>Mathematica: import and export calculations

Posted on August 10, 2010 by

> I often do long calculations in Mathematica. If I’ve got the time, I’ll keep the kernel active and do all the fun plotting, animating, basic playing-around with the results right when I’m thinking about it. However, often I need … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematica, technology | 2 Comments

>Clickers vs cards

Posted on January 9, 2010 by

>I use peer instruction in most of my introductory courses.  When I first started I used colored cards for the students to use when answering multiple choice concept questions but when I had a chance to switch to clickers (personal … Continue reading →

Posted in teaching, technology | 10 Comments

>Jarnal (vs the Gimp) for screencasting

Posted on December 23, 2009 by

>I’ve been putting more thought and research into better ways to do my screencasts/lecture capture and I’ve stumbled onto Jarnal.  It’s a straight-forward whiteboard editor but it comes with some handy extra features (see below).  For screencasting it’s biggest downside … Continue reading →

Posted in screencasting, teaching, technology | Leave a comment

>Teaching Naked

Posted on December 13, 2009 by

>It appears I didn’t try enough different search terms a year ago to look into resources for my new way of teaching.  I stumbled on this July article from the Chronicle of Higher Ed thanks to a tip from my … Continue reading →

Posted in screencasting, teaching, technology | Leave a comment