HASAN, Teaching Middle School Physics and Biology using Scratch

I was not sure how to look for scratch project ideas for the blog to write about, and then when I checked the USN syllabus for the middle school students, I was really amazed with the thoughts that came into my mind on how software (including programming environment) or games could help virtually in every area and every topic therein. But since it is about programming to learn and our target area is science subjects I had to identify topics that include some kind of systems involved which would be helped to be learned by programming and simulating. Still there are many and I finally settled with physics and biology.

I am very intrigued by the writings on thinking in levels and emergent object by Uri Wilensky and Mitchel Resnick (1999). I am not sure how I could use scratch for involving emergent levels to learn Physics concepts. But I am really interested in to discuss with the class about it. I do see potential for a student to model from the scratch the behavior of atoms with rules of natural forces and emergent behavior of high level physics objects such as Newton’s laws, conservation of energy and momentum resulting from these. But, I am not sure if it would be suitable for middle school students. But I really would like to discuss and explore this with the class and our beloved professor if possible at all.

Nevertheless, using the ideas of constructionism, I would like to propose ideas for students to learn many of physics concepts (i.e. Motion, Gravity, Optics) by making simulation environment and games with multiple levels.

The first idea is that students would program an experimental environment on their own. They would be given an example environment to gain inspiration and also would be given a set of concepts that they may use. When simulating, any number or a defined set of objects can be added and their properties could also be changed using sliders or data textbox. The properties may include mass (with support of setting mass to infinity), velocity, acceleration and angular velocity and angular acceleration. All the objects could be subject to newton’s law, gravity and conservation of momentum and energy. The whole experience for the students could be divided into multiple iterations. Each iteration would be divided into two basic phases. First is to code, second is to simulate. A set of preset questionnaire could be given to students to identify if they had observed particular observation similar to Simpson, G., Hoyles, C., & Noss, R. (2005) experiments. And also they should be given option to write their own experience while building and simulating the environment. I understand that it would not be an easy straightforward program to emulate collision behavior using scratch. So, a significant amount of time and effort to analyze and model such environment on our own need be spent before assigning such task to the students.

Another idea for teaching these concepts of motion is to let students build their own games instead of just simulating and observing the behaviors to place more value to build objects with different kinds of physics behavior. The games would consist of multiple levels with different kinds of objects with different physics properties. Each level would be like puzzle game. But, I am not sure how complex would it be for middle school students.

To teach the concept of Optics, Students can be asked to make games with multiple levels involving rules of optics. They could make game elements such as Light particle or wave, medium of properties with different values. A simple game could be like a light wave would come out of a specified location in a specific direction. And there would be a goal state. The gamer would be given a set number of medium with set properties. The gamer would need to place those to guide the wave to the goal. Another setting could be like, a set of medium in preset locations would be provided and the gamer would need to set the medium’s properties in way to guide the light particles to the goal. Building the whole game would result in students understanding of the different parameters in optics equation and playing with the end game would make them gain experience with the optics behavior.

I prefer building games instead of simulation because when one tries to build games they are automatically inspired to build something meaningful and engaging for its gamers. Thus the builder need to think out of boundary to bring in new ideas and trying to implement that thus enforcing the idea of Construtionism.

I find the ideas of thinking in levels and emergent objects could be used heavily when to teach concepts of biology. I would not elaborate much on these but I would like to point to different concepts which can be targeted such as evolution, cell structure and cell division, environmental problems. Here too building games could be useful for students to learn the process of photosynthesis, human organ system and nutrition. I am not sure about the school curriculum but simulation environment could be great to teach concepts of DNA and their impact evolution and variation.

Lastly, I want to point out that, if a set piece of target concept is chosen then various ways of involving construtionism can be found which may be a hard process to go through for a teacher within regular structure but nevertheless not impossible at all. I find emergent level is even harder to model but with more effort this could lead a student to a far better understanding of the target concepts which would prepare the student in powerful ways for the future to utilize the concepts experienced.