Aplicações de simuladores interativos no ensino de Física : uma revisão bibliográfica

Abstract

The education of Physics has currently counted on a computational tool called interactivesimulators, that represent natural phenomena and real experiments via digital means. This new methodology emerge as an alternative to change the classroom overview, ruled by classic educational methods. The present work sought through the review of articles that report applications of interactive physics simulators, to unveil the pros and cons, as well as identifying the main use strategies, and if there is an improvement in the students’ learning process. It is noticed that there is a great variety of simulators in the world wide computer network, that are free and of good quality, like the ones offered by the website Phet. For the apps to work it is needed only the access of a common computer "without much processing or memory capacity", the apps are available on the internet and can be used in the website or be downloaded to be used in machines with no access to the internet. In the analysis of the results obtained by various applications, it is noticed that the students are attracted to this methodology and that they think to have learned the content with it. It is still pointed out that the students that studied with the interactive simulators learned more than those who did not use them. It is concluded that this tool is a tendency that helps the teacher in the classroom that presents pros that stand out against the cons, not solving the learning problem, but allying with other strategies that can improve the quality in Physics education.