The 25-year-old biology and aquatic science teacher at Chesapeake High School, in Essex, is using software that creates a virtual, three-dimensional environment, similar to a video game, to teach children the fundamentals of biology and science. It's a new program that began this fall at the school.

"A lot of kids learn by doing," Scalice said in a recent interview. "A lot of adults learn by doing. If they're doing, they're learning."

Developed by engineers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in North Laurel, the software creates virtual environments for students to navigate and test out laws of science and math.

The program Scalice is teaching allows the virtual environments to create different scenarios. One scenario, for example, is that a certain species of fish have died off and the students have to take virtual water samples and do virtual tests to see why the fish died off. Another involves figuring out the angles and trajectory needed to launch a night vision camera into the distance.

Reese Glidden, 16, a junior at Chesapeake High, said he started working with the program over the summer when the new laboratory was installed. Currently, he is using a virtual recreation of the 1980 volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, to investigate the environmental effects of the eruption.

"It just gives you a different way to learn," Glidden said. "You feel like you're actually the focus. ... It's almost like you're getting one-on-one attention from the teacher."

Glidden said the program appeals to the students of his generation, many of whom, like Glidden, are very familiar with video games.

"I think students who play video games can really relate to it and grasp on pretty quickly," he said.

Funded by feds, school system

The virtual learning project was funded through a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education and $2 million from the Baltimore County schools for installation costs at Chesapeake from Baltimore County Public Schools, according to schools spokesman Charles Herndon.

The technology was developed for Baltimore County and Chesapeake is the only school using it now, Herndon said.

But the school system might eventually expand it into other schools, and other school systems also are interested.

"It's certainly something that a lot of people are looking at," Herndon said.

Tim Frey, a supervisor of the APL team that developed the software, said the engineers who designed it had video games in mind.

"The look and feel is going to look and feel like the gaming environments they (students) are used to," he said.

Jim Miller, a software engineer who helped design the program, said he wanted to make sure the software could use a variety of environments for students to explore. One environment being considered, he said, is the moon surface.

"The NASA mission is just cool," Frey said. "If we can give them some science training on a non-earth environment that might be a win-win for everyone."

Because Scalice is open to what he sees as the future of education, he knows that his role will have to change. Rather than standing in front of a classroom with notes, a board and a piece of chalk, Scalice envisions himself in more of a coaching role, providing students with one-on-one information after initially teaching the lesson.

"I'm doing less but doing more," he said.

For Frey, whose teams of software engineers are used to creating virtual three-dimensional environments for the Department of Defense, the work for Baltimore County was a chance to do something different. It was, he explained, a welcome opportunity to "get kids fired up about science and math."

user comments (1)

user harrykeller says...

Sounds like a great resource. Just be wary of the trap that many fall into. Your very nice simulations are not substitutes for science labs. They ARE support for learning science concepts outside of and in addiiton to the lab work. So, of course, are videos, books, demonstrations, field trips, and so on. You are adding another neat tool to the science learning tool box. Science labs have another dimension not provided by these sorts of tools. They are virtually the only means by which students can understand the nature of science, develop science reasoning skills, and come to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of the work that students do. Real, error-ridden, biased, and "messy" data from the real world are why science labs can achieve these goals. That's not to say that all science labs must be hands-on (physically touching materials under investigation), just that the data must originate in the real world and not from a programmer's keyboard. It's even better is the students take their own individual data point by point. That approach may seem tedious, but these students must own their data and understand where it comes from. Automatic data collection tools, such as probeware, remove that important aspect of science labs. We see teachers today using large online scientific databases as tools for science investigations (a form of lab). That approach misses out on the data collection but not on the rest of the learning experience. The primary problem with this approach is the limited range of science available. A new universities are experimenting with remote robotic labs. Once again, the actual data collection is out of the students' hands, which may be all right for more advanced students, especially upper-class college science majors. Once again, the range of science is very limited to remotely-programmable instruments. More tools will appear to assist in dealing with time, space, money, and safety limitations of science labs. One tool already available is the prerecorded real experiment. With a sufficient number of these available to students in a lab, the essential aspect of the lab is preserved. Of course, much still depends on presentation and on the teacher and how the activity is integrated into the course. Such breakthroughs will help the investigation part of a science course just as the tool in this article helps the content area.

Posted 1:25 PM, 09.25.09 | Permalink