American Institute of Physics: The Meggers Project Award: $4,6000
The ubiquitousness of the smartphone in both teacher and students’ lives cannot be denied in this day and age. These devices contain a suite of sensors that are quite familiar to the high school physics student and teacher: accelerometer, magnetic field sensor, light sensor, pressure sensor, in addition to video and audio capabilities to name a few. There are also free apps for smartphones that can connect to these sensors for data collection and analysis. The physics education literature has exploded with submissions describing experiments utilizing the smartphone’s sensors. Students and teachers are literally walking around with a sophisticated data acquisition system in their pocket! What is missing to see the wider adoption of these tools into the High School physics classroom is direct professional development for teachers. This Meggers Project Award application seeks to bridge this gap with High School physics teachers in Arkansas initially and then branching out to a wider audience via professional development workshops at conferences and sharing the content developed by teachers on a dedicated website.
List of Personnel:
Education Researchers:
Dr. William V. Slaton – Professor of Physics, College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics (UCA)
Dr. Umadevi Garimella – Director of the STEM Institute (UCA)
Dr. Deborah Dailey – Professor of Teaching and Learning, College of Education (UCA)