Creating and Using Mini-Clips in the Physics Classroom

Digital technologies are an increasingly prevalent part of everyday life, particularly for secondary school students. Physics education has a long history of using technology in productive ways to engage students’ thinking about physics concepts; some of the more popular approaches include using Probeware for experiments and Physlets for simulations. This presentation will demonstrate the potential power of creating and using short video “mini-clips” to engage students in conceptual discussions about physics. This workshop will suggest some ways that teachers can create, and encourage students to create, their own mini-clips for use in physics. Characteristics of effective mini-clips will be explored and participants will discuss the merits and drawbacks to sample mini-clips. A key feature of this workshop will be to highlight inexpensive, cross-platform approaches to creating mini-clips for use in both the physics classroom and the general science classroom.

Dr. Shawn Bullock is an assistant professor of education at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He is currently teaching physics and mathematics methods courses in the B.Ed. program, with an emphasis on the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning purposes in the K–12 environment. Shawn’s research interests include how pre-service physics teachers learn to teach, informatics and digital technologies, and the place of climate change science in pre-service teacher education. He is particularly interested in how problems of learning science, problems of learning to teach science, and problems of learning to teach using ICT interact with one another.