This study presents a rollercoaster activity including virtual reality and following the six-steps engineering design process. In the study, a real-life problem involving a rollercoaster accident was given to 12 pre-service science teachers first. The participants were then asked to imagine, plan, create, and test a rollercoaster without an…

This paper outlines the growing phenomenon and need to integrate technologies into mathematics and science teaching and learning. There are a number of successful projects for valuable integration of technologies around the world, however, these successes are often limited reaching a relatively small number of teachers and students. In this paper,…

For decades, educators have hoped to integrate geospatial tools into K-12 classrooms but struggled with barriers of time, technology, and curriculum alignment. The authors formed a design partnership with ninth-grade science and social studies teachers in an urban high school in order to conduct teacher professional development while also…

When describing teachers' adoption of new technology, existing conceptual models tend to focus on a single dimension, either quantitative, such as the frequency or amount of technology use, or qualitative, such as the way in which a given technology influences teachers' instructional practices. Such one-dimensional approaches can fail to…

This report describes our efforts in fostering Taiwanese pre-service teachers' ability to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and teaching. The current state of science teacher education and ICT policies in Taiwan are documented briefly. The course model, MAGDAIRE (abbreviated from Modeled Analysis, Guided Development,…

Incorporating technology into courses is becoming a common practice in universities. However, in the geosciences, it is difficult to find technology that can easily be transferred between classroom- and field-based settings. The iPad is ideally suited to bridge this gap. Here, we fully integrate the iPad as an educational tool into two…

iSMART (Integration of Science, Mathematics, and Reflective Teaching) Program is an online science and mathematics integrated graduate program for middle school teachers across the state of Texas. As part of a large design-based research project, this paper describes the initial stages of the design process of the iSMART program for its first…

Students struggle with the transition from learning to read narrative text in the early grades to reading expository text in the science classroom in the upper grades as they begin reading and writing to gain information. Science teachers can adapt their teaching materials to develop students' reading comprehension and recall by writing summaries…

This article profiles Carla Wade, a former science teacher who has shown a passion for teaching educators the most effective ways to integrate technology. Her use of a video microscope during a classroom science lesson revealed to Wade how technology can awaken students' interest in learning. Wade discovered years ago how to talk teachers out of…

We conducted a series of summer workshops on bioinformatics to increase educators' knowledge of this new field of inquiry with the assumption that their knowledge will, in turn, impact student achievement. The workshops incorporated experiential learning and self-reflection (Loucks-Horsley et al. 1998). Educators demonstrated significant increases…

This article features Ohio teacher Carol Fleck's use of videoconferencing in teaching Contemporary BioScience and Genetics. Fleck, who says her initial vision for the class was "science without classroom walls," covers such topics as emerging diseases, bioterrorism, and forensic science. Collaboration between schools is a key part of the…

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) supports and encourages the use of e-Learning experiences for preK-16 science students, as well as for science educators engaging in professional development in the traditional, informal, or distance learning environment. NSTA defines e-Learning as the effective learning process created by combining…

Designing effective professional development experiences for technology-enhanced inquiry instruction is the goal of the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) NSF funded Center for Learning and Teaching. In order to provide this type of support to a large number of teachers, we devised a "targeted professional development approach."…

This paper describes the use of handheld computers in the Science classrooms of four Tasmanian schools over a year. Analysis was informed by theories of innovation and assisted by ecological perspectives. Teachers demonstrated a range of attitudes to innovative pedagogies associated with the devices, and these corresponded to student achievements.…

How to move science-based labs online has been one of the main obstacles associated with the development of online science programs. In the spring of 2006 and again in 2007, we organized online workshops broadly based around the central theme of Moving the Lab Online. The objective of these workshops was to provide a forum for the exchange of…