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Remote Internet Lab of GymKT

How did it all start?

Since the year 2000, we have felt that the Internet has quite a strong educational potential. So we started to create a physics website to collect available educational materials for students and teachers. This site, called "Fyzikální kabinet GymKT" (now called FyzKAB), developed both in content and technical aspects over the next ten years.

At the height of its popularity, the site was attracting nearly a hundred thousand visitors a year! And for a physics site originally designed to serve the needs of a local high school, this was truly impressive.

e-learning

However, the mere publication of "static" information proved insufficient for modern teaching. This was not changed by any attempts to create animated educational presentations or by attempts to create educational videos. A certain intermediate stage of our online efforts was the period of so-called online simulations. This was inspired by the interactive simulations of our German colleague Walter Fendt, whose sites of interactive online simulations in mathematics, physics and astronomy are truly phenomenal!

Remote-LAB GymKT

However, we were still attracted by the idea of using the Internet to remotely control a real physics experiment, where the measurements are made on real equipment, and where the obtained measurement result is the result of a real experiment. The necessary connection between the experimenter and the physical reality is provided by a computer with an Internet connection. The combination of physics, electronics and computers inspired us to create the first remote experiment.

The concept of the first task – Temperature Dependence of Resistance of Metals and Semiconductors – was designed as a part of the final thesis of the DVPP-RIF 3 study at the Technical University of Liberec. The implementation of the remote experiment and the whole environment of the remote laboratory took place at the J. Vrchlicky grammar school in Klatovy, fully directed (and financed) by its creator.

The laboratory became the first high school remote Internet laboratory in the Pilsen region and the first high school laboratory in the Czech Republic after its launch (April 12, 2011, 7:44 AM).

The purpose of the laboratory is not only to support practical physics teaching, but also to gain experience in the operation of a remote Internet laboratory. Due to the attractiveness of this topic we expect to create new tasks in the future. Based on the experience of building and operating the experiments of the remote laboratory, we intend to create further tasks either as student projects or as Students' Professional Activities (SPA).

Remote-LAB GYmKT - panorama
An interactive panoramic view of the physics part of the lab experiments

On the other hand, no one can imagine what a nightmare it is to keep the remote lab running all the time. It's not so hard to create a remote task as it is to keep it up and running. The time of the coronavirus pandemic, and remote learning in particular, was a stress test. Remote experiments suddenly became almost the only (globally) meaningful way to do physics experiments in the classroom. But that's another part of the remote lab story…


We will therefore be very grateful for all your comments and insights!



Awards Received

The laboratory continues to receive various awards (after a successful defense of the final work of the DVPP-RIF 3 study, within which the first task of the laboratory was developed). The first award was the 1st prize in the competition "Creative Teacher 2011" in the category "Learning tool" and in 2014 the award of the Pilsen Region: "Successful Teacher 2014".

The next successes were characterized by the creativity of our students. The design and construction of the experiment "Load characteristic of the source" was awarded in the student competition "Technical Olympics of the Pilsen Region 2015". Two years later (2017) two teams were awarded in the same competition – development of a booking system for remote experiments and construction of a new experiment "Study of diffraction phenomena".

1

USB Board K8055

The experimental USB from K8055 (by Velleman®) was used together with our K8055-MARIE application (developed by us) in our first concept of remote tasks. (see the section For Developers).

2

iSES Web Control

Thanks to the support of the European Regional Development Fund, we were able to extend the laboratory to the role of "Oscillations on the spring", which is solved on the iSES Web Control platform.

3

Arduino + Ethernet Shield

We are developing a completely new way of driving based on experience with remote experiments both previous concepts. The solution is now focused on the use of the Arduino module.

Map of our visitors

When you say remote Internet lab, everyone definitely think about the question: What is the distance from which users connect? Thanks to FlagCounter service we can record countries from which our visitors come. The service has been running since February 24, 2012, and on the attached map you can see the flags of countries from which our users have visited us.

Free counters!

Participates (or has participated) in the development of the Remote-LAB

RNDr. Miroslav Panoš, Ph.D.

Author, sponsor and co-owner of the Remote-LAB GymKT

  • author of the experiments:

  • » VILI (©2011)
  • » NICoL (©2012)
  • » DERIL (©2013)
  • » CEcIL (©2014)
  • co-author of the experiment ZaCHaRIAS » ©2015–16

  • co-author of the experiment DiANE » ©2018–??

  • developer of the control application K8055-MARIE » ©2014–19


doc. RNDr. František Lustig, CSc.

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University

  • author of the experiment IRMA » ©2015


Lukáš Holeček, Martin Jílek, Petr Trnka

students of J. Vrchlicky Grammar School, Klatovy

  • authors of the experiment ZaCHaRIAS » ©2015–16


Adam Krátký, Václav Hrabík

students of J. Vrchlicky Grammar School, Klatovy

  • authors of the experiment DiANE » ©2017–18


Karel Patlejch

student of J. Vrchlicky Grammar School, Klatovy

  • author of the Reservation System » ©2017–18


Authors: Remote-LAB GymKT

Special thanks to the authors of the language localizations of the remote experiment control panels:

Mgr. Jiří Morava

localización en español  es flag

  • translation of experiments:

Anastasiia Plotnikova, Ph. D.

локализация на русский язык  ru flag

  • translation of experiments:

Андрій Ткачук

Українська локалізація  ua flag

  • translation of experiments:

Thanks for Translations

The remaining translations are (yet) created using Google Translate or DeepL Translator.
If you want to contribute to a better translation, CONTACT US!


covid-19 FeedBack

Little feedback about our lab::
(mainly from the time of the coronavirus pandemic)

FeedBack
„Dear colleagues,
Thank you for your work with this lab, especially lately I like to use it for our students. If you are interested, I can send you a decent report of the individual tasks as a thank you, maybe it would be useful for you.“
Zdeněk H. (Prague, Feb 19, 2021, 13:14)
FeedBack
„Good afternoon,
Your remote lab is a precision job that I really like! I am currently such a "teacher rookie", I fell into teaching because my original engineering position disappeared due to coronavirus. But I must say that I really enjoy learning.“
Ing. Jiří U. (Feb 16, 2021, 19:49)
FeedBack
„Have a nice day,
Thank you so much for the great remote experiments. Greetings from Pardubice and I wish you health and happiness in the New Year!“
Monika D. (Pardubice, Jan 10, 2021, 19:52)
FeedBack
„Good afternoon,
I would like to congratulate the authors and developers of the remote lab at GymKT on a great project and thank them for their work. In the current pandemic situation, I used RL in my university teaching of future physics teachers and it worked great. Thanks again for your work!“
Petr K. (Prague, Nov 20, 2020, 10:29)
FeedBack
„Good afternoon,
The light bulb left you on a remote VA light bulb experiment. So just let you know. Thank you for your remote lab. It allows me to teach physics in a meaningful way these days. You're amazing!“
Jan Š. (Prague, Nov 16, 2020, 21:55)