Interactive Science Fiction Prototyping in Virtual Worlds: Fundamentals and Applications

Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) is a powerful tool to imagine, explore, and exploit future technologies, science, and environments and it can be a valuable asset for education, multimedia, and research. This article explores SFP in interactive, flexible, immersive, and collaborative settings, which introduced as Interactive Science Fiction Prototyping (ISFP) and allows new forms of experiencing and reflecting on prototypes. We investigate how to integrate the ISFP process into an existing collaborative virtual world platform and outline required integration steps. Furthermore, we discuss different application scenarios for ISFP in educational, artistic, and business domains and conclude with future ideas and challenges to explore modern scientific ideas

Consensus Modeling as a Cultural Practice: A Case Study From a Seventh-Grade Science Classroom

Recent reforms in science education aim to involve K-12 students in practices similar to those of professional scientists. These reforms promote student collaboration and science practices including developing models and engaging in scientific argumentation with evidence. Small group work in science classrooms has increased following the reforms. However, while small group collaboration has gained popularity, research suggests that it does not always lead to equitable participation. This qualitative case study uses discourse analysis to examine how two small groups of students in a seventh-grade science class develop consensus models of a phenomenon and how students are socialized to participate in those small groups. The results indicate that the groups used four different communicative pathways to include entities in the group consensus model. Each of the four pathways had varying amounts of participation for group members and influenced the consensus process. Analysis of how these pathways unfold during small group work suggests that students formed social hierarchies in the group that influenced participation for each group member. The results demonstrate that while small groups are assigned to create “consensus models,” the final models may not demonstrate true group consensus. There may still be benefits to consensus modeling instruction, however, more research is needed to understand the benefits and to develop instruction that promotes equitable opportunities to participate for all group members

Experimenting with electromagnetism using augmented reality: Impact on flow student experience and educational effectiveness

Educational researchers have recognized Augmented Reality (AR) as a technology with great potential to impact affective and cognitive learning outcomes. However, very little work has been carried out to substantiate these claims. The purpose of this study was to assess to which extent an AR learning application affects learners' level of enjoyment and learning effectiveness. The study followed an experimental/control group design using the type of the application (AR-based, web-based) as independent variable. 64 high school students were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group to learn the basic principles of electromagnetism. The participants' knowledge acquisition was evaluated by comparing pre- and post-tests. The participants' level overall-state perception on flow was measured with the Flow State Scale and their flow states were monitored throughout the learning activity. Finally, participants' perceptions of benefits and difficulties of using the augmented reality application in this study were qualitatively identified. The results showed that the augmented reality approach was more effective in promoting students' knowledge of electromagnetic concepts and phenomena. The analysis also indicated that the augmented reality application led participants to reach higher flow experience levels than those achieved by users of the web-based application. However, not all the factors seem to have influence on learners' flow state, this study found that they were limited to: concentration, distorted sense of time, sense of control, clearer direct feedback, and autotelic experience. A deeper analysis of the flow process showed that neither of the groups reported being in flow in those tasks that were very easy or too difficult. However, for those tasks that were not perceived as difficult and included visualization clues, the experimental group showed higher levels of flow that the control group. The study suggests that augmented reality can be exploited as an effective learning environment for learning the basic principles of electromagnetism at high school provided that learning designers strike a careful balance between AR support and task difficulty.This research has been partially supported by the Spanish project EEE (TIN2011-28308-C03-01, Plan Nacional de I+D+i, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) and the eMadrid network (S2009/TIC-1650, Comunidad de Madrid).Publicad

An analysis of grade 12 physical sciences textbooks for the inclusion of science practices

Abstract : Please refer to full text to view abstract.M.Ed. (Education

Interactive Teaching Across Culture and Technology

Remember the time when you had a teacher in front of a blackboard endlessly talking, sometimes in a rambling way to students? Those days are gone. This project is a proof of that and aims at palliating students’ boredom. Interactive Teaching Materials across Culture and Technology (INTACT) intends to present an alternative way in the teaching paradigm as it intends to be a resourceful tool in the teaching/learning process. Both teachers and students can work together cooperatively and collaboratively, two different ways well explained by Mary Glynn and Ildikó Szabó further ahead. Teachers will no longer become the centre of learning but they will become guides and facilitators throughout all the learning process. Students can learn from their teachers but the latter can also learn from the former. The novelty here is that learners are engaged online in a different set of activities and among students. Therefore, the INTACT platform caters for an online collaborative learning community comprised of both students and teachers. As Sarolta Lipóczi so well puts it, the crux of the matter is ‘learning to learn too’. The teaching paradigm is changing and we are witnessing different approaches and techniques in pedagogical matters. In this context, at the basis of the INTACT project is a display of a wide array of new techniques and methodologies that account for active learning based on multimodal teaching and learning resources. Students will thus interact cognitively and in a constructivist way with different materials, such as visuals, texts, audio, to name a few. INTACT offers students and teachers options so that they can choose several actions in the course of the learning unit, for instance watch, browse, select, compare and manipulate all the resources available. Bearing in mind this short introduction to the project, in Part 2 Mary Glynn and Ildikó Szabó give us a better definition of INTACT and the educational arguments underlying its foundation. They also focus on the difference between collaborative and cooperative learning and on the importance of bilingualism and the advantages of CLIL, now one of the trendiest bilingual teaching methods, In part 2, we find a sample of resources ranging from Biology to second language learning. In the first learning unit, Toni Cramer and Steffen Schaal from the University of Education-Ludwigsburg, Germany, conceived an 8-lesson unit plan on the Human Immune System. Through these 8 lessons, students will learn how to explain blood types, to describe the parts of the human immune system model and collect data and interpret the spreading of diseases using adequate simulations, among other useful knowledge. The second and the third learning units are targeted at primary school students. The authors’ main purpose, Mary Glynn, from St. Patrick’s College in Dublin and Mariangeles Caballero from Universidad Complutense – Faculty of Education in Madrid, respectively, is to enhance students’ knowledge on science and technology by exploring and applying scientific ideas and concepts. Magnetism and the Human Circulatory system are therefore the proposals presented by the authors. Framed in the Geography programme of the 7th grade of the 3rd cycle of the basic education, for a target audience aged 12-13 years old, Maria Antónia Martins, from Emídio Garcia Secondary School in Bragança-Portugal, conceived the fourth learning unit on Elements and Climate factors regarding the Translational Motion and the Seasons of the Year. The temperature element was chosen to be studied throughout 3 lessons. In the course of these, students should not only be capable of relating the diurnal and annual variation of the temperature according to the movements of the earth but also to understand the relation between the annual variation of the temperature and the latitude of the place. The fifth and the sixth learning units aim at improving foreign language and social skills while at the same time students are taken back in time, thus broadening their knowledge on culture and history. Through the most suggestive title: ‘Legends and heroes – To be a Knight in King Arthur’s court’, Ildikó Szabó, from the Kecskemét College, Teacher Training Faculty in Hungary, takes us on a tour through medieval times meeting the needs of several learning styles, such as acoustic, kinaesthetic and visual. Sarolta Lipóczi, also from the Kecskemét College, Teacher Training Faculty, conceived the sixth learning unit titled ‘Mozart as a child and his travels’ a way to learn German as a foreign language. In this unit, primary school students are given the story of a famous musician born in Austria. Students thus develop cultural knowledge and language competences through exciting learning objects and activities. In part 3, Birgit May, Annika Jokiaho and Vítor Gonçalves, with the collaboration of José Exposto make a brief overview of the INTACT platform, explaining the methods adopted and highlighting more technical issues related to results achieved during the the project. Subchapter 3.2. reflects on good practices resulting from the whole project. It also records the national teams’ experience in working with the others for accomplishing the various tasks as well as the numerous unexpected and unavoidable problems that came up in the three years during which the project was completed. Being all said, we truly hope that this ebook can become an appetiser to the project, largely to make both students and teachers frequent users of the interactive platform