PhET Interactive Simulations explained

PhET Interactive Simulations
Commercial:No
Type:Online education
Language:English, Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Norwegian, Odia, Persian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Uzbek Vietnamese
Content License:Creative Commons (CC-BY)
Author:Carl Wieman
Launch Date:2002

PhET Interactive Simulations, a project at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a non-profit[1] open educational resource project that creates and hosts explorable explanations. It was founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman. PhET began with Wieman's vision to improve the way science is taught and learned. Their stated mission is "To advance science and math literacy and education worldwide through free interactive simulations."

The project acronym "PhET" originally stood for "Physics Education Technology," but PhET soon expanded to other disciplines. The project now designs, develops, and releases over 125 free interactive simulations for educational use in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. The simulations have been translated into over 121 different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, German, and Arabic; and in 2011, the PhET website received over 25 million visitors.[2]

In October 2011, PhET Interactive Simulations was chosen as the 2011 Microsoft Education Tech Award laureate.[3] The Tech Awards, presented by The Tech Museum of Innovation, honor innovators from around the world for technology benefitting humanity.[4]

History

After winning the Nobel prize in 2001, Wieman became particularly involved with efforts at improving science education and has conducted educational research on science instruction. He helped write Physics 2000[5] to provide simulations to explain his work in creating the Bose-Einstein Condensate. As he gave public lectures, some incorporating simulations,[6] he noticed that "often the simulations would be the primary thing people would remember from my talk. Based on their questions and comments, it appeared that they consistently learned the physics represented in the simulations."[7] He then used money from a grant from the National Science Foundation Distinguished Teaching Scholars program, the Kavli Foundation, and a portion of his Nobel Prize money to found PhET to improve the way that physics is taught and learned. The PhET simulations differ from the Physics 2000 ones because users can interact with the simulation to change conditions whereas the Physics 2000 simulations are just videos.[8]

In 2007, Wieman moved to Vancouver, British Columbia while retaining 20% faculty position at the University of Colorado Boulder. The current director of PhET is Dr. Katherine Perkins, who has been with PhET since January 2003. Perkins hopes that the simulations’ accessibility and interactive nature will increase scientific literacy and promote student engagement in the classroom.[9]

Organization

PhET Interactive Simulations is part of the University of Colorado Boulder which is a member of the Association of American Universities.[10] The team changes over time and has about 16 members consisting of professors, post-doctoral students, researchers, education specialists, software engineers (sometimes contractors), educators, and administrative assistants.[11] The current director of PhET is Dr. Katherine Perkins.

Design and educational impact

PhET Interactive Simulations incorporates research-based practices on effective teaching to enhance the learning of science and mathematics concepts.[12] The simulations are designed to be flexible so that they can be used as lecture demonstrations, labs, or homework activities.[13] They use an intuitive, game-like environment where students can learn through scientist-like exploration within a simplified environment, where dynamic visual representations make the invisible visible, and where science ideas are connected to real-world phenomena.

A PhET simulation starts with three to five people including a content expert (scientist), a teacher, an educational researcher, and a professional software developer. The design begins with identifying specific learning goals that have proven to be conceptually difficult based on teachers' experiences in the classroom. The simulation design, look and feel is storyboarded, discussed, and then finally "coded." Each simulation is user tested through interviews with students and in classrooms, re-worked as needed and re-tested, before released on the PhET website.[14]

Along with testing every simulation, the PhET team performs education research on their simulations. They have shown in their research that when students explore simulations in addition to traditional labs, student concept understanding improves.[15]

PhET usage by educators

While PhET Interactive Simulations develops the simulations, it is primarily teachers and publishers who develop the educational activities which use the simulations, sharing these with the community. Contributors on the PhET site follow Open Education Practices (OEP), enabling teachers to use or adapt the activities freely.[16] Other Open Education Resource organizations that provide ideas and reviews include:


Professional organizations also provide ideas for using PhET simulations. In the JCE Chemical Education Xchange (ChemEd X), members have blogged about how using PhET can help with specific topics like Stoichiometry Resources,[34] First Week Excitement,[35] PHYSICS 2000,[36] and Adding Inquiry to Atomic Theory.[37]

Research on use of simulations in education

The National Science Foundation has provided grants for several organizations to study PhET use:[38]

Other research grants:

External links

Notes and References

  1. https://phet.colorado.edu/donate Support PhET
  2. News: Guttenplan. D.D.. Web Tutors Become Stars Far from Classroom. New York Times. December 11, 2011.
  3. Web site: The Tech Award 2011. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20121109202905/http://thetechawards.thetech.org/laureate/archive/2011. 2012-11-09.
  4. McCracken. Harry. Meet the Winners of This Year's Tech Humanitarian Awards. Time. October 21, 2011.
  5. Web site: Physics 2000. University of Colorado Boulder. 22 August 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20140924081235/http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl. 24 September 2014. dead.
  6. Cornell. E.A.. C.E. Wieman . Nobel Lectures in Physics 2001. Rev. Mod. Phys.. 2002. 74. 3. 875–893. 10.1103/revmodphys.74.875. free.
  7. Wieman. Carl. Katherine K. Perkins . Wendy K. Adams. Wendy Adams . Oersted Medal Lecture 2007: Interactive simulations for teaching physics: What works, what doesn't, and why. American Journal of Physics. April 2008. 76. 4. 393. 10.1119/1.2815365. 2008AmJPh..76..393W . 30005032 .
  8. Web site: Reviews Web Watch- Interactive Simulations. 2005 Phys. Educ. 40 81. IOP Publishing. 22 August 2013.
  9. News: Xue. Katherine. Alumni Science Simulator. 22 August 2013. Harvard Magazine. July–August 2012.
  10. Web site: Association of American Universities.
  11. Web site: About PhET .
  12. Bryan. Joel. Technology for Physics Instruction. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. June 2006. 6. 2. 230.
  13. Web site: Ash. Katie. Programming Digital Fun Into Science Education. Education Week Digital Directions.
  14. Book: Maki, Peggy. Assessing for Learning: Building a Sustainable Commitment Across the Institution. 2004. Stylus Publishing. Sterling, VA. 1579224407.
  15. Wieman. Carl . Wendy K. Adams. Wendy Adams . Katherine K. Perkins. PhET Research: Simulations that Enhance Learning. Science. October 2008. 322. 5902 . 682–3 . 10.1126/science.1161948 . 18974334. free.
  16. Web site: PhET For Teachers. PhET Interactive Simulations. 23 June 2013.
  17. Web site: National Digital Science Literacy Maps. 16 June 2013.
  18. Book: Dushay, Naomi. Analyzing metadata for effective use and re-use. 2003. Proceedings of the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications. 10.1.1.210.8888.
  19. Book: Developing a Digital National Library for Undergraduate Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education: Report of a Workshop. 1998. The National Academies Press. Washington, DC. 978-0-309-05977-0. 53–57.
  20. Book: Kyrillidou, Martha. Developing the DigiQUAL protocol for digital library evaluation. 2005. ACM Press. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. 172–173.
  21. Web site: MERLOT Physics. MERLOT at California State University. 21 June 2013.
  22. Advances in Web-Based Learning - ICWL 2004: Third International Conference, Beijing, China, August 8–11, 2004, Proceedings, Volume 3 (Google eBook)
  23. Web site: MERLOT Physics Showcase. MERLOT at California State University. 16 June 2013.
  24. Web site: MERLOT Physics. MERLOT at California State University. 16 June 2013.
  25. Web site: Physics Front. AAPT and NSF-NSDL. 21 June 2013.
  26. Web site: The Physics Front. AAPT and NSF-NSDL. 16 June 2013.
  27. Web site: Physics Front. search for phet activities. AAPT and NSF-NSDL. 16 June 2013.
  28. Web site: Pedagogy in Action. Science Education Resource Center @ Carlton College. 21 June 2013.
  29. Web site: Pedagogy in Action Library. Science Education Resource Center @ Carlton College. 16 June 2013.
  30. Web site: Resources for Using PhET in class. Science Education Resource Center @ Carlton College. 16 June 2013.
  31. Web site: The International Association for K-12 Online Learning. 23 June 2013.
  32. News: Vander Ark. Tom. 10 Ways Smart Cities Develop & Support Teachers. 23 June 2013. Education Week. June 17, 2013.
  33. Web site: Open Educational Resources and Collaborative Content Development – A Practical Guide for State and School Leaders. iNACOL. 23 June 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20150225234037/http://www.inacol.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/inacol_OER_Collaborative_Guide_v5_web.pdf. 25 February 2015. dead.
  34. Web site: Cullen. Deanna. Stoichiometric Resources. Division of Chemical Education. 16 June 2013.
  35. Web site: Cullen. Deanna. First Week Excitement. Division of Chemical Education. 16 June 2013.
  36. Web site: Cullen. Deanna. PHYSICS 2000. Division of Chemical Education. 16 June 2013.
  37. Web site: Cullen. Deanna. Adding Inquiry to Atomic Theory. Division of Chemical Education. 16 June 2013.
  38. Web site: awards. search PhET. National Science Foundation. 22 August 2013.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "PhET Interactive Simulations".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.