A utilização de ferramentas da informática educativa como instrumento pedagógico no estudo da eletricidade em uma perspectiva de aprendizagem significativa

Abstract

The theme of this research is the use of educational informatics tools as a pedagogic device for the study of electricity in a significant learning perspective. This research is the analysis of a case consisting of twenty students that attend a secondary education third grade in a public school named EEFM Profº Plácido Aderaldo Castelo located on Conjunto Ceará, outs kirts of Fortaleza. The central interest of this study was to analyse the use and importance of some tools deriving from educational informatics as a supporting tool for the learning of electricity in the physics subject on secondary education. The bibliographical collecting gave me the opportunity to make a short historical gathering on educational informatics showing different ways of inserting the computer in education, chiefly in the teaching of physics, and besides the difficulties to achieve this insertion, show the main characteristics of David Auseubel’s significant learning. The theoretical points were elaborated from the contributions of personal authors an official, including: Brasil (1996, 2002); Breton (1991); Fiolhais e Trindade (2003); Valente (1999); Vidal et al (2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2002d, 2002e), Moreira e Masini (2001), among others. In the study of the case, an initial research was made with the intention of knowing the knowledge level on some electricity subjects, especially electrodynamic, as well as verifying the students’ motivation for physics – it’s worth saying that up to that moment physics classes were all given without the use of any resource from the educational informatics. After this two classes of electricity subject were given in the laboratory of informatics using educational informatics tools with focus on learning, educational softwares and a blog containing a podcast, at the end students were as kectto answer another questionnaire. Such questionnaire has the purspose of verifying whether such tools have contributed to improve the referred students’ learning and motivation about the studies of electricity by means of educational informatics devices. The first questionnaire showed that most of the students were dissatisfied with both their level of learning and the devices used to teach electricity. Otherwise, such dissatisfaction was not noticed when informatics tools were used in the laboratory of informatics.