by/par M. Nantel, Photonics Research Ontario, Suite 331, 60 St-George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7
The world of physics education is full of opportunities and challenges. For example, whereas every week new discoveries capture the public's imaginations, it is increasingly harder to recruit students into physics undergraduate programs; the teachers and university professors who actively pursue physics education research are developing great methods and resources to facilitate learning in physics, but their discoveries are not widely known and too rarely implemented; while new programs in physics can be expensive to start and could benefit from free industry equipment donations, many such potential partnerships go unrealised. Better communication between physicists and their principal audiences (public, industrial and governmental) and between physics educators themselves (across all levels of the educational system) can go a long way in capturing opportunities and reducing the impact of the challenges. It is becoming increasingly important that there be effective networking tools in the education community, and this paper presents a few examples of such tools that have brought good results for all involved (locally, on the national scale and globally). These tools are easily implemented and have had major impacts on several programs in photonics and in the science & technology awareness communities.