Εικονικές πραγματικότητες στη γεωγραφική εκπαίδευση: σχεδιασμός, ανάπτυξη, εφαρμογή και αξιολόγηση ενός διδακτικού πακέτου για τη διδασκαλία και μάθηση γεωγραφικών εννοιών ; Virtual realities in geographical education: design, development, application and evaluation of instructional material for teaching and learning geographical concepts

A pilot empirical research was carried out with primary school pupils concerning Physical Geography and particularly the erosion phenomenon by the action of running water on the earth’s surface, by the method of semi-structured personal interviews, using three series of static pictures. The results showed that the majority of pupils aged 9-11, presented serious misconceptions and lack of comprehension about the processes of the landforms’ evolution and about the concepts related to geomorphologic phenomena. The findings directed the design of the educational software ‘Geomorfes’ (landforms) as an effective tool to support the construction of geographic knowledge. The application presents visualizations of geomorphologic phenomena in a dynamic and interactive way, integrated in a hypermedia context that includes multimedia information and interactive activities for the pupils. The subject of the application was the phenomenon of denudation with its three stages, erosion, transportation and deposition.The educational software ‘Geomorfes’ is based on the dynamic visualization of the phenomena under study and it provides pupils with opportunities to combine different types of information through multiple representations and to participate in interactive learning tasks. It is consisted of three parts that deal with the topics under study, following the same process in every part.The main empirical research was carried out by the method of semi-structured personal interviews. The goal was the comparison of former and new ideas, which children express and the investigation of their possible perceptions’ changes, after their interaction with the educational software. At the last part of each one of the two researches, three sketches showing a mountain, a gorge and an estuary were presented to each child and the children were invited to make by themselves, for each picture, two other rational drawings, in order to show the evolution of the landscape in time, without the use of specific geographical terms.After the ...