KALEIDOSCOPE ERT Production of Educational Formats Case Presentation: The “Balloon”

2. The balloon case KALEIDOSCOPE ERT Production of Educational Formats Case Presentation: The “Balloon” (analysis of an applied educational scenario on the basis of the Greenboard categories)

3. The balloon case Aims and Objectives 1. aims description Problematique One of the most fundamental problems in teaching physics is the problem of language use. The actual use of words and expressions of our everyday language in a completely different context is a fact that actually produces many misinterpretations and difficulties (eg. space, displacement, distance) These concepts although taught in a plethora of teaching hours still consist a terra incognita for many students and that is due to the fact that these concepts are used in a completely different notional content.

4. Aims and Objectives 1. aims description • “science practice”: • to zoom in aspects of the idea students shape about science and what is referred to as “scientific practice”. • conceptual change • to point out elements of the procedure through which students as users of the specific software application (the balloon microworld) place terms of everyday language to a scientific conceptual context. That is, how they give new meanings to specific concepts of “school science”, which themselves and their peers use on an everyday basis, quite differently. The balloon scenario (teacher manual)

5. Aims and Objectives 2. Objectives description subject domain: 1a. Teacher: Clarification of basic notions of kinematics and understanding in a science context. Such notions are displacement, distancevelocity. 1b. Researcher: zoom in the way by which students handle or shape the above notions. 2a. Teacher: Analysis of the physical phenomenon of two bodies meeting. Meeting in the science context is being at the same place at the same moment. 2b. Researcher: point out misconceptions connected to the way students conceive the notion of simultaneity, that is, the coexistence at a certain point in space, and the notion of limit (marginal meeting)

6. Aims and Objectives 2. Objectives description subject domain: 3a. Teacher: Use of multiple representations to observe the alterations of a physical magnitude 3b. Teacher: Representations of mathematical relations as well as visual representations of physical parameters 3c. Researcher: Study of the mechanism developed by students in order to achieve the transmission from one form of representation to another, and of the codes they use to translate the information they see or think they see in one representation

7. Aims and Objectives 2. Objectives description technology use related Use of software functionalities, word processing social and action related aspects of the learning process Students handle the problem in collaboration in groups of 2 or 3, expressing opinions and developing argumentation. The skills they are expected to enhance are those of group work, collaboration and argumentation.

8. Aims and Objectives 2. Objectives media format The balloon scenario (teacher manual)

9. Aims and Objectives media format • Teacher: • A computer microworld • Open ended student work sheets • Researcher: • observation journals • tape and video transcripts • questionnaires • semi structured interviews microworld work sheets videos

10. Contents 1. Subject domain description Science – Physics – Kinematics Level: 3rd Gymnasium (14-15 year old students) Rectilinear normal motion and steadily accelerated rectilinear motion 1. Subject domain media format Student book (available on line at http://www.pi-schools.gr) Worksheets (to be filled in by each student after studying specifically designed simulation)

11. Contents 1. situated contentdescription Students carry out experiments involving letting a balloon go up and then throwing a missile at it. Buttons and sliders are used for the parameters, a graphical and an animation representation is in place simultaneously. The script of the simulation is specially designed so that the students can inspect and change it to create their own versions of the simulation. 1. situated contentmedia format The balloon microworld (available on line at http:// http://seed.01p.gr/Communities/Communities/GreekCommunity/GrDownloads/default.aspx http://seed.01p.gr/Communities/Downloads/default.aspx )

12. Students info 1. profiledescription The program will be implemented with students of third grade high school (14-15 years old). The students before their participation to the program they will have been taught kinematics at their physics class, so that they will have been familiarized with the concepts they will deal with during the project and with the scientific terminology and methodology. 1. profilemedia format

13. Students info 2. needsdescription • The needs we aim at exploring are those related to: • students meta-knowledge, that is the ability they develop in order to use the knowledge attained during the Science lesson, as well as the knowledge of scientific methodology, to solve problems expressed in everyday language terms. • Students ability to use symbolic representations to study the alteration of a magnitude, their ability to decode data coming from a scientific conceptual framework and to conceive the information contained in those.

14. Social orchestration 1. numberdescription whole class of 3rd Gymnasium students (20 – 25 students) 1. numbermedia format

15. Social orchestration 2. groupingdescription Students are distributed in groups of 2 or 3 and each group is involved in the problem solving process in front of a PC. The composition of the groups is strictly based on alphabetical order and not on any other predefined criterion. 2. groupingmedia format

16. Social orchestration 3. interactiondescription Each group of students jointly fills one work sheet, while the questionnaires are filled by each student separately. The negotiation among each group’ s members is considered substantial in terms of revealing the way students compose their understandings of scientific concepts and place the latter in a scientific context. 3. interactionmedia format

17. Social orchestration 4. rolesdescription Students are given the role of researcher – scientist. They define the problem, discuss on the solving strategy and accordingly alter the microworld environment, try out experiments and keep notes of the solutions they think of. 4. rolesmedia format

18. Actions 1. Action pattern description In the course of this activity the students are expected to be involved in the following actions (in relation to the use of the software application): STEP 1 Draw a thick brown line on the ground (the point of departure of the body). STEP 2 Rename the START button to: “Start Position”. STEP 3 Draw a “support” vertical line, to comprehend the different inclination of x=f(t) in different speeds, in order to identify that the fast moving vehicle, in the same time as the slow moving one, arrives at a more distant point. STEP 4 Place a text box next to each axis with a symbol of its magnitude and units On a higher level and to the extend to which the teacher is familiarized with the E-Slate environment, he/she can show the students the code that guides the balloon, as well as the 4 quills-turtles which impress the graphic representations. Then the students can compare the codes that "produce" the graphic representations of shift associated to time, answer a question with regard to the difference of the two codes and explain the different form of the two graphic representations.

19. Actions-Action Pattern 3. We cease the motion where we wish, by clicking on the PAUSE button. Then, the body comes back automatically at the position of departure, while the graphic representations remain drawn, so that a comparison to the next can be made. With the START key the body restarts moving from the position we have defined as initial. If we let it move for sufficient duration, after some time it will automatically stop and return to the point of departure. 2. We consider that, each time, the ground is at the point of departure of the body. The body can begin its movement from any point of the ruled surface. For this to happen, we place it where we want and define that this is its initial position, by pushing the INITIALIZATIONbutton. As soon as this is done, all drawn graphic representations are extinguished and the canvases of graphic representations remain empty. • The body moves on the scene, which provides a pair of axes. The horizontal axis passes from the point of the scene, which we have defined as a point of report, but this axis, as well as the vertical one are mobile and users can move them without having the potential of also changing the place of the point of reference.

20. Actions- Action Pattern 4. Thestudy of movement takes place with the aid of graphic representations and students are asked to recognize the identity of their axes. The graphic representations can show up or disappear at will. The existing graphic representations are: x=f (t), r=f (t), t=f (x), v=f (t) where the x is the shift, r is the distance from the point of reference which always remains locked, t is the time, which begins to count from the moment where it the body begins, and v is the speed of the body. 5. We can restore the body on the point of reference, from which the horizontal axis also passes initially, with the REPOSITION button. Then, automatically, the point of reference is also fixed as a position of departure. It is the unique case where we can study two movements with different points of departure on a common pair of axes. 6. In order to draw objects on the “scene” or on any of the graphic representations (auxiliary straight lines), we select with the mouse the particular component and from the Tools menu we select component handling. On the appearing menu we set the tools and the menus to be visible, so we can select the suitable tool and import any object we wish.

21. Teacher 1. rolesdescription • Teacher: • Presents and explains the process to be followed by students • Guides the exploration of the microworld environment and functionalities • Reminds –while discussing- the basic theoretical points students will need to study the problems (graphical representations, basic scientific concepts, elements of mathematical formalism) 4. rolesmedia format

22. Teacher 1. rolesdescription • Researcher • Encourages the work groups, observes their course work, intervenes to point out issues, answers questions, in order to guide students to discover their own answers. • Corrects the worksheets, analyses them, interprets and evaluates the results 4. rolesmedia format

23. Teacher 2. teaching and learning methodsdescription • Lecture: introduction to the microworld • Questions and answers to repeat theory • Problem solving and brainstorming to implement the activities and fill in the work sheets 4. teaching and learning methodsmedia format teachers’ and researchers’ notes in emails exchanged during the development of the software Balloon scenario (teacher’ s version)

24. Organisational and Cultural Context 1. contextdescription Greek private school with an intensive programme, where it is expected from the school “audience” to embed innovative activities and initiatives into the formal curriculum 1. contextmedia format institutional profile and specific information about the school: http://www.haef.gr

25. Space 1. physical characteristicsdescription Computer lab with 13 PC station. The computers are interconnected and are set in circle all around the room. In this way there is free space in the middle of the room available for the teacher to move around and observe what the students are doing with their computers. 1. physical characteristicsmedia format

26. Space 2. usedescription In the classroom, the teacher, who is mainly responsible for carrying out the activity, coexists with a researcher, who performs mild interventions to specific groups, where considered necessary, aiming at pointing their interest to certain aspectsof the problem or to facilitate their problem solving efforts. There is also a second researcher, who handles the camera and whose role is to record what is happening in different areas in the classroom and to focus on anything interesting. 2. usemedia format Teacher and researcher researcher teacher

27. Assessment 1. formative assessmentdescription 1. formative assessmentmedia format

28. Assessment 2. summative assessmentdescription • Teacher • The responses to the questions in the worksheets • Researcher • The responses at the questionnaires which the students will answer some time after the completion of the project. • Interviews with the teacher and selected students • Data collected by videotaping and tape recording 2. summative assessmentmedia format

29. Evaluation 1. evaluationdescription Formative evaluation is taking place permanently and informally through the observation of student’s teams by the teacher. During the project it is possible that the teacher will interfere in order to change some of the questions addressed to the students or to add some supplementary questions (final or intermediary) depending on the program’s outcomes. 1. evaluationmedia format

30. Traces 1. externalizationdescription Report with the description of the research and report about the results 1. externalizationmedia format

31. Traces 2. activity tracesdescription • Student worksheets (versions), • half-finished student artifacts (miscroworlds), • filled questionnaires. 2. activity tracesmedia format

32. Traces 2. activity tracesdescription • Student worksheets (versions), • half-finished student artifacts (miscroworlds), • filled questionnaires. 2. activity tracesmedia format

33. Artifacts and Materials 1. availabilitydescription The lessons and activities take place in the computer lab of the school, and therefore, the particular application and the software should be installed in every work station. Two or three students will work on each machine, so the suitable seating arrangements should be made in the roomin advance. 1. availabilitymedia format Two or three students will work on each machine, so the suitable seating arrangements should be made in the roomin advance.

34. Artifacts and Materials 2. usedescription • PCs • Software (installed in each workstation) • Work sheets (given to students), • Software manual • questionnaires 2. usemedia format Students worksheets as a word doc E-Slate (general authoring program) manual and microworlds downloadable at: http://seed.01p.gr/Communities/Communities/GreekCommunity/GrDownloads/default.aspx http://seed.01p.gr/Communities/Downloads/default.aspx

35. Artifacts and Materials 3. statusdescription • PCs: tool • Software (installed in each workstation): primary tool • Work sheets (given to students), • Software manual: resource for the students and teacher • Questionnaires: resource for the researcher 3. statusmedia format

36. Time 1. duration and stepdescription 4 to 5 teaching hours It is intended to implement the activity within 5 school days, during the official daily school program. 1. duration and stepmedia format School program also available at the school Website (http://www.haef.gr)

37. Theory 1. pedagogical stancedescription Learning through the process of constructing Connection to previous cognitive area Learning through social interaction 1. pedagogical stancemedia format Balloon scenario (Teacher version)