Dear Parents and Students,

I've just gotten a new digital toy that I started playing with today.  It's called a Livescribe Pen and it will allow us to make quick and easy digital tutorials for one another.  I experimented with it a bit just now, making a tutorial for those of you who are still struggling to identify variables and constants in an experiment.

You'll notice that the audio quality is a bit scratchy at points.  I'm sorry about that!  Turns out the microphone in my pen is more sensitive than I expected. 

The tutorials that I'll make for you are sure to be cleaner as I get better with the device.

For now, if you're struggling with variables and constants, check this out:

Identifying Variables and Constants

Hope this helps,

Mr. F

Embedded below is another Livescribe tutorial completed by students on our team.  This particular tutorial was completed by Emma and Savannah and it covers nuclear fission. 

What grade do you think the deserve?  Why?

In class, we've been studying convection---or the way that heat energy transfers through a liquid or a gas.  To help students review this topic, Mr. Ferriter has created a Livescribe tutorial.  You can view his tutorial by visiting this link:

http://bit.ly/convectiontutorial

You can also view the tutorial below----although for some reason, the audio on the Livescribe tutorials embedded here on Posterous doesn't always work.  (Mr. F is still troubleshooting that).

By the way, Mr. Ferriter made one content error in his tutorial!  If you can find it and let him know what it was, he'll give you 3 extra credit points to use on a future assignment. 

In class recently (see here), we completed a quick hands-on energy activity called the Dancing Penny Lab.  In the tutorial below, Ryan and Luke explain what they think was actually happening during the Dancing Penny lab:

Extra Credit Opportunity:  Write a short paragraph on a separate piece of paper evaluating Ryan and Luke's tutorial.  How accurate was their description of the assignment?  What did they get scientifically correct? What was scientifically inaccurate?  If you were to improve their piece, what would you do first?  On a scale of 1 to 10, what rating would you give them?  Why? 

(Students who answer these questions can earn between 5 and 10 points to use on any assignment.)

Here's another tutorial designed to introduce students to the Triangle Method for solving Percents.  This is a procedure that a lot of Gnome students this year seem to enjoy.

Remember that you can watch the tutorial here on our Posterous site OR click on the link titled "Solving Percents: Triangle Method" to watch the tutorial on the Livescribe website. 

Also know that for some reason, you won't hear Mrs. Beazlie's voice for about the first 10 seconds of the tutorial.  Not to worry, though:  The good math stuff doesn't start until then anyway!

Hope this helps, Mrs. Beazlie

In the past few weeks we have worked on solving percent problems using ratios.  Below you can find a link to a tutorial to lead you through the process.

http://bit.ly/solvingpercentsratios

Dear Parents,

One of the questions that students ask me all the time is how they can raise their grades in my science classroom.  Generally, the answer is, "Do good work the first time around!"  Like most of the Gnomes teachers, I'm not a huge fan of extra credit. 

I have come up with a system for raising grades, though, that I'm comfortable with.  Any student(s) who are interested in replacing the lowest score in their average can use my Livescribe pen and notebook to create a tutorial connected to the topic of the assignment that they're trying to replace.  You can learn more about how Livescribe pens work by reading this entry from my blog.

One of our students has already begun experimenting with the Livescribe pen.  She's created this tutorial on potential and kinetic energy----one of the topics that we're studying right now:

(Note: click the orange arrow in the top right hand corner of any tutorial to watch it full screen)

She's also used the Livescribe pen to write a 25 Word Story:

And to record one of her favorite Shel Silverstein poems:

I hope that this helps you---and your kids---to understand how grades can be raised in my room.  And I hope you'll encourage your child to take on the challenge of creating a tutorial that other people can learn from!  It would be really cool to see what kind of tutorial library we can build over the course of the next semester. 

Be well,

Bill Ferriter