Exploring Physics

A truly interactive curriculum app.

Interactive means that you can feed it information just as it can feed it to you, on demand. Enter information as text, drawings, equations and graphs. Get just-in-time information at a tap of the finger or mouse, including the media that you have come to expect in an app.

Curriculum based on inquiry and modeling

We believe that students learn by doing. Activities within the Exploring Physics Curriculum App take students through a pre-lab discovery process, makes them design an experiment, and provides questions for a post-lab discussion so they can arrive at the concept by analyzing their own data. Students then apply the concept through practice problems, reading pages and further experimentation.

Hands-on labs, Reading Pages, Practice Problems, Student Summaries – coherently arranged to learn physics through a concept-building process, deep content background, and concept deployment. Student discussion, whiteboarding and Socratic dialogue are an integral part of this curriculum. The app makes it all easy to deploy.
Just-in-time definitions, problem-solving movies, animations and simulations. Use the power of the digital medium.

Hybrid offline-online access. Internet is not needed to access the app, enter or save your entries. Internet access is required only intermittently, for example to update the app or the e-books, to submit answers to the teacher, or to receive the teacher’s feedback. Do homework on the bus, if you like.

Resources for the teacher. Teacher pages for each activity includes learning objectives, a movie on the lab setup and analysis, help with conducting the activity using a modeling-based pedagogy, and a summary of the concepts addressed in the practice problems. But there’s more – a Unit story line, unit learning goals and objectives, big ideas, Next Generation Science Standards and Mathematics Common Core alignment for each activity, materials lists, and problem sets for assessment. The teacher portal allows electronic grading of student submissions, returning assignments to students, and online web-accessible record keeping.

Pedagogy

Based on inquiry and modeling pedagogies, the curriculum is structured to allow students to construct their own learning with teacher guidance. Students learn physics concepts by exploring the concept with familiar materials, designing and then conducting an laboratory experiment, and then analyzing the data they obtain to learn the concept. Each mathematical formula is derived by the student by conducting an experiment. The process is guided by questions that students answer and discuss based on their observations. Thus each lab allows students to construct a mental model of the concept. They then deploy the concept through further activities or practice problems. Reading pages guide the student to more complex analysis. Practice problem sets can be used as assessments or practices.

Using the App in your classroom

The App has a teacher and a student version. The teacher version includes the Teacher Information listed above and access to a web-based teacher portal for grading and record-keeping. It is otherwise identical to the student version.

Alignment to Standards

Next Generation Science Standards | Mathematics Common Core Standards

System Requirements

iOS 9.5 or newer for iPad | Chromebook | Windows 7 or newer | Mac OSX 10.9 or newer

Purchasing the app for your classroom:

Please contact us if you wish to purchase the app for your classroom. Tell us which units you would like to purchase, and how many students you have. While a few popular unit combinations are available in the shop, you may chose any combination of units that you wish.