Many preschool classrooms explore plant growth. However, because many plants take a long time to grow, it is often hard to facilitate engagement in some practices (i.e., since change is typically not observable from one day to another, children often forget their prior predictions or cannot recall what plants looked like days or weeks earlier).…

We describe a classroom exercise to allow students to explore foraging strategies in higher vertebrates. The exercise includes an initial interactive session in which students act as predators and are guided through foraging simulations, and a subsequent student-led session where classmates are employed as experimental subjects. Students rated the…

Virtual environments can resolve many practical and pedagogical challenges within higher education. Economic considerations, accessibility issues, and safety concerns can all be somewhat alleviated by creating learning activities in a virtual space. Because of the removal of real-world physical limitations like gravity, durability and scope,…

Technology offers ample opportunities to bring reality into the classroom. Students and teachers nowadays have many tools to work in an authentic way with real data in mathematics and science education. However, much research and development are still needed to create a consistent learning trajectory out of the many exciting single activities.…

This publication consists of a lengthy list of environmental games (35) on the market today, their source and purchase price. Included is a description of the major changes the types of games have undergone. The first group of games resembled closely ordinary board games with success dependent on skill and/or chance rather than understanding of…

The use of simulation is discussed, including its effectiveness in generating environmental awareness and an environmental ethic in the student. Two simulation activities are described. (RE)

Presents a nuclear power plant simulation game which is designed to involve a class of 30 junior or senior high school students. Scientific, ecological, and social issues covered in the game are also presented. (HM)

Describes the procedure and materials of a game designed for teaching alimentary systems. One set is used to teach a whole class. (GS)

Presents a simulation activity that allow students to work through the exercise of DNA profiling and to grapple with some analytical and ethical questions involving a couple arranging with a surrogate mother to have a baby. Can be used to teach the principles of restriction enzyme digestion, gel electrophoresis, and probe hybridization. (MDH)

Computational science includes the use of computer-based modeling and simulation to define and test theories about scientific phenomena. The challenge for educators is to develop techniques for implementing computational science in the classroom. This paper reviews some previous work on the use of simulation alone (without modeling), modeling…

Presents a general step-by-step description of how classroom games for science can be developed. Examples from the slim chance game from the Health Activities Project of the University of California at Berkeley are included. (HM)

This module is intended to give students a better understanding of the factors involved in home design that relate to energy consumption. Students are given an introductory page followed by a set of directions for a home design game. One class period is required to accomplish the activities of this module. (Author/RE)

It is often difficult to engage students, especially younger students, in authentic scientific inquiry. By authentic, the author means that the classroom activities are both good simulations of scientific inquiry as experienced by professional scientists and something that the students can relate to on an intuitive level. However, by engaging…

This article describes a simple and inexpensive hands-on simulation of protein folding suitable for use in large lecture classes. This activity uses a minimum of parts, tools, and skill to simulate some of the fundamental principles of protein folding. The major concepts targeted are that proteins begin as linear polypeptides and fold to…

A new, simple classroom technique helps cell biology students understand principles of Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics. A student mimics the enzyme and the student's hand represents the enzyme's active site. The catalytic event is the transfer of marbles (substrate molecules) by hand from one plastic container to another. As predicted, increases…