Gamtamokslinis ugdymas / Natural Science Education

8-26

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas, Violeta Šlekienė, Loreta Ragulienė, Renata Bilbokaitė

Over the latter years education practice has changed a lot. New ways, forms and me-ans of teaching “are coming” to comprehensive schools. Even applying common teaching methods and forms, their application algorithm is changing. First of all, it is related to virtual environment. You can find plenty of important material for education practice in the internet. One of urgent fields is digital teaching/learning content. We can basically assert that digital teaching/learning content is a perspective way seeking to improve education process. However, it is not right to refer only to research works carried out in other countries. It is ne-cessary to assess the context of the country, to accomplish representative evaluations in the population of Lithuanian students and teachers. Digital teaching/learning content, as research works carried out in other countries show, can be an effective means in the teaching/learning process. Lithuania is short of such research works. Quite often teachers practitioners “are experimenting” in a very limited space and restrict themselves to only individual digital content component creation, e.g., of various computer teaching programmes. The object of this research is the efficiency evaluation of digital presentations and les-son scenarios for “Nature and man “subject lessons. Digital presentations and lesson scenarios are arranged according to the textbook “In scientists’ footsteps 5”content. The main aim is to evaluate the arranged digital teaching/learning content. The evaluation was carried out in four main aspects: • Didactic; • Technological; • Usage; • Need. The research was going on from the beginning of January, 2011 to the middle of April, 2011. 20 teachers gave experimental lessons and carried out the evaluation of each of them. The evaluation paper was prepared. It contained 34 statements, connected with the employ-ment of digital content. The statements were evaluated in the 5 range scale from “quite agree” to “quite disagree”. Also the teachers were asked to give comments which they considered to be necessary. Experimental lessons were given in the following order: • IB+PPT (Interactive board +Power Point presentation); • IB+AcIns (interactive board +Active Inspire presentation); • S+PPT (screen + PowerPoint presentation); • S +AcIns (screen + Active Inspire presentation). One group of teachers (11) were using interactive boards + PPT/AcIns + lesson scena-rios in the lessons. The second group (10) were using the screen + PPT/AcIns + lesson scenarios in the lessons. In addition, some teachers tried IB/S + lesson content was given in pdf format. Research results show, that digital teaching/learning content together with arranged lesson scenarios for the realisation of the latter is undoubtedly, an innovative phenomenon in the educational practice. DTC (Digital Teaching Content) application in education practice is significant, because it directly educates students’ digital literacy as one of the essential abilities. DTC is basically interpreted as a component supplementing and integrating traditional teaching means. It has been stated, that DTC usage makes the lesson more effec-tive regardless of the subject of the lesson (makes it more interesting, diverse, more attractive), develops students’ cognitive and psychosocial abilities, strengthens learning motivation, activates teaching/learning process itself. In addition, employment of DTC plays a supplementing role in education process applying various ICT, e.g., interactive boards, multimedia projectors and other. It has been stated, that prepared DTC in respect of realisation and extent of time is suitable and optimal. Optimal amount of slides is presented, the duration of slide usage in terms of time is optimal, and the foreseen activities are fully implemented. Referring to research results we can claim, that the priority is given to Active Inspire format. We can surely assert that DTC usage together with the other teaching /learning devices solves valeological - ergonomic problems. Time is saved, the usage of time allotted to learning is made more effective, teachers’ work itself is made easier, in this way forming possibilities to solve other important education questions.

33-39

Authors: Renata Bilbokaitė

The term visualization is defined as representation of images but this is only a brief ex-planation because the term encompasses all kinds of represented information in various forms of codes. Priority in information codes has shifted from verbal codes to visual codes. A computer screen has enabled an individual to see invisible and difficult objects and made cognitive and social processes easier. Visualization tools have the strongest position among other teaching/learning tools because of such features as complex 3D, spatial relationships, parameters of moving objects and comprehensible representation of images. Visualization takes into account schoolchildren’s perceptive and cognitive abilities including visual thinking and meta-cognition. The previous authors’ researches results enclosed that there were statistically significant differences between two main categories that showed that boys more than girls used searches for visualization in the internet. According to this, there is a question – what has influenced this difference? The aim is to find out boys’ opinion why they are searching for visualization more than girls. The results enclose that the boys more frequently search for visualizations in the inter-net than girls. There were found out two main reasons that explained stated data. Search for visualization was used for learning purposes and for meeting their requirements. In firstly, boys want to have a deeper knowledge, also, they identify that visualization stimulates their cognitive processes and motivation too. Secondly, boys are noisy than girls during the lessons, they do not concentrate them selves to themes and mostly, often do not listen to the teacher. According to this, at home they feel lack of knowledge and want to compensate this by searching for visual information. Also, boys feel pleasure when they are searching in the internet.

49-59

Authors: Edson Rodrigues Santana, Agnaldo Arroio

Scientific knowledge is a social construction gained over time; however it is possible that students do not have that understanding. According to Carvalho (2001) is possible that scientific concepts in many cases are not articulated to the daily lives of students and issues of social context. Based on an action research this work tries to detach the importance of making proposals of activities that bring together the scientific concepts with daily life issues of students. For this purpose we used the information and communication technologies, focused on the production of comics supported by computers. The problem presented to students was about the processes of soil sealing and the consequences for cities such as floods and droughts. The result allowed students to reflect in pairs and with teachers about these problems for their lives. Students were encouraged by the use of computers in a social context to articulated scientific concepts to communicate science. While the comics produced by students supported teachers to understand the process of student learning allowing the mediation’s inferences in Natural Science Education.