PhET Blog

We are searching for qualified candidates who are interested in joining the PhET team as a full- or part-time Professional Research Assistant.

With our current emphasis on building and studying simulations for middle school math and science, advancing our teacher professional development resources and support system, branching into tablet and touch-compatible simulation design, and advancing the use of simulations in undergraduate chemistry, responsibilities will include (but are not limited to):

1) Redesigning existing simulations, incorporating new findings on effective sim design and adapting designs for use on touch-devices. (Software programming is NOT required. PhET has a team of in-house software developers).
2) Designing new simulations
3) Supporting simulation design, development, and research efforts – e.g. analyzing data, supporting classroom research studies, searching for web resources, etc.
5) Helping to liaison to and support the K12 community.

For more information and specific qualifications, see the online posting at:

https://www.jobsatcu.com/postings/72825

Please consider applying! And, share this information with your colleagues who might be interested.

Thanks!

Thank you Royal Society of Chemistry for your generous support of PhET!

Support from our community is invaluable for keeping the simulations up to date (including the HTML5 work) and free for all.

If you want to help support PhET, donate at http://phet.colorado.edu/donate

If you’d like to become a corporate sponsor, please e-mail [email protected]. Depending upon the level of sponsorship, your logo can appear on our website which has had over 70 million sims served!

After teaching middle school science for three years, Bryce is excited about joining PhET as sim designer and IRB coordinator. During his time in the classroom Bryce used PhET sims including Radioactive Dating Game and Projectile Motion in his inquiry science units. After using PhET extensively in his teaching, Bryce is looking forward to designing new sims to engage students in topics like Geology and Astronomy.

Bryce is from Iowa, where he studied science education at the University of Iowa. He moved to Boulder in 2008 to study education and received his MA in Curriculum and Instruction from CU in 2010. Communicating science and advocating for science literacy are Bryce’s passions. In his free time, he likes to play ultimate (frisbee not fighting), soccer and board games as well as to cook and eat good food.

What determines the concentration of a solution? Learn about the relationships between moles, liters, and molarity by adjusting the amount of solute and solution volume. Change solutes to compare different chemical compounds in water.

We’re excited about our new grant proposal that we submitted to the Dept. of Education on building and studying math simulations, specifically for middle school. The funding would significantly expand our offering math offerings so keep your fingers crossed!

We’re excited to see PhET team member Emily Moore’s study featured in  “Probing Use of Simulations“ published in the July 2013 issue of the RSC’s Education in Chemistry.

Emily’s study was designed to provide insight into interactive simulation use during guided-inquiry activities in chemistry classes. In the study, 80 students in a General Chemistry class were given ten minutes to explore PhET simulation Molecule Polarity with no instructions on how to interact with the simulation. Using mouse click data, audio recordings and clicker question responses, she investigated: students’ ability to use the simulation by analyzing the extent to which they explored the simulation, the discussions students engaged in during simulation use, and student perceptions of simulation use.

As RSC Editor, David Read, says, “The analysis of recordings provides a fascinating glimpse of the student perspective, and does support the conclusion that the implicit scaffolding genuinely works.”

To read the full results of the study, see Emily’s article, “Interactive Simulations as Implicit Support for Guided-Inquiry“, in the RSC’s Chemistry Education and Research Practice.