Museos virtuales iberoamericanos en español como contextos de enseñanza y aprendizaje de las ciencias naturales

Abstract

The mission of science museums is to contribute to the incorporation of science in the general culture of society. Their collaboration with schools entails increasing opportunities for both teachers and students to learn science. In recent years, museums have got involved in the IT world; resulting in the existence of virtual museums that offer meaningful educational experiences without having to physically go to their premises. In this way, Ibero-American Virtual Museums in Spanish have been characterised as contexts for the teaching and learning of science. A content analysis of 28 museums was carried out considering three dimensions: ICT, Didactics and Science. According to the obtained results, it may be concluded that most of the virtual museums show important progress in the 'ICT' dimension but interactivity needs to be improved. As regards the 'Didactics' dimension, it is important that the virtual museums include resources that deal not only with conceptual but also with procedural and attitudinal content. In relation to “Science” dimension, it is relevant to provide a vision of applied science which takes the historicity of knowledge into consideration. It is recommended that teachers choose the learning scenarios which have the best characteristics concerning the studied dimensions, that they exploit the social media of the museums and that they develop specific activities which are meaningful to the classroom practices around a specific virtual museum.