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Friday, June 15, 2012

Day in the Life of Greg Schwanbeck, Physics teacher (Leonard Medlock, EdSurge) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Day in the Life of Greg Schwanbeck, Physics teacher (Leonard Medlock, EdSurge) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:


Day in the Life of Greg Schwanbeck, Physics teacher (Leonard Medlock, EdSurge)

Greg Schwanbeck teaches at Westwood high school in Westwood, a suburb of Boston. This was posted in EdSurge, June 12, 2012. EdSurge is an advocacy organization promoting greater use of new technologies in classrooms.
Mr. Greg Schwanbeck, a 9th grade physics teacher at Westwood High School in Mass., likes to let his students fiddle with electrical circuits. He hasn’t bought wires or transistors, however. Instead he turns to something called the DC Circuit Construction Kit PhET. Short for Physics Education Technology, these interactive simulations were created at the University of Colorado – Boulder.
PhETs run Java applets from a browser. Mr. Schwanbeck loves the fact that you can visualize hidden forces like resistance (in the aforementioned PhET) — something not easily accomplished in a physical HS science lab — to  introduce new topics, reinforce students’ understanding of a concept, offer extra credit assignments or