To: Frank Pottenger, Erin Baumgartner, Stacey Carpenter, Carmela Minaya, Don Buchholz, Arny Feldman, Joe Laszlo, Mary Lee
From: Dave Kleinjans
Copy: Don Young
Date: 2003/01/30
Subject: Meeting minutes from 01/18 PPT meeting
These are my notes from the meeting. Please let me know of any corrections.
Present: Frank, Arny, Erin, Stacey, Dave, Don B, Carmela, Joe, Mary.
Administrative
· We decided to break the meeting into smaller groups and shorter meetings the next time.
· The curriculum group, including Frank, Erin, Stacey, Carmela, Don B, Dave, and Arny, will meet next on February 11 at 2:30 in UHS3-104.
· The funding and recruitment group includes Frank, Erin, Don B, Dave, and Arny. This group has not yet scheduled a meeting.
· Others are welcome at the meetings, of course.
· Mary’s status in evaluation may be changing as she may begin writing the evaluation and attending fewer of the project classes and meetings.
Big Picture
· Arny feels that teaching thinking is more important than learning facts in high school science courses to prepare for citizenship or college. Students can learn more details and facts in college. He thinks an integrated science course helps in that respect. He also feels that the most unique thing about this course is the constructivism. It must be integrated in the 9-12 curriculum.
· Based on our experience with the course so far, the physiology portion adds enough student interest to justify continuing with the idea. We’ll review it again as we progress.
· This course may be a general or introductory science course because it does not have enough physics or physiology to count as either.
Schedule
· Milestones:
o 2003/01 - presentation to charter schools and Kamehameha on the Big Island – Dave has been unable to contact Truitt White of Wai Ola school. This does not seem to be a productive path and will be dropped.
o 2003/05/01 – NSF letter of intent due.
o 2003/05/16 – end of instruction for 2002-3 school year
o 2003/06? – Arny’s proposed presentation to out-of-field teachers (was administrators and curriculum directors)
o 2003/07/21-07/26/ – curriculum development workshop.
o 2003/08/26 – NSF final proposal due
o 2003/04 – HaSTA presentation
Funding
· We did not review the current financial status of the project.
· Frank presented a draft overview of the course.
· Frank suggests that we need to recruit a steering committee. Names suggested were Arny Feldman, Barb Klemm, Tom Speitel, Don Young, someone from biology, Justin Mew, someone from the DOE, a DOE teacher. For constructivism, Mathias, Mathews. Someone from AAPT Hawaii. Physics First – Leon Letterman
· NSF – We have the dates. Frank is in charge of the preliminary proposal.
· UH Foundation - ?
· Ed Laws – Frank will set up a presentation with Ed.
· Kamehameha - Kam may be a source of funding. They are apparently interested in trying physics first on the Big Island. We need to find out who to contact at Kam.
· Hawai`ian schools may be another source of funding.
· Arny is working on funding through NCLB and the Catholic Archdiocese.
· NSTA is requesting articles on physics. We should write an article for presentation early next year. Erin has started a draft.
· We need to work on our presentation. Not much progress so far.
o Besides the hands-on activities, we need to have a scope and sequence, a concepts and skills list, a sample unit plan, and a story board showing possibilities for future multi-media presentations.
o We need to compare PPT to the standards, and to general science courses.
o Frank is convinced we can document our success with our records.
· Arny mentioned a possible project with Randy Hitz as the PI through COE and NCLB. The focus would be on out-of-field or not highly qualified teachers. The money would be used for a 1 week summer workshop.
Recruitment
· Our summer workshop, which was seen as a training session for teachers to use the course material in 2003-4 is now envisioned as a curriculum development workshop where teachers will critique our material and help us to develop it. We anticipate compensating them with 3 credits at a 500 level. This is apparently the last year that will be possible without paying the full tuition, so we should take advantage of it.
· DOE – Frank will talk to Loretta about setting up a presentation with the DOE administrators. We need documentation on the physics first movement before that meeting. Erin has some information on physics first. Justin Mew should be the contact person.
· HaSTA – Erin will find the HaSTA meeting schedule and try to get us a slot at their next meeting.
· Private schools – Frank will try to set up a presentation through the Witts.
· Charter schools – Which of the charter schools have high schools? We should make a presentation to them. No progress so far.
Curriculum development
· Curriculum review and planning
o Motion – Carmela used a nervous system coloring book for PNS and CNS. That would be an improvement over our chalkboard drawings.
o Pendulum – Carmela did the pendulum activity with her class, but did not have her students derive the equation. She still thought it well worthwhile.
o Statics – we discussed the presentation of statics. Carmela liked the marshmallow dinosaur activity. She did the center of mass activity with paper rather than cardboard, and it worked fine. She did the ruler balance with rulers rather than meter sticks and simply perched them on the end of a stick for a fulcrum, which worked fine.
o Dynamics – we worked on the sequence of presentation of dynamics. Dave is writing the unit.
o We agreed that we should use Newtons as the unit of force rather than gram-force. We can use mass as an analog for force when it is needed.
o Arny will supply a list of symbols for our use, so that we are consistent.
o To encourage more writing and the transfer of concepts, we could have the students write about social applications of the concepts.
· Product development
o Don presented an activity outline. We compared it with the outline presented at the last meeting and combined the two. Don will update his outline per the discussion.
o Don has reviewed the course records from the first part of this year. He has trouble writing course material from the early notes. Later portions of the course have more complete activities which he thinks are sufficient to write from. We’re not sure at this point how to get around this issue. Don doesn’t know the science or the pedagogy, and the team members are busy writing new material so that they don’t have long periods of time to spend interviewing with Don.
o Don would also be a good source for overheads for the course.
Evaluation
· none
mtg minutes 20030118 030124 dk01.doc P. 1 Printed: 01/30/03