Avaliação de softwares para o ensino de genética a partir de aspectos pedagógicos e técnicos

Abstract

The knowledge derived from the teaching of genetics have a great importance for the formation of critical and active citizens in society. In spite of this, unfortunately, the understanding of the contents taught in the discipline is considered difficult to understand, which may be associated with an extensive vocabulary, full of concepts that need some degree of abstraction. In view of this context, the present work aimed to analyze the pedagogical and technical aspects of educational software have the intent to teaching of genetics, as tools to facilitate the teaching-learning process in basic education. In order to do so, queries were made in a database (Biblioteca Digital de Ciências, CESTA, Experimentoteca, LabVirt, Portal do Professor and RIVED) for the survey of software that approached the genetic theme. The selected software was classified according to its taxonomy (tutorials, programming, word processor, multimedia and internet, development of multimedia and pages, simulation and modeling and games), and then evaluated for its pedagogical and technical aspects. Regarding pedagogical aspects, the software was evaluated in terms of the epistemological perspective (behavioral, constructivist, or socio-interactionist) and the ability to adapt to the learning styles and presentation of the contents. For technical aspects, the attributes of robustness, portability, use of images, presentation of information, orientation and navigation, interactivity, aesthetics and affectivity were evaluated. There were 53 softwares, of which 36 were multimedia, eight games, six simulators and three tutorials. As for the pedagogical aspect, only 10 softwares presented characteristics that could fit it in the behavioralist epistemological perspective. As for the technical aspects, it was possible to observe that most software do not care about adjusting the font size, offer help and guidance to the user and also have little interactivity. The study allowed to classify the software and to evaluate them as to the pedagogical and technical aspects, which were systematized in order to help the teacher about the profile of educational software. However, the results highlight the need to establish criteria for the selection of software by teachers, in order to select software more suitable for their pedagogical proposal.