ACCESS Open House Demonstration Abstracts

Computer Models for the Science Classroom

Mary Ellen Verona
mverona@mvhs1.mbhs.edu
Susan Ragan
sragan@mvhs1.mbhs.edu http://mvhs.mbhs.edu

The high school science classroom needs new tools in order to achieve the AAAS Project 2061 Science Benchmarks Common Themes of systems, models, constancy and change, and scale.

STELLA software allows the student to represent change over time in a dynamic fashion. Although the software uses numerical integration to generate values, the computation is hidden from view so that students with basic algebra skills may build models and run simulations.

Through graphs and tables generated by the models, students are able to test hypotheses, analyze data, and understand the inter-relationships between parts of a system.

One of the goals of the EOT-PACI K-12 program is to bring the tools of computational science to K-12 classrooms. This demonstration will show how the Maryland Virtual High School is doing that in high school science classrooms.

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