Days 39-40: Lab Performance Assessment
We spent these 2 days (3 periods) on a lab performance assessment. It was split into 2 parts: an individual portion and a group portion.
The individual portion had 3 tasks:
(1) Find the speed of a green buggy using a stop watch and meter stick;
(2) Find the speed of a green buggy using a motion detector and Lab Quest 2;
(3) Find the speed of a green buggy using video analysis in Logger Pro.
I had 4 stations set up for each of the 3 tasks. Students spent about 20 minutes at each station and rotated through. (The video for the video analysis task was pre-made by me.)
The group portion had 1 task: Design an experiment using a pull-back truck to find a mathematical model relating 2 variables. Students worked in groups of 3 and had 60 minutes to complete this task. They could graph their data by hand or use Desmos.
Half the class spent the first 60 minutes of the 3 periods rotating through the 3 individual tasks while the other half worked on the group task. Then they switched for the remaining 60 minutes.
Noschese 180 
Sounds like fun! I inherited a class years ago where every lab had students learn a new technique to measure the wavelength of a laser. It certainly showed them lots of cool techniques but I heard from the students that they were tired of measuring the same thing. Some realized that some techniques were way better than others and they felt they learning the less accurate methods was a waste of time. Do you get any of that with the multiple techniques to measure speed here?
#NaBloCoMo