Resources to assist teachers at schools closed due to COVID-19
Study Design changes, Suggestions for doing Practical Investigations in 2020
Study Design changes
The Adjusted Physics Study Design for 2020 is available on the VCAA website or can be downloaded from this webpage.
Adjusted Physics Study Design for 2020 Only 371 kB pdf
The adjusted Physics Study Design released 1st May 2020 with deletions in red text and with strikethrough, Changes in blue text and highlighted in yellow. Note: This document only applies to 2020.
Summary of dot point changes in the Adjusted Study Design for 2020 31.9 kB pdf
A two page document listing the dot points that have been deleted from Areas of Study 1 and 2 in Unit 4 for 2020 only, along with the changes to Area of Study 3, the Practical Investigation.
List of questions from past exam papers that are not relevant to the adjusted study design for 2020 10.9 kB xlsx
A spreadsheet of the questions from the November exams and the NH exams for 2017 – 2019 that test the dot points that have been deleted from the Physics Study Design for 2020 only.
Teaching Program for Unit 4 of the Adjusted Study Design for 2020 33.3 kB doc
A two page document describing a week by week teaching program for Unit 4 of the adjusted Physics Study Design. It is based on the exam period starting in the week beginning 9th November and that teachers will use the end of Term 2 and the first week of term 3 to consolidate their students’ understanding of Unit 3 content and possibly hold mid year exams.
Managing Learning if Schools Shut 43.5 kB pdf
A file of strategies and resources that was included in the VicPhys News No 5, Term 1, 2020. It also includes information and links for over a dozen online courses that may be of use to students.
Resources for switching to Online teaching 20.1 kB docx
A file of strategies and resources compiled by the Physics Education Group (PEG) of the Australian Institute of Physics. PEG is a group of tertiary physics educators. Areas covered include: i) General advice, ii) Making videos, iii) Useful tech, iv) Useful Zoom features, v) Alternatives to Zoom, vi) Interactive Online Activities, vii) Simulations, viii) Full online courses, ix) Using pre-made videos, x) Alternatives for Labs, xi) Experiments students can do at home, xii) Effective quiz practices, xiii) Community shared resources. Most of the resources are useful at secondary level.
Physics at Home 20.1 kB docx
A two page document produced by UK teachers that was downloaded from a thread on ‘Supporting schools during COVID-19’ in the forum ‘talkphysics.org’ . It has a large number of links on Forces, Static and current electricity, Magnetism and electromagnetism, Sound, Light, Matter, Energy and Space Physics. The activities have a middle level flavour.
Strategies for Practical Activities at Home 20 kB pdf
A one page document describing some strategies for doing practical activities at home along with some links to sources of activities.
List of Practical Activities for Areas of Study with Adaptations or Alternatives for use at Home 46.3 kB pdf
A six page document describing possible practical activities for each Area of Study with suggested modifications or alternatives for use at home. Units 1 and 3 have been completed, Units 2 and 4 will be done during Term 2. Prepared by Vicphysics Teachers’ Network.
Conducting Online Assessment Tasks 17.2 kB pdf
A one page document describing the method used by Albert Park College to conduct assessment tasks online. The method is consistent with VCAA Guidelines on authentication.
Adventures of Bungee Bear: A Tracker Dr Barbara McKinnon from Kew High School has prepared a tracker activity that could be used as a model for students use at home for other Motion experiments. The files are on our Motion webpage and include video files, notes, a spreadsheet and tracker files. The material can be found under ‘Springs’ and ‘Activities’, so in the table at the top of the Motion web page, go down to the ‘Springs’ row, then across to the ‘Activities’ column and select ‘Yes’.
Freely Available Remote Laboratories, FARLabs is an Australian website where students can do experiments that use equipment schools don’t have. The experiments are controlled by the students via the internet and they collect their own data. Teachers can normally book time for their students to do an experiment as part of normal class time. However with students currently learning from home, there is more flexibility, but access time still needs to be booked. There are experiments on Radioactivity and Photoelectric Effect, Interference and Diffraction. Teachers need to register before they can book a time.
Positive Physics
Positive Physics, an award-winning online problem bank, has announced that it will provide FREE subscriptions to all teachers and students until the end of July to aid schools with remote learning. Site Features include: i) unique building block method for less intimidation, ii) instant feedback, iii) random number generator to prevent copying, iv) automatic grading, v) differentiation & customization (new!), vi) alignment to fundamentals of AP Physics 1 (US Curriculum).
Interactive Video Vignettes
Interactive Video Vignettes (IVVs) are designed as ungraded web-based assignments for introductory physics students. They combine the convenience of online video coupled with video analysis as well as the interactivity of an individual tutorial. Each online vignette addresses a learning difficulty. Most of them take a student about 10 minutes or less to complete. Nine interactive Video Vignettes (IVVs) are available for free on Motion and Electrostatics.
Mathscope Coronavirus Offer
Mathspace have announced they will offer their product for schools that have closed.
OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University (US). Its their mission to give every student the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. They publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print. They have also developed low-cost, research-based courseware that gives students the tools they need to complete their course the first time around.They have courses in College Physics, High School Physics and AP Physics as well as Astronomy and University Physics. The first three courses have similar content to each other, which seems comparable to VCE Physics.Each course offers access to a text in various forms, online, as an app or as a pdf. There are also Instructor resources and Student resources, which sometimes include short videos, assignments and guides. The Astronomy course in its Student resources section has a list of videos with their URLs, grouped by content areas. The list is 25 pages long.
Adapting Perimeter’s Resources for Online Classrooms
The Perimeter Institute has a long history of producing quality educational material from primary to senior secondary. This webpage has a table of all their resources that is 8 pages long. Each row in the table has the following entries: Weblink, Title of the activity, Year level, Curriculum topic and a Detailed Description of how to adapt the activity for an online classroom. There are 14 senior activities covering waves, fields, energy transformations, circular motion, nuclear physics and dark matter.
Online Teaching Resources – Articles from The Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is making freely available a collection of specialised articles that focus on remote learning. These articles highlight the use of smartphones for lab experiments (11 articles from TPT) as well as other activities (6 from TPT, 16 from AJP) that can be adapted for use by students at home. The articles have been made free to read, download and share for a limited time.
Phyphox – Physical Phone Experiments
PhyPhox is a website dedicated to experiments that can be done with a mobile phone, with many being free. The app can be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store. PhyPhox is an initiative of Aachen University in Germany, the website has an English version. There are monthly newsletters going back to 2016 as well as a Forum that has many contributions on experiments, etc.
Home Learning Resources from UK’s STEM Learning
The authoritative UK website ‘STEM Learning’ has compiled two sets of materials, one on Home Learning to support families and one on Home Teaching to support teachers.This webpage has sections on i) curriculum resources from Prep to Senior years, with about 8 Senior Physics activities, ii) Guidance for families and iii) Educational family activities.
Home Teaching Resources from UK’s STEM Learning
The authoritative UK website ‘STEM Learning’ has compiled two sets of materials, one on Home Learning to support families and one on Home Teaching to support teachers.This webpage has sections on i) Curriculum resources on 17 physics topics, with each topic having several activities, ii) ‘Activities for in-school delivery’ has articles assessing the research on the approaches schools adopt to support students’ learning while schools are closed due to COVID-19.
Living Physics Portal
The Living Physics Portal is an online resource of curriculum material for introductory physics course for life sciences. It hopes to make physics classes more relevant for life science students. The website is very well structured, there is a section for each area of physics, e.g. Mechanics, in each section several headings ( e.g. Newton’s 3rd Law) and for each heading a few sub-headings (e.g. Action/Reaction) and finally some resources which are described in detail and can be downloaded. You need to register and there is an expectation that at some stage in the future you will contribute some material.
Smart Phones on the Rise
An article on apps that allow experiments to be done at home. The article mentions Phyphox which is on this webpage. It had a 30% increase in downloads in the second half of March. This article also describes Physics Toolbox, also on the page, which has had a similar increase.
Physics Toolbox
The Physics Toolbox website provides free and low cost data analysis tools to ‘harness the power of mobile sensors and enhance science education’. Their website is well designed with tutorials, apps for Android and iOS, as well as Lessons. Their apps use 16 different sensors.
SparkVue
SparkVue is a data analysis tool by Pasco with many capabilities. It is a very comprehensive package with substantial teacher resources.
The Physics Teaching Podcast
The Physics Teaching Podcast is a UK website with a new podcast each week. Many of them in March and April 2020 were about remote learning and ‘Lockdown lessons’. The website goes back to Oct 2018, so there is a lot to choose from. Some are about the UK Curriculum and use unfamiliar acronyms, but many are relevant to other jurisdictions. Each title has a paragraph description and the running times vary from 15 – 30 minutes. There is no search function.
Google Jamboard
A number of teachers has found this ‘whiteboard’ app very useful and versatile when conducting online classes.
Also check out Useful Websites and Youtube Videos which includes several teacher developed websites.
Suggestions for conducting Practical Investigations in 2020
Vicphysics newsletters in Term 3, 2020 have described a variety of strategies to conduct practical investigations under this year’s constraints.
One of these was to provide videos of a range of experiments from which students would be able to extract data for analysis. The videos have been recorded and are now available, see details below.
Data sets for students to analyse are also being put together, see details below.
Investigations on Video Topics are:
- How the strength of the magnetic field between two bar magnets varies with separation as measured with a top loading balance.
- How the strength of the magnetic field between two disc magnets varies with separation as measured with a top loading balance.
- How the magnitude of the electrostatic attraction between a charged rod and a metal sheet varies with separation as measured with a top loading balance.
- How the energy loss and the force of impact of the bounce of a basketball varies with drop height.
- How the energy loss, force of impact and compression of a spring vary when a set of metal washers fall down a rod onto the spring from various heights.
- How the energy loss, force of impact and compression of a spring vary when a sets of metal washers of different mass, fall down a rod onto the spring from a fixed drop height.
- How the time for a ‘Saxon Bowl’ to submerge depends on the diameter of the hole in the bottom.
These videos are now available in a folder on the Vicphysics Google Drive rather than on our website. Teachers may request access to the drive and download the files for their students by emailing Vicphysics
Data Sets: The Vicphysics Google Drive also has a folder for data sets. There are two data sets at this stage. To access them, please email Vicphysics If you have a data set to share please send it to Vicphysics.
Investigations at home: Our homes have many items that can be used in an investigation, such as balls, toys, rubber bands, plastic bottles, cloths, etc. Measuring instruments can include kitchen scales, ruler, stop watch apps, indeed there are a range of measuring tools in apps such as Phyphox, The Physics Toolbox and SparkVue. The video analysis software, Tracker, is also a very powerful tool. Check the practical activities webpage.
Lab techs: In some schools, the lab tech may be still coming in, as it is their workplace. They may be willing to set up and video some experiments and investigations for you.
Secondary data: The study design for 2020 also offers the alternative of using data from other investigations. An obvious source is the investigations by previous students. School should have log books from previous years. This could be a rich lode, but it may take some time to extract the right ore and then refine it to the point where it becomes useful. It is also a resource that could be shared with other schools. If you have any to share Vicphysics is happy to make it available in a controlled way.
Simulations: There are several websites, such as PhET, Walter Fendt, etc that provide simulations as educational material. They may have some value as topics for investigations, but they are usually limited as far as repeated trials and uncertainty in the data recorded. These can be found here on our Apps and Applets webpage.
Mech-Net has introduced a different way for doing physics experiments with sophisticated research quality engineering equipment. The program allows students to conduct experiments in the exact same way as if the equipment where actually in their classroom. This is not a virtual reality program of what the data should be. This is real data recorded from an actual test with the equipment. MechNet is offering these programs for FREE to assist teachers with online remote labs and in class labs as well.
It is an aerofoil investigation with two continuous independent variables of air speed and angle, as well as discrete variables for profile (three types) and for flap/ice (four angles of flap and 2 ice conditions). The dependent variable is the lift, although data for the upper and lower surface velocity and pressure at several points are also available. Recorded data can be downloaded to the clipboard for analysis in Excel. The air speed and angle have slide controls, so repeated trials can be done, generating some uncertainty for students to consider. The range of discrete variables means that several students could use the program for quite different investigations. A student with insecure physics may find this program challenging, but a student comfortable with their physics will be excited by the opportunities provided.
There is a short youtube video showing all the features of the program. Teachers need to register and once approved, book time for students. The website says there is an hourly fee, but unspecified and it seems to be currently waived.
Check also the report of the webinar on this webpage. Many aspects were covered including: Possible topics, phone apps, sources of secondary data, timelines, authentication, etc.