July 15, 1999

LIBRARY/SCIENCE FOR CHILDREN

Virtual Experiments That Go 'Kaboom!'

By MARGOT SLADE

Science. 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.



Associated Press
Overview

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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.""




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