Please, think for a moment about this questions:
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| photo credit: all images correspond to their respective authors. |
What do students DO in traditional secondary school science?
What do students LEARN doing that?
Is traditional science-learning empowering ALL students for the 21st Century?
Today in the world, around 500 million teenagers study in Secondary School -the biggest opportunity ever in humankind history.
Each student spends every year around 100 hours in science lessons .
If we improve this service, we can change the the world.
Teachers want to give students quality science learning and empower them to improve their lives, and the world.
However, they are trapped with test measurements, programs timelines and a critical time and resources shortage to prepare powerful science experiences for all students.
Today in the world, around 500 million teenagers study in Secondary School -the biggest opportunity ever in humankind history.
Each student spends every year around 100 hours in science lessons .
If we improve this service, we can change the the world.
Teachers want to give students quality science learning and empower them to improve their lives, and the world.
However, they are trapped with test measurements, programs timelines and a critical time and resources shortage to prepare powerful science experiences for all students.
What is PLOP?
PLOP is an open solution to this problem, limited to the Optics Unit*, in which students during secondary education spend around 10-18 hours of classroom time.
Yearly, this service delivers the magnitude of 1 billion student-hours:
an immense and underdeveloped amount of time*.
* Where around 1 billion of dollars is spent -inefficiently- every year.
Pixel Learning Open Project -PLOP- is an open non-profit project.
It shares with teachers, from all over the world, an international standard, up-the-date, inclusive and powerful learning experience to initiate Optics learning in secondary education.
* Note: Normally, Optics is a learning unit or module within the Physics subject, studied between 7th to 12th grade (12-18 years old), according to local/regional/national curriculum.
What does PLOP do?
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| Microscopes built by students in PLOP's pilot implementation. |
PLOP, offers to global teachers all documents and information, required to adapt and replicate an open learning design, aimed to give a quality start for the Optics Unit in Secondary Education level.
The central learning task proposed in PLOP is students construction of a smartphone digital microscope adapter (Yoshino, 2013).
Around this learning experience, PLOP creates an inclusive learning environment to prepare the Secondary School Optics Unit.
This designed learning offers:
an initial meaningful concrete-link to Optics content, promotes students ''hand's on'' active learning, and students feedback about their previous knowledge.
In this way, it is expected to increase all students overall learning achievements and possibilities, setting appropriate conditions and information for the Optics Unit design and execution.
* Note: Taking part in the functioning of Yoshino smartphone microscope, are directly involved this optics contents: light propagation, refraction, lens, optical systems, electromagnetic waves, photoelectric effect, polarization and human eye.
How can YOU contribute in PLOP?
This is an open project, you can contribute and improve it in many ways:
This is an open project, you can contribute and improve it in many ways:
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- by Sharing Feedback of user experience (teacher, students)
- by creating your adaptations,
- by publishing your variants Here,
- by Partnerships (Media partner, IT partner, Smartphone Brand partner)
- by Volunteer professional internship (Web developer, Graphic Designer, PR)
- by Volunteer professional consultancy service (send an email telling in what you would like to help us, we are open to receive your advice and improve),
- by Researching (thesis, implementations, articles, reviews: PLOP is 100% research)
- by Investing, and,
- by Crowd-funding for its implementation in local, regional, national and/or international levels.
If you would like to contribute in any of those ways, or have another idea or feedback, PLOP is open and would love to hear from you.
- by Sharing Feedback of user experience (teacher, students)
- by creating your adaptations,
- by publishing your variants Here,
- by Partnerships (Media partner, IT partner, Smartphone Brand partner)
- by Volunteer professional internship (Web developer, Graphic Designer, PR)
- by Volunteer professional consultancy service (send an email telling in what you would like to help us, we are open to receive your advice and improve),
- by Researching (thesis, implementations, articles, reviews: PLOP is 100% research)
- by Investing, and,
- by Crowd-funding for its implementation in local, regional, national and/or international levels.
If you would like to contribute in any of those ways, or have another idea or feedback, PLOP is open and would love to hear from you.
Which are PLOP's current version (beta) specs?
The next specifications, were developed in response to state-of-the art research, intergovernmental recommendations and students opinion, to improve traditional Secondary School science learning:
- Gives students (in dependence of local resources) a device which converts their smartphone or tablet into a digital microscope, useful for recreation, learning, research and sharing content.
- Facilitates students and teachers to recognize students previous optics knowledge and informational competences, before adjusting formative/learning activities of the Optics Unit.
- Enhance students contextualization of the optics within their personal and global current daily life.
- Enhance active learning.
- Facilitates students improvement of their informational competences.
- Facilitates the success of all students in the learning tasks.
- Facilitates the inclusion of all students to the effective participation in Optics Learning Unit.
- Includes the (capitalize) current universally available technology.
- Support of modifications and improvements to adaptation to local contexts, different budgets and other learning activities within the universally standard curriculum in secondary education.
- Usable from 7th to 12th grade (easy adaptable to students level).
How PLOP began?
/>PLOP is one of the products of two years of advanced design research and testing, born after the degree thesis '' Design of a Class Zero to the Optics Unit for the Secondary Education of the XXI century '' (Rates Marmentini, 2015; original in spanish; two-page english abstract + bibliograhpy ).
All began with the viralization in the social networks of the Yoshino smartphone adapter in late 2013.
Thanks to his experience in research and working as Physics Teacher, Diego Rates M. immediately recognized the current potential of this resource for educational context.
He started is thesis project with the idea of a proposal of learning design, centered in this resource applied to the context of the Optics Unit at (Lower) Secondary Education Level.
In march 2014, he began working as Physics Teacher at Dunalastair Las Condes IB World School (Santiago, Chile), where he implemented a pilot testing (September, 2014), of student individual construction of the Yoshinok microscope, within natural class context:
all students (50) achieve 100 % of success in the key tasks required to build the microscope, as well it was demonstrated technical and economic universal feasibility
(by evaluation of observable performance indicators, and, by cost and funds indicators, respectively) (Rates Marmentini, 2015).
This design research developed by Diego Rates Marmentini (2015), was presented as research thesis to obtain the Degree in Education at Universidad de Concepción, to create a learning solution to the Optics Unit that might be used in the universal 21st century secondary school.
This website is one of the projects delivered from that study, to facilitate teachers, from any secondary school of the world, to adapt to local conditions and deliver this designed open learning environment for Optics. And, at the same time, it has the possibility of improve its offer to global students, by contributions from the community.