Loose Ends: Mr. E Science Theater 2008

This last school year I tried a new project with my Honors physics classes, called "Mr. E Science Theater." Inspired by an article I had read in an old copy of The Physics Teacher, I envisioned my students giving presentations on some physics-related subject of their choosing. I had a few goals in mind:

• High Quality: I wanted my students to put together a high quality presentation. Not only did I want clear and scientific explanations, I wanted interesting and engaging presentations.
• Student Choice: Very much related to my high quality standard, I wanted to give my student's some choice in what and how they presented. I offered three broad subject options: science fair presentations, physics problem re-enactments and explanations, and real life physics demonstrations. Likewise, they were given three options on when/how to present: in-class live presentation, in-class video presentation, and out-of-class live presentation.

The project went surprisingly well for a first-time, shot-in-the-dark attempt. (My motto in life: when doing anything for the first time, survival is success.) As expected, some groups absolutely loved it and ran with it. Other groups were decidedly less enthusiastic. To give you some idea of the quality of some of the presentations, check out this video one group made to preface their calculations of their cars' horsepower:



I LOVE it! One of the student's parents later told me how impressed he was that his son had been willing to spend Spring break making a physics video. Of course, there is very little obvious physics in the clip, but from the speedometer scenes the students' did calculations and came to reasonable results. Hooray!

As a follow-up to the project, I created a wiki about the project and had my students "edit" it. The wiki I created was really just an outline. Students were expected to add details and suggestions to the outline. You can see the wiki here. Responses were good, but many were somewhat repetitive and borderline (and not-so-borderline) silly. I like the wiki as a way to encourage collaboration, but I think I need to refine my (written and expressed) expectations.

This project is definitely in the schedule for next year. Now that I have some quality examples to show, I'm excited to see what my students will do!