At the Denver School of Science and Technology, a public charter high school serving many students from low-income families, laptops are used by teachers and students in a variety of ways. About 30% of the graduating class takes an AP Physics exam, compared to only 3% nationally.
I was recently involved in a few pilot field tests in which high school students were challenged to build an energy efficient scale model house. We observed something amazing. Initially, I was worried that students may end up building houses that are s…
The Concord Consortium announced its new President, Chad Dorsey, at the meeting of its Board of Directors on October 28, 2008. “Chad was the unanimous choice of the Board and has its enthusiastic support,” said Board Chairperson, Pendred Noyce.
Now that you can publish a Molecular Workbench simulation as an applet and embed it on your web page, you may be wondering how you can control it and get data in and out. It may be interesting for web developers who would like to link an existing Flash…
For a while I have been asked whether or not an MW simulation can be made to run directly within a browser page instead of a pop-up window. Several collaborators would like to deploy MW simulations within their web portals or delivery systems. For them…
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) uses numeric methods to study any natural phenomenon and solve any engineering problem related to fluid flow. It has been an indispensable tool for many engineers. Mature, powerful CFD products are available nowadays….
Google SketchUp is a wonderful program that you can use to design 3D structures such as a building WYSIWYG-ly. It offers by far the most advanced user interface for creating 3D objects. Within ten minutes, you can sketch up a simple house with a roof,…
The Molecular Workbench (MW) software offers salient interactive simulations of electrons, atoms, and molecules that explain many phenomena from the microscopic level. What exactly is in a simulation that makes it a better teaching tool than a text boo…
The educational software market is largely dominated by cartoon movies, animations, and games. Developing these media usually requires no rocket science (i.e., sophisticated mathematics and computation in the context of this blog). But this may change …
A significant part of chemistry education is about teaching molecular structures. Before computers were widely available, many teachers used physical ball-and-stick models in the classroom. Using physical models has limitations–the variety of the mole…