Labster- Blog post # 9

 

For this week, I looked through a few of the resources mentioned including Drawmatic AR which is a cute augmented reality resource that recognizes certain nouns and phrases written on the printable “magic paper” and brings those things to life using augmented reality. I will definitely be sharing that app with my middle schooler over the thanksgiving holiday, but what I really wanted to find was something for my future high school students that would be enjoyable and an enhancement to their education. In comes Labster.

Labster is a lab simulator that currently has 169 simulations for high school-aged students which cover chemistry, biology, physics, etc. The simulations begin with expositional knowledge about the experiment and often utilize real-world scenarios. One of the videos on Youtube puts the virtual student in charge of finding the athlete who is doping by synthesizing the proteins from the athlete’s urine sample inside the lab. Another very cool thing about Labster is it allows the students to do things that they could not actually do in the real world, at least not easily. An example of this is one of the experiments that transports the virtual scientists to the surface of the moon to take samples that they can then study in the lab. 

The Labster website is very helpful and comprehensive. It includes a blog as well as a podcast that goes into depth on the educational philosophy that undergirds Labster. After listening to their podcast, I was really impressed with how intensively considered the platform is. The lesson designers are science professors with extensive teaching backgrounds who utilize the learning cycle to promote the acquisition of knowledge. The team is also very responsive to issues of diversity and accessibility which is discussed in this podcast. Though not all of the simulations are accessible, they are steadily working towards that goal. They also create avatars that represent the multicultural population. Even in the digital world, it's important that students are able to see themselves represented as scientists. Another helpful podcast is this one that answers FAQs in regard to using Labster in high schools. 

On the whole, Labster is easy to use and only requires a laptop or tablet. It costs money but is free for the first thirty days for educators to try it out. The major consideration when using Labster is how to integrate it most effectively into the curriculum. The designers that speak on the podcast posit that its most effective use is as a prelab. That uses the simulation as a practice round that builds the student’s confidence and lightens the cognitive load by teaching them laboratory protocols before even entering a real-world lab so that they are able to focus more on learning from the experience. However, one of the advantages of Labster is it is a cost-efficient way of allowing students to use lab equipment that they may not otherwise have the opportunity to use due to expense. The developers suggest that if the app is being used in this way, including a communal discussion portion after the simulation since in the app, the students are working in seclusion. In words, use Labster as part of the lesson to increase engagement, not use it as the entire lesson itself. 

After researching educational uses of virtual and augmented reality, I am intensely intrigued by the future of its role, and I look forward to promoting its integration into my future school’s curriculum.