Loyola University Chicago

Department of Physics

Workshop Guidelines

Guidelines for Planning AAPT Workshops

The AAPT holds two meetings with workshops each year. Normally, the Winter meeting is held in January, and the summer meeting is held in August.

Winter Meeting

The Winter meeting is always held in a major hotel in a large city.

Because of this location the following comments will usually be true:

  1. The room assigned for a workshop may be much smaller and more crowded than a typical classroom. Small rooms in hotels are usually designed for a small business group rather than for active workshops.
  2. Hotels do not have chalkboards. If requested in advance large pads of paper (around 1 m square) mounted on an easel can often be provided for workshop leaders to write on.
  3. Overhead projectors and screens are generally available.
  4. Slide projectors and TV units with video playback units (VCR's) are available but must be requested in advance. These units exist in very limited numbers in hotels. Requests must be made well in advance of the workshop.
  5. Outdoor activities are virtually impossible.
  6. Computer availability is difficult to arrange and requires substantial advanced planning.
  7. Limited computer network connections may exist. This must be verified by the AAPT staff well in advance if these are to be used for the workshop.
  8. Generally the attendance at the winter meeting is considerably smaller than at the summer meeting. However, there are usually fewer workshops offered in the winter than in the summer.

Summer meeting

The summer meeting is always held on a college or university campus.

Because of this location the following comments will usually be true:

  1. Rooms will be typical college or university classrooms.
  2. Chalkboards will be available, whereas large paper pads on easels are not.
  3. Overhead projectors and screens are available.
  4. Slide projectors and TV units with video playback units (VCR's) are available but must be requested in advance and confirmed prior to the workshop.
  5. Small scale outdoor activities on grass are possible even on campuses located in urban areas. Activities involving cars and parking lots may be quite difficult to arrange.
  6. Computers are available. However many if not most computers will be in fixed computer laboratories and can not be brought to the workshop. Advance planning is a necessity if one wishes to use computers.
  7. Computer network connections exist at central sites, but not normally in individual classrooms.
  8. Attendance is higher at the summer meeting, but there are many more workshops.