VccSSe
Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education
“Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education”
UNIT 2
Seminar
The Basics and Examples of Virtual Instrumentation in Education
Duration: 4 hours
Content:
A. Introduction
B. Basic Meaning of Virtual Instrumentation in Education
C. Virtual Instrumentation on Internet - Examples
D. Task
E. Bibliography
A. Introduction
Virtual Instrumentation (VI), as stated previously, has its origins in industry and labs.
Having this in view, VI was divided into four main application groups: simulation,
measurement, data analysis and control. Generally, Virtual Instruments can be used for
research, industrial and educational purposes [1].
This chapter deals with educational uses. Even if this chapter presents some
significant high quality available resources on the Internet, other main virtual environments
(Cabri Geometry, LabVIEW, Crocodile Clips) will be reviewed later, as special and
distinguished parts.
B. Basic Meaning of Virtual Instrumentation in Education
In general, virtual instrumentation is completing or replacing the manipulative part of
the experiments. Many instruments not only allow users to conduct measurements but also
present briefly fundamental theory of the phenomenon or / and provide full information
concerning the experiments (how to switch on instruments, make connections, set correct
parameters and run experiment, how to collect and analyze data and verify the obtained
results etc). Virtual experiments are equipped with applications that simulate the phenomena
and processes, and model instruments and experimental measurement systems. For the
majority of the experiments, the applications can be selected from the menu bar of the user
interface, developed for virtual experiment control. Before starting the acquisition of data, the
experimenter has to prepare virtual experiment to work. It needs to connect instruments,
switch on all virtual instruments and choose correct operating parameters, to select the
experimental conditions. It is recommended that the experiments be based on real
experimental data.
Virtual experiments are presented on different sites in Internet or are easy to
approach from CDs (as LabVIEW applications - executable programs developed in
LabVIEW). It means that these virtual experiments can be available and useful for pupils /
students at home for the training before entering the real laboratory and also for e-learning /
blended learning. These experiments can be also a part of the home virtual laboratory for
disabled students or as part of the virtual laboratories in secondary schools. Finally, teachers
and lecturers can use them for demonstrations during the theoretical lessons.
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VccSSe
Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education
“Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education”
Of course, home training allows students to get familiar with the experimental
arrangements and techniques before their work in the real lab. On the other hand, it reduces
the instrumentation learning time in the real lab, so that pupils / students can concentrate
more on the details of the phenomenon and also most of the lab time can be used for other
things (for example: data acquisition, verifying results, discussion and preparation of report
documents). Virtual experiments provide pupils / students the opportunity to repeat
measurements many times and run experiments at convenient time. Essential properties of
the home virtual laboratory - and also of virtual laboratories for secondary schools - are that
they are costless and can be performed at any time using computers and presented software
[2].
C. Virtual Instrumentation on Internet - Examples
Nowadays, Internet makes possible to offer some small applications on-line.
Chronologically, Java language was the first option for creating new virtual instruments. In
the recent years, Adobe Flash, with Action Script programming language, offers a powerful
and very visual tool to develop virtual instruments.
C.1. SHOCKWAVE: Explore Science – more than a decade ago, in 1995, Raman
Pfaff created Explore Science, “the first shocked laboratory” (Figure 1). He emphazised that
“This site will let both students and teachers interact with material on the web, rather than
just reading text” [3].
Figure 1 – IFMSA mirror of Explore Science webpage
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VccSSe
Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education
“Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education”
Mechanics, E & M, Life Sciences, Waves, Astro, Optics, Games and Basics were the
main cathegories used by Pfaff to classify all the 45 interactivities. It was really an interactive
laboratory and students (or teachers) were asked to make actual “virtual experiments”.
Playing golf and looking for “hole in one”, making collisions between two blocks of adjustable
mass, moving a pendulum with variable length, using aditive or substractive lights etc. are
some examples of it. But the best way to evaluate the idea of interactivity in the mid 90’s is
visiting his web-page! Nowadays, Explore Science evolved to ExploreLearning [4], a
commercial site with hundreds of examples (called gizmos) covering Physics, Chemistry,
Earth Sciences, Geometry etc. with an empirical evidence for the instructional effectiveness
of ExploreLearning's Gizmos [5].
C.2. JAVA: Walter Fendt – some of the most famous physics labs are written not in
English, but in Chinese and German. Prof. Fu-Kwun Hwang (from the National Taiwan
Normal University) wrote more than 70 Java applets. These applets cover most topics of
Physics. Prof Hwang uses Internet as a way to share its knowledge (freely) and all his
applets can be downloaded for free. As a result, many volunteers made the effort to translate
them into English. To know more about Mr. Hwang work, his English webpage can be visited
[6].
Herr Walter Fendt, Physics teacher at Paul-Klee-Gymnasium in Gersthofen, Bavaria,
wrote Physics, Astronomy and Maths applets. He also offered them to the web community.
Now, 21 different versions of these applets are ready to be downloaded from his web page
(Figure 2) [7].
Figure 2 – Walter Fendt webpage
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VccSSe
Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education
“Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education”
C.3. Other sites – More examples can be found on Internet, examples whith
programming of high quality but not so famous. La Baldufa [8] (spinning top in Catalan) from
the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, is a good example of it. This virtual lab
represents a succesful cooperation between the mentioned University and Secondary
Schools.
Educaplus (http://educaplus.org) (Figure 3) - Jesús Peñas, teacher of Physcis and
Chemistry in Andalusia, started a personal project in 1999 [9]. Today there is no doubt that
his website contains the most complete collection of free flash interactivities for secondary
school in Spanish. They cover some parts of Spanish scientific secondary curriculum. Most of
these flash are really interactive and can be considered as small pieces of virtual labs.
Perfect Gases Laws [10], Kinematics [11] and Optics [12] have their own sections and most
of the secondary school topics on these subjects are well represented with interactivities.
All the above mentioned sites provide ready-to-use interactivities. Teachers don’t
require any extra computer skills. Just as Internet users they should be able to plan lessons
using on-line interactivities.
A step further would need teachers being competent in language programming, web
design etc. This is quite far away from teachers’ interests and background. For this purpose,
teachers willing to create their own activities but avoiding a hard training, virtual (and
commercial) labs offer a good solution.
Figure 3 – Educaplus homepage
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VccSSe
Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education
“Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education”
D. Task
The participants are asked to visit at least three web pages that involve the use of
virtual instrumentation in education.
At this step, every participant has to improve his / her scenario created in the previous
seminar with new ideas about the introduction of virtual instruments in his / her practical
activity.
The new version of the scenario will be prepared in another “doc” file and uploaded in
the Moodle platform – in the section “Solved Tasks”.
E. Bibliography
[1] http://mami.uclm.es/jmruiz/materiales/Documentos/Instrumentacion%20Virtual.pdf
[2] Tlaczala, W., Gorghiu, G., Glava, A., Bazan, P., Kukkonen, J., Masior, W., Uzycki, J.,
Zaremba, M. (2006). Computer Simulation and Modeling in Virtual Physics Experiments.
Current Developments in Technology-Assisted Education, Proceedings of the 4th
International Conference on Multimedia & ICT’s in Education, FORMATEX, Badajoz,
Spain (pp. 1198 – 1202).
[3] http://ww2.unime.it/dipart/i_fismed/wbt/mirror/ExplrSci/dswmedia/index.htm
[4] http://www.explorelearning.com/
[5] http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cCorp.dspResearch
[6] http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/
[7] http://www.walter-fendt.de/
[8] http://baldufa.upc.es/baldufa/lbindex/lbindex.htm
[9] Educaplus has been awarded with several prizes. See:
http://www.educaplus.org/quienes/quienes.html
[10] http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/jpc/gases/index.html
[11] http://www.educaplus.org/movi/index.html
[12] http://www.educaplus.org/luz/index.html
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