That is a really powerful way to learn, you learn what's important and what's not important. One of the things that the PhET allows that other things don't allow is when something spontaneously comes up in class and I can say, "Let's test it." What happens when I put a light bulb or a battery in here? What happens when I put a pencil into the circuit? We make the simulations highly interactive so that when students move a slider or create a different setting, they get immediate feedback as to the effect of making that change. In a real circuit, they can only infer that electrons are flowing through wires by the brightness of the poles, but in PhET since, they can see the electrons. I find that PhET matched very well with the way I visualize what's happening in the system. I always picture the molecules bouncing around and that's really how I think about what's happening in the system. They spend a lot of time beta testing and revising with students. One of the unique things about PhET is that it's research-based, both in its design of the simulations we draw from research across different areas. It was shown to us in class and we play with them on our own, and it just gave us a chance to see how everything worked. We can look first, you see it as a solid and you see the temperature, and then you can turn it into a liquid and you can observe the difference on a micro level that matches pretty well with what they see at the macro level. Without having to make a mess, so I don't have to take ice and melt it and do all that. I have used the sims in tutorials where they played basically the role of some experimental equipment. Sometimes I'm using it as a demonstration, as a really effective way to describe a dynamic system to the students. One way that I use simulations is I ask clicker questions around them to really focus what students are thinking about and trying to process. You see the flow of each electron and how electrons are affected by resistance. You see what's going on when you connect two wires and the battery. Before it was all on a page and now you can actually see it. They're really fun even for me to play with. One of the main goals of PhET is to provide students with an open exploratory environment where they can really engage with the science content like a scientist. We have simulations in physics and chemistry and a growing number in Earth science, biology, and math. You can run them online or you can download them to your computer. PhET is a collection of over 100 interactive simulations for teaching and learning science. This course is also available in Spanish as “Introducción a las Simulaciones PhET para la Educación STEM” View Syllabus To finish this course, you need to complete two assignments with Peer Review: 1) Selecting PhET sims, 2) Select a strategy for a Whole Class set-up, and design your first activity. This course is the first one of the specialization “Active Learning in STEM with PhET Interactive Simulations”, that include 3 courses in total. You will also review strategies for how to use PhET in circumstances where you are presenting a simulation in front of the whole class using a projector, interactive whiteboard, or sharing your screen online. In this course, you will learn how to access and share PhET simulations with your students, and explore the features that make PhET sims a powerful tool for science and mathematics teachers. All simulations are open source and free to all students and teachers. We extensively test and evaluate each simulation to ensure educational effectiveness. PhET Interactive Simulations ( ), a project of the University of Colorado Boulder, provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations for use across, primary, secondary, and higher education levels.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |