Fun with polymers : development of interactive multimedia and practical polymer science programmes

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Multimedia was the buzzword of the previous decade. Electronic learning is thebuzzword of this decade. Both concepts changed, and are still changing the wayeducators present knowledge and information to students, both locally andworldwide.South Africa, also standing in the midst of these technological changes, has its ownunique opportunities regarding the teaching environment. Different factors arecurrently changing the educational scene in South Africa. With Curriculum 2000 andthe Outcome-Based Education concept (OBE) came the opportunity to choose andincorporate relevant science and technology programmes into school curriculums.The introduction of Technology as a subject in junior secondary school, opened thedoor to bring students in contact with, for example, the vast world of materialscience. Senior secondary students, on the contrary, have little or no exposure toteaching programmes on modern materials; materials that rule their lives! There is aneed for high quality, easily accessible and informative material scienceprogrammes. This provided the initiative to create this programme.Depending on the standard of students, Fun with Polymers can be used as:• a lecturing tool for teachers and lecturers• an encyclopeadia which students can interactively navigate to learnmore about polymer science• a source of information to anyone curious about the interesting worldof plastic materials.The name Fun with Polymers indicates that learning science can be fun(after ali!). The programme contains easy to use navigation buttons, helpfiles,hypertext, sound, animations and pictures to teach synthetic polymermaterial science. Content consists of the history of the development ofpolymer materials, basic polymer chemistry principles, information on thebuilding of macromolecules, facts on synthetic polymer materials, and somequestions and answers to test the student's knowledge. Practicalexperiments, with plastic materials, complement the theoretical informationand provide students with hands-on experience.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University