Teaching materials used in distance education are generally obtained from the internet as ready-made by teachers. Materials such as simulation, animation and presentation are usually limited to the frame drawn by the creator and do not allow changes outside this limit. In addition, many of these types of materials do not have a feedback mechanism.…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of augmented reality and mobile application supported instruction on students' academic achievement, attitude towards astronomy, anxiety and motivation towards learning science in the "Solar System and Beyond/Earth and Universe" units in seventh grade Science lesson. In the study,…

Pandem-Sim is a live, distance-learning simulation where 10th-12th grade students perform as epidemiologists to investigate infectious disease outbreaks. Prior to a mission, teachers review content and introduce students to the sim interfaces. During the mission students analyze data concerning demographics, symptoms and patient histories for a…

Contemporary teaching and learning approaches expect students--at any level of education--to be active producers of knowledge. This leads to the need for creation of instructional strategies, learning environments and tasks that can offer students opportunities for active learning. Research argues that one of the most meaningful and engaging forms…

In this paper we show an example of how to use a computational simulation to obtain visual feedback for students' mental models, and compare their predictions with the simulated system's behaviour. Additionally, we use the computational simulation to incrementally modify the students' mental models in order to accommodate new data,…

This paper discusses the teaching of basic quantum mechanics in high school. Rather than following the usual formalism, our approach is based on Feynman's path integral method. Our presentation makes use of simulation software and avoids sophisticated mathematical formalism. (Contains 3 figures.)

Technological advances continue to reshape the skill sets necessary for students to succeed both in the classroom and in the workforce. The ability to communicate information verbally and graphically can be viewed as a necessary skill that should be developed in a secondary technology education curriculum (Silva, 2008). This article outlines a…

Introduced to study components of ionized gas, the mass spectrometer has evolved into a highly accurate device now used in many undergraduate and research laboratories. Unfortunately, despite their importance in the formation of future scientists, mass spectrometers remain beyond the financial reach of many high schools and colleges. As a result,…

We have conducted an education project to communicate the wave energy concept to high school students. A virtual reality system that combines both hardware and software is developed in this project to simulate the buoy-wave interaction. This first-of-its-kind wave energy unit is portable and physics-based, allowing students to conduct a number of…

Educators must address several challenges inherent to the instruction of scientific disciplines such as physics -- expensive or insufficient laboratory equipment, equipment error, difficulty in simulating certain experimental conditions. Augmented reality (AR) can be a promising approach to address these challenges. In this paper, we discuss the…

In the teaching of physics at upper secondary school level (K10-K12), the students are generally taught to solve problems analytically, i.e. using the dynamics describing a system (typically in the form of differential equations) to compute its evolution in time, e.g. the motion of a body along a straight line or in a plane. This reduces the scope…

The aim of this study is to scrutinize the characteristics of conceptual meaning making when students engage with virtual worlds in combination with a spreadsheet with the aim to develop graphs. We study how these tools and the representations they contain or enable students to construct serve to influence their understanding of energy resource…

Mainly used in the 1960s, bubble chambers played a major role in particle physics. Now replaced with modern electronic detectors, we believe they remain an important didactic tool to introduce particle physics as they provide visual, appealing and insightful pictures. Sadly, this rare type of detector is mostly accessible through open-door events…

Modeling of a natural phenomenon is of value in science learning and increasingly emphasized as an important component of science education. However, previous research has shown that secondary school students encounter difficulties when engaging in modeling activities and need substantial support in order to create meaningful scientific models.…

This paper presents the development of a 3-D virtual environment in Second Life for the delivery of standards-based science content for middle school students in the rural Appalachian region of Southeast Ohio. A mixed method approach in which quantitative results of improved student learning and qualitative observations of implementation within…