The Use of Digital Media in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Teaching and their Uses in the Learning Process
Astronomy and astrophysics have been present in our
society’s daily routine for a long time. As sciences and fields of
knowledge, they also have been becoming ever more formalized and spread,
this way helping humanity in many situations of need. Therefore, topics
related to these areas are present in the syllabus of various
educational systems, their subjetcts being taught in numerous curricular
components, such as Science, Geography and Physics. However, the
approach to this theme has been facing a series of obstacles, such as
the lag in the training of teachers and the way they are being presented
to students. Thus, using Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia
Learning and the educational curriculum of the state of São Paulo as
guides, I created a didactical sequence using video lectures, consisting
of animations combine with narrations. The video lectures were meant to
serve as tools to boost the teaching of astrophysics at school. The
development of this work involved an initial study to carry out a survey
of the students' previous knowledge and then compare these results to
the final assessment, applied after the presentation of the material.
This comparison showed an evolution in the students’ knowledge regarding
astronomy, but not without the need of the teacher’s interventions to
engage in discussions of the topic.