Teaching and Learning Physics with Interactive Video

APR 01, 1994

Using computer‐controlled digital video, students con view and analyze the physics of events as common as the snapping of a towel, as graceful as the motion of a dancer or as extraordinary as the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881428

Dean A. Zollman

Robert G. Fuller

In 1961 the psychologist Jerome Bruner concluded a discussion of innovative teaching materials of the late 1950s by saying, “The intelligent use of [audiovisual] resources will depend upon how well we are able to integrate the technique of the filmmaker or the program producer with the technique and wisdom of the skillful teacher.” The Physical Sciences Study Committee had just completed a series of films that attempted to bring together current film technology, the expertise of the film producer and the knowledge and experience of outstanding physics teachers. Today a critic of pedagogical films would find much to change in the PSSC films. Yet they did open new territory for physics teachers, and parts of these films survive today in the videodisc series Physics: Cinema Classics.

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References

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More about the Authors

Dean A. Zollman. Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas.

Robert G. Fuller. University of Nebraska, Lincoln.