Who Uses TPF?
TPF materials have the potential to serve an entire spectrum of users with physical science and physics resources for grades K-12. These users include the following but are not limited to experienced teachers, new and cross-over teachers, students, and mentors. A complete array of services is offered that allows a teacher to:
- Collaborate and share selected materials with other teachers and students;
- Browse the collection by course type, grade level, or topic for units and unit elements;
- Access resources that include high quality labs, tutorials, teacher reference materials, lesson plans, activities, and assessments with many items to choose from at all levels of instruction;
- Setup and use the filing cabinet to store, organize, and collaborate with students and others;
- Upload links and teacher-developed materials for evaluation and inclusion in TPF repository; and,
- Help to build a community of teachers with common interests and needs by sharing hints, teaching practices, challenges, and successes.
How is TPF Organized?
Items within the collection are listed as unit elements, which are organized by subject and are examples of web resources for that topic (see Figure 4). Resources are included based upon quality of content, ease of use, alignment with standards, and best practices for the teaching of physical sciences. Example unit elements that can be arranged to build curricula are included, along with activities, labs, lesson plans, simulations, assessments, and curriculum support materials.
From the home page, the user can browse featured items and resources, download featured lesson plans, search the items in the collection, and can go directly to the units and unit elements using the left navigation menu. All resources are available to registered users only.
Figure 4. Organization of the home page on TPF and feature types
Searching for Resources on TPF
A search can be filtered by item name, category, general subject, specific subject, resource type, target grade level, or user role as shown in Figure 5. The user can also search within all of the ComPADRE collections.
Figure 5. TPF search options and categories
An advanced search can also be done by topic, category, subject area, or keyword. Possible topics include measurement, motion, forces, momentum, energy, springs, heat and temperature, wave energy, electrostatics, electricity and circuits, magnetism, electromagnetism, optics, particles and interactions, and astronomy. Within each topic, elements are found that allow the teacher to assemble lessons on any physical science topic.
For the New Teacher
Located on the left navigation menu are links to materials especially for new teachers, advanced search options, and other features to be highlighted later in this article. Under each course type, topics and units are listed as shown in Figure 6. Teachers of elementary, middle, or high school physical science or physics can find lesson plans, activities, labs, and assessments.
Figure 6. Materials for new teachers, topics and units, and course types
K-8 teachers and teacher mentor materials have been selected to be developmentally appropriate and safe for use in pre-high school classrooms. For example, Figure 7 shows a screenshot when Physical Science K-8 and course type was selected. The topic list is consistent across all course types but the unit elements were filtered for middle and elementary school use. Since some of the items in TPF are appropriate for more than one course and may be found by searching across more than one course type. Within each topic, units are described by example unit elements, which are organized by categories of activity, content support, tutorials, and assessments, depending on the type and number of resources available for that category.
Figure 7. Topics are listed under each course type
One or more unit elements are listed under each unit as seen in Figure 8. The “bread crumbs” (italicized text to show the path the user has taken) in the upper left corner of the screen will help teachers navigate through the materials. Clicking on the “plus” sign to the left of each unit element will reveal more information about that element and collection items listed underneath. The categories include activities, content support for teachers, student tutorials, assessment, references, and others.
Figure 8. Unit elements and items
Clicking on the item will bring up the detail page containing a short description, a link to the material, URL or location in TPF repository, and links to other relevant subjects as seen in Figure 9. Also available on each detail page is information about the intended user and citations. If a teacher has a comment or suggestion, clicking on the “Suggestion” tab will provide an opportunity to share feedback.
Figure 9. Item detail page
