Science Simulations: A Virtual Learning Environment — from Journey in Technology by Dolores Gende

Where do I find simulations?

One of the best websites for science simulations is PhET from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Originally founded by Physics Nobel Prize laureate Carl Weiman, PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. These simulations can be downloaded or played directly on your browser.

Teachers can access the Teacher Ideas & Activities page for teacher-submitted contributions, designed to be used in conjunction with the simulations.

These are the links to the core science courses simulations. The PhET website also contains excellent Math simulations.

Simulation Resources

Biology
Chemistry
Earth Science/Geology
Physics

http://www.brightstorm.com/

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Crowdsourcing chemistry -- April 2010 presentation at Google Tech Talk -- by Dr Matthew Todd, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney

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Google Tech Talk
April 6, 2010

ABSTRACT
Presented by Dr Matthew Todd, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney.

Science shaped itself in the founding days of learned societies: individuals or teams competed, in secret, with paper-based communication in subscription journals. Why are we all still doing science like this? The internet has had a major impact in our sharing of data by traditional means, but it has not yet radically changed the way we actually perform science.

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Here’s a list of the projects mentioned in the video:

Praziquantel is being used in the treatment of schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection spread by freshwater snails in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Gates Foundation is funding an operational research program – SCORE to control and eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases.

This operates out of Imperial College, London and is led by Professor Alan Fenwick OBE.

The Cathedral model is where a professor and students conduct funded research to develop a solution whereas the Bazaar model invites other people to collaborate in an Open source way to develop a solution. Firefox, Chrome, Wikipedia are all Bazaar models.

Open Science involves publishing in real time and letting people respond as they see fit and then collaborate in real time.

The UsefulChem Project led by the Jean Claude Bradley at Drexel University – aimed at producing molecules that will be used to treat malaria.  Bradley is a proponent of and practises Open Notebook Science.

Open Source Drug Discovery:  http://www.osdd.net/ – OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world.

Open WetWare:  http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:AboutOpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering.

The Open Dinosaur Project:  http://opendino.wordpress.com/ (founded to involve scientists and the public alike in developing a comprehensive database of dinosaur limb bone).

Chemspider:  http://www.chemspider.com/ChemSpider links together compound information across the web, providing free text and structure search access of millions of chemical structures.

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ – advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.

GenBankhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/ – is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.

The Tropical Disease Initiative aims to apply an open-source collaborative approach to biological and medical research for tropical diseases.

The Synaptic Leap:  – Open Source Biomedical Research.

Stack Overflow allows you to post code and ask for help on a problem.

Chempedia is a free service for uniquely identifying and naming chemical substances.

CML (Chemical Markup Language) is an open standard for representing molecular and other chemical data.  It includes XML Schema, source code for working with CML data, and was devised by  Peter Murray-Rust who worked with Microsoft to develop a Chem Word Add-in enabling a Word document to be searched and the chemical information in it to be automatically annotated and extracted.  When you hover over a word, you get a structure and you can change the structure.

Chemicalize.org –   a public web resource developed by ChemAxon.

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The Ultimate Study Guide: Wolfram Alpha Launches “Course Assistant” Apps — from ReadWriteWeb by Audrey Watters

The computational knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha is launching the first three of a series of new “course assistant” apps today. These apps, available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, are designed to take advantage of the Wolfram|Alpha technology in the service of supporting some of the most popular courses in high school and college.

The idea is to be able to quickly access the pertinent capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha relevant for specific subject areas. Currently, these subject areas are Algebra, Calculus, and Music Theory. But the company says it plans to add apps for other subjects – “for every major course, from elementary school to graduate school,” – including those fields outside math and science.

From DSC:
Notice the term engine (in bold maroon above).
This is the type of sophisticated programming that will increasingly be baked into future learning products — as the software seeks to learn more about each learner while providing each learner with a more customized learning experience…pushing them, but aiming to encourage — not discourage — them. I can see an opt-in program where each of us can build a cloud/web-based learner profile — and allow such an engine to be “fed” that data.



A pictorial gallery of the most amazing science images of 2010

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From DSC:
I’m interested in trying to take pulse checks on a variety of constantly moving bulls-eyes out there — one of which is new business models within the world of teaching and learning (in higher education, K-12, and the corporate world).
I have no idea whether the courses that this site/service offers are truly great or not. To me, it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is whether this model — or this type of business model — takes off. The costs of obtaining an education could be positively impacted here, as competition continues to heat up and the landscapes continue to morph.

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The Great Courses -- online lectures from across the lands

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Surviving the future is an unsettling glimpse into the human psyche right now, as our culture staggers between a fervent belief in futuristic utopian technologies on the one hand, and dreams of apocalyptic planetary payback on the other. Thought provoking and visually stunning, Surviving the Future looks at the stark and extreme choices facing our species as we prepare ourselves for the most challenging and consequential period in our history.”

— from http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2010/survivingthefuture/

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As seen as CBC-TV on Thursday Oct-21-2010

Surviving the Future -- as seen on CBS on 10/21/10

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Surviving the future

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— originally from http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2010/11/surviving-future.html

From DSC:
Although I don’t agree with many things in this piece, it’s important to reflect upon some of the sometimes exciting and sometimes disturbing things in this piece. Looking at some of the enormous challenges and potential directions ahead of us this century, it’s all the more important that our hearts are hearts of flesh, not hearts of stone!

UMC packs 3-D visuals into cutting-edge research lab — from grandforksherald.com by Ryan Johnson

$145,000 virtual immersion lab creates realistic 3-D simulations
Think virtual reality, only more realistic. Add to that cutting edge-technology and the ability to interact with and walk around 3-D holograms and you get the newest addition to the University of Minnesota-Crookston, complete with special effects impressive enough to put the 2009 blockbuster film “Avatar” to shame

— Dr. Adel Ali from grandforksherald.com

…BYU has just received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The pilot project will examine the deeper learning and cost savings that can be achieved when open textbooks replace traditional, expensive textbooks in public high school science classrooms.

15-20 public high school science teachers in Utah will replace their expensive, traditional textbooks with open textbooks from CK12.org for the 2010-2011 school year. Approximately 2,000 students will be impacted by the changes. Most will use printed versions of the books, while a few hundred students in one-to-one schools will use the online versions of the books on netbooks or iPads. Teachers will continue to supplement the CK12 books with additional resources and activities just as they have historically supplemented expensive, traditional textbooks.

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How to teach with technology: Science and math — Edutopia.org

Also see:

Big Thinkers: Katie Salen on Learning with Games — Edutopia.org
A professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design talks about the value of games and the empowerment of play.

How to Build a Technology-Based Curriculum — Edutopia.org
Educators emphasize that infrastructure must precede innovation.

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STEMTube.com

STEMTube.com

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