What I did on My Summer Vacation (AAPT National Meeting)

Posted by: Scott on: August 11, 2012

• In: Activities | Lab & Classroom Equipment | Lab Experiments | Reference Sites | Teaching Techniques
• 2 Comments

I’ve been a member of American Association of Physics Teachers for about 6 years now.  If you teach physics, please join!  The journals and posters alone are worth the tax deductable annual dues.  I attended my first AAPT meeting a couple of weeks back.  I learned one or two great new things, met some super people, but I was also a bit disappointed.

Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way.

• I’m used to NSTA, so maybe my reference is unfair.  AAPT was small, really small for a national conference.  I felt like everybody knew each other because it was the same people every year.  You could get through the entire exhibit areas in about an hour.
• It also felt like the conference was aimed at college educators.  I know the organizers claim it’s not, but I’m giving my opinion here based on attending one day of a much longer conference.
• I had hoped that the talk on video in the classroom would give lots of useful tips; how to integrate video, success at flipping the classroom, etc.  Most of the discussion was why video lectures won’t replace colleges.

Now the positives:

• The first timer special and lunch was a great idea.  Lunch and the company was terrific, I’m glad I went.  The first timer $75 one-day special is a great way to try it out.
• I got to meet some great people, some new, some who I had previously met online (Kathy, Frank).  Everybody was warm and there to interact and learn from each other.
• I met local AAPT members who are trying to suck me in to local activities.  I am interest, but they always do them on a Friday night and Saturday.  I may submit, I do need local physics buddies but I love my weekends.
• Andy Rundquist demonstrated a great use of Jing.  He has his students take a picture of their homework, then narrate the work on video.  The video is their homework submission.  Jing limits them to 5 minutes and when they talk, you can immediately tell if they know what they are talking about.  Andy has them do this for every homework, I’m going to use it sparingly.  Super idea.
• There is free software out there called Tracker that does video analysis.  One cool use was to take a moving object, like a person jumping into the water, identify several points (hands, feet, head) through each frame, and let the software determine the center of gravity and plot  the motion.  Did I mention free?
• I really like the sessions where there is a new presenter every 10 minutes.  Lots of great stuff, and if it isn’t, it’s only 10 minutes until the next one.

AAPT was worth my time, I wish I had done the entire week.  It was close enough to home that I was able to take public transportation.  Here’s the problem: if you can get your school to pay for you to travel to one national conference, which do you choose – AAPT or NSTA?

For me, it would be an easy choice.  NSTA has so much more to offer, so many more strands, talks, exhibitors, and people to interact with.  I would love to do both, I don’t see how.  I will get involved locally, AAPT is too good of an organization to ignore, they are worthy of our support.

Tags: AAPT