VIRTUAL COLLABORATION - PROJECT AND ACTIVITIES
1Jozef DEMKO, 2Alexander DIRNER, 1Marek DOMARACKÝ, 3František FRANKO, 1Júlia HLAVÁČOVÁ, 2Gabriela MARTINSKÁ, 2Pavol MURÍN, 4Michal ŠERÝ
1Department of Physics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics,
Technical University of Košice, Park Komenského 2, 042 00 Košice, tel. 055/602 2832, E-mail:
2Department of Nuclear and Subnuclear Physics, Faculty of Sciences,
P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, Jesenná 5, 042 00 Košice, tel. 055/622 1926, E-mail:
3Department of Technical Education, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences,
Prešov University, Prešov, E-mail:
4Department of Physics, Pedagogical Faculty,
University of South Bohemia, České Budejovice, E-mail:
SUMMARY
In this paper information is given about the project Virtual collaboration and about activities connected with it. Virtual collaboration is a free association of students and teachers from secondary schools and universities as well as scientists, whose aim is to increase the physical awareness of the society and to achieve new effective methods for cooperation with talented students.
Technologies used by Virtual collaboration are: Webcasting, Virtual Rooms Videoconferencing System, and Web University.
Virtual collaboration using the Webcasting technology enabled students and teachers to take part in two lectures on antimatter from CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research). During live transfer it was also possible to have a look round various laboratories where experiments with antimatter were just carried out and ask questions via Internet.
Virtual collaboration has also joined the CERN’s Web University – live lectures and their archive. In the frame of cooperation on the project Life in Universe a series of lectures were given with multimedial presentation in Slovakia and archived for Web University.
Two multimedial tutorials were translated from English: Particle Adventures and Hands on CERN.
Members of Virtual collaboration took part in the project of European largest research institutions – in workshops Physics on Stage 1, 2 where new ways of physics teaching were presented.
Keywords: physics education, multimedial tutorial, Web University, videoconferencing, distance education, VRVS
1. INTRODUCTION
The increasing number of personal computers connected to Internet and new information technologies have brought a lot of new possibilities for obtaining and spreading information which can be also used in various forms of education. Internet offers interesting possibilities to inform secondary school students about attractive fields of contemporary physics, what is nowadays very important because physics at schools belongs to the least favourite subjects.
Teachers from various schools connected to Internet can compare and complete the contents of syllabus, and motivate each other in this way to improve education process.
To certain extent personal communication between teacher and student as well as among students can be substituted by the non-personal communication with the computer containing educational program or with computer as communication mediator with other network users. In this way the teacher can set students various types of problems which are solved by groups consisting of members from distant places connected by network and especially by the interest in the problem given. The aim of the project Virtual Collaboration [1] (VC) is to form such groups. VC is a free association of Slovak university and secondary school teachers and students, scientists, who are trying to increase the physical awareness of the society and to achieve effective methods for cooperation with talented students in information society. Its aim is to acquaint students with basic questions which physics can answer in a new attractive way, to search for talented young people, to motivate them and work with them – involve them in scientific research by solving physical problems in cooperation with professional physicists.
In the first phase of the project the following activities are of importance:
- to set up the mutual connection of computer networks with the possibility of communicating in a video-conference way
- preparation of study materials (e.g. multimedial tutorials).
2. TECHNOLOGY
First and the simplest technology used by VC has been Webcasting [2], which is a relatively cheap way of one way transferring and archiving digital video records via Internet. This way of presentation has earned popularity mainly in educational and scientific institutions in a very short time. It has become an inevitable tool used in the distance education, and popular – science programs and it also helps to make accessible the newest results obtained in scientific research.
Fig. 1 Example of VRVS videoconferencing
As the further technology the top Caltech (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena) Web oriented videoconference technology - Virtual Rooms Videoconferencing System [3] (VRVS) has been chosen. It enables communication between several participants in the videoconference providing simultaneous sharing of sound, video and of the computer presentations at low bandwidth of computer networks. Simple work with VRVS products, fast access to the selected videoconference, developed system of Web oriented archive technology, low operational price and integration of several videoconference technologies are the advantages of this technology. There was installed the first VRVS reflector in Slovakia by VC in collaboration with Caltech and CERN (European
Organisation for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland). The VRVS technology is nowadays checked by VC at a few secondary schools.
Another tool used by VC is Web University [4] (WU). It belongs to the most progressive ways of distance learning. WU consists of two main parts: first - live video-conference transmission between lecturer and a few groups of students at the same time using VRVS technology, second – “video on demand” lectures are free available in Web archive, so students can learn individually from the WWW within some multi-media materials and communication with their teachers is realised by available audio-video transmission.
3. ACTIVITIES
3.1. Webcasting
In the beginning of 2000 the "Live from CERN" team was established in CERN with an aim to prepare a series of lectures on antimatter. The first lecture "Antimatter – the Mirror of the Universe" was followed by the second one "Antimatter factory". Both lectures contained basic information about antimatter and ways how it can be created and investigated. VC using the Webcasting technology made possible for students and teachers to attend these lectures. During live transfer it was possible not only to have a look inside the CERN studio from where the Webcasting was moderated, but also round various laboratories where real experiments were just carried out. Scientists could be asked about actual problems of interest immediately, via Internet.
3.2 Web University – live lectures and archive
Slovakia, as a second country after Finland, in close cooperation with CERN has joined its Web University [4]. In the frame of VC students of Faculty of Sciences and of Technical University had the opportunity to take part in lectures “Telecommunications of the Future” given by Dr. R. Parker in March 2001 in CERN.
Fig. 2 Web University: Life in the Universe 2001
During the year 2001 VC also cooperated on the project “Life in Universe” which included the series of lectures given by Z. Urban. He is a publicist and translator of many well-known books, which popularise various fields of science written by authors as P. Davies, J. Barrow, E. Wilson, J. Glass and others. The topics of his lectures were: The Universe – From Big Bang to the Creation of the Solar System; Geobiology of the Earth; Complex Life; Man and Civilisation. Another two lectures in the frame of this project were given by Z. Komarek The members of VC (Technical University students) realised multimedial presentation and prepared video records which were processed in a standard form for WU archive and they are available also on CD ROM.
In the same way the lectures given by high energy physicists Prof. Bo Andersson (Sweden) and Prof. Vladimir Oujinskii (Russia), who were invited to the Faculty of Science, were processed by VC and they are available on WWW in WU archive [5].
3.3. Multimedial tutorials
Another activity of VC is to prepare computer textbooks for university students – multimedial tutorials substituting classical textbooks. The advantage of such form of textbooks is their easy updating. Since they are more flexible they can contain information about the newest discoveries at a high level and they become very interesting teaching tools. Physics presented in this way can be very attractive for students because they are used to work with computer and this is then the natural way for them how to enlarge their scientific and general knowledge.
Multimedial tutorials can also serve as a tool in the life-long education, which becomes very important nowadays. Network users can read the text and apply to authors by e-mail if some comments or questions arise since network provides the most flexible communication.
In the frame of the VC project a first step in the above mentioned direction was done in the teaching of physics at the Technical University (TU) in Košice. Two original English tutorials were translated into Slovak: “Particle Adventures” and “Hands on CERN”. The Slovak version [6] is aimed as a complementary study text for the basic physics course and as a part of the study text for two optional subjects: Nuclei and Particles, Physics and Present at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics.
Fig. 3 Homepage of Multimedial Tutorials
For the VC members – secondary school students these tutorials can be the basic study material. For advanced VC members (university students) there is a task – to prepare interactive tests with simple questions and problems on WWW and to interconnect them with tutorials and vice versa the tutorial readers have possibility to check the level of understanding of a read topic.
The preparation of the Slovak version of tutorials was also a very interesting individual form of teaching process and the experience of using them in the education process was very encouraging [7].
3.4. Other activities
VC has also joined a series of international projects which has been prepared by the largest European research institutions CERN, ESA (European Space Agency), ESO (European Southern Observatory) with the aim to popularise physics. Members of VC took part in workshops Physics on Stage 1 [8] (CERN, 2000) and Physics on Stage 2 [9] (Estec, Noordwijk, Netherlands, 2002). The topic of these workshops was the search for new non-traditional ways of physics teaching.
4. CONCLUSION
The aim of the project VC is to search for young talented people, to motivate and work with them. The VC group which consists of students, teachers and scientists has been formed. First steps have been realised by implementation of new information technologies at various types of schools and by foundation of Web University, as well as by preparation of Slovak versions of multimedial tutorials on particle physics.
REFERENCES
[1] / http://vk.science.upjs.sk[2] / http://webcast.cern.ch
[3] / http://www.vrvs.org
[4] / http://webuniversity.web.cern.ch/webuniversity
[5] / http://webuniversity.science.upjs.sk
[6] / http://www.tuke.sk/feikf/preklady
[7] / Hlaváčová, J., et al.: Využitie Internetu vo výučbe – Virtuálna kolaborácia, Zborník medzinárodnej konf.: „New Trends in Physics“, 15.-16. Nov. 2001, Brno, pp. 457-462
[8] / http://www.cern.ch/pos
[9] / http://www.physicsonstage.net