AAPT Winter Meeting 2023

 

 

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2023 Winter Meeting Workshops

AAPT is offering a number of workshops in association with the upcoming 2023 AAPT Winter Meeting.  These workshops will take place on January 14-15. This is a great opportunity to gather with your colleagues and learn some new teaching techniques, while engaging in thoughtful discussion. Be sure and register early as these workshops can fill-up quickly. 


Location: 

Portland Community College, Vernier Science Education and Hilton Portland Downtown

Bus Schedule to Portland Community College on Sunday,  January 15.

7:30 am - Bus will depart the Hilton
12 noon - Bus will return from the college to the Hilton

Bus is ADA compliant

Cost

All workshops four hours and under will cost $75 for members and $100 for non-members. 

Continuing Education Units (CEU)

Earn CEU hours for attending one of the AAPT workshops.  Earn 0.40 hours for a 1/2 day workshop. Any workshop under 4 hours does not qualify for CEU hours. 

 

Workshops

Saturday, January 14
 

Fun, Engaging, Effective, Research-Validated Lab Activities and Demos for Introductory University, College and High School Physics (including Virtual Learning Options} Participants in this workshop will have hands-on experience with the research-validated active learning introductory labs, RealTime Physics (RTP) which make extensive use of computer-based tools and video analysis. These labs have been used effectively in college, university and high school introductory physics courses. Participants will also experience Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs)-a strategy for making learning in lectures more active and effective. These active learning approaches are fun, engaging and validated by physics education research (PER). Participants will also work with adaptations of these materials for distance and virtual learning. Modules from the Third Edition of RTP and links to online materials will be distributed. Note that while this workshop will be held at Vernier Science Education (easily accessible by light rail* from downtown Portland) it is a pedagogical not a commercial workshop. There will be a brief "happy hour" at the end of the workshop. 
Organizer(s}: David Sokoloff and Ron Thornton 
Date: Saturday, January 14
Time: 1:00-5:00 PM
Location: Vernier Science Education
Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

* To get to Vernier Science Education, you need to take the MAX Blue Line light rail (not the Red line) toward Hillsboro and get off at the Millikan Way station. The ride takes about 25 minutes. You catch the train on the north side of Pioneer Square on SW Morrison Street (between SW 6th and SW Broadway). As you get off the train at the Millikan Way stop, the train was heading west. Cross the tracks and continue to walk about 200 meters to the first large gray building on the left. You can find the Max Blue Line schedule at: https://trimet.org/schedules/s/t1100_1.htm
 

PICUP: Integrating Computation in Introductory Physics Courses
In this workshop, we will show you some ways in which computation can be integrated into your introductory courses. The PICUP partnership has developed a variety of computational activities for introductory physics, and we will show you how you can take these PICUP materials and adapt them to fit your needs. PLEASE BRING A LAPTOP COMPUTER. In this workshop, we will focus on computational activities using spreadsheets and web-based “Trinkets” so you do not need to have any specialized software installed. 
This workshop is supported by OPTYCs, The Organization for Physics at Two-Year Colleges (NSF-DUE-2212807).
Organizer(s): Larry Engelhardt, Aaron Titus, and Tony Musumba
Date: January 14
Time: 1:00 to 5:00 PM
Location: Portland Hilton Downtown
Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

Effective Undergraduate Departments: Curriculum, Cohesion, and Career Pathways
This interactive workshop will be focused around effective practices in creating healthy undergraduate physics and astronomy departments and classrooms. As departments aim to build thriving undergraduate programs, developing course sequences and environments that both serve and recruit undergraduates for a broad array of career outcomes is vital for a successful department. Advising, course sequences, and undergraduate clubs can be tools that serve students aiming for both graduate school and careers. This interactive workshop will focus on the identification of departmental goals,
discussions around implementation, and establishing pathways for change.
Topics will also include recent community reports and data, curriculum development, student/faculty cohesion, alumni, and career pathways in 2023.
Organizer(s): Brad Conrad
Date: January 14
Time: 1:00 to 5:00 PM
Location: Portland Hilton Downtown
Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

 

January 15

Teaching Collaborative Mathematical Modeling in VR with NOMR (Novel Observations in Mixed Reality) Labs
Participants in this session will learn about incorporating virtual reality (VR) technology into the physics laboratory. This application of VR is based on the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), and focuses specifically on creating opportunities for students to test and generate new hypotheses associated with particle interactions. Participants will engage in activities the way students do, starting with a testing experiment of Coulomb’s Law and moving into hypothesis-generating experiments with exotic matter that obeys known laws of physics, plus a few more. These activities facilitate students’ engagement in the process of mathematical modeling of additional laws the particles obey in the VR space. 
Participants will learn to leverage VR technology to provide opportunities for students to be immersed in a complete cycle of quantitative hypothesis generation, testing, and revision. VR is used in this context for its appeal to students’ familiarity with game play, specifically targeting the learning outcomes identified by the AAPT Lab Guidelines and the Science and Engineering Practices of the Next Generation Science Standards.
Organizer(s): Jared Canright and Suzanne White Brahmia
Date: January 15
Time: 8:00 to Noon
Location: Portland Community College
Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

Modern Eddington Experiment
It is not too late to start preparations for performing the Modern Eddington Experiment (MEE) with your students in April 2024. Portland Community College (PCC) students were the first students ever to have measured the curvature of space by successfully determining the Einstein Coefficient during the 2017 eclipse. Now, PCC has as many as seven teams for the  MEE and is looking for many more, since twelve teams can perform the experiment at 8000' elevation in the central Mexican arid plateau between Mazatlan and Durango with the cooperation of the El Salto Technological Institute. As many as 12 more teams can perform the experiment in Southern Texas, so attending this workshop will enable you to proceed with preparations. The workshop will cover the required equipment, initial preparations and calibrations, the procedures during the eclipse period of five days and four nights at a resort compound, and post eclipse data processing. Grants will be discussed which may allow you to purchase the needed equipment and fund the travel for you and your students to the research site in Mexico, a site that is exactly on centerline at the point of maximum eclipse. The equipment to be used in 2024 will be at the workshop for some hands-on practice with one of the world's greatest amateur astronomers, Mr. Richard Berry. If you have your own experiment that you would like to perform an experiment with us at the Mexican or Texan research site, please join us in this workshop and describe your ideas to the group. You too can join us in Mexico on April 8, 2024 by attending this workshop.
Organizer(s): William A. Dittrich
Date: January 15
Time: 8:00 AM to Noon
Location: Portland Community College

Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

Neutrino Physics Masterclasses
More than 13000 students from over 60 countries gather at a nearby lab or university each year in order to become "particle physicists" for a day by participating in a particle physics masterclass. In these masterclasses, students work directly with physicists to analyze real data from one of several particle physics experiments. This workshop will focus on masterclasses that feature data from MINERvA and NOvA, both neutrino experiments based at Fermilab. Participants will alternate between "student mode" and "teacher mode" in this workshop and will get a chance to analyze some particle physics data themselves. In addition, we will go through some of the standards-based classroom activities that prepare students for the masterclass, and connect introductory physics topics to contemporary physics research. Please bring along a laptop!
Organizer(s): Shane Wood
Date: January 15
Time: 8:00 AM to Noon
Location: Portland Community College

Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

The Patterns Approach: Kick Starting Students Inquiry and Mathematical Modeling Skills so Experiments Drive Their Learning
Experience how we model, guide, step-aside to scaffold student talk to be the primary driver of student learning as students conduct experiments, mathematical modeling systems, argue from evidence (CERs), and explicitly compare and contrast low evidence predictions with data-informed predictions of the real world. We will introduce the anchoring experiments that contextualize four common patterns in physics and kick start student inquiry and mathematical modeling skills.  At the end of the workshop, the full year of collaboratively developed Patterns Physics, NGSS aligned, student centered curriculum that meaningfully integrates across the STEM disciplines will be shared.
Organizer(s): Bradford Hill and Stephen Scannell
Date: January 15
Time: 8:00 AM to Noon
Location: Portland Community College

Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member

Physics in an Astronomy Context: NASA HEAT Resources for High School and College
Join this fully reimbursable workshop to engage in integrated activities appropriate for high school and introductory college physics and astronomy teachers who want to teach with integration and authentic NASA data. Attendees will use resources developed and tested by physics and astronomy education researchers through the NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team, including labs, lecture tutorials, clicker questions, and diagnostic assessments. These materials address topics that integrate Physics, Earth Science, and Space Science, including (but not limited to) (1) coronal mass ejection videos to understand both simple mechanics as well as accelerations of relativistic particles, (2) sunspot data to understand period and frequency, (3) eclipses to understand geometric optics, and (4) smartphone magnetic field sensors to understand planetary magnetism. (This workshop is fully funded by a NASA Grant/Cooperative Agreement Number 80NSSC22K1071 awarded to AAPT. Participants who complete the workshop may seek full reimbursement of their workshop registration fee.)
Organizer(s): Janelle Bailey, Brad Ambrose, Ximena Cid, Darsa Donelan, and Shannon Willoughby
Date: January 15 
Time: 8:00 AM to Noon
Location: Portland Community College
Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member 
Note: You will be fully reimbursed for the cost of this workshop upon completion 

WebVPython for Non-beginners: Integrating Coding in the Classroom
Over the last few years, there has been a push to integrate computational modeling in the introductory physics curriculum. This is a workshop for instructors with some general experience in coding. Participants will practice with codes in WebVPython (also known as GlowScript) that demonstrate physics principles ranging from conceptual to calculus-based level. Participants will develop activities for classroom students that could start with simple working codes, where physical modelling is then incrementally added through guided steps. Further examples of classroom utilization of coding will be provided, and a discussion on the frequency of integration of computational methods in the classroom will be promoted. Participants are asked to bring their own laptops and to create an account in webvpython.org before arrival. This workshop is proudly supported by the Organization of Physics in Two Year Colleges, OPTYCs.z
Organizer(s): Joe Heafner, Kris Lui, Tom O&#’;Kuma
Time: 8:00 AM to Noon
Location: Portland Community College

Cost: $75 member/$100 non-member
Note: 
 This workshop is supported by OPTYCs, The Organization for Physics at Two-Year Colleges, which is funded by NSF-DUE-2212807. TYC participants can be reimbursed for the workshop fee  and are eligible for travel reimbursements through OPTYCs.

 

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