Multimedia and intedisciplinary education

Renata Holubová, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic

1 Introduction

The traditional school environment is not able to concern in science subjects such as physics, chemistry, technics. The contents is comming of the students practical life and they cannot see the signification of knowledge acquired in school subjects. In consideration of the Educational system for our basic and high schools, the teachers get more freedom to organize the school work. New trends for more attractive environment come into live.

Our opinion is that students are motivated by curiosity and wonder during the lessons. A good understanding of the problems can be also a way how to motivate children for the study. With untraditional and out door activities we can show that science can be fun and understandable. The aim is to bring the school environment and activities closer to students experience and the problems of practical life, technics, work, employment. It is necessary to show the aplication of knowledge in technics because technic, technology and physics are not the same but they cannot exist without each other. The fundamental way out is the students activity. But not only asking and answering their own questions but the practical activities by taking the things in hand.

Students´ learning in physics should include creating competencens that contain skills developed in laboratory activities. Students must construct their own understanding of physics ideas. This knowledge cannot be transmitted by the teacher, but must be developed by students in interactions with nature and technics. The competences will be achieved when laboratory work, project and field work so as outside work are included and well integrated in learning and teaching physics.

2 Laboratory and field work

We argue with our collegues – chemistry, biology and physics teachers that science education would be incomplete if it does not include laboratory work. The role of practical work is even more relevant of these days that are characteristic of rapid changes in technology and society. As presented in [1], the field and laboratory work consist of some basic steps:

A. Educational reserves, museum, garden, town, plant  FIELD  preparation of field work  field work  systematic analysis of results

B. Natural school environments, greenhouses… initial activities  activities  systematization

C. School lab, simulating computer technology  LAB  preparatioon of a guide work  lab work  systematic analysis of results

confronting results  complementary and evaluation activities  critical analysis of the model

Laboratory works are a traditional part of teaching physics. The activities are concentrated to achieve skills in the measurement of basic physical quantities and define the accuracy of the measurement , manipulation with simple equipment, tools, measurement instruments. The main part of skills that the students have to achieve are competences for cooperation, making predictions and conclusions and doing a laboratory report.

Some problems of laboratory work will be mentioned:

Not sufficient equipment, out of date instruments

Large group of students (only one works the others are passive)

Computer simulation instead of real experiments (in a number of situation, the computer is cheaper then the experimental set)

Inadequete teacher instruction

The teacher is not motivated in doing labs with their students

Small number of practical lessons in educational programmes

A great part of students do not see the meaning of the work

Low degree of freedom – a cook-book for doing the lab work

Assessment of laboratory works must contain also marking the formal laboratory reports. Each report must be properly dated and headed. It must be written in the way that everybody can undestand what was done and why. Giving them a question, the students can answer and explain the problem, they understand their own report. The other question is if all the data were reported and how accurate are the results. The conclusions must be correct, the experimental method must be adequately described. The report must contain also complete references in correct form.

3 Multimedia in our laboratoriem

•100 experiments – high school, university level

• interdisciplinary relations – EKG, heartbeat scanning

• state transition of soda thiosulfate

ULAB datalogger ULAB is an easy to use, portable, graphic data collection system,

which can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom or in the field.
It can be used:
- as a versatile multimeter, for direct display of physical quantities measured by sensors connected to ULAB;
- as a stand-alone datalogger for measurements independent of computer with real-time display of measured data on the ULAB screen;
- as an interface connected to a PC computer with real-time display of measured data on the computer screen.

4 Workshop stations

New type of activities developed within the framework of the new trends in physics teaching and learning are out school activities and project work.

An example of out door activities are workshop stations. So as in experimental work students are divided into small groups of 3 or 4 person. The definition of the problem must be in the way that various activities and pathways for becomming the results can be chosen. The first step is a motivating experiment and than the complex excercise is defined. The students use various workplaces and reach the result from various points of view. The excercises conclude typical students activities such as doing small experiments, doing computer based experiments, preparing small models to ilustrate the function of the tool, seeking for information using media, hypertexts, textbooks, internet, solving numerical excercises. The teachers role is to organize the work and stimulate the students activity. To prepare this kind of students work needs a lot of time. It is necessary to prepare instructions, pictures, hypertexts, data etc.

5 Project

Project – the basic steps to prepare and realize project work can be pointed out:

  • Preparatory work
  • Background reading
  • Literatury search
  • Realisation
  • Report
  • Presentation
  • Discussions
  • Conclusions

While working on the project the enthusiasm of students can be seen. They must input their own ideas and innovations. For projects only a lower degree of supervisions is reqiured. Students improve their technical skills . When writing the report, some topics must be poited out: clarity of introduction, content , standard of diagrams, number and relevance of references.

The project must be written in good language. One speaker of the group presents the project for the audience, where the discussion take place. The quality of discussion depends on the interest of students for the presented problem, on the quality of presentation and the relevance to practical students lives. Conclusions must be formulated. The project is presented in the simplest form only in the class, better in the presence of more classes. The best projects take part in various competitions and exhibitions.

Project Heuréka

Example of project teaching in the Czech Republic is the project Heuréka – „hands- and minds-on“ physics. Heuréka contains not only students activities, but also seminars for physics teachers. For example spring or summer camps for future physics teachers, Heuréka teachers visited DESY in Hamburg, "House of Science" in Stockholm and Experimentarium in Kobenhagen in August 2004. Quite successfull are annual conferences of the Heuréka project, about 14 annual workshops with more than 52 participants including teachers from Slovakia and from UK. But not only seminars for new participans but also reagional seminars for „traditional participants“ take place.

The main aim of the Heuréka project is to improve physics education. You may ask who cares and who is the leader of these activities? The answer will be – the teachers and students of all ages themselves. There are many projects aimed at improving physics education, but Heuréka is one of the most popular. Some of interesting points in this project:

  • The project really ‘lives’: A number of weekend seminars are organized, together with spring camps, main conferences and trips (as mentioned DESSY, Stockholm, CERN). Heuréka puts together teachers from different types of schools, future teachers, people from universities and other people interested in physics education. And the interaction and cooperation of all these groups proved to be rewarding and inspiring.
  • A „network of teachers“ was created, with all these activities they inspire and support each other .

The project is concentrated on physics education for the age group 12-15. It started ‘from bottom up’: from teachers at schools. Now it is a common project. It lasts for more than 12 years - and from the activity of just a few people it expanded to the project including several tens of active participants. Its aim is to cultivate not only teaching of physics but also interactions of teachers and pupils in general.

Its title (which, in English, means Eureka) resembles heuristic method of teaching. But it does not mean that Heuréka is limited to an old one ‘learning by discovering’ approach (that one criticised for, e.g., ignoring pupils’ preconcepts, context of learning etc.).

The main idea of the Heuréka project is based on constructivism. These trends we can see in Western countries educational programmes too.

The need to improve teaching of physics is in the centre of interest and is wery intensive in the last years. Some research studies were done. But Heuréka is only a small part of inovative activities in our schools.

The participants try to let pupils discover physical principles and phenomena by themselves. Our task is to make them active during the learning process. We don’t want to teach passive consumers of information passed on by the teacher.

Other activities:

Trade fair of ideas of physics teachers

6Conclusion

There are some possibilities how to improve the interest in physics and technics and how to develop competences for a succesful outcome into the practical life. The school invorenment must be changed – the leading role of the teacher in physics education must be changed to the role of a discussion manager and a organisator of students activities. The school education has to come closer to students practical life and this can be done only by improving the ways of students own activities. Only then will be the student prepared for the life in the changing society. The students must be able to decisions, to solve problems, to be creative. The competences in knowledge and handling skills must be interdisciplinary. This can be achieved only in an active school environment with laboratory work supported by multimedia, experiments, field work and projects.

Resources:

1. Roesler, F. (2004) Arbeiten in der Lernwerkstatt-eine Möglichkeir für kooperative und selbständiges Lernen. PdN-Ph 6/53, Jg. 2004, pp.19-23.

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