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Friends, Over the past few years we have been working to make our collection of lecture demonstrations more usable, more current, and more accessible to the faculty. During the summer of 2010 there was a major cleaning and reorganization of the
lecture demo room next to Robinson 253. We have also begun a process of documenting our demos. You can find our documentation to date in two places: 1)
In the “Lecture Demos” folder on the shared Q: drive; 2)
In a binder in the lecture demo room. Each demo has a one-page description in a standard format, including one or more pictures, keywords, a brief description and explanation, and comments for the instructor. The collection is pretty limited and spotty right now, but it’s
a beginning. In both places you can also find an interesting article from Eric Mazur’s group at Harvard about how to use, and how not to use, demos in order to promote student understanding. You can help this process in at least three ways: 1)
If you remove any materials, equipment, or anything else from the lecture demo room,
even for a short time, fill in the sign out sheet (on the door as you leave), so we know where it’s gone. Cross it out when you return the materials. 2)
If you do a good demo in your own class, take a few minutes to document it – preferably using one of the existing sheets as a template, but if that’s too much trouble, just email the information to me and I’ll format it. Shannon has
a digital camera that you can borrow, and Jim can help you take photos and write it up in the appropriate form. Then send it to me and I’ll see it gets added to the collection. 3)
If you know of a good demo that you think we ought to have, or if there’s an existing demo that needs repair, replacement or sprucing up, let me know and we’ll see what we can do. With your help we can continue to improve our teaching infrastructure. Roger Tobin Professor and Chair Department of Physics and Astronomy Tufts University 617-627-5461 |