TPT WebSights column draft for April 2008:

WebSights features announcements and reviews of select sites of interest to physics teachers. All sites are copyright by their authors. This column is available as a web page at <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.Edu/pubs/WebSights/>.

If you have successfully used a physics website that you feel is outstanding and appropriate for WebSights, please email me the URL and a description at <macisadl@buffalostate.edu> – especially if you can describe how you use it to teach or learn physics.

The Latin-American Journal of Physics Education (LAJPE)

A new freely-available physics education journal obtained from <http://www.journal.lapen.org.mx> publishes papers in Spanish, English and Portuguese. LAJPE is published by the Research Center on Applied Science and Advanced Technology of National Polytechnic Institute (CICATA-IPN) <http://www.cicata.ipn.mx> located in Mexico City and the Latin American Physics Education Network (LAPEN) <http://www.lapen.org.mx>, with a number of well-known AAPT figures on the journal's International Advisory Committee. Papers from Chile, Cuba, Spain, France, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Syria and the US appeared in LAJPE 1(2). I particularly enjoyed the Viennot paper on common instructional representations that are in fact over-selections that can lead to student misinterpretations.

LAJPE is a new journal joining several journals dedicated to physics education, including the Institute of Physics' Physics Education <http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/0031-9120>, the AAPT's own Physics Teacher <http://ojps.aip.org/tpt/>, the American Journal of Physics <http://ojps.aip.org/ajp/>, the APS-AAPT Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research (PRST: PER) <http://prst-per.aps.org/> and for those interested in physics teacher preparation, the Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online (JPTEO) <http://www.journal.lapen.org.mx/>. Lots of good reading, with some freely available articles at all sites.

Contributed by Cesar Mora, Editor-in-Chief, LAJPE <ceml36@gmail.com>.

Online University Physics Lectures from MIT indexed for AP Physics instructors

Dr. Walter Lewin's 100-plus lectures from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OpenCourseware site at <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/> three semester calculus-based introductory physics survey course sequence of Newtonian Mechanics (8.01), Electricity and Magnetism (8.02) and Vibrations and Waves (8.03) were reported in last month's WebSights. We recently learned that the kind folk at MIT have indexed both the lectures and associated artifacts (course slides and notes) by topic as part of a collection of materials aimed at AP Physics instructor and students available from <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/hs/physics/physics/>. Nearby, materials for teaching AP Biology and Chemistry are also available.

Harvard's Online Astrophysics Data Service (ADS) includes some science education articles

Pat Viele, Cornell Physics Librarian writes that the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) has added a new feature especially for science teachers. The service is called Science Education Search and allows one to search across many science education journals at once and even locate a review article. In order to use the service, which is free, one must set up an account. To set up an account based on your email address, go to: <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/> and click on "sign on" in the upper right hand side of the screen. Register, and then go to the main page: <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/>. From the main page of ADS, click on highly customizable query forms and choose Science Education Search.

Contributed by Pat Viele, Physics and Astronomy Librarian, Cornell University <ptv1@cornell.edu>.

National Center for Optics and Photonics Education (OP-TEC) site

The OP-TEC site <http://www.op-tec.org/> is dedicated to helping recruit and prepare students for future careers as photonics technicians. The site includes much recruitment and career information (videos, handouts, brochures and slide presentations), together with a collection of optics teaching resources (photonics links).

Contributed by Julie Foreman, Associate Director of Partnerships and Communications, National Center for Optics and Photonics Education <foreman@cord.org>.