July 15, 1999
LIBRARY/SCIENCE FOR CHILDREN
Virtual Experiments That Go 'Kaboom!'
By MARGOT SLADE
cience. The very word can
make strong parents tremble
-- especially if their science
education ended with high-school
physics or in college with ""Rocks for
Jocks"" and especially since the quality of that education may have been
dubious. Now these parents must
confront computer-conversant children who want explanations for lightning, dinosaurs, how the human body
functions and how the heavens work.
An encyclopedia or science text
won't always suffice. Science comprises facts, processes and phenomena along with a method of exploration that involves forming and testing hypotheses. Children may be able
to recite an explanation, but true understanding is very likely to require
deeper involvement.
""You have to experiment with actual objects -- plants and animals,
pulleys and pendulums, an apple as
Earth and an orange as the Sun,""
said Sarah Beth Corning, the science
teacher at the Village Infant Center
in Manhattan. ""Hands-on science is
fun, understandable and very real.""
That's where science software
comes in. At their best, these programs allow children to form hypotheses and test them by changing
variables and seeing how those
changes would actually play out.
Thanks to full-motion video, children
can watch blood flow, mix chemicals
or construct a circuit without having
blood, chemicals or batteries on hand
or on their hands.
More important, they can try out
ideas and manipulate objects just to
see what happens. That's hard to do
at home, and even in school, in part
because it can be difficult (and costly) to redo experiments and in part
because an experiment gone awry
can be a major problem. The only
danger with the software, Ms. Corning said, is the possibility that overenthusiastic parents will wrest control of the mouse from their children.
""Yet, in the best educational settings -- be it in the classroom, before
a computer or in a lab -- experiments that don't go as expected can
be powerful learning experiences,""
said Arthur Pober, an educational
psychologist and child and family
counselor who is executive director
of the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
In selecting science software for
young children, roughly ages 4 to 8,
Dr. Pober advised looking for ""exposure and interest"": introductory programs that expose children to a
range of subjects and put them at
ease with something that is part of
daily life, and subject-specific programs that play to a youngster's
budding interests.
Children should be placed in the
role of explorer-experimenter. And
the programs should emphasize in
their games and activities -- invariably, science principles are embedded in challenges of some kind -- observation, deductive reasoning, educated guesses and building on what
the child has learned. Activities
should offer adjustable levels of difficulty, and they should go beyond the
presentation of facts.
""Kids need to discover for themselves why things are as they are and
how things work,"" Dr. Pober said.
""Then they'll own that knowledge.""