Alternative Conceptions

One of the basic facts of science and mathematical education is that you have to deal with Alternative Conceptions in your students.
Basically humans are very good at finding patterns in the world, but we're very reluctant to give up on discovered patterns, even with plenty of evidence that they don't work. We also have a weird tendency to only seek evidence that confirms our theory, and discount or dismiss evidence that rules our theory out.
The following link lists a series of common Alternative Conceptions.

Metaconcepts in Physics

There are four major classes of phenomena that are encountered in the physical sciences:

• Particles
• Waves
• Flow and
• Fields

Understanding the general properties of these phenomena enable you to understand a large variety of events in the natural world.

SageMath and 3D Graphics

As mentioned in an earlier post, Sage Maths is a high-level mathematical system that combines a large variety of open-source (free) software into one powerful bundle.
In the classroom, one of the most exciting features is it's interactive 3D plots.

Network Graphic Objects in SageMath

See here for how to install SageMath:
http://australianteacher.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/installing-sage-mathematics-on-windows.html

At the end of this year, my school set our Year 10's some network theory as their last topic for assessment. I quickly needed a way to generate weighted networks for worksheets. Yes, hand-drawn would have worked, but like all things, once you put the effort into making a program, it's only a couple of edits and clicks to make multiple diagrams. Plus this way, I can also use the same SageMath worksheet to generate the answers as well.