Distance Learning (Webinar)

Thank you to those who were able to tune in to one of our webinars - we really appreciated having the chance to catch up with you all. You'll receive the recording by email.

If you didn't make it, here is a summary of the materials used and the resources we co-created. Keep adding to the challenge ideas below.

Video

Catch-up here!

Slides

The unanswered questions

We did our best to answer the 'big picture' questions live. Hopefully you'll understand if we didn't get to every single individual question - please continue the conversation by commenting on any page in the site and we'll get back to you!

Here are a few themes that we didn't get a chance to respond to:

• What hands-on experiments can students do when the shops are closed? Look around you. Almost everything you see probably has a Physics connection. A musical instrument can be played into Audacity. A book has mass, pages, surface area and friction. A TV produces light. A kettle boils water. A video of just about any moving object can be analysed in LoggerPro or Tracker. Think too about the Physics connections to your human body! In our video we suggest some substitute pieces of apparatus and Emma tells of four EEs that were done at home (Stokes' Law, hairdrier wind tunnel, mirascope optics and the decay in height of a bouncing ball).
• Set up of equipment and troubleshooting during the IA. A time-consuming process in the lab! This one will really come down to your school's systems. Some freely permit video calls between teachers and students, in which case you could schedule regular one-to-one check-ins with students and their apparatus. At the other extreme, some schools don't allow any web-based calling. This is where it can be useful to set up Google Classroom or Onedrive and to follow your students as they work on their investigative report. You can add comments daily.
• Where to learn about ICT for IB Physics. Good question - maybe a topic for our next webinar. Chris used to run a 2.5 day workshop on this so it'll be impossible for you to try everything in the space of a few hours. Why not choose one of the instructions sheets (search "Algodoo" or "Geogebra") on this site and have a go at working through.
• Assessment and exams. Thank you for all of the amazing recommendations in the Chat - Socrative, Examnet, Quizziz, GoFormative, Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, etc. Don't forget that this site has over 1000 MCQs and hundreds of problem sheets. We recommend testing for 10 minutes during every lesson rather than in big chunks. Your IB Coordinator will probably instruct you on how to manage exams.

Links

The video contained lots of links to exemplar resources and materials. Here are some of our favourites:

• ThinkIB - for teachers
• StudyIB - for students
• Online course - teacher to set for classes using Student Access
• A sample activity - Fuels with corresponding problems and test
• Excel modelling - Radioactive decay
• Algodoo - Ideal Gases, Momentum Carts, Lenses
• Geogebra - Chris Hamper and instructions for Spacetime Diagrams
• Audacity - Drinking Straws
• Database ideas (or not!) - Binding Energy and Hubble's Law
• Student guides - Practical Work, Errors, IA Survival, IA Ideas and an exemplar page
• Apps and websites for hands-on experiments - Tracker, Sparkvue

It sounds like we'd better check out phyphox now too :)

InThinking community challenge

Please respond to any or all of these questions in the Comments below.

1. What’s the best distance learning strategy you’ve tried so far?
2. What distance learning strategy would you most like to try?
3. Suggest an IA investigation that could be done at home or online.