Here you can find information of past training events of FRONTIERS at National Level.
Bringing Nobel Prize Physics to the Classroom
Short Description
In the framework of the Open Classroom Conference 2021 https://openclassroom2021.ea.gr/ organized by EA and EDEN, an online training workshop was offered in collaboration with the Reinforce project:
“FRONTIERS, Bringing Nobel Prize Physics to the Classroom”. In framework of the workshop, participants were informed about the framework and methodology of the FRONTIERS project. They worked with the full set of educational resources developed by the project consortium as well as participating educators on how to introduce Nobel Prize Physics to the Classroom. They discussed best practices of implementation with students and focused on the educational Activity: “Mass Energy Equivalence”. A round table discussion followed in order to discuss merits and barriers of introducing these topics to our students.
A recording of the workshop can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF3gkctYrLM&ab_channel=EllinogermanikiAgogi
Black Holes and Gravitational Waves in the Classroom
Short Description
A 2-day online teacher training workshop on black holes and gravitational waves for Greek teachers was organized by Ellinogermaniki Agogi and IASA with the support of EGO in December 2020 with the participation of more than 100 Greek Teachers. During the first day, the FRONTIERS team had the opportunity to present to the participants the Physics of Gravitational Waves, guide them through a virtual visit to the Virgo Gravitational Wave Detector, discuss with them the history and new paradigm of Gravitational Observation and present educational activities that can help incorporate these activities to the school curricula.
During the second day of the FRONTIERS workshop for Greek teachers on Black Holes and Gravitational Waves, professor Theocharis Apostolatos from the University of Athens introduced the participants to fundamental aspects of General Relativity and Black holes and guided them through the discoveries that earned Penrose, Genzel and Ghez the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. Teachers were introduced to the dedicated FRONTIERS educational scenarios on black holes and the expansion of the universe and engaged in a fruitful discussion regarding the introduction of these topics to the school classroom.
High Energy Physics in the school Classroom
Short Description
At 18-19 February 2021, IASA in cooperation with EA organized a two-day event dedicated to High Energy physics and aimed mainly towards high school teachers (although more than 100 teachers of all levels were allowed to participate). On the first day Prof Chatzifotiadou, a member of the ALICE experiment of CERN gave a talk titled “Introduction to the LHC, the ALICE experiment and heavy ion physics”. Following that a virtual visit to the ALICE experiment was hosted by prof. Chatzifotiadou. The participating teachers had the opportunity to follow a guided tour of the detector and the ALICE control room and discuss with the host about the details of the experiment. The last event of the day was a presentation of the FRONTIERS high energy physics scenaria developed by IASA and aimed towards high school students. The second day began with a talk by the University of Crete prof. Kyritsis titled “Elementary particles from experiment to theory”. Following that the citizen science activity “New Particle Search at LHC” developed by IASA was presented. With this activity, the general public, including students can help scientists look for long lived particles that have not yet been discovered. The day was concluded with a round table discussion on the activities presented and way of introducing them to Greek classrooms.
The agenda of the event in Greek can be found here: https://indico.ea.gr/event/1/.
Teaching the Universe (Enseigner l’Univers)
Short Description
The teachers training workshop “Enseigner l’Univers”, organized by FRONTIERS partner PCCP, took place, fully online, on the 6th – 7th May 2021.The workshop was included in the official teacher training offer of both the Académie de Paris and Académie de Créteil (two of the three school departments of the Paris area). Thanks to this format the organizing team were able to train 36 teachers rather than the 30 that we initially proposed to the Academies. The workshop involved 15 researchers of the APC laboratory as well as other laboratories in Paris and saw the exceptional participation of Prof. Joseph Silk, who gave an introductory lecture about present status and open problems in cosmology. Moreover, in addition to the traditional courses about astroparticle physics and cosmology, a new course about Higgs boson physics was proposed. The PCCP fully exploited the experience and tools developed in FRONTIERS, both for teachers practicals and for the evaluation of the workshop itself. The workshop was organized over two days, via Zoom. One and a half days were dedicated to 1 hour lectures from researchers in cosmology and astroparticle physics. Half a day was dedicated to practical workshops on FRONTIERS Demonstrators. The teachers could choose between a cosmology activity on the Hubble law or a gravitational activity on the Michelson interferometer and the detection of gravitational waves. Both workshops were managed by the PCCP team participating in FRONTIERS. Teachers feedbacks was extremely very positive. A common positive feedback concerned the level of depth of the subjects treated, as well as the participation of so many different researchers, each one an expert in a different field of cosmology and astroparticle physics. One negative remark was about the duration of the workshop: given the amount of information given, a three-day workshop would be more suited, with shorter sessions each day. This remark was prompted by the fully online nature of the workshop.