Remote Internet Lab of GymKT
How did it all start?
Since 2000, we have felt that the Internet has quite strong teaching potential. So we started to create a physics website to collect available teaching 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 glory days, the website even reached almost a hundred thousand visitors a year! And for a physics site originally intended only for the needs of a regional Grammar-school, this was truly impressive.
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 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 webpages of interactive online simulations in mathematics, physics and astronomy are truly phenomenal!
However, we were still attracted by the use of the Internet for remote control of a real physics experiment, where the measurements are performed on real apparatus, 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 – Measurement of thermal dependence of electrical resistance of metals and semiconductors – was designed as 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 Grammar-school J. Vrchlicky in Klatovy, fully directed (and funded) by its creator.
The laboratory became the first high school remote internet laboratory in the Pilsen region and the first grammar school laboratory in the Czech Republic after its launch (12 April 2011, 7:44 AM).
The purpose of the laboratory is not only to support practical physics teaching, but also to gather experience with the operation of a remote Internet laboratory. Due to the attractiveness of this topic, we expect to continue to create new tasks. 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).
On the other hand, no one can imagine what a nightmare it really is to keep the remote laboratory running all the time. It's not so much hard to create a remote task as it is to keep it running permanently. The period of the coronavirus pandemic and distance learning in particular was a stress test. Remote experiments suddenly became almost the only (globally) meaningful way to conduct 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!
Received awards
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). As the first award was the 1st prize in the competition "Creative teacher 2011"in the category "Learning tool" and in 2014 was awarded the prize of the Pilsen region: "Successful Teacher 2014".
Next successes were characterized by the creativity of our students. Design and construction of the experiment "Load characteristics 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 - developing a booking system for remote experiments and constructing a new experiment "Study of diffraction of light".
