Relevant initiatives

Physics 2005 – Virtual laboratory and interactive portal for physics teachers

National Institute of Nuclear Physics - Bari Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Sezione di Bari

2005

National

No

Online course, Teaching Methodology, Video, Didactical resource

Physics

Italian, English

Teachers, Students

Physics 2005 is a project addressed to Physics High School teachers.
The initiative aims to provide the teachers with online didactic material consisting in simulations of Physics phenomenon selected among those available on the Internet, categorizing and describing them with a presentation sheet. All the material is available online and on cd-rom.
Another purpose of the project is to involve teachers in the development of didactic units using the provided simulations supplying (eventually) these with a working sheet for the students.
A cd-rom containing physics simulations from Internet is available free of charge for High School physics teachers.
Simulations (a few hundreds) are classified and described by an information card (in italian).
This material may help during normal class activities to demonstrate some concepts (the cd-rom doesn't require Internet access).
The cd-rom contains in addition around ten curriculum units using these simulations.
Each unit (in italian) contains a card for the teacher detailing the educational goals of the activity.
Then follows a step by step description of the use of the simulation for the student.
The last part is a quiz to check learning objectives.
The same material is available online on this site.
Tools are available to teachers to contribute to the project by modifying or adding new curriculum units. The same tools enable the teachers to participate into forums on the project activities.
Some simulations have not the working sheet because of their demonstrative purpose. However the nature of each unit is declared in advance.
The technical staff is composed of dr. Maria S. Mennea, dr. Antonietta Regano and dr. Giuseppe Zito. Dr. Chiara Evangelista a teacher of the Physics Department and Prof. Franco Nuzzi a teacher of Liceo Classico Orazio Flacco in Bari collaborate to the project.
Send all requests of information to fisica2005@ba.infn.it.

The website addresses especially to teachers and offers to them useful tools to integrate their lessons in classrooms and in the laboratories.
The partition of the material in didactic units (http://www.ba.infn.it/~fisi2005/moduli.html) simplifies the Web surfing and facilitates the resources search.
For example there are some proposition of “la caduta di un grave” (“falling body”) http://www.ba.infn.it/~fisi2005/modulo001.html#001019.
The use of Java and Flash technology adds interdisciplinary, attractiveness and educational potential to the initiative. However it forces the user to visit the “download” section (http://www.ba.infn.it/~fisi2005/modulo001.html#001019) to guarantee a correct fruition of the resources available on the website.

The website is exclusively dedicated to physics. It presents several interactive learning experiences on physic phenomena.
The overall judgment is positive. It is helpful for all levels of education and it allows to illustrate the experiments with measurements, animations and graphics.
Java software is required to use the didactic modules.

The strength point is the presence of video animations that are placed on the "moduli didattici" section.
I like this method because it allows a large simplification and help the learning process.
Weakeness: Some of the links does not work, for example: "wikiFisica2005".