Awesome new physics blogs

Dan Meyer was the first transformative education blogger I discovered, way back in 2006 or so. From there, I discovered all the incredible math bloggers that I still inspire me. But, secretly, I kept wondering what was up with the physics blog community. Didn’t we invent the freaking world wide web? Of course, there was Rhett, but it was years before I discovered any other physics bloggers out there. Well, I’m glad to say, a few years after those dark days, my wishes have been fufilled beyond my wildest dreams, and I’m thinking about making one of my summer projects coming up with a proper blog directory to highlight all this awesomeness.

But for the time being, I’ll just highlight 3 awesome blogs coming out of the great state of Delaware— “a small wonder,” indeed.

• Newton’s Minions: This is an outstanding blog that features a lot of student work, discussion of Standards Based Grading, and how to teach scientific reasoning. Two posts worth reading:
  • Chains of reasoning: Strings and Standing Waves : Josh’s chains of reasoning posts are awesome. Using outstanding questions, he pushes his students to carefully build well reasoned arguments to explain a phenomenon.
  • Pseudoteaching with a purpose: Josh posts a great reflection on pseduoteaching, and pushes back on teaching students the value of mathematical tricks that greatly simplify problems and help students to gain a physicist’s insight.
• Physics! Blog: Kelly burst onto the blog scene a month ago, and blogs about Standards Based Grading, metacognition and more. Two highlights:
• Goal-less problems: Kelly has worked hard to develop a willingness in her students to take on open-ended problems that force them to identify the questions for themselves, and do a complete analysis of the situation at hand. you’ll be amazed at what her students can do with this.
• Failure is not optional: In one of the very best posts I’ve read in the past few weeks, Kelly describes how she’s redefining assessments in her class to “show what you don’t know.” It’s a powerful post that every teacher should read.
• Physics and Parsimony: On of the newest entries in my blog reader, this blog has begun to focus on how students develop talent through hard work, metacognition and mastery. Highlights:
  • “Naturally Gifted”Mark takes on the idea of innate giftedness and reminds us that students are quick to adopt these explanations of their own abilities, even when it is clearly not the case.
  • Why do we think sports are important?: A great post that shows us the value of sports is that it teaches us that we can get really good with hard work.