Physics in Primary Schools
I just came back from the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress in St.John’s Newfoundland and Labrador. It was a very interesting conference. It was especially exciting to see that the Division of Physics Education had 4 sessions and each one was very well attended. We had more than 50 people attend one of the sessions (the total number of conference attendees was 450) and there were many parallel sessions. I would like to mention that many of the physics education sessions focused on physics outreach and physics in elementary schools. I applaud this effort. We have to make sure our elementary students have an opportunity to learn physics before getting into high school. I learned about a number of excellent resources. One of them was presented by an invited speaker from the UK – Ann Marks. She shared with us an excellent resource she created with the support of the Institute of Physics: http://www.iop.org/activity/outreach/resources/pips/ It is an excellent resource for physics teachers and for anybody who is thinking of doing physics outreach in elementary schools. Take a look at it. 