Technology-Supported Sequential Astronomy Activities to Foster Spatial Thinking

• HZ Okulu ^[1] ; A Oguz Unver ^[1]
  1. [1] Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Mugla, Turkey
• Localización: Hands-on Science: celebrating science and science education / coord. por M.F.M. Costa, José Benito Vázquez Dorrío, Josep Maria Fernández Novell, Carme Zaragoza Domènech, 2023, ISBN 978-84-8158-973-3, pág. 298
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Understanding the night and daycycles, the phases of the Moon, and solar andlunar eclipses, which arise as a result of therotation and revolution of the Earth and/or theMoon, requires spatial thinking skills.Furthermore, students' Earth-boundobservations in their daily lives make it morechallenging to understand these phenomena. Inthis case, it is important for students to transitionto a space-based perspective and activelyengage with the subject through the learningactivities.Considering this situation, we have developedtechnology-supported sequential activities thatfacilitate the transition between Earth-basedobservations and space-based observations.These activities utilize a specialized Sun, Earth,Moon model for teaching the concepts of thenight and day cycle, phases of the Moon, andsolar and lunar eclipses. The activity materialsinclude a model that represents the relativesizes of the Moon and Earth, as well as theinclination between the Moon's axis of rotationand the ecliptic plane. Additionally, it involves alight source, a smartphone, a computer, aprojector, a screen mirroring application,Stellerium software, and Celestia software.The activity begins by setting up the model.Then, the screen mirroring program on asmartphone is used to project the image onto ascreen. By opening the smartphone's camera,the intention is for students to observe thesimulated phenomena in the model from variousangles and perspectives. In the activity, the nightand day cycles, phases of the Moon, and solarand lunar eclipses are presented to the studentssequentially on the model. Using a smartphone,the transition between Earth-basedobservations and space-based observations isfacilitated. Stellerium software and Celestiasoftware are then used to observe thephenomena simulated from various celestialbodies, such as the Moon and the Sun.