Educational Technology for Physics Content

So far, the technologies explored in this blog were usable for any subject, as they allow students to communicate, evaluate, and create content from any field. This week, however, we will focus on educational technology specifically applicable to physics content. Educational Technology for the field of physics is particularly interesting as the world-wide-web itself can actually be credited to physicists trying to share data easier in hopes to learn and understand the universe better. There are many resources out there for educators wishing to help their students explore physics through the aid of technology, such as: www.physicsclassroom.com, phet.colorado.edu, ophysics.com, and stellarium.org or through phone apps like the PhysicsToolboxSuite. These resources are staples of physics education and should be explored by anyone interested in the field of physics, however I am already rather familiar with all of these and will instead explore other technologies for this blog. When searching for Physics Educational Technology, I typically look for some type of simulation. This is because physics is a set of patterns and rules that the universe seems to obey, and a simulation can simulate individual rules and patterns (or even collections of rules/patterns). These simulations often let students freely explore specific, fundamental relationships and extrapolate to form bigger and more robust connections with the universe at large. There are many downsides of simulations, however, including oversimplifying complex relationships or even using models that are not valid in all cases causing students to create misconceptions. Thus, simulations are vital but must be carefully considered before implementation. For astronomic concepts such as the motion of the planets or the phases of the moon, I previously relied on stellarium, a planetarium simulation that allows students to explore the sky and celestial objects. This software is free and has been available for a while so it has always been my go-to, however it is not very user friendly and many students do not pick it up quickly. Because of this experience with stellarium, I was excited this week when my class mentioned celestia.space, a similar application that is also free but is much more updated and has better graphics and interface. It is not a perfect replacement from what I have seen, however, as it does not seem to display the sky from Earth's perspective as nicely as stellarium does, but when it comes to viewing large scale motion in the solar system, like the moon moving around the Earth, celestia is far better. Not only that, but because of the better user-interface, students can pick up celestia easier and explore it in greater detail. This simulation allows students to see these astronomical objects and phenomena and use that knowledge to better understand what they might see in the night sky. The next simulation I explored was recommended in a previous physics class, but I had not had the time to play with it during that semester; it is called The Concord Consortium, and is similar to phet or ophysics in that it offers a collection of simulations for various physics concepts. The primary difference is that The Concord Consortium has molecular simulations often powered by Molecular Workbench , a powerful simulator to model interactions of a lot of tiny particles. It also supports more 3D simulations where students can more realistically manipulate the simulations. These kinds of simulations are great for students to understand and conceptualize the models they encounter in physics. Both simulations allow students to explore the models freely, manipulating and experimenting without much limitation, however guided assignments can be created to structure and direct the learning. The only thing that I do not like about Celestia is that I have not found a way to view the sky as from the Earth like Stellarium does, which leaves the burden on the student to visualize what would actually be seen by the Earth for some processes. This is not detrimental, as it also offers the option of multiple split screens to get many vantage points to aid in that visualization as much as possible. As for The Concord Consortium and Molecular Workbench, my only critiques are simply that there are not enough topics yet; there are many simulations on the Consortium's website, but most are very similar to one another and not many cover topics like torque or stress/strain. This library will likely be expanding over time, however, and I look forward to the additions. I would also like to see more guided activities that educators can utilize with the simulations. Alternatively, I have also recently been exploring the use of unity.com to have students or educators create their own simulations based on the physics. Unity is visual rendering program that allows users to build 2D or 3D games and simulations based on moving objects around visually and programming scripts to make objects move in the game. With this software, educators can design specific simulations for their students to explore have the freedom to design game-like simulations that can engage the students while still offering the benefits of simulations discussed earlier. I would also like to employ unity with my students to have them design simple simulations that implement the physics concepts we are covering. The downside to this program is that it would require time in class getting students familiar with using the program itself before they would be able to build much on their own, and even then much time would likely be spent revisiting coding and using the software throughout the use of this technology. It is one which I aim to employ, but I do not know how best use it in the classroom yet. As for physics educational technologies which do not involve simulations, here I tend to focus on measurement technologies and tools to visualize data. One such technology mentioned above is the Physics toolbox suite app for Android devices. This app utilizes the sensors already in your device to measure things like acceleration, magnetic field strength, volume, brightness, air pressure, and more. I was recently introduced to phyphox.org, however and I think this is an equally impressive phone technology resource that also has write-ups for specific labs and activities already created for learners. This app seems to offer more versatility than physics toolbox suite. It also offers more customizable graphs to see specific relationships and measurements. The only thing I wish phyphox has that the toolbox suite has is an augmented reality option for the magnetic field. Using the camera in a smartphone, students can walk around the room and place arrows (based on the phone's measurement of the mag field) and the student can then look at the field of arrows in the room to visualize the magnetic field. Augmented Reality features like this are very new and still in development, however, so these features will likely take time to proliferate through education. I am excited to see how they develop and would be excited to work in this field to advance the application for the physics classroom. The number of activities that can be performed by physics students with these technologies is growing every year. I will describe two activities utilizing these content based technologies to enhance the traditional lesson, one for astronomy and the other for electric circuits. As for the circuit lesson, Physics students are expected to learn about the basics of circuits and electricity, however it is often hard to utilize in the class due to the dangers of electricity on top of the ease of building a circuit incorrectly. This lends itself well to simulations, as students can prepare for the real circuits with digital ones and learn the basics before ever connecting a capacitor to a battery. Through simulated circuits, students learn the basic dos and don'ts and can begin using real components with some experience already. It has been shown that simulations like these can be used to prepare students for evaluations using real circuits better than preparing with real circuits can (Finkelstein et al., 2005). These simulations allow students the ability to experiment but also offer visualizations of the motion of electrons in the circuits, leading to better student understanding overall. The Concord Consortium offers one such lesson that guides students through videos and interactive questioning that lets students learn these basics at their own pace. Overall, the interactive on the Consortium is not as in depth as some others that I have found (for instance on Phet) but it does offer interesting video tutorials for students. For Astronomy, I argue that simulations are requirements in the current classroom, as the scales are just too large to understand without a visualization technology. One particular lesson may include using Celestia to understand the seasons and the altitude of the Sun in the sky throughout the year. Using Celestia, students can split the screen and see the Earth's position (relative to the sun) at two different times in the year. The student can also turn on the 'terminal line' and 'Planetographic grid' to see what parts of the Earth are getting sunlight throughout the day and which parts aren't. Students can explore for themselves how different parts of the Earth are getting more light or less light throughout the year and decide what that might look like from the Earth during Summer or Winter and even at different locations around the Earth. This is completely transformative, as it allows students to explore what the Earth-Sun system looks like in a way that is impossible without. Students can even go to different planets through the solar system to explore for themselves what the seasons are like for the different bodies in our solar system. This technology affords the learner the ability to immerse themselves within the environment of the solar system in order to better understand the solar system. The content being as large as the solar system really requires some tool like this for students to truly appreciate the motions observed by these bodies. And pedagogically, learners benefit from the freedom of being able to explore different objects at will or even explore other avenues, such as the proximity of the planet to the sun throughout the year and whether or not this has any impact on the seasons for different planets; this tool is one that students may be interested in opening up outside of the academic setting just to explore and have fun with. Throughout this post, I have alluded to the fact that there are many technologies that do similar jobs for physics education. Many simulations exist for projectile motion or electric fields, but that does not lessen the importance of these technologies. In fact, the prevalence of technologies is a testament to the innovation within this field. As such, I think we will continue to see new technologies as well as continual improvements. These technologies will likely all offer unique learning experiences that learners can explore, transitioning the educators job from source of information to mediator or the method of delivery, allowing students to explore on their own with the instructor providing appropriate recommendations based on the learner and their own personal perspectives and resources. The redundancies in these technologies will allow academia to focus more on the pedagogical demands of individual learners, as there will be many avenues to explore any particular topic using whatever level of technology and content is appropriate for the student based on their own personal development.

Refences: Finkelstein, N., Adams, W., Keller, C., Kohl, P., Perkins, K., Podolefsky, N., Reid, S. and LeMaster, R., 2005. When learning about the real world is better done virtually: A study of substituting computer simulations for laboratory equipment. Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 1(1).