Abstract:

In recent years, the development and dissemination of new digital technologies in many areas has led to major changes in society and have also began to be noticed in education systems and teaching resources. In this regard, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) supports a multidisciplinary project between two Galician researching groups, the Micro-Optics and GRIN Optics group (GRINTEAM) and the Artificial Vision and Pattern Recognition group (VARPA) in conjunction with teachers from different schools. The main objective of this project is the design and development of Physics-Chemistry, Biology-Geology and Technology-related content applications for personal computers and mobile devices. These interactive tools are addressed to the different stages of Spanish education, namely Compulsory Primary Education (EPO), Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) and Baccalaureate students and serve as educational support material for both students and for teachers.

In the first stage of the project those issues showing greater difficulty for students are identified, paying special attention to diversity. Then the applications are designed attending to the advice of the teachers and programmed using HTML5 markup language and MATLAB mathematical software, depending on the apps requirements. In the case of webpages, they were designed to be responsive naturally providing optimal interaction experience when using different devices such as tablets or desktop PCs. Each of these digital applications includes a guide describing the theoretical basis of the phenomenon related exercises. All applications and materials related to them are also available in English, providing an added value to the project, as it will facilitate their introduction in multilingual centers.

Keywords:

Active learning, Education, MATLAB GUIDE, HTML5, Virtual laboratory, Educational Software.