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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 11, Issue 2 , Foreword (Dec., 2010) Marcia C. LINN, James D. SLOTTA, Hiroki TERASHIMA, Elisa STONE, & Jacquie MADHOK Designing Science Instruction using the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE)
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The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment (WISE) has been supporting research on inquiry-oriented science on the Web for nearly 15 years. Throughout this time, we have offered WISE free-of-charge to the community. Many researchers and curriculum designers have added projects and features to WISE.
A wide audience of K-12 science teachers use existing WISE curriculum projects. Currently, there are over 250,000 student accounts with approximately 3000 new student accounts being added each month. Each year, about 5000 teachers use WISE (around 400 each month). Each year many teachers and researchers actively author new WISE units specific to their state standards and contexts.
Over the years, the WISE user interface has been translated into 7 different languages, and employed in thousands of schools. This year, we celebrate the release of our newest version of the WISE technology, which has been configured as a modular open source project that should make it easy for developers to adopt and adapt the WISE technology, learning tools, and curriculum materials. Below, we review the research foundation, then describe our new version of WISE technologies, and introduce opportunities for educators around the world to participate.
WISE curriculum and assessments feature powerful, interactive scientific visualizations to illustrate unobservable phenomena such as chemical reactions at the atomic level, large-scale phenomena such as climate change, and phenomena that happen quickly such as collisions. Each inquiry project is organized around a personally-relevant question such as, “What can I do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?” The WISE units are designed using the knowledge integration framework (Linn & Eylon, in press; Slotta & Linn, 2009). The environment captures student interactions in embedded assessments and offers teachers grading and classroom management tools to provide feedback to students, track student trajectories, and monitor student progress.
In this paper we describe the knowledge integration framework that we use to align instruction, curriculum, and assessment. We discuss the curriculum design process and summarize some recent research. We describe the latest version of WISE as well as the resources available to everyone free-of-charge.
Copyright (C) 2010 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 11, Issue 2 , Foreword (Dec., 2010). All Rights Reserved.
