Sometimes it is hard to let students collect data to test their ideas about nature. For example to make observations how stars move for a long time, or do experiment about why plant grow to the sunlight. In this case, when oboservation and experiment difficult to carry out in classroom, computer software or interactive simulations can help a lot. There are two examples.
In a middle school biology class, students can play with the following flash game to figure out why plant grow to the sun.
In a elementary school science class, student can stuy how much water does a crow drink every day. They can also study their own diet using the same method.
value=”http://bioteahouse.wikispaces.com/file/view/crows+drink+water.swf/391202546/crows%20drink%20water.swf" />Interactive simulations can help:
- enage students, just give a cool show and some questions, then let them play with it.
- stimulate students to ask questions
- make observations and collect data or evidences
- test their ideas
If teachers can guide and organize them to make explainations or argue with each other based on evidence, and make predictions and test them, at last provide opportunities for self-evaluation and community evaluations, then this approach would be more effective for learning science in classroom.
