Physics Education Network (1999 - 2005)

       This initiative was an Internet service for the virtual tutoring of in service physics teachers. Since middle of 1990 the teaching material (traditional and, in particular, multimedia material) was numerously exploded and – via the Internet – worldwide accessable, e. g. more than 103 applets were available for physics teaching (see MPTL). A teacher at school cannot follow this evolution due to time constraints etc. According to our opinion such an Internet service must contain only evaluated material; it takes too much time to check all the available material for one topic/lesson.

  

       The content of this Internet service was such that we offered support for the teacher in all kinds of his or her work: to prepare a lesson (to buy suitable instruments, to choose suited transparencies...), to teach a lesson (to offer teachware, problems for a lesson...), to coach students (to render information for project work, to answer questions...), to provide discussion boards, to support further studies (to suggest books for self-studying, information about colloquia at physics departments...), to offer teacher training courses on modern topics in physics like Seeing atoms ? (link, in German).
       PEN was one of the first websites created to support physics teachers in Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as in Germany.  

       The website of project PEN is no longer available. A more detailed description in English can be found here, in German here.