This module will now take you into the first of three pedagogical approaches, starting with sensor exploration. You will engage in scaffolded and open play with multiple sensors to understand what they measure, and promote ownership over the tool before it is put to work. You will also learn about how the sensors function at a basic level, learning the fundamentals of microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS). While it may not be necessary to understand how sensors work in order to use them to engage in science practices, most teachers and students find the information interesting and enlightening. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone and a small magnet (any kind), and, optionally, a large air-tight bag for a challenge if your smartphone has a barometer.

This module takes you from sensor exploration into the second of three pedagogical approaches, phenomenon exploration, before advancing finally to modeling. Across this and the next few modules, you will use your smartphone to observe and make sense of real physical events, beginning here with two everyday motions: walking toward and away from a wall, and jumping. You will work first as a learner, watching your own body generate a graph, and then step back as a teacher. Along the way you will meet the position-time graph difficulties that students reliably bring to kinematics, connect an acceleration trace to Newton's laws, and see how these experiences extend to elevators, playgrounds, and amusement park rides. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone, a few meters of open floor and a wall or flat object that you will walk toward and away from, and a piece of paper and pencil for sketching some graphs. Optionally, you might want to try some experiments that require a wide bed or bedsheet, and access to an elevator or playground swing. Sample data will be provided if you do not have the optional materials.

This module continues your work with phenomenon exploration, transitioning from motion to sound and light. One thing changes here: until now your smartphone has been a detector, but in this module it also becomes a source, producing tones and colored light that you and your colleagues can combine. You will watch your own voice appear on an oscilloscope, compare three different displays of the same sound, add waves together to hear timbre change, generate beats with two phones at once, and then use the screen as a light source to build colors by addition and strip them away by reflection and absorption. Several of these activities need more than one device, so they double as a model for the group-based approach many classrooms will need. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone and at least two others (borrowed from colleagues or friends) and paper and pencil for sketching waveforms. Optionally, you may want to try some experiences that require a sheet of white paper, a dark room (or large coat or thick blanket to block out light if you can’t get a dark room), colored candies or beads, and colored gummy or gelatin snacks.

This module closes out phenomenon exploration with a field you have no sense for at all. Nothing in the human body detects a magnetic field. And, unlike a stopwatch or a colored lamp, a magnetic field sensor is missing from most school laboratories. You will read the Earth's field at your own location and check it against a global map, work out which way it actually points. Additionally, if your device supports augmented reality, you will build a three-dimensional picture of the field around you and around a magnet. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone (and, briefly, a second smartphone to take a photograph of your smartphone setup) and a magnet with clearly-defined poles (e.g., a ceramic or neodymium magnet; standard “flat” refrigerator magnets will not work).

Already throughout this course, you have used multiple models, and you have engaged in quasi-modeling of physical phenomena by qualitatively exploring the relationships between variables in a system. In this module, you will learn about models and modeling as an underlying process to drive understanding through experimentation with smartphones, using fluid pressure as an example. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone. Optionally, you may want to try an experiment that requires the use of a meter stick or measuring tape, tub or deep container, water, and a commercial waterproof phone case. Data for this experiment is provided should you not have the materials or not want to try the experiment with your own phone.

Browse a set of modeling investigations you can carry out with a smartphone (simpler ones needing only a single sensor and a ruler, and more complex ones needing particular equipment or data export), and choose the one you will use later in Module 8. For each, you get the modeling objective, an empty data table, the setup, and the practical guidelines. While you won’t yet collect data, the goal is to find the investigation that fits your sensors, your materials, and the physics you teach. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone. Optionally, you may want to try an experience that requires the use of a meter stick or measuring tape, a large open area for tossing an object, and medium-to-large, high contrast object for tossing (e.g., a tennis ball, basketball, football, etc.). You will also choose a physical principle to model, depending upon your available materials.

Having chosen (or come up with) a model in Module 7, you will now collect your own data, build a graph from it, describe the mathematical relationship you find, and reflect on what the experience would mean for your own students. Your portfolio, which includes the modeling objective, evidence of your data collection, a scatter plot, a description of the model, and a reflection, will go out for peer review, and you will review the work of others in turn. MATERIALS: To complete this module, you will need to have your smartphone and any materials required for the modeling experience you choose.

Course wrap-up, contribution, and certificate.