Modelling Astronomy Education, the Case Of F-Hou Tools: SalsaJ and Human Orrery

TARGET GROUP: STUDENTS

OBJECTIVES

·        To promote a method of learning sciences through astronomy as a motivating context to interdisciplinary science education with emphasis on modeling activities.

·        To reproduce the data analysis with a dedicated software called SalsaJ and to model movements of planets with a Human Orrery (a Spatio-Temporal Map of the Solar System), connecting thus mathematics, physics, geography and arts.

SUMMARY

The association F-HOU is part of a worldwide project, Global Hands-On Universe that aims to promote a method of learning sciences through astronomy. We are a community of science teachers, astronomy researchers and science education researchers, whose main goal is to provide science and mathematics teachers from middle school to high school with interactive and collaborative tools (software, instruments, methodology, documents shared on the Internet). Based on an investigative pedagogy that emphasizes observation, the global objective is to develop students’ curiosity, to maintain their taste for science and TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION, and to lead them to argue and reason. This approach requires interaction between physical sciences and mathematics, and can also be easily integrated into multidisciplinary teaching (combining literature, philosophy, TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION, language teaching and sports).

REFERENCE

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03172677/document