On The Use Of Information Technology To Improve Students’ Scientific Literacy

Scientific literacy is a central concept of science education in the primary education stage around the world. Thus it is also the theme goal of the new round curriculum reform in the science courses undergoing in China. The standards of the new round of chemistry course reform explicitly pointed out that,"the chemistry course of the compulsory education phase is to improve the scientific literacy of students, helping to cultivate the students’scientific spirit and social responsibility through learning chemistry, and improve the ability of our future citizens to adapt to the modern society and the modern life".Chemistry is a subject based on experiment and also an important part of natural science. Chemical teaching plays an important role to cultivate students’ scientific literacy. For high school chemistry teachers, it is not a big job as to teaching knowledge, showing experiments and solving problems students facing, but it is a big challenge for them to organically link the real life with chemistry teaching through inquiring experiment, experimental teaching, thus cultivating the students’ scientific literacy when facing such a reality of Enrollment rate oriented high school stage.With the popularization and development of IT, especially the widespread application of computers in schools, computer-aided pedagogical become the inevitable trend of the reform of basic education. It has been clearly pointed out in the new round curriculum reform standards:"we have to vigorously promote the universal application of IT in the chemical process of teaching, enhance integration between information technology and curriculum,...give full play to the advantages of IT and provide a variety of educational environment and a powerful learning tool for student learning and development.’On the basis of understanding of the concept of chemical scientific literacy, this thesis combines with the actual situation of today’s high school chemistry teaching, explores the IT-based chemical simulation of interactive experiment, then tries to design, develop it and apply it into practice in order to deepen the students’ mastery of knowledge and the cultivation of chemical science and literacy.Chemical simulation of the interaction experiment courseware has distinctive features such as simulative, scientific, interactive, repeatability and so on. It can not only improve the efficiency of teaching in the classroom, but also improve the students’ interest in learning, and enable students to experience the inquiry process, experience the fun of exploring and feel the charm of chemistry, so that students will achieve success from the experience of problem-solving. Thus the scientific literacy of students of chemistry cultivate will be improved by way of developing students’ observations in the inquiry process, thinking, questioning, comparison and analysis of general ability. Thus what the students have learned is no longer staying in the books or the theoretical level, but organic and real-life linked to the application of chemical knowledge and life. Students with a scientific attitude to solve problems in real life and a scientific way of thinking and habits will become new citizens with the development of the new era.This thesis mainly divides into six parts:Part I:Introduction of the thesis background, content, purpose and method. Part Ⅱ:Overview section including scientific literacy, chemical science literacy training, basic chemical experiment explorement, the basic experiential learning overview, courseware for exploration activities in the IT-based simulation analysis.Part Ⅲ:design and development of IT-based chemical simulation experiments courseware; description of the simulation courseware development platform and its functions; case development by the use of this platform of chemical simulation experiments, that is the author developed two experiments to explore the activities of the courseware, which are the use of computer simulation for the determination of the half-life of radioisotopes and the redox reaction rule in life.Part Ⅳ:instructional design based on the chemical simulation exploration activities, this part describes the application of the two explore examples developed by the author in teaching.Part Ⅴ:Summary and Outlook part including the basic conclusions of this research, innovation and inadequacies, and the author’s expectation of the application prospects of chemical simulation experiments in the secondary education.