CILT99 Demonstrations

Visualization and Modeling

ChemViz: Quantum Chemistry Visualization Tools

Lisa Bievenue
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/edu/chemviz

ChemViz is a set of scientific visualization tools and curriculum materials designed to make computational chemistry accessible to high school, and college, teachers and students. Waltz, one of the ChemViz tools, is a web-based interface to DiSCO, a computational chemistry tool that calculates electron densities and molecular orbitals. Students use Waltz as a web-based computational laboratory for designing experiments that can answer their questions concerning such abstract concepts as electrons, atoms, molecules, and chemical bonding. By using Waltz to generate images of the electron densities for various combinations of atoms, students are able to understand in concrete terms the differences between equal and unequal sharing of electrons, bonding and antibonding orbitals, strong and weak bonds, and the energy differences of atoms at appropriate and inappropriate bond distances and angles. A second tool of ChemViz is a web-based interface to the Cambridge Structural Database of crystallographic structures. Students can search for a named molecular structure such as aspirin, ethanol or caffeine, or they can search for a chemical formula. In either case a 3-dimensional interactive representation of the structure is shown to them via the Chime plugin or the RasMol application.

With these tools, chemistry teachers who currently use handwaving to teach invisible submicroscopic concepts will instead use computational and visualization tools to represent three-dimensional processes. An evaluation report documented that ChemViz was successful in changing the teaching of quantum chemistry (Moran, et. al., 1995)..Teachers learned to move away from a role as purveyor of knowledge to a more facilitative role. Students and teachers learned how to use a supercomputing application to ask questions, develop and test hypotheses, and document results with images and animations of atomic structures.

Using Function Probe for Trigonometric Applications

Jere Confrey
http://questmsm.home.texas.net

We are beginning a project investigating the development of trigonometric thinking. The project will have a number of parts including a careful examination of trigonometric thinking as it is used in graphic arts, semiconductor work and sound machines. In addition, we plan to examine critically the understanding of trigonometric reasoning in students in advanced courses. Finally, after undertaking these initial studies of reasoning currently in successful students and in experts who use the ideas explicitly and implicitly, we plan to build a connecting and enhancing series of computer tools and interactive diagrams to bridge the divide and to work with teachers in our implementation site to embed these within existing state curriculum frameworks. In our demo, we will show a simple and initial application of our software Function Probe to web-based data for sunrise, midday and sunset and illustrate how the visualization tools of the grapher and the table capacity can lead to more effective understanding of transformations of trigonometric functions.

Stagecast Creator - Desktop Simulation

Allen Cypher
http://www.stagecast.com

Stagecast Creator is a new desktop simulation program that enables anyone -- kids, teachers, publishers and software authors -- to easily create interactive games and simulations. It is ideal for project-based learning, and for creating math and science visualizations. The teacher's edition of Stagecast Creator includes a Teacher's Guide that presents 20 different lessons for using Creator in the classroom. There are lessons for grades K through 12, covering topics from math and science to language arts and music. Any world built in Creator can be placed on a web page for others to view and use, making Creator the easiest way to build fully interactive demonstrations for the web. Based on Apple's Cocoa technology, Creator is a cross-platform Java application that runs on Windows PC and Macintosh PowerPC computers. At the CILT workshop, I would like to present a demo of Creator, show math and science visualizations that have been built in Creator, and demonstrate how to create your own worlds.

Visual Programming with Function Machines

Wallace Feurzeig

Function Machines is a visual programming language expressly designed for mathematics and computer science education. The Function Machines language employs two-dimensional visual representations-graphical icons-in contrast with the linear textual expressions used for representing program structures in traditional (one-dimensional) languages. In Function Machines the transmission of data and the passage of control are graphically animated in a fashion readily accessible to students.

Function Machines is based on a "function as machine" metaphor. Mathematical functions are viewed as machines that communicate with other machines through data flow and control flow connections. The system provides as primitive constructs, machines corresponding to the standard mathematical, graphics, list processing, logic, and I/O operations found in one-dimensional languages. These machines are used as building blocks to construct more complex machines in a modular and extensible fashion. The visual representation of machines and the animation of the passage of data and control makes the semantics of functional operation and iterative and recursive computation transparent. The operation of recursion is shown visually by displaying a separate window for each instantiation of the program as it is created, and erasing it when it terminates.

In the Function Machines environment, a machine runs whenever its inputs are available. Since this can occur simultaneously for several machines, the system naturally supports parallel operation. Thus, the system opens new opportunities for introducing the study of parallel algorithms to beginning students. Function Machines has been piloted in elementary and secondary classrooms. A recent implementation by BBN Technologies in collaboration with the Education Development Center extends the previous version by incorporating additional functionality, a richly enhanced graphical user interface, and a ten-fold increase in computational speed. A demonstration of teachers' and students' work will illustrate the system's special capabilities and educational benefits.

Student Visualization Tools Explore Time and Space

Eric Hilfer
http://www.TERCworks.terc.edu

Two software products developed by TERC empower students to interactively explore real-world data organized by time and geographic position. VideoScape is a data acquisition and analysis tool which combines MBL probe measurements with synchronized video. A picture is worth a thousand words; students explore sets of data observations which are presented as graphs that are actively linked to video. As they browse through the graph data, the video displays the frame which corresponds to each data point. As they play the video, or drag the playback position to interesting moments, the corresponding data point is highlighted on the graph. The context of time-dependent measurements is immediately conveyed. Abstract data representations are suddenly rooted in reality. The computer is used to extend the students' senses while maintaining a compelling visual connection to the data. Accurate probe data and flexible video playback speeds empower students to enter time realms usually unavailable to human apprehension, like time lapse observations of light and clouds in the sky, or the transient events of kids jumping under the influence of gravity. Students can also collect their own VideoScape data using MBL probes and a video capture device.

Visual Earth is a professional-strength Geographic Information System application tailored for use by students, which supports guided discovery and open-ended investigation. Visual Earth's student-friendly GIS interface concentrates on the essential GIS tools students need to investigate intriguing questions using layers of global and local data. The Visual Earth user interface includes a guided discovery mechanism for presenting multimedia material which supports the students' inquiry process. As students master the process of using real data to investigate a problem and deduce solutions, they can move on to open-ended research questions which draw upon a variety of available data overlays.

UNOmaha's Office of Internet Studies Features CASDE

Bob Pawloski
http://ois.unomaha.edu

Over the past five years, the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Office of Internet Studies has been involved in assessing Internet applications as utilized in K-12 classrooms. Gathering data with web-enabled databases, this research office of UNOmaha's College of Education evaluates widespread integration in Nebraska as well as two USDOE Technology Integration Challenge Grants. Furthermore, curriculum development and resources have been advanced in the form of a Space Shuttle Simulation Laboratory and also by forming a consortium with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln's Center for the Advancement of Land Management Technology (CALMIT). The Consortium for the Application of Space Data to Education (CASDE) has produced a cross-platform sampler CD with lesson plan starters or Building Blocks, and DataSlate. DataSlate is a Java application authored by NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory. It allows users to view data sets at several resolutions, and to simultaneously compare different types of space imagery covering the same geographical area. Applications with other types of imagery are being explored. Measurement and annotation tools have been included in the current release, with extensive input solicited from practicing K-12 educators. CASDE's third partner, CALMIT, has developed an extensive and very educator-friendly web site titled Virtual Nebraska (http://www.casde.unl.edu/vn.html). The CASDE project has a strong evaluation and metrics process in place, and is carefully monitoring the effectiveness of CASDE based activities with students and teachers. Results from several quantitative pilot studies, as well as a variety of evolving qualitative information (such as interviews and testimonials), is very encouraging. The full evaluation portfolio for the CASDE project is available at http://ois.unomaha.edu/casde/

Strawberry Creek: Supporting student understanding of water quality through causal modeling

Sherry Seethaler
http://wise.berkeley.edu/

Strawberry Creek is a web-based curriculum designed to teach high school physics, chemistry and biology students about water quality. Developed as a partnership project involving researchers, high school teachers, and scientists, the curriculum is based on a set of pedagogical principles that are the result of fifteen years research. One of these principles is to help students make visible their thinking about particular scientific concepts.

Toward this end, Strawberry Creek employs a (http://cilt.berkeley.edu/creek/modeling) causal modeling tool which allows students to make and explain relationships between different factors (e.g. chemicals and organisms) in the creek. The particular nature of these relationships is represented through color, shape, and textual explanations. Students use the modeling tool to make initial predictions about the factors that contribute to water quality. As students explore online evidence about these factors, they iteratively refine their model. In addition to providing students with an external representation of water quality relationships, the tool also makes student thinking visible to the research team by logging changes to student models over time. The study we report on explores changes in students' understanding of the role of phosphates and nitrates in the eutrophication of a body of water: where they are used, how they enter a water system, and their consequences on algae, bacteria, and other organisms in the stream. By helping to make student thinking visible, the modeling tool serves as an instructional scaffold for student learning. By tracking change to student models over time, the tool, combined with pre/post measures, serves an important assessment function that helps us to develop a deeper understanding of student learning about water quality as we iteratively redesign the curriculum.