Gina's Congress Presentation

Here are the slides and video from my I-RISE Congress Presentation.  My apologies for taking two months to get these up.

 During my two weeks at I-RISE, I explored how the rules of Energy Theater affected teachers' representations of energy.

To start off my presentation, this is my spirit animal- a baby panda!

I attended I-RISE in the transitional summer between undergraduate and graduate studies.  I came in with some experience in interaction analysis and discourse but I still had a lot to learn.  

I am generally interested in the studying the many facets of how students experience their physics classes.  In particular, I enjoy studying open-ended, constructive learning environments like I-RISE.

I looked at the rules of Energy Theater and how they mediated the teachers' discussions about designing energy representations.

In this first clip, teachers are negotiating about their energy theater for a mousetrap car.  We see that rules play an important role here.  They first acknowledge that they are breaking representational rules.  Later we see that they realize they are not one unit of energy, which violates conservation of energy.  

In the next clip, the teachers are drawing out the energy story for the Gaussian Gun.  They are attempting to reconcile their knowledge that a small amount of energy is dissipated with the rule that energy can only exist in equal sized chunks.

Rules and norms came up in other areas as well.  With more time, I would have explored how Todd got the class on board with the MFer representation for the Gaussian Gun.  It would have also been interesting to study rules and rule-breaking of the social responsibilities outlined on the first day of class.  

In conclusion, I-RISE was awesome!