Abstract:

It is almost a consensus that the experimental work helps the students to develop skills, understand better the theory, create scientific models and be creative. So, the experimental work is an important part of the learning process in science, because the students are engaged in heads-on and hands-on activities. It is worth highlighting that active learning not only provides the development of student’s skills to solve problems and change attitudes towards science, but also their own attitudes and values in society.

Unfortunately, many students do not have access to the laboratories or do not develop a critical reasoning in a second moment outside the laboratory. For many of them, laboratory work resumes to follow a recipe and to write a report at the end, which gives a poor contribution for the development of conceptual skills.

An improvement to laboratory work may come from interactive resources, namely the use of virtual activities based on video and pedagogical computational simulations, which can have a positive impact on the learning process of students who are now very familiar with the use of media and digital technology.
In this work we proposed a didactic sequence of what we call the VLAB-FIS project, focused on the Newton's laws of motion experiment. This is an activity where students investigate the motion of a body that moves on a horizontal plane, under a resultant of the forces acting on it that may or may not be zero, a situation that can be achieved in many well-known situations. The didactic sequence consists, first, in giving students an introductory short video, to provide a holistic view of the experimental work and help them to better understand the contents of the experiment, and thus promote understanding about what they are going to do in the laboratory and also motivation for learning more about the contents.

Digital educational resources will complement the introductory video:
1. a pedagogical computational simulation based on easy java, which allows interaction and acts as a virtual laboratory activity. This enables students to execute the experiment virtually outside the classroom or laboratory context, providing the direct involvement of physical concepts with previously acquired knowledge, therefore enhancing meaningful learning.
2. Ultimately, a video recording of the experiment, followed by the analysis of the phenomenon studied with Tracker software, which is a freeware video tool for teaching physics frequently used to understand the various nuances of motion and to relate it with its graphic representation.

The idea brought up in this work is that with this didactic sequence, students can understand the physical phenomena occurring in the Physical world just like in laboratory activities, understand the applicability of physical-mathematical models in solving problems and finally realize the potential of technology and virtual interactive resources for their own learning, even when they are not at school. The VLAB-FIS project in now being implemented in two Portuguese high schools with students of 10th and 11th grade (15-16 years old). A discussion concerning the use of the described didactic sequence will be given in the paper.

Keywords:

Newton's Laws, Virtual Experiment, Vlab-fis Project.