My one student in attendance was too shy to ask why she wasn't seeing anything on the screen and I didn't know to ask if she was seeing what I was writing.  I only found out when I viewed the recording.  I was able to figure out what I'd done wrong via Yammer and the next time I tried the notes function, it worked better:

This video describes the difference between speed (scalar) and velocity (vector) and is useful the week this session was recorded, but also in a future module when we discuss vectors, something students tend to have difficulty with (you'll see the next video also discusses vectors...did I mention students struggle with having a magnitude AND a direction??).

The next video I used with my students had a clip from Despicable Me, but is entirely related to our content (I swear!).  I thought it might get the students laughing, maybe engage them a little bit, and then I could bring it back to physics after the clip (start at 3:18 to see my intro and the video and stopping at 6:15 will let you see my explanation after the video):

I find it difficult to talk about myself in this sort of way, but on this last day at Savannah Arts (Truly, it is my last day.  I could have never planned to reflect on my teaching career on my last day at my favorite school...), I have to believe that I made a difference in my students' lives.  I worked very, very hard to create a learning environment where my students could succeed and feel confident about their science abilities.  We get a lot of kids in Physics that have just come from Chemistry and that struggled quite a bit with Chemistry.  They come to me saying things like, "I can't do conversions" or "I'm bad at science" and I work very hard to praise them and show them that they CAN be successful at science.  Physics, no less!  In my AP class, I work very hard to teach them about environmental science and also how to be responsible citizens and voters.  I try to encourage them and build them up as scientists.  I am often told that AP Environmental Science (APES) was their favorite class and that they learned so much in that class and talk about what we learned in APES with their friends and family.  This is perhaps the greatest compliment I can get from a student.  I love when they see how the things they learn in my classroom are applicable in their life outside the school building.

I think I am quite adept with technology and I have made great strides flipping my classroom when no one else in my department or school was doing it.  I researched the various LMS, spoke with my Technology Specialist, created videos, guided notes, learning objectives (competencies) based on the standards and so much more because I believed that it was a superior method to what I was doing before and my students excelled using this method.  I feel like this is not quite virtual school, but it is a blended method of learning and I know that I could make the transition to teaching virtual school successfully.  

My weakness as an online educator is probably that I haven't ever taught a fully online class.  However, I know that you have to start somewhere and if you ask anyone who has worked with me, they will tell you that I work incredibly hard and I do what needs to be done for my students to succeed.  

So far so good.  Then I get to the next two horizontal projectile questions:

Ok, stop!  Something here is drastically different.  We are down to between 41-58% of students getting these questions correct.  For #4, there isn't one wrong answer that is particularly popular, so this tells me they were guessing and really had no idea how to solve this problem.  The students historically suffer with a problem like this.  When they are given a height and distance and no initial velocity, they struggle.  This tells me that we need to practice these types of questions more (and to be fair, these are the harder problems and when I haven't looked at this material for awhile, I struggle with where to start too).  We do a problem like this in their lab, but since they work in groups, the math work that is turned in doesn't always reflect their knowledge because someone who DOES understand the concept, tends to help them with it (lets them copy their work without showing them how to do it).  I call this "not teaching them how to fish."  I have no problems with them helping each other, but my requirement is that the person doing the helping "teaches them how to fish and doesn't simply give them a fish".  They don't always follow this rule, however (they are teenagers!).  

Now, lets move onto problem #5.  Less than half of them know how to do this one and there is an INCORRECT answer that was chosen almost as often as the correct answer.  This tells me that they at least know how to start the problem and got stuck or lost somewhere along the way.  They chose the distractor quite frequently, which tells me that they are making a common mistake here.  This could be remediated individually when I go over the quiz, an instructional video could be created discussing this particular type of problem (could be helpful with #4 too!) or, in the case of virtual school, we should talk about this in our weekly synchronous session and maybe even have a discussion about this type of problem.  They are making a common mistake and this is easily remedied.  Much easier than #4, where almost half of the students have no clue where to begin.  It could also be useful to pair a student that got #5 correct with a student that got #5 incorrect (especially since its almost exactly a 50/50 split) and have the person who got the problem correct watch over or look over the work of the student who got it incorrect and "teach them how to fish".  

Now, let's look at some individual quizzes.  I've eliminated their names to comply with FERPA, so they will simply be referred to as Student A and Student B.  Student A's quiz is below:

Student A obviously needs a little more work on this section.  She got question #1 correct, which tells me she knows the first step of a horizontal projectile problem (solve for time!), but then gets stuck after.  She also got #8 correct, which didn't require any math, but was actually a concept question.  So, this tells me all is not lost with her.  I know that she's at least looked at the material, but maybe didn't spend as much time on it as needed (I try and tell them over and over that this unit is the most difficult and will take more work than any other, but they're teenagers, so of course they know better than me).

Now let's look at Student B (We will come back to Student A):

I swear, I just picked two students randomly, but these two would actually make excellent partners for reviewing this section before they took the alternate version of the quiz.  Student B missed one problem and it just happens to be a problem Student A got correct! (Seriously, I couldn't have planned that if I tried).  They would make excellent partners because Student B could help Student A with the bulk of the problems that were missed, but Student A wouldn't feel like she was getting tutored by a friend because she could help Student B with the problem she missed!  I would also direct Student A to the instructional video where I explain how to start (the part she's excellent at!) and solve each step of a horizontal projectile problem.  It would probably be worthwhile for Student A to watch that video a couple times while she CONCURRENTLY is solving a problem so she gets practice with the various steps.  Then, once she's solved a couple with the video, she could try working on them by herself and ask Student B for help if needed.  Of course, I'm always available, but sometimes they like learning from their friends rather than me.

I'm not sure if an LMS can do this automatically or if I could set up paths like, 

The sections are divided into learning objectives (usually 2-4 per section) and the quizzes are also divided by learning objective (competency) so I can see exactly where the students are struggling.  I made short quizzes (4-9 questions), so the students couldn't just "pass" the quiz by getting the majority of the questions correct and still lacking mastery of a learning objective.  

 I now realize that this is similar to competency-based learning.  My learning objectives are basically competencies (things I want the student to be "competent in" or "master) and the quizzes are the assignments used to demonstrate competency (mastery).  To expand on this, I could create a rubric like the following and use that to "grade" their work (assignments labeled "Practice" in the organizational guide above, lab write ups, and anything related to that learning objective):

The items on the left of the rubric are the competencies (learning objectives) and the numbers are their level of competency with the skill.  I would suggest at least a 3, but preferably a 4 or 5 would be required to demonstrate competency (mastery).  If they can demonstrate competency (mastery) on the Practice problems, then they could be exempt from the quiz.  Alternatively, if they wanted to prove their competency (mastery) by doing the quiz, they could do that as well (Some students do not need to work the practice problems to "get" the concept and these students would benefit from being able to basically "quiz out" of that section.  If they wanted to complete the lab related to that learning objective and use that as their evidence of competency, they could do that as well.  This method allows students a variety of methods to demonstrate competency and also gives them more ownership of their learning.

These scores are very similar, only 2% change in average score.  One thing that is noticeable, however, is that the second year, there were more very low scores and more very high scores.  I can only guess that the very low scores were from students that knew it was the end of the year and that this was the last test before the final.  I let the students' final exam grade replace any test grade that quarter, so there are those students that blow off the last test because they have so much going on with AP exams and other state-mandated tests, and then buckle down and study for the final exam, knowing the final will replace this test grade.  I also told the students that I would not make them take the final if their year grade was over 95% as a thank you for working hard all year.  Some students were very close to this average and studied very hard for the last test trying to bring up their year grade enough so they didn't have to take the final.  Even with the lower grades, the average score was a little higher this year (electricity 2015 clone).  I'd like to say this was because I improved as a teacher, but it probably wasn't that at all. :/

When teaching online classes, I would look at similar data to make sure that my tests were reliable.  If the average scores were drastically different from year to year, that could suggest that my test is not reliable.  Of course, I would need to be teaching the course long enough to be able to have some of that data.  I could also look at the histograms and compare sections with each other.  If the sections have drastically different scores, this could also indicate a lack of reliability.

When administering a test in my classroom, I work hard at maintaining test security.  Tests are kept in a locked cabinet, students are only allowed to work on test corrections in my classroom under supervision, and I try to watch my students closely to make sure they are each doing their own work.  In the online classroom, I would make a time limit for my test, not allow students to look over their score and choices until everyone had completed the test, if at all, and try to have a large test bank to choose questions from.  I especially like software that lets you pick the questions and it scrambles the questions and gives the students a subset of the questions, so each student has a different question set.  Getting to know your students and their work is also crucial.  For example, when I was in college, my mom wanted me to write an essay for my brother who was in high school (no judgement, please).  I told her that I couldn't write the essay for my brother because he had been writing his essays all year.  His teacher would know his style, common grammar mistakes, etc.  If I wrote an essay and he submitted it as his, the teacher would know that it wasn't written by my brother because it would be completely different stylistically.  In that same way, I get to know my students and can tell if they have simply improved a great deal or something else is going on.