Digital Simulations and Models “Young Bits” – Chapter 1

Digital Simulations And Models are tools that can help youth workers to more tangibly and clearly explain difficult concepts, by giving the youngsters the visual or tactile support to better understand them.

Before digging into the topic, lets clarify some concepts.

A digital simulation is a visualization of a process or a schematic representation of one or more objects or graphs that can help students understanding things better.

Another definition of modelling is the act of creating a model that describes and represents a system. A simulation is the process of analyzation of the system using this model.

Let’s see some examples:

The internet is full of resources that can help you to develop in this area, so if you want to know more, here are some good “starters”:

• • The Educator’s Guide to Teaching with Digital Simulations
  • Tips about creating a simulation – What Is An eLearning Simulation And How Do You Create One?
  • History and Examples of Digital Simulations – How Simulation Tools are Transforming Education and Training
  • Applications of Simulation-Based Learning

And here are some videos that you may like:

• • How to use simulations in education
  • Simulation teaching method
  • How Simulations can Change the Educational process

If you want to begin right away, here are some great applications and tools that you can start exploring:

• • PhET Interactive Simulations – This is a project at the University of Colorado Boulder that creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.
  • Education Arcade – Created by MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program, the tool provide fun and accessible ways to explore real and virtual worlds, experiment with technology and use games to build math and science skills.
  • Prepmagic – Prepmagic offers science simulations for students to improve learning; it allows teachers to design materials and tools to engage and enhance student learning, by helping them to make connections between scientific theories and real life.
  • Minecraft: Education Edition – is a game-based learning platform that promotes creativity, collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive digital environment. The application is a great tool to simulate different scenarios that can lead to significant improvements in creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and computational thinking skills.

The content for this post is part of our online campaign called “Young Bits” which aims to increase the quality of Digital Youth Work by providing the interested parties with knowledge and tools that exist on the internet, but are not structured in a handy manner. The campaign represents the main result of the project „DIgital Technology as a TOol”, a training course that was financed with the support of the European Commission through Erasmus+ Programme. This blog reflects only the author’s views, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.