Relevant initiatives

I@PHT (Internet @ided Physics Teaching)

D. Allasia, C. Marino, V. Montel, G. Rinaudo, Dipartimento di Fisica Sperimentale, University of Torino

1997-2011

National

No

Online course, Didactical resource

Physics

Italian, English

Students

Website which provides descriptions of games and experiments based on science and Physics.
The didactical material available on the section “The Quantum mechanics with Feynman’s method of the sum on many paths” has been elaborated in the framework of the SeCiF project in order to make the non-physicians more familiar with the Quantum mechanics.
This site is made principally for university students, but also for secondary school students with a particular interest on the subject and for each practitioner who wants to think in a different way the key concepts of Quantum mechanics.
The “Guida agli esperimenti” (“Guide to the experiments”) section collects some experiments that can be replicated with the tools that are commonly in whatever secondary school laboratory. These experiments are useful to entry into the soul of Feynman’s method, because they are centred on its 2 key concepts: the connection between energy and frequency and the concept of “many paths”.
The “Sperimentazioni in classe” (“In class trial”) section provide documentary evidence of the many in-class works carried out by teachers starting from their own ideas or following the examples available on the website we are talking about.
The “La Fisica Giocando” (“The Physics Playing”) sections contains:
- La Fisica Giocando: a collection of games and toys presented at the GIREP convention (Barcelona, ES, August 2000) available on English and Italian;
- POS 2000: a collection of games and toys presented at the “Physics on Stage", CERN, 6-11 November 2000 available only in English.
- Il Fiore all’Occhiello: purpose of scientific training for the primary school. In particular there are games, real-life things and their connections with scientific key concepts of Physics, Chemistry on scientific subjects in general.
- Per gioco: contribution, suggestions, purposes, threads from “percioco.splinder.it” weblog started at January 2003.
-Kayak: instruction for projecting and building a kayak replicating the experience of the elementary school Azeglio.
-La respirazione: a project for the Physics of breathing carried out by the “Enrico Fermi” Low Secondary school of Burolo;
- Forum INDIRE 2002: collection of the best interventions to the forum “the Physics Hidden into the toys, the objects and the real-life phenomenon” held on the INDIRE website in the spring time 2002.
- Energia: a guide to present the subject for every level of education.
-Insegnare scienze in laborotorio: a guide on the way to teach Science in the laboratory.
- Schede giochi - Verbania 2003. 40 sheets on games and toys.
- Schede giochi - Verbania 2004. 23 sheets on games and toys.
- Schede giochi - Verbania 2006. 26 sheets on games and toys.
- Schede giochi - Verbania 2005. 21 sheets on games and toys.
- Schede della Mostra alla SMS Principessa Clotilde. 44 sheets made for the “Story of a school and its collection of ancien tools of Physics” exhibit.
Each sheet has 2 versions: that one for the teachers and the other for the students who guided the visitors of the exhibit.

This initiative, created by the University of Turin, is not only dedicated on games with educational aims, like the title could suggest. Actually, always with a particular focus on physics, experiments are very interesting (for example the refraction experiment http://www.iapht.unito.it/qm/esperimenti/rifrazione1.html) or didactic in-depth analysis (like the quantum mechanics experiment http://www.iapht.unito.it/qm/). The scientific quality of the available material on the website is guaranteed by the university institution acting as curator.