Abstract:

Nowadays students show lack of motivation when learning science, for instance Physics and Chemistry, which is accentuated through their academic path. This fact is obvious when we see children asking a lot of questions in the first years of age which disappear in time.
The situation mentioned above suggests, among other factors, a classic approach and a missing contextualization of the scientific concepts. The present academic approach prompts to that e-learning will become a normal part of the practice over time, complementing traditional methods and that students will expect e-tools and experimental work to be available to enhance and support their learning.
The essential objective of this study is to propose ways to invert this process, giving several and diversified proposals to increase students’ interest and motivation in scientific areas such as Physics and Chemistry. To achieve such goal two channels are essentially used: new technologies and experimental work. To implement that, it is important to have virtual laboratories like this to help teachers to perform some experiments that are impossible to do at school either because lack of material or by safety precautions, for example.
Teaching nowadays is, as always, a challenge. In order to keep students motivated and worried about scientific questions that appear all the time, in everyday situation, teachers need to change pedagogical methods in classrooms.
The use of new technologies and experimental work seems to be a positive option to make students active in their process of studying science, like Physics and Chemistry.

Keywords:

Physics, chemistry, science education, secondary school, teaching/learning process.