Project on Interactive Screen Experiments

Overview

Objectives

The objective of the project is to investigate whether physics education in Africa can benefit from the use of Interactive Screen Experiments (ISEs) and whether African physics departments could also develop their own ISEs. An explanation of what ISEs are, how they are produced, and how they are applied in physics education is given in section Links. As a pilot project, the use of ISEs developed in Berlin, will be tested in the Department of Physics at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Preparations for this pilot project began during the visit of Dr. Kenneth Kaduki of the University of Nairobi to Berlin in September 2003 (see section Reports). 

History

In the summer of 1999, Prof. Dr. Rudolf Rass, physicist at the Technische Universität Berlin, approached Dr. Jürgen Theiss, founder and chief co-ordinator of the Berlin-Nairobi Physics Student Exchange, with the idea to use ISEs, which are developed in his research group, in physics education in Africa. Since Prof. Rass had difficulties in establishing contacts to African physcisits, he was interested in benefitting from the links the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange maintains to the Physics Department at the University of Nairobi. Dr. Theiss was delighted about Prof. Rass' idea, especially because it would also enrich the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange. A contact to Dr. Kenneth Kaduki at the University of Nairobi was readily established. As a pilot project, Dr. Theiss suggested to train a Berlin-Nairobi physics exchange student in Berlin in the presentation of ISEs, so that the exchange student could present ISEs at the University of Nairobi. This would have allowed to assess whether an application of ISEs at the University of Nairobi is, in principal, feasable. Unfortunately, the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange turned out not to have the extra capacity in 1999 to carry out such a project.

In March 2003, Florian Weissbach introduced Karsten Markus to the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange. Mr. Markus has been working on ISEs as a teaching assistent of Dr. Jürgen Kirstein, who invented ISEs. Mr. Markus had also studied at the University of  Cape Town, South Africa. Because of his work with ISEs and his experience of studying physics in Africa, he became very interested in determining whether  physics education in Africa could benefit from ISEs, exactly as Prof. Rass suggested 4 years earlier. Mr. Markus has joined the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange and now represents the capacity the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange was lacking in 1999. He began his new project on ISEs by inviting Dr. Kaduki to Berlin in September 2003 in order to begin building a strong collaboration with him. With his leadership Mr. Markus will undoubtedly establish and  co-ordinate a successful project on ISEs within the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange. 

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