The Use of Web Simulator as an Auxiliary to the Physical Teaching: Concepts about Electromagnetism in the Distance Education Mode

Abstract

The world is changing constantly and together with it education and its modalities, that is, the dimension that education develops it becomes necessary to comply with the new demands emerging from this development. The distance education is one of these developments in education system, with all the specifics, it's more than that, it is a window of opportunity that opens, allowing the population to achieve satisfactory educational levels, especially in a country of continental dimensions as Brazil. Ahead of this scene, it is observed a moment where the development of the Technologies of Information and Communication (ICT) never reached waited levels, proving the importance of distance education in our country. In this work, the contributions of ICT involved in teaching through the Web are presented, regarding particularly the use of virtual simulators in electromagnetism bases. The technological easinesses proportionated by the TIC enter in this modality of education as one of the main technologies directed to education in the distance and virtual simulation as one among some effective methodological tools in this education. The simulators are programs that simulate the behavior of physical systems from predetermined models. Simulation results are usually presented in large format visual appeal, as animations, graphs. Thus, little intuitive concepts and of difficult visualization as the concepts on Electromagnetism, become accessible the students. Currently, simulation programs are probably the most popular application way of computers to Physics teaching. A range of these programs is available on the Web in apllets’s form written in Java®, Flash® among others. In this paper, the electromagnetic simulations had limited to the use of on-line virtual platform available at htpps://phet.colorado.edu/pt_BR, in this interactive website, it’s possible to select not only electromagnetism simulations, as well as in other Physics’ areas offering to the students an extremely interactive environment of significant learning.