Catapult Project Day 2

Today we finished off the catapult project by having each group fire their catapult from the top of a desk instead of flat along the floor. The students had to modify their original equation to factor in the height of the desk. Then they had to use their new equation to predict where a target should be placed on the floor. Part of their grade was based on how close they came to hitting a bullseye!!!

I had one group hit the bullseye dead centre. Most of the groups were within about 15 cm of the bullseye.

We ustreamed the final catapult firings so that anyone that wanted to watch was able to.

Thanks to Jared Nichol and Neil Stephenson for following along and chatting during the ustream. My students thought that was quite cool!!

I have also created an excel spreadsheet to help grade this project.

You can obtain the description of the actual project and the rubric from yesterday's post.

Catapult Project

Today my Pure Math 20 class carried out the catapult project. I have been waiting for this day for 2 weeks. Ever since I built the catapults I have been excited to see how the project would play out for a whole class. I broke my class of 30 students down into groups of 3, handed out the project to them and gave them some guiding words on collecting their data.

My first words of wisdom were practice, practice, practice the firing of the catapult before you ever collect data.

The students took my words of advice and did an awesome job of carrying out the project. Some groups even realized once they started trying to calculate the equation of the flight path of their marble that their data was not good enough. So, they redid the data collection!!! Wow, most students would have just given up.

We ran out of time to finish the project today. So tomorrow, the students will use their equations to predict where they should place a target on the floor. Then we will see how good their math calculations really are!!!! I plan to ustream the event tomorrow at approx. 10:30 a.m. mountain time. I will tweet the url for the ustream. You can follow me on twitter at kaminskiterry.

Here is a video of one group collecting data.

Check out more pictures here on flickr.

I have posted the detailed handout for the project.

I have also posted the scoring rubric I am using for the project.

I have to thank Sean Sweeney for sharing this project over at his blog. It is because of his sharing that my students are getting to enjoy a truly awesome mathematical experience. Thanks Sean.

M&M Catapult

Last weekend I came across an M&M catapult project on Sean Sweeney's blog. This really got me excited because I was just starting to teach the unit on Quadratic Functions with my Gr.11 Math 20 Pure students.

I read and reread Sean's blog post this past week. Last night I made a list of materials I needed to construct these catapults for my class. Today I built 10 of these awesome little devices.




The building of the first catapult took a little bit of time. After I constructed the first catapult I then tested it to see how well it worked. I was getting distances of between 2 and 3 feet with the catapult. Not bad, I thought, this will be good for a classroom setting.

After the first catapult was built and tested I changed a few things to speed up production. I had used wood glue to build the first catapult. While it holds well it takes a while to dry. On my wife's suggestion, I used her crafting glue gun to construct the second catapult. What a difference!!! The next 9 catapults went together in no time flat.

I can hardly wait to have my students work on this M&M catapult project. I think they are going to love it!!!

Hurry Up and Wait!!!

We have just finished the first 3 weeks in our new high school. For the most part the start up of the new school has gone off without a hitch. However, the technology end of things is still in chaos. It started with not having Internet access because Telus was not coming to hook up our SuperNet connection until Sept.3. We would have to live without the Internet for awhile. This required ALL of us to think how we used to do things before we had the Internet and e-mail. Back to typing memos, printing them and photocopying them to distribute to staff members. We eventually received access to the Internet and that portion of our lives has returned to normal.

We are suppose to have 120 laptops on carts to use with students. At present not one of those laptops is in a cart and useable by students. How are teachers suppose to integrate technology into their classrooms when the computers are not even available?

Last May and June we tested some wireless networking at our old high school and determined that 20 concurrent users on one wireless router was about all the router could handle. Then users started dropping off of the wireless network. At that point, we informed our district IT people that they needed to install 2 wireless routers per classroom to ensure a class of 30 students could all access the wireless network at the same time. I thought they understood. However, it turns out they only installed one wireless router in each classroom and, guess what, the 2 classrooms where we are currently testing the wireless network are having issues. Once more than 20 students try to access the network computers start dropping off of the network. It would have been nice if our IT guys had just followed our advice from the start.

Then there is our 1-to-1 laptop program for our Gr.9's. With all of the network and wireless issues that the IT people have been dealing with, the 120 laptops for our Gr.9's are no where ready to distribute. We have not done any training with our Gr.9's yet because we need the carts of laptops to do this. It is going to be many weeks before these Gr.9s receive their laptops.

I know that opening a new school has its trails and tribulations. However, when we are trying to prepare our students for the 21st Century it just feels like we are being told "Hurry up and wait!!!"

New Way of Presenting Course Information

Yesterday, I was able to meet with all of the students in each of my courses for 30 minutes. In the past I would have handed out a course outline to them, talked AT them for who knows how long and bored them to tears!!!

Yesterday, I changed things. Instead of talking AT them I created a Keynote presentation that contained the key points I wanted the students to know. I placed some music in the background of the presentation and I had the students "READ". I also placed some interesting pictures in the presentation to help jazz it up.

Thanks to Darren Kuropatwa for sharing his "First Day" presentation. I have borrowed a lot of information from his presentation and mashed it up to my liking.

While my students were "watching and reading" the presentation I looked around the room and noticed that they were all engaged. I hope my first day with them was better than they experienced in their other classes.

You can view my "First Day" slideshow here.

First Day of Classes

Today marked the first official day of classes at Cold Lake High School. A number of our staff planned a much "different" first day for our students. It started off with all of our students meeting with their teacher adviser for one hour in their TAG (Teacher Adviser Group). Since we were opening a new school today and TAG was a new thing at our school there was lots to talk about in that first hour.

The second hour of the day were grade level assemblies led by each of our administrators. This where the students heard about all of the rules, procedures etc.. for Cold Lake High School.

From 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. the students returned to their TAG and were given a tour of the school, received lunch (free), had time to socialize and walk through the displays that highlighted the teams and clubs at our school.

From 1 p.m. until 3:20 p.m. The students attended 30 minutes of each of their 4 classes where their teachers had a short period of time to meet with them and discuss their courses.

The day blew by pretty quickly. Before we knew it 3:25 p.m. had arrived and the students were on the bus home.

The kids LOVE the new school. Let's hope that, as teachers, we are able to instill a LOVE of learning in them during the 2009-2010 school year.

The Beginning

About a week ago our staff was allowed to physically enter our new high school, Cold Lake High School. At that point, most of us began unpacking boxes, thinking about how to arrange our desks in our new classrooms (It took me 4 different arrangements before I was happy)and beginning the new school year in a totally new environment.
The transformation for me is not only the fact that I will be teaching in a new building but that I will now have access to a cart of laptops to use with my math students and a fully wireless network to use with those laptops. I will be trying many different things with my students. Some of them will fail miserably but I hope, at least some of them, will work out truly spectacularly. As I begin this new school year I am a little anxious because I am going to be traveling down a path that is new to me. However, I am excited because I truly believe that the changes I will be attempting to make will engage my students more and help them learn and understand mathematics better. No matter how uncomfortable I am, if my students end up happier and better educated I am all for it!!! I hope that you will leave me comments related to my blog postings so that we can make this journey of change together. There will be days I will need your help and encouragement and other days I want to "blow my own horn" because I have just delivered the most kick ass lesson of the week. So the journey begins.

**The pictures are from my new classroom at Cold Lake HS.