This short paper presents an educational approach to teaching three popular methods for encoding DNA sequences: one-hot encoding, binary encoding, and integer encoding. Aimed at bioinformatics and computational biology students, our learning intervention focuses on developing practical skills in implementing these essential techniques for…

Energy is a disciplinary core idea and a cross-cutting concept in the K-12 Framework for Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). As numerous authors point out, the energy model in these standards emphasizes the connections between energy and systems. Using energy ideas to interpret or make sense of phenomena means…

Human-driven carbon emissions have resulted in increased levels of dissolved carbon dioxide in the Earth's oceans. This dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, which impacts ocean acidity as well as the solubility of carbonate-containing compounds, with far-reaching impacts on marine ecosystems and the human communities…

Learning standards for K-12 science education emphasize the importance of engaging students in practices that scientists perform in their profession. K-12 teachers are expected to engage students in scientific modeling, which entails constructing, testing, evaluating, and revising their own models of science phenomena while pursuing an epistemic…

In today's dynamic global economy, integrated units of study are particularly important. Students who are fluent in several disciplines and comfortable moving among them can make meaningful connections and maintain enhanced understandings (Sias et al. 2016). This article shares an integrated STEAM unit that is grounded in the science disciplinary…

Scientific computing and computer literacy are increasingly important skills for chemistry students to learn, but despite this need, there is an absence of chemistry-specific texts available for teaching the subject. This article introduces a freely available textbook released under a Creative Commons license for use in an undergraduate scientific…

This article introduces the use of "VPython" (the "Python" programming language plus a 3D graphics module called "Visual") as a potentially valuable tool in teaching aspects of secondary school chemistry, which also provides an opportunity for students to gain some experience with manipulating and/or writing computer…

Multiple initiatives contend that all students should master computational thinking, including the "Next Generation Science Standards, the K-12 Framework for Computational Thinking," and Code.org. In turn, many physics teachers have begun to explore a variety of approaches to integrating computational modeling through programming. These…

Computational approaches toward simulating chemical systems and evaluating experimental data has gathered great momentum in recent years. The onset of more powerful computers and advanced software has been instrumental to this end. This manuscript presents a hands-on activity which trains students in basic coding skills within the Matlab…

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is gaining traction in K12 education. Whereas well-designed and engaging VR experiences may be considered educational, teacher educators with content-area expertise are uniquely positioned to analyze the actual content provided by those experiences when determining VR's educational value.…

This book has been prepared to introduce common technological tools that can be used in science education in the distance education process. Although most of the applications introduced in the book are used in face-to-face education, this book focuses on their use in the distance science education process. In the Introduction part of the book, the…

This paper presents a programming project named NMRviewer that allows students to visualize transformed and processed 1 H NMR data in an accessible, interactive format while allowing instructors to incorporate programming content into the chemistry curricula. Using the MATLAB graphical user interface development environment (GUIDE), students can…

Students in Mrs. Wilson's fourth-grade classroom watch in anticipation as the guest teacher, Ms. Davis, demonstrates binary signaling using a lightbulb that flashes when she holds it in her hands. She challenges them to guess what she is trying to "say" while making the lightbulb flash on and off, explaining that the lightbulb stands for…

We implemented a laboratory curriculum reform to teach foundational concepts in chemistry, particularly those concepts related to healthcare, in a chemistry course for prenursing students. Here, we discuss the reform, exploring how students built upon understandings gained in lab and correlating lab learning to course outcomes. We further discuss…

Pavio's Dual-Coding Theory (1991) and Mayer's Multimedia Principal (2000) form the foundation for proposing a multi-coding theory centered around Multi-Touch Tablets and the newest generation of e-textbooks to scaffold struggling readers in reading and learning from science textbooks. Using E. O. Wilson's "Life on Earth: An Introduction"…