Benjamin Petkie, 2020 AAPT Teacher Professional Development Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

I am currently a sophomore at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts studying Physics and business. I’ve loved teaching since high school and believe all of us as educators can improve on our pedagogical ideas and materials we use in the classroom; I am involved in a teacher advisory group where we do exactly these things! I was inspired by my high school physics teacher to choose this as my career path. He made the subject exciting and relatable, he brought out the best in students and they wanted to learn. All too often I see the opposite happening and believe through the work we do together as the SPS we can improve education across the entire US.

I am also involved in a fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha. This has afforded me countless opportunities to be involved in philanthropy and social events. Through this organization I am becoming a member on the Food Recovery Network team which brings unused food from WPI to local women’s shelters.

I had the opportunity to study abroad in Germany during my time at WPI. This experience was life changing as I learned a new language and traversed a culture that I never had before. I plan to continue experiencing different cultures around the world and love to travel.

Internship

Host: American Association of Physics Teachers

Project

Abstract

Women in Physics are underrepresented, one need not to look further than a few statistics to see the data shows only 20% of Physics undergrad majors are female. APS and AAPT are doing something about this with STEP UP, a motivated group focused on achieving equal representation of minorities in the physics community. I’ve been a part of this organization since the internship began and focused on making a Podcast on what STEP UP is all about by interviewing STEP UP student ambassadors. Ambassadors can teach lessons on anything from careers in physics to women in physics or just spread the word about the group. We delved into their own work as well as their involvement with STEP UP. There are ways to spread the word about issues of inequality, I’m hoping the AAPT Physics Podcast can be one as well as provide useful information to the physics community about other organizations who make an impact.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

First Week going Virtual

So, let’s address the elephant in the room, the entire internship has been moved online. This said, I can’t express how grateful I am to everyone who made the virtual internship possible and fought to give us an experience we will most definitely reflect positively upon. That being said, I am the AAPT intern and my mentor is Mark Hannum and man we had a fun first week!

A few of the things we worked on were the Step-Up program for empowering women in physics, planning for the upcoming virtual AAPT summer conference, and generally meeting just about everybody involved in these projects (around 100!). Our biggest current project is designing a virtual teacher lounge for K-12 teachers attending the conference. The software we are using allows attendees to walk around in a virtual conference setting, and when the attendees get close enough, speak to each other over video call. I am very excited that we are trying to innovate and differentiate what we can do within the virtual world, maybe it will even be used in future conferences if it works out well! A final project that I was introduced to was creating a physics related podcast where we take prominent members in the physics field including high school teachers and interview them on a variety of topics. This is probably the project I’m most excited for and hope to start on it very soon.

Outside of work the interns are still getting to know each other pretty well. We will be doing zoom calls at least once a week with all of us and either have a game or movie night. We played an awesome jackbox party game on Wednesday and I’m happy to say that I think we will get to know each other pretty well over the 10+ zoom hangout sessions. Week one was busy and fun, and I find myself looking forward to what the next 9 weeks have to offer.

Smooth Sailing

Week 2 on the virtual platform and things are still running smoothly. My mentor Mark and I are remaining in great contact even though we are a few hundred miles away. I can say I’m now pretty involved in a few projects including STEP UP, the summer AAPT meeting K12 lounge, and a physics related podcast. I’m really starting to get more into STEP UP by working with another AAPT staff member Anne, I feel like the STEP UP for women in physics will consume a lot of my time in a very good way. I will be meeting with high school student ambassadors to see where I can help them with expanding the network of ambassadors that will teach lessons to promote women to pursue a STEM career.

On the more urgent side, the AAPT summer meeting is coming up! I’m working with Justine to setup the virtual world we will have participants walk around in. I’m even going to have a presentation that I will give in the virtual physics lounge! Everything seems to be coming together, I will be making a flyer for promoting the teacher lounge using Canva. I have used this software maybe once before, but it is nice to learn it again. Scheduling is almost done, and it feels like we have a great backbone to work off of.

I got the go ahead from Mark and Justine to put some time into a physics podcast. Lucky for me they did a lot of digging for resources before I was an intern, so I have some really good material to use for the podcasts. I’ll be planning the first episode this coming week and will update next week with how it’s coming along.

Week 3: getting projects done

I have to say I’m sad I won’t be meeting my peers this summer because we have so much fun at our online hangouts. It’s amazing how much a fun game can bring people together even when they’re miles apart.

This week I had a lot of fun tasks, my favorite being the flyer I made for the teacher lounge during the Summer AAPT meeting, I’ll add an attached image of the final product. I really learned a lot about using Canva, I’m sure I’ll use it in the future for creative posters promoting events. In regard to the teacher lounge, we now know we’ll be running it in a zoom type format instead of using the virtual gather room. This was kind of disappointing to hear because I thought the gather room was a more creative approach but on the bright side it will be much more organized and easier to monitor the rooms. I will be hosting a panel of high school and college students in the lounge to give feedback on their experience with online learning with a Q&A session after. I’m hoping students and teachers will be able to have a conversation on how to improve the experience on both ends. I am also getting moving on the podcast, I’m going to use garage band to patch together the audio files and if needed use an online podcasting software to be able to interview from a distance over video call.

I’m now working with a few STEP UP ambassadors and met a group of five in a zoom meeting. They are planning a lot of cool stuff to promote STEP UP and I’m looking forward to working on some projects with them. They have a great discord going with a ton of channels so new ambassadors can get involved with peers early on. Thanks for everyone who made this another great week!

STEP UP and Student Panel

Oh, how time flies, week 4 has now come to a close and I’m having a good a time as ever. We have the teacher lounge schedule finalized and I am now reaching out to HS and college students to be on my panel in the lounge. I’m hoping I’ll be able to provide an opportunity for students and teachers discuss their successes and failures in the online learning platform.

I’m also doing more research for the podcast; my first attendee couldn’t make it so I’m hoping to interview the STEP UP ambassador group that I connected with last week. I’ll attach our podcast logo to the post as well. I’ve been listening to the titanium physicist podcast (actually listening to it while I write this) and its been helping me figure out how to format the podcast. I highly recommend the reader gives it a listen, it’s a very nice relaxed discussion on Physics concepts. I’m hoping to be more K12 focused but think the discussion format could be really fun. Looking forward to week 5!

Our Days are Numbered but they will be Memorable

Wow already reflecting on week 5, time is really flying now and the summer AAPT meeting is coming up fast! The panel I’m hosting is coming along well, I reached out to one of my mentors and they connected me with 4 of their students. I’m hoping to meet with them soon so we can go over what topics we want to discuss in the first part of the panel. We have a final flyer and schedule virtually set in stone; everything really seems to be coming together.

The Physics Demo Competition is coming up soon! I’ve got something in the works, but I can’t reveal it to the other interns but between you and me, it’s awesome. That’s a little further out (July 15^th) so a lot of energy is going into the podcast now. I have the guest list and an outline of the episode; I’m hoping to record this week and put it out on the weekend or next Monday! Other than that, I’ve also been able to help out with certain parts of STEP UP. I’m a little new on some of the projects so I’m getting settled in, but I think this next week will be a good time for me to get more involved in those projects.

As always, looking forward to the next week and I’m sure we there will be an awesome intern mid-week hangout to talk about in the next post!

First Podcast Down

And so, the Podcast begins, the first official episode was recorded Friday night and I will be posting it sometime next week. I’m very happy with how much I learned from the setting up the Podcast and look forward to making every episode better than the last. I loved interviewing the students from Texas A&M who are STEP UP for women in physics student ambassadors. We talked about a lot of things related to the organization but they also each had really cool projects/research they are working on that I’m excited to listen to again. The online Zen caster software worked very well, and I will be using garage band for the first time for postprocessing.

I also had the chance to design some more social media ads for the AAPT teacher lounge. We are going to be putting out a lot and spreading it all over the place to advertise for this online conference. My student panel is coming together, I have a meeting setup with them this Thursday to hash out some details on what we will be discussing. I know they will have ideas that will better the panel.

Next week is going to be super busy because of practice and setup of the AAPT meeting and I will certainly have a great number of updates.

The AAPT Summer Meeting is here!

And the event has finally arrived, the AAPT summer meeting will run Sunday the 19^th – Tuesday the 21^st. I will personally be hosting a panel on Tuesday as one of the last events of the K-12 teacher lounge. The STEP UP summit is also this weekend so I got to attend a few plenary talks and panels to learn more about what the STEP UP ambassadors are shown material wise as well as learn some statistics about minorities in physics. Really exciting stuff happening, and I will have to update how everything went next Monday.

All of the interns submitted our physics demo competitions where we had to use household supplies to do a physics demonstration. I used toilet paper rolls, headphones, a computer, and a ruler to measure the speed of sound. Lots of cool videos so go check them out on the AAPT YouTube channel!

The final, and my personal favorite, update is in regard to the Podcast, it’s almost done! The audio has all been recorded and edited, the intro is finished, and I only need to add the outro then it’ll be off to Spotify, apple music, etc. Look out for a link in next week’s post to the Podcast!

The Meeting is Over and the Podcast is Out!

The 2020 Summer AAPT Meeting is officially over, and I have some highlights. I loved all the plenary speakers, especially STEP UP’s Zahra whose talk is still on YouTube. I attended a few other sessions including one on using virtual reality in E&M classrooms that I though was very interesting. The biggest highlight was probably the connections I made. The chat feature made it easy for me to connect with people in the main area I stayed in, the K12 teacher lounge. I feel I have come out of the conference with a much better idea of how they run and made some valuable connections.

I hosted a panel discussion in the teacher lounge with three high school students answering questions about online learning. I was blown away with how well the high school students articulated their ideas on the online learning platform and I believe both students and teachers walked away with a better understanding of how to move forward. Some great questions were asked and some topics touched upon included: how teachers should communicate with students, how to best structure a schedule for the student, what actions to take to make the virtual classroom feel like a real one, and whether synchronous, asynchronous, or a mix of both styles of teaching is best for the student. I am so grateful that I had willing students as well as a great mentor who introduced me to them.

The podcast is officially live on Spotify! Instant Physics: Just Add Coffee!

Next Project

After week 9 of the internship we’re cracking down on the AAPT Summer Grand Challenge. This was promoted during the meeting to entice teachers to share their distance learning labs. We got a total of 21 submissions and we will pick a winner and organize the labs into a printable pdf for any teacher to use. I think this kind of resource is invaluable and will hopefully reach a lot of teachers.

This past week Mark also had me make a commercial to promote submissions for the grand challenge and I have to say I had a blast. I had a small compilation of simple at home physics labs and added music and a short song that I wrote. I’ve been loving all of these creative projects I’ve been working on, it feels like I’m making an impact through art.

The internship may be over but the Memories never will be

And so, it ends.... or does it? This summer internship has been such a fantastic experience. We closed it off Friday with our final presentations and I’m so impressed how much we all learned even having done this virtually.

My final week consisted mostly of organizing the Summer Grand Challenge submissions (tactile at home labs) so we can put them into a booklet and share with HS teachers. Filtering through the 25 submissions I found that some were incredibly innovative. I really think this resource will be extremely helpful for the rest of this calendar year if not longer. The final booklet will be finalized in a couple weeks, I’m really excited to see how it turns out!

Although the internship is technically over, I still feel I will hold onto connections for maybe even the rest of my life. The interns and I are remaining in a group chat together to stay connected, although we all interned at different places, we still got to know each other and will be in contact frequently. I can’t put into words how grateful I am to all of those who made this internship possible. Brad and Kayla, my mentor Mark, and countless others.