Use of Digital Manipulatives for Experimental Design

Joselyn J. Todd

Director of Instructional TechnologyCary Academy, Cary, NC

http://caryacademy.org

Lausanne Learning Institute

Welcome

• Who am I?• **Who are you?** (Where are you

from? Primary Discipline ?)

• What are we going to do over the next 50 minutes or so?

• (Browsers)

Participant Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

• Collaboratively explore how a DM can be used with students to study experimental design

• Help students analyze the affordances and limitations of a DM

• Share digital manipulatives-applets, simulations, and software that can be used to create such things

** Do you use DMs in your classroom? How?**

Why use DMs?

“Can students do this experiment in a classroom setting and get reasonably accurate data such that the “science” or “math” may be discovered?”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Balance_%C3%A0_tabac_1850.JPG Creative Commons

Digital Manipulatives• Recommendations: Update your Java and Shockwave; Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. Have multiple browsers on your machine.

• Look for DMs that allow manipulation of variables for experimental design.

• Avoid “simulations” - unless you want to have your students analyze them for accuracy.

Let’s Collaborate

**Determine whether the following are useful for students to study experimental design.** Explore for 5 minutes to determine if this is a good DM for ED. What are the affordances and limitations of these tools?

• DM 1 -http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hmsc/activities/simulations/gr5/unitb.html

• DM 2 - http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/olc/dl/120074/bio18.swf

• DM 3 - http://www.learner.org/courses/envsci/interactives/ecology/

Exploring An Example**Go to: http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/projectile-motion/projectile-motion_en.html and “play” for 3-4 minutes. Use FireFox if you have it.**

Let’s Collaborate Further

**Having explored the tool now we will divide into teams and develop short materials and methods in order to design an experiment. Google Docs? Board? Pirate Pad? Cacoo? We’ll use Pirate Pad.**

• T1- https://www.piratepad.ca/p/Simulation

• T2 - https://www.piratepad.ca/p/Simulation

• T3 - https://www.piratepad.ca/p/Simulation

Share Screen. Taking it Further!

ResourcesTools for Math and Science:

http://nlvm.usu.edu/

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/

http://phet.colorado.edu/

http://www.explorelearning.com/

http://concord.org/activities ( Create your own: http://mw.concord.org/modeler/ )

**Share your own resources in the Chat**

Joselyn’s Information

Joselyn J. Todd, Ph.D.

Director of Instructional Technology

Cary Academy, Cary, NC

joselyn_todd@caryacademy.org

919-228-4541

Twitter: @joselyntodd