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Giacomo Torzo
ICIS-CNR, Phys. Dept.
Padova University, Italy A
GIREP Seminar
2003
“Information-Communication –Technology in the experimental physics teaching” is a very popular topic since many years. What interesting can still be said on it , considering the overwhelming amount of information we are given everyday ? Stimula and ideas reaching us from the web, from journals, from books are even too many to let us build up a unified approach to an efficient use of ICT in lab teaching.
It seems sometimes that any more advice about new technology (offered as an aid to teachers) would be perceived as an added “noise” to the existing excessive offer. But we know that ICT expertise and use is still lacking in our schools…
Keeping in mind this foreword, I believe it is important to enlighten few concepts: 1) experimental physics teaching has to deal with phenomena that must (not always but quite often) be analyzed quantitatively. 2) quantitative analysis requires measurements (usually to be performed in the short time available to the teacher) . 3) graphic tools as well as fitting procedures (and/or simulations) are often necessary to achieve neat interpretations of the investigated phenomena. 4) easy repetition of measurements and/or easy data exchange among users may greatly improve the overall efficiency of the lab sessions. 5) reducing the energy spent in explaining practical details (those needed to perform the experiments) is important.
How may Real Time Laboratory (RTL) satisfy all the above requirements ?
I answer with a two-word sentence: universal instrument. Computer-aided data acquisition systems have replaced (not only within the scientific world, but also in our everyday life) the various kind of different old instruments. And this brought–in also a simplification of use: all the measurements are performed more or less in the same way (choose sensors, choose data-rate, collect data, display data, analyze data).
The old separation between data taking and data analysis (both in time and in the kind of tools used) is disappeared when using the universal instrument. Often the investigation proceeds in a circular path where data taking, analysis, modeling, new data taking in different situation… are part of a single process. And also the separation between theoretical and experimental teaching disappears.
The wide range of different commercial versions of RTL may be misleading : they are actually very similar tools and we must be able to explain to the teachers that, once they have become acquainted with one, they will be familiar with all the rest.
To be honest there are important differences, especially for the software driving the RTL, and sometimes the commercial choice was not the best from the point of view of efficient teaching.
If we will have any opportunity to establish collaborations with industrial partners (as in national or international projects) I believe we should insist in asking to maximize for didactical RTL the features that allow interchangeability of probes and software that keeps visible the universal characteristics of RTL (e.g. avoiding automatic probe detection and hidden procedures in fitting data …).