Many factors, such as distance learning, increasing costs for supplies, and decreasing budgets, make it difficult to provide hands-on STEM activities in schools. While access to physical labs, manipulatives, and lab tools might be limited, science, technology, engineering, and math learning is rooted in exploration and investigation. How can you ensure your students get an interactive STEM experience? Create an engaging learning environment with virtual lab simulations.
What are virtual labs?
Virtual labs allow students to explore STEM through simulations and experiments. Whether teaching in person, virtual, or hybrid classes, online labs help students build science and math skills to succeed in STEM. With virtual labs, students get hands-on learning with real-world applications. They are also the perfect fit for blended learning and individualized instruction.
How do virtual labs help learners of all ages?
Interactive learning through online lab simulations delivers authentic STEM experiences for students with immediate feedback, which allows students to consider their choices and recreate experiments. Students of all ages and abilities can engage in an interactive learning environment that brings them into the process. Student learning is supported because they can dig deeper into subjects and really understand challenging concepts as they form, analyze, and test ideas to find solutions. The motivation to explore is high with the inquiry-based approach of virtual labs.
Ways to implement virtual labs
- Spark students’ interest in a new science or math concept. Start a lesson by diving into an interactive virtual lab so students can hypothesize, observe, and analyze.
- Easily assess students. Use virtual labs to assess students’ understanding of science and math concepts. Virtual labs can be great formative assessment tools.
- Assign virtual labs for at-home practice. Virtual labs make it easy to extend learning outside of the classroom. Assign students virtual labs that supplement STEM lessons so they can further practice science and math skills at home. With these virtual lab simulations, students will experience science and math beyond a textbook and see how STEM applies to the real world.
Virtual lab simulations for STEM activities and skills
Interactive STEM simulations, like ExploreLearning Gizmos, deliver real-world lab work. Virtual labs give students laboratory activities without the cost, prep time, and messiness. No more outdated equipment or sharing supplies. Virtual labs can be updated without purchasing new materials, such as the recent updates to the popular Phase Changes Gizmo that make the Gizmo more accurate and easier to use. The volume of the water in the beaker was decreased, and the range of the heat slider was increased, allowing the water to heat up or cool down much more quickly. A hexagonal pattern was added to the frozen molecules in the ice, providing a more precise illustration that molecules in a crystal have a regularly repeating pattern.
Phase Changes Gizmo
Gizmos help students cultivate scientific thinking through online simulations. There are concepts that teachers can’t demonstrate in class due to time constraints or location limitations. Some are simply abstract ideas. Teachers can help students at any grade level see the unseeable with virtual labs while building STEM knowledge and skills. The highly visual, interactive design fosters active participation, communication, and social skills.
Isn’t it time to bring virtual labs into your classroom?
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