Hello and welcome to our new series Learning Treasures of the Internet, where we present to you little gems we find while curating our TeachPitch library. Today, we kick off with teaching STEM subjects through sport. With me today is Dr Christopher Hein, a former secondary school teacher who leads the Curation Team here at TeachPitch.
Christopher, did you enjoy learning STEM subjects at school?
Christopher: That’s a tough question to answer. I enjoyed Chemistry because the way it was taught in Germany, where I went to school, didn’t involve much maths. Physics and maths on the other hand were taught in a very abstract and theoretical way. I struggled because I never properly understood why concepts such as projectile motion are important in general, let alone why I should bother about it.
Why do you think that was the case?
Christopher: I like hands-on examples, because they help me visualise and understand things. I believe one of the big challenges of teaching any subject is being able to make the content relevant for pupils. So embedding learning content in a context familiar to the learner is crucial. Especially in the STEM field where students commonly think the topics are complicated because they involve maths and they think maths is hard. The challenge for teachers here though is that producing good resources that help bridge the gap between the content on the one hand and the students on the other requires a lot of time.
How can the internet be useful here?
Christopher: Due to the rapid growth of the internet there are millions of resources out there. While curating the internet we came acrossNBClearn, a video portal provided by the US television company NBC. It contains many short video clips of less than 10 minutes length that can easily be integrated into lessons for example as summaries or introductions to topics. I particularly like this linkhttp://www.nbclearn.com/nhl/cuecard/56639. This six minute video explains the concept of projectile motion applied to an ice hockey puck. I like it, because most students in Europe and North America are familiar with this sport – some might even play it themselves, and within a short amount of time. If I would have seen that video clip when I was learning about projectile motion in school, I think it would have really helped my understanding.