SciNews online: scaffolding the construction of scientific explanations

Middle and high-school science teachers have traditionally introduced current events in the classroom to leverage news topics relevant to the curriculum, such as the Sumatra Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. SciNews Online is an online research environment codesigned with science teachers for learners to construct web reports on the science behind the news on natural disasters. Writing scientific explanations provides valuable learning opportunities for learners to engage in a realistic and educationally relevant science task. Here I highlight the design of the Scientific Explanation Activity, a scaffolded environment that supports learners' construction of scientific explanations using multiple online sources. The Scientific Explanation Activity focuses on supporting the development of key information literacy skills for sense-making in science inquiry, namely information integration across sources and effective scientific argumentation. Keywords Scaffolding, online research, educat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Sebastian de la Chica
• Keywords: CHI 2007, Effective Scientific Argumentation, Human Computer Interaction, Relevant Science Task, Scientific Explanation Activity