NEXT STOP IS ARMENIA, FOR ALOP VOLUNTEERS SHARING HANDS-ON APPROACH TO TEACHING OPTICS AND PHOTONICS
SPIE Newsroom
Oct 31 2012
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — An innovative program that trains
physics educators in a hands-on approach to teaching optics and
photonics will present its next workshop in November in Armenia.
Volunteer instructors with Active Learning in Optics and Photonics
(ALOP) will gather from around the world 18-23 November at the Armenian
State Pedagogical University in Yerevan for the training session. ALOP
is sponsored by UNESCO, SPIE, the international society for optics and
photonics, the ICTP (Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical
Physics), the National Academies of the USA, and Essilor.
Workshop facilitators in Yerevan will be professors David Sokoloff,
University of Oregon (USA); Zohra Ben Lakhdar, UNESCO-L’Oreal Laureate,
University of Tunis (Tunisia); and Alexander Mazzolini, Swinburne
University of Technology (Australia); assisted by Joseph Niemela,
ICTP, and Juste Jean-Paul Ngome Abiaga, UNESCO.
Professors Souad Lahmar (University of Tunis, Tunisia), Vengu
Lakshminarayanan (University of Waterloo, Canada), and Ivan Culaba
(Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) also are on the ALOP
facilitator team.
Modules cover topics such as lenses, optics of the eye, interference,
diffraction, photonics, optical communications, and atmospheric
optics. Workshops utilize materials and supplies that can be obtained
locally and are low in cost, to help participating educators easily
incorporate and sustain the lessons within their own STEM (science,
technology engineering, and mathematics) curricula.
Among the challenges that local participants face are classes that
are too large, lack of adequate equipment, and set curricula that
leave little room for innovative teaching, organizers report — in
one extreme case, a participant represented a school in an area with
no electric power.
Planning is underway to implement workshops in Lebanon, Chad and
Ghana in 2013.
Recent workshops have been hosted by: ~UKigali Institute of Science
and Technology and the National University of Rwanda, in November
2011, with 41 participants from Burundi, Uganda, Democratic Republic
of Congo, and Rwanda. Local organizer was Professor Karemera Marembo
Claver of the National University of Rwanda, along with co-organizer
by Fedele Ndahayo, Dean of Sciences at the university.
~UInternational Center of Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel, Nepal, in
December 2011, with 27 participants from throughout Nepal. Organized
locally by Professor Deepak Subedi (Kathmandu University), assisted
by Professor Raju Khanal, the workshop had the additional goal of
training a group of Nepalese facilitators to present local workshops
and thereby train more local facilitators.
~UCentre National de Formation des Formateurs en Education, Carthage,
Tunisia, in March 2012, with 30 participants from Algeria, Cameroun,
Morocco, Central Africa, Chad, and Tunisia. The workshop was a
follow-up to a past year’s event, enabling participants to develop
more independence in setting up the learning modules and to gain
deeper knowledge in physics.
In 2011, the ALOP team was awarded the SPIE Educator Award in
recognition of the team’s achievements in bringing basic optics and
photonics training to teachers in the developing world. See more
information at
SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a
not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based
technologies. The Society serves nearly 225,000 constituents from
approximately 150 countries, offering conferences, continuing
education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of
interdisciplinary information exchange, professional growth, and
patent precedent. SPIE provided over $2.7 million in support of
education and outreach programs in 2011.
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