High School Teachers
at CERN
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TEACHING MATERIALS

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HST

A new method to teach with the Computer as a tool.

ESPACE (http://www.espace-cd.net), an EU project, develops a system to support up to date teaching. It allows the teacher as well as the student to create web sites, which support learning without having to learn web programming. The idea is, to use the computer to perform the task of presentation, leaving the teacher with more time for personal communication and discussion without losing structure in the classroom activity.

A possible class room application 

1.The teacher prepares in advance a module covering the topic to teach (the module is structured in so called Learning Elements (LEs)), which have to consist of a 'learning atom' (i.e. a short text about a single heuristic step) and a 'multimedia element' (i.e. pictures, videos, sound, games etc.). 
2.The pupils go through the module at their own speed and choose themselves how detailed they want to learn the topic (they can chose simple or more
detailed learning paths through the module). 
3.Pupils can perform self-tests within the LEs. 
4.The pupils represent the topic by preparing lessons, which can be composed by self-written LEs as well as by LE taken out of existing modules. 
5.The lessons prepared by the pupils are presented to the whole class, discussed and if necessary corrected. 
6.The presentations are assessed by the teacher and by the listening classmates. 
7.At the end an individual test of the pupils adds information for the final assessment. 
 

The state of the art 

The web based Learning Teaching Writing (LTW)-system is operational. The creation of modules and lessons and the use of them in Netscape or Internet
Explorer is supported and available to every ESPACE user (subscribe:
ohu@kph.tuwien.ac.at). 
A web-based manual exists (
http://espace.kph.tuwien.ac.at/manual.html). 
The design of the web front end (what you see if you browse through a lesson or module) is preliminary. 
Supported multimedia element types are pictures, videos, animations, sound. 
 

Future steps

In due course of time, depending also on fundraising success, following features will be implemented step by step: 

     Appealing, professional web front end design 
     Upgrading of the database servers 
     Facility to write formulas 
     Improvement of multimedia support 
     Establishment of an ESPACE community 
     Implementation of a Test Constructor for assessment 
 

Examples 

Particle Physics (level 1) draft-module. You can choose how to look at it. Either with:
     http://db.kph.tuwien.ac.at/FMPro?-DB=LE.fp3&-Lay=NET&-Format=LE_overview.htm&-Max=99&module_ID=8&-SortField=LE_ID_new&-Find
(Username: espace. Password: _ _espace_ _ ) or download in pdf Format:
http://espace.kph.tuwien.ac.at/hst2000/particles.pdf (4630 kB).

If you want to collaborate on the further implementation and classroom test of this draft contact Christian.Gottfried@cern.ch.

An introduction to CERN'(Maiani, SSL2000): You can choose how to look at it:
     http://db.kph.tuwien.ac.at/FMPro?-DB=LE.fp3&-Lay=NET&-Format=LE_overview.htm&-Max=99&module_ID=36&-SortField=LE_ID_new&-Find
(Username: espace. Password: _ _espace_ _ ) or download in pdf Format:
http://espace.kph.tuwien.ac.at/hst2000/maiani.pdf (805 kB).


© CERN and High School Teachers Programme at CERN  Last modified: 28 June 2002