{"id":5065,"date":"2018-02-14T22:58:10","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T05:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/?p=5065"},"modified":"2018-02-14T23:01:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T06:01:01","slug":"scientific-simulations-creating-misconceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/2018\/02\/14\/scientific-simulations-creating-misconceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Simulations – Creating Misconceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was quite impressed by this week’s topic on the WISE platform; creating a dynamic and interactive platform with collaborative learning and authoring is no easy task. I chose to customize “What Impacts Global Climate Change?” from the WISE library. I chose this primarily because it is currently a very hot topic and the political climate surrounding it is quite stormy. Triple puns aside, Linn et al. (2003) defines inquiry as “engaging students in the intentional process of diagnosing problems, critiquing experiments<\/strong>, distinguishing alternatives, planning investigations, revising views, researching conjectures, searching for information, constructing models<\/strong>, debating with peers, communicating to diverse audiences, and forming coherent arguments<\/strong>” (p. 518). I suspect many of you would agree that inquiry is a desirable learning method in modern education, but the devil is the details so to speak. For instance, one change that I wanted to make was in the simulation Step 2.8 Add Gasses to the Model (click here)<\/strong><\/a>, unfortunately I could not find a way to do that. As you click on the Drive! button, temperature increases exponentially; students not paying attention could easily miss the confusing scale at the bottom in thousands of years. In addition, there is only one car in the simulation putting out CO2. As this is created for students in grades 6-8, the simulation could be misinterpreted in any number of ways. As an educator, I feel it is necessary to be careful about how we display information, to be as accurate as possible, or else students will construct models and arguments that are not based on actual facts. Given the chance, I would change the image to be more representative (i.e. add more cars, even cows if we want to get technical), have a time scale at the bottom that would be more identifiable, and perhaps have an indicator of how much CO2 is being put in the air as the student presses the button. I would also ensure that the temperature increase is consistent with data from multiple sources (see below) and current statistical models.<\/p>\n

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Linn, M. C., Clark, D., & Slotta, J. D. (2003). WISE design for knowledge integration.\u00a0Science education<\/i>,\u00a087<\/i>(4), 517-538.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was quite impressed by this week’s topic on the WISE platform; creating a dynamic and interactive platform with collaborative learning and authoring is no easy task. I chose to customize “What Impacts Global Climate Change?” from the WISE library. I chose this primarily because it is currently a very hot topic and the political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42803,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669390],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-ski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42803"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5070,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5065\/revisions\/5070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}