In recent years multimedia tools like dynamical models, video clips, computer-aided laboratories and internet have been introduced to education. In order to retain the teaching-learning process up-to-date it is necessary to disseminate the usage of these tools among in-service teachers and provide them with methods and materials, enabling them to motivate their pupils and increase students’ activity.
So far the computer-assisted education has only been scarcely used at primary and secondary schools especially out of two reasons, first because of low accessibility of computers for the purposes of physics education, second for the low computer literacy of school teachers. Out of the latter reason the necessity of further education of teachers arose. Considering the workload of teachers and the opportunity of decentralization of education, a distance communication could be an appropriate means of instruction. However, physics computer applications can only be done at a higher level of handling with a computer.
At the Department of Physics Education we have just started first attempts to instruct a small group of secondary-school teachers from various regions of Slovakia. This project is of a high importance since a new curriculum for subjects of general education is going to be prepared in Slovakia. After approving the educational standard as well as the recommended teaching methods, distance learning is possibly going to be a tool for spreading these changes and environment for retraining the teachers for the needs of the new standard. At present, our distance education is mostly focused on computer-based measurements using hardware and software of Coach. The participants have been supplied with the required interface, several sensors, accessories and the software for the duration of the course. As the teachers vary in their computer skills one of our aims is to find out various approaches as for the means of the communication and detailedness of instructions. The distance education has already been tested and carried out both in a synchronous and asynchronous way. The contribution will deal with our very first results of this distance form of instructing the computer-assisted measurements.