KSU Physics Education Bike Project

This project is a multi-national effort to collaborate on the adaptation and creation of pedagogical materials.  The bicycle, a highly developed yet simple device, is the focus of this effort.  Students and faculty are using materials developed in a variety of countries and creating new materials using contemporary multimedia.  This effort began almost 15 years ago when Robert Fuller and Dean Zollman created the videodisc Energy Transformations featuring the Bicycle at about the same time that the PLON Project in The Netherlands developed the teaching module Traffic and the British Open University developed a course on Materials and Structures which featured the bicycle.  These efforts were independent of each other.  Since that time we have worked to combine instructional materials from these and other countries.

Project
Web Site at the Unversity of Amsterdam

Contents of KSU Bicycle Project Web Site

•  Description
and Application of 2000-2001 International Exchange Program

•  International
Study & Exchange Program

European Community. and United States students enrolled in one of the
partner institutions will become part of an international team of students
who will investigate various scientific and cultural aspects of the bicycle,
and create multimedia instructional materials about their activities. The
students will become part of a three-year effort that will link international
students by computer and bring them together periodically to work face-to-face.

• Workshops
on the Bicycle in Science, Technology and Culture, 1995

These workshop, held in Great Britain and The Netherlands, brought
together science and technology educators  and multimedia experts
from the U.S., Australia, and several European countries.  Together
they developed plans for pedagogical, multimedia materials for teaching
about the bicycle.  This effort led to the International Study and
Exchange Program.  U.S. participation in these workshops was supported
by the National Science Foundation.

• International
Conference on the Bicycle in Science Pedagogy

This conference, held in Lincoln, Nebraska, was jointly hosted by the
University of Nebraska – Lincoln and Kansas State University.  Multimedia
specialists, researchers on the science and technology of the bicycle and
physics educators worked to gather to lay the basic ground work for a series
of lessons on the science and technology of the bicycle and their cultural
adaptations in different cultures.  The conference was supported by
the Association of Big 8  (now Big 12) Universities.

• Resources

• Bicycle
Links