Using the “D-stage” Kit to develop 2d Science Microworlds

Zacharoula Smyrnaiou, zsmyrnaiou@ppp.uoa.gr

Educational Technology Lab, School of Philosophy, Department of Pedagogy

Foteini Moustaki, fotmous@ppp.uoa.gr

Educational Technology Lab, School of Philosophy, Department of Pedagogy

Marios Xenos, mariosxenos@gmail.com

Educational Technology Lab, School of Philosophy, Department of Pedagogy

 “D-stage” is designed by ETL as a “kit” for developing 2d Science Microworlds. “D-stage” is a “microworld kit” in the sense that it allows researchers, teachers and students to use it as a template and create a set of 2d Microworlds for simulating phenomena defined by Newtonian or other types of scientific Laws. Designing and constructing new microworlds using the “D-stage” kit, the students have the opportunity to explore the physics laws that underpin the phenomena they wish to simulate and create new and complicated situations to experiment with.  

To develop their microworlds the students have at their disposal: a) an area where they may insert objects and observe the simulated phenomena – the “Stage”, b) an area where the Properties or Behaviours of the objects appear in the form of sliders (angle, length, mass, radius, delay) – the “Attributes” area, c) an area where the GUI handlers are placed (e.g. the START button) – the “Control” area, d) an area where the values of specific Properties or Behaviours appear in a vector form, e) a Logo Editor for programming the Properties, the Behaviours and the relationships between the objects that appear on the Stage.

When opening the kit, the Stage already hosts only one object programmed to move like a projectile. Making it move in different ways is just a matter of changing the initial conditions through the sliders or changing specific parts of the LOGO Program that underpin its motion. Adding new objects at the Stage is also quite simple for the designer of microworld. The Logo code that controls the behaviour of the already existing object can be copy-pasted and linked to the new object.

In this poster, we will attempt to highlight University students’ designing processes as they developed 2d half-baked Microworlds (Kynigos, 2007), using the “D-Stage” kit. We specifically focus on which functionalities of the kit they use and how they connect their design choices with pedagogical and epistemological underpinnings.

References

Kynigos, C. (2007). Half–Baked Logo microworlds as boundary objects in integrated design. Informatics in Education , 6 (2), 335–359.