Nuclear Physics Project Reflections

I have a few notes to share about the outcome of the [Nuclear Physics Project](https://pedagoguepadawan.net/45/nuclearphysicsproject/).

If you are interested in seeing the final projects, the entire [nnhsphysics wiki](http://nnhsphysics.wikispaces.com/) is available. If you don’t want to read every page, I created an [index that highlights](http://nnhsphysics.wikispaces.com/Sample+Projects) several project pages that cover a variety of topics in a variety of ways.

In terms of the quality of the projects, many students were very creative with their presentation methods. I strongly encouraged and pushed students to find creative ways to present their projects. I should have spent more effort encouraging students to have strong science, technology, and society-related content. In general, the content wasn’t as thorough, complete, and as accurate as I had hoped.

Overall, I think students learned a great deal about the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. I forget that events that I lived through (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl) are consigned to the last pages in my students’ U.S. History text that they never get to read.

In terms of technology, I was very impressed with [Wikispaces](http://wikispaces.com/). Wikispaces is ideal for classroom projects. I was able to easily create accounts for nearly 150 students very easily even though students don’t have school e-mail addresses. It is trivial to search by student name to see their recent edits to their pages and comments that they have made. The permissions model is sufficiently flexible to allow everyone to view content, yet only members to edit and comment on it.

I was also impressed with [Scribd](http://scribd.com/). It was very reliable and makes it easy to embed documents in Wikispaces. I found the ability to embed the document, either as individual pages to scroll through or as a slideshow, particularly useful.

A couple technologies were disappointing. [TeacherTube](http://teachertube.com/) was unreliable in terms of being accessible and successfully uploading videos. The 24-or-more-hour delay for approval, while understandable, was frustrating at times. The only reason I used it at all was that it wasn’t blocked by my school’s web filters.

Speaking of web filters, it goes without saying that they made these projects more cumbersome and frustrating than I would have liked. That said, the technology staff at my school was great about unblocking sites that were obstacles to students working on their projects.

Also disappointing was the wireless performance in my classroom. All students were able to connect via wireless but would frequently have difficulties logging into Wikispaces or posting comments on Wikispaces. They were particularly frustrated when they would compose a thoughtful comment only to lose it when the submission timed out. Reflecting back on this experience, I wonder if this was due to some sort of latency issue and Internet Explorer’s relatively short timeouts. I may try using Firefox to see if that mitigates the issue.

Overall, I would definitely try something similar to this again. Next time, I would like to plan a bit more ahead and have more time for the project so I could involve educators and students from other schools. If you have any tips for me for next time, please share!

2 thoughts on “Nuclear Physics Project Reflections

  1. Andy Rundquist

    Thanks for these insights into pros and cons of this cool project. This sentence struck me the most: “I should have spent more effort encouraging students to have strong science, technology, and society-related content.” I have to say that I was thinking that even before you said it (and even without looking at the projects). This is a very common problem for me in a class called First Year Seminar for first year college students. My version is very science-based but often projects like this one tend to get student flexing all their non-science and non-math muscles. I’ve struggled to find a way to balance what I want them to focus on and what they have passion for.

    Reply
    1. geoff Post author

      I think if I had more time to provide intermediate feedback to students and have them go back and make revisions, the content would have been better. As it was, we were running up against graduation, and the students barely had time to read each other’s projects at all.

      If you find a way to better achieve balance, please let me know!

      Reply

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