Infrared Camera
I wrote a grant to get an infrared camera for the school. I recommend trying to get one, it was an eye opening experience for the students, getting them to experience normally unseen portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Lots of "oohs" and "ahhs" with this, which I just love. |
Morse Code
Following student interest and questions, a variation of the 2 cups-and-a-string telephone organically led to a mini unit on Morse code. I was lucky enough to have access to an authentic Morse code device so I made these videos for students to transcribe.
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Estimation Game
Estimating is such a valuable life skill that is very much overlooked in school. I've done different variations of this Estimation Game over the years. Recently I've had students create their own Estimate Game for their peers to complete, with a portion of it being digitally based like the image above. I had them use Excel for calculations on this, another important skill that doesn't get taught as in-depth as it should. |
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Sun-Earth-Moon to Scale
This was cool for the kids to experience the size of the sun by standing on its surface. And filming it with the drone was a unifying goal that gave the group purpose. |
500 ft Timeline of Earth and Drone Project
This saw the class really hitting its stride working as a cohesive group. |
Measure Distance Using the Speed of Sound [Gazdonian Productions]:
An off-handed student suggestion spurred this challenge: Can We Measure Distance Using the Speed of Sound?. We spent weeks problem solving the heck out of this one. Definitely a highlight of my 20 year teaching career. In this video we're asking for help from sound experts when we got a little stuck about 70% of the way through the project. |
Holocaust Cassette
A SPED co-teacher pulled out a cassette of recordings of local Holocaust survivors from a student project in our school from 1978(!). "I want to play this for our Social Studies class but who has a tape player these days?" "I do," I said and this project was born. Students learned how cassettes work, got to work the play-rewind-fast foward buttons and then embarked on a competition of who can create a digital recording of the tape with the best sound quality. |
Walking App Test
A student question led us on the path of a lengthy project where the class designed a project to test the accuracy of the distance walked on Health app on your phone. Great experience on experimental design for students and a good dive into using Excel to help with a real world issue. |
Compound Microscope
This was an open ended project with a simple directive of "Let's see what everything things look like under a compound microscope." A big part was students getting a good photo of each with their phones - not an easy task.
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How Strong is a Trader Joe's Paper Bag? [Gazdonian Productions]:
Every time I go to Trader Joe's (frozen green beans!) they always double bag my groceries, with the cashier adding a comment along the lines of, "I'll double-bag these because our bags are not strong." So I decided to test how much a single bag could actually hold. We even got TJs CEO Dan Bane on board (amazingly) and he was into our test. So that was cool. |
Version 2: Is Your Skateboard Slower in Cold Weather? [Gazdonian Productions]:
The weak design of my first stab at this experiment has always bothered me. So I set out to create a better experiment from the ground up to answer the age-old question "Does Cold Temps Affect My Skateboard?" This one is much better. |
Build It! The Sound Improver Project [Gazdonian Productions]:
School should be more about doing. Something I found at a park one morning lead to this project where students build their own device to improve the sound quality of their cell phones. Before starting this project we learn a little about acoustics. |
Friction: How Adding Sand to Ice Reduces Friction[Gazdonian Productions]:
An overview of an experiment we did on a huge sheet of ice in our school's courtyard. |
Law of Reflection: Two Mirror Reflection [Gazdonian Productions]:
This takes the straight-forward Law of Reflection and turns it into an interesting problem-solving activity for students. If you hold back from showing students how to do it and instead provide only gentle nudging, students really get into problem solving mode.
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How to Tape Stuff [Gazdonian Productions]: Both the students and I enjoy open-ended experiments that we've never conducted before. This is a pretty basic one, but after doing it I'll never use tape things the same way again. So that's cool.
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