Adding the human touch

Subha Das Mollick

Many students do not like physics because it is too cold and objective, devoid of emotion. To get these students interested in physics, one may try reading out passages from popular science books.

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The biophysics of walking

Geetha Iyer

Walking is something most of us take for granted. Modern day lifestyle having turned sedentary, it is now the prime form of exercise. Walking naturally brings to focus the limbs and by extension a memory of lessons of the skeletal and muscular system.

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Teaching physics, the Waldorf way

Gopa Malaker David

In the early years, in a Waldorf school, the kindergarten is spent in free play and listening to stories. Here, learning takes place primarily through imitating and repeating what the teacher does. As we move on to the grades, children learn more out of love, trust, and respect for the teacher.

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Ideas to enhance learning

Kannan Ramaswamy

Teaching that imparts learning is a challenging task. The real challenge for all teachers at all levels is to find out whether their teaching translates into learning. How do we know whether learning has happened? The answer to this question can only come from cleverly directed investigations.

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An inquiring class

Meena Sriram

Physics is one subject that can be very fascinating as children can apply concepts and see the consequences immediately. It is less abstract than the other sciences thus leaving little scope for imagination.

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Through the looking glass

Pinaki Das and HC Verma

In December 2013, the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly proclaimed 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015). Thus 2015 is a great year to begin, or add to, activities about light that can be conducted in a classroom.

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Stories to amuse and entertain

Arun Elassery

The mainstream educational discourse stridently insists that science and mathematics are the most important and also the most difficult subjects that children need to learn. Here are some contrary expert opinions.

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Innovative exhibits, spectacular results

Sanjana Krishnan

On the 17th of January, students of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, set up an exhibition called Paradigm. It was a wonderful exercise in learning by doing. The students were encouraged to take up topics from the syllabus that interested them and design innovative experiments to illustrate some concepts embedded in these topics.

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Teaching to think

Tejasvi Dantuluri

There is a growing apathy in students towards science. One reason (or misconception) is that it is a tough classroom subject and another is that it is the clever student’s cup of tea. This notion has led to both fear and stress in pupils as they keep encountering the subject at different levels of their education.

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Making mechanics less mechanical

Kripa Gowrishankar and Richard Fernandes

Galileo is credited with discovering the laws of the simple pendulum. It is a much told story that he observed the swinging of the lantern in the cathedral of Pisa (whose bell tower is the famous Leaning Tower) during a church service. He is said to have timed it against his pulse, which one presumes he had suspected to be of uniform temporal nature.

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