Engaging Teachers and Children in the Physics of Waves through the Connections with Music
The connections with music present a great opportunity for engaging children in the science of sound, and science in general. With this goal, our program has been creating a series of web applications and hands-on activities that allow children to explore, visualize, and play with sound. Our previous work, carried out in the classroom with heavy involvement of our team, showed that the approach was effective for increasing children’s engagement with science. In the new stage of our project, we are seeking to reach children through their teachers and to improve the resources so the activities are more easily adopted by teachers throughout the country. For this, we have been carrying out an iterative design process involving web development, curriculum development, and professional development for eight-grade teachers. We have also been following up with teachers to understand how the activities can be best applied in the classroom. Our professional development workshops were shown to have a great impact on teachers’ attitudes toward teaching sound and waves, and toward teaching science in general. Our applications and resources are being used throughout the country and have been accessed more than 800.000 times.