Electro-Lab Kit

With the Electro-Lab Kit, the Siemens Stiftung encourages and supports imaginative experimenting during physics classes.

Numerous studies show what fascinating and successful physics lessons are all about: they rely heavily on experiments. Experiments illustrate physical phenomena and help students obtain a better and deeper understanding of natural-science issues. The combination of theory and practice helps students develop better cognitive skills and learn “scientific thinking“. However, life-like experiments are still vastly underrepresented in natural sciences and technology education. Teachers usually have to do without well-equipped physics labs, appropriate curricula, or adequate materials for experiments. Many times, the acquisition of adequate quantities of materials is too expensive for the schools. And with the offers currently available, establishing a didactic link between school experiments and real applications is hardly ever possible.

With the Electro-Lab Kit – a case full of materials for “Learning by doing” for the tenth grade and up – the Siemens Stiftung intends to help teachers enrich their physics classes with educationally processed, realistic and practice-oriented experiments. Selection of elec-tronics and electrical engineering as the main focus was quite intentional. Because these topics are still not (nearly) represented enough in today’s curricula, even though they play an outstanding role in all areas of our day-to-day lives. The multifaceted experiments make possible by the box provide a valuable insight into the latest industrial applications. That way, students get to discover e.g. the role voltage, induction or transistors play in modern technologies, or how much “stuff” is really contained in LED color displays, electronic cameras or high-voltage systems. All that is needed is the student’s willingness to study on their own initiative, the courage to try out new things, and personal inventive talent.

The Electro-Lab Kit is currently being tested and evaluated in an intensive pilot phase. Having already been rated as good instructional material for physics teaching by the Chair for Physics Education at the Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, the Electro-Lab Kit is now undergoing practical testing in use in routine teaching at schools. In a four-month test phase the Siemens Stiftung has provided four schools with the Electro-Lab Kit. The pilot schools are in four German states, Bavaria, Hamburg, Hessen and North Rhine-Westphalia. The schools using the experimentation kits in regular physics lessons are the Albert-Schweitzer School in Kassel, the Anno-Gymnasium in Siegburg, the Luise-Meitner Gymnasium in Unterhaching near Munich and the Kurt-Körber-Gymnasium in Hamburg. The suggestions and proposals for changes made by students and teachers testing the lab kit will be taken into account for the further development of the kit and the accompanying material after completion of the pilot phase.

First teacher further training with the Electro-Lab Kit in South Africa

Teacher workshops on the subject of “Innovative student experimentation sets in science teaching” were held at the Cape Town German School and at three other high schools in Cape Town between November 26 and December 2, 2009. The teachers were given an insight into the various possible uses of experimentation sets in the classroom and had the opportunity to carry out experiments them-selves with the experimentation materials provided.
Teachers from the kindergarten, primary school and senior school of the Deutsche Internationale Schule (German International School) in Cape Town took part in the training course. According to the learning level of their students they were given introductions to the use of the Discovery Box (Kindergarten), the NaWi-Box (primary school) and the Electro-Lab Kit as well as other material relating to medical technology, renewable energies, measurement  and electricity (middle and top grades of the Gymnasium).
Teacher workshops are also being held at three high schools Hoërskool Tygerberg, Hoërskool Stellenberg, both in Cape Town, and Paul Roos Gimnasium in Stellenbosch. Teachers will be trained here in English on how to use the Electro-Lab Kit and experimentation sets on the subjects of medical tech-nology and renewable energies that are designed for teaching at middle and top grade.