simulations in the classroom: creating an engaging pedagogy
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Simulations in the Classroom: Creating an Engaging Pedagogy. Scott A. Sinex Department of Physical Sciences and Engineering Prince George’s Community College. Presented at the Computation and Science for Teachers Workshop held at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Pittsburgh, PA - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Simulations in the Classroom:Creating an Engaging
Pedagogy
Presented at the Computation and Science for Teachers Workshop held at the Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center, Pittsburgh, PA on 23-27 June 2008
Scott A. SinexDepartment of Physical Sciences and
EngineeringPrince George’s Community College
Students should…
• Deal with data and graphs from – experimental results – prepared data sets from Internet
• Look for trends
• Introduce mathematical modeling– Regression– Goodness of Fit
Use simulations…
• To examine microscopic interactions– NetLogo– Agent Sheets– Many Java applets on the Internet
• To explode mathematics of macroscopic interactions– Excelets– Vensim or Stella
Where do we start?
• Select a single basic modeling tool – Excel
• Learn some principles of mathematical modeling
• Develop computationally-based simulations
An ideal approach…
Single variable experiment
Multivariable simulation
Develop an ideal mathematical model
Add error to make real-world
science process oriented
Guided instruction…
• Written guided-inquiry or discovery based instructions (think like your students when you pose questions!)
• Predict-test-analyze
• Try it and then revise/rewrite it!!!!!
Ultimately…
• Integrated mathematics and science
• A very science process oriented approach
• Your students could be developing models on their own
This is just the beginning…
Computational science can study…
» Weather and climate» Disease spread» Engineering design
See the PSC Scientific Visualization Gallery http://www.psc.edu/research/graphics/gallery
Let the journey begin!!!!!but first some coffee
Resources
• Exercises developed by previous CAST participantshttp://www.psc.edu/eot/k12/cast.php (see previous years)
• Computational Resources by MVHS http://mvhs.shodor.org/CAST2008
• Developer’s Guide to Exceletshttp://academic.pgcc.edu/~ssinex/excelets
• Introduction to Computational Science Angela B. Shiflet and George W. Shiflethttp://wofford-ecs.org/IntroComputationalScience
Data analysis
• Graphing with Excel – LabWrite• http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/gt/gt-menu.html
• Using Excel for Handling, Graphing, and Analyzing Scientific Data: A Resource for Science and Mathematics Students
• http://academic.pgcc.edu/psc/Excel_booklet.pdf
Data sets
• Quantitative Environmental Learning Project (QELP) as Excel fileshttp://seattlecentral.edu/qelp/Data.html
• Exploring Data – datasets as Excel files
http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/datasets.htm
Email contact: [email protected]