Students nowadays grow up with electronic devices and are adept at navigating the virtual world. Practical activities may be more of a novelty for them than simulations. Using the topic of electric circuits as a context, we examined the ways in which Grade 11 students perceived and learned from practical work and simulations, respectively. In this…

This article presents the design of an immersive simulation and inquiry activity for technology-enhanced classrooms. Using a co-design method, researchers worked with a high school biology teacher to create a rainforest simulation, distributed across several large displays in the room to immerse students in the environment. The authors created and…

A small group of high school students performed a virtual laboratory experiment in Second Life that mimicked a real experiment in both its appearance and procedure. Lab report grades were equivalent to report grades for hands-on experiments, and the quality of students' results was similar. Results of an attitudinal survey show that students…

The article presents a brief overview of the Neighbourhood Game Design Project, a studio-based curriculum intervention aimed at engaging students in the design of place-based mobile games and interactive stories using geo-locative technologies (for example, GPS enabled cell phones). It describes the three curricular components that defined the…