Relevant initiatives

Galileo Museum

Museo Galileo - Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza

2010

European

No

Online course, Video, On-line Game, Didactical resource

Physics, Science

Italian, English

Teachers, Students

The Online Catalogue of the museum presents the more than 1,000 objects on permanent exhibition through color images and detailed descriptions. The user can access biographical data, explore "In Depth" information and find contextual background related to the selected object. For the more complex objects, simulation animations and/or videos are also made available.
The Galileo Portal offers a rapid, practical way of consulting the Galilean resources found on the Museo Galileo’s website, ranging from informative entries addressed to all who want to learn more about the subject, to research materials designed for scholars and experts in the field. Each item on the menu, always visible on the left side of the screen, gives access to a group of links organized by subject matter and accompanied by a brief description of the page to which the user is directed. For free browsing, a search system is present on all pages of the portal.
The section “Online Didactic” gathers thematic path and suggestions. The teachers will find this section very useful for their own didactic.

The importance of visiting a museum is
undisputed and these activities are increasingly advised and stimulated. The reason is because they are plenty of interesting spurs of learning for students and able to approach students to the sciences.
This portal allows a virtual tour of the Florence’s Galileo Museum (http://www.museogalileo.it/esplora/museovirtuale.html) overtaking the logistics and financial difficulties that are often an obstacle for this type of initiative.
A lot of resources are available on this website and the pedagogical significance is guaranteed from the scientific museum’s staff.
Of the resources variety it can be pointed out:
-online games like http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/scienzapergioco/indice.html
-thematic paths like “horro vacui”
http://www.imss.fi.it/vuoto/indice.html ;
-interesting experiments like “come costruirsi un cannocchiale galileiano” (how to build a galilean telescope)
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/cimento/risorse/icannocchiale.pdf ;
-in-depth analysis of 360° about Galileo
http://portalegalileo.museogalileo.it/igjr.asp?c=4.

This website is related to the Galileo Museum of Florence (former Institute and Museum of History and Science). I know this website since more than 10 years and I use it systematically. I appreciate it very much because I think that history of Physics is an essential guide for the construction of didactical proposals. Proposals should not aim at reaching simply notions but should provide the real meaning, the conceptual tools and the awareness about the proceeding of the Science.
The strength points of this website are:
- The videos sorted by thematic areas http://catalogo.museogalileo.it/indice/IndiceVideoAreaTematica.html,
- The paths about the exhibits shown by the Museum http://www.museogalileo.it/esplora/mostre.html,
- A portal completely about Galileo http://portalegalileo.museogalileo.it/egjr.asp?c=4.
Among the thematic areas, I mostly used those ones on the Astronomy, on Galileo and on the Pneumatics.
The unique weak point is that the portal is not only for schools, has not only didactical scopes and thus some topics are too much hard to understand because of the attempt to be exhaustive.

Potential transferability in class:

The contents available on the Museum portal, together with the competence of the experts who work or have worked on this website, have been very helpful for the creation of didactical paths. The latter are consistent with my above mentioned necessity: a didactical proposal about the change of the idea of movement, from the Cosmology of Aristotle and Ptolemy to the new Galileo’s Physics; another path about the moving from the theory of “horror vacui” to the concept of air pressure; one more proposal on the thermic phenomena starting from the assembling of thermometers. When I present these didactical proposals in class, I am used to insert some resources available on this portal. The students can consult again the materials at home and take advantage for their learning.

Strengths: this portal contains animations and also few interactive activities.
Weakness: the experiments collected within this website are “ancient”. Only little space is given to more recent discoveries connected to Galilei’s experiences.