JD-style Executive Summary: We all know how helpful videos can be in
physics teaching, but they also have some downsides. The use of
well-timed short animated GIFs, not only solves some of these problems
but has other advantages too. So I've created a Physics GIF Gallery,
especially for physics teachers. It's a free educational resource that
I'd love you to use and share (and maybe help me build it out too!).
Here's the link: http://physicsfootnotes.com/physl-gifs
Longer Story...
Here are some of the problems/limitations with videos when you're in a
classroom setting:
-- You don't always have access to social video-sharing platforms like
YouTube and Facebook
-- Videos get taken down by YouTube all the time, especially for
violating copyright. (Sorry folks, it was there when I prepared this
lesson last night!)
-- The performance of video is unreliable, often requiring better
bandwidth than the teaching facility offers
-- Unless you're playing the whole video, you have to muck around
finding the exact location where a cool effect happens
A well-timed short animated GIF can solve these issues in many instances
and can be great for:
-- Grabbing attention at the start of a lesson
-- Motivating an upcoming concept
-- Re-igniting a failing lesson
-- Stimulating a class discussion
-- Filling in an unanticipated gap in a useful way
-- Focusing on the precise phenomena without clunky overhead and time
wastage
So I've set up a Physics GIF Gallery which I'm very happy to freely
share with the physics teaching community. In particular, I can help
make sure:
-- Only the best GIFs will be presented, saving you time searching
through pages and pages of rubbish on social sharing sites
-- There are no broken image links (because I'm personally hosting all
the images)
-- Original sources are properly attributed (shielding you from
infringement issues)
-- Annotations exist to give you ideas for how you might use an
animation in a lesson
(Keep in mind it is a work in progress though, and I've only recently
started, so not all of this is there yet.)
Anyhow, if you have a few moments feel free to pop over and check it out
here:
-- an astronaut 'weighing' himself in space
-- a shockwave generated by a real volcano eruption
-- a superb demonstration for addition of relative velocities
-- some awesome physics teacher fails ;-)
If you like it, feel free to join in and help, and also to tell others
about it!