NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN NATURAL SCIENCE EDUCATION: COMPUTER LEARNING SYSTEM NOVA5000 LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Natural science laboratory material base in secondary schools has been renewed by implementation of the project "Infrastructure of technology arts and natural sciences” in recent years, Lithuanian secondary schools have been equipped with modern teaching aids. Science teaching rooms received three types of computer learning systems (Xplorer GLX, Nova and Spark) with the necessary teaching equipment. The Science Learning System Nova5000 has been developed specifically to meet the needs of educators and students alike, helping schools transform their teaching and learning experience. The Nova5000 brings innovative, user friendly and affordable technology into the classroom, straight into the hands of students. Nova5000 integrates standard computer func-tionality with scientific data logging and math software. The Nova5000 includes the following SoftMaker applications for advanced office functionality. TextMaker - a full-featured word processor, including a thesaurus, footnotes, on-the-fly spellchecking, and the ability to insert a table. Generally compatible with Microsoft Word documents. PlanMaker - a full-featured spreadsheet program, providing the full calculation power and visualization features of a modern, high-end spreadsheet package. Generally compatible with Microsoft Excel worksheets. Presentation is an application for creating multimedia presentations and slideshows that includes extensive graphics and text tools to support a wide range of subject areas. Nova5000 includes a virtual laboratory, which contains 15 physics, 2 chemistry and 3 biology experiments. You can monitor the progress of the experiment, shows the results obtained: readings, draw graphs, and so on. It is possible to change certain settings, and how much you want to repeat the test of times. Teachers with their students using computer learning system Nova5000 may creatively adapt its features due to their needs: one device to replace by others, the experiment carried out in separate parts, to come up with their own tasks, and so on. Experiments may be carried out frontally by all the pupils in the class or in small groups, while others are designed for classroom differentiation and individualisation - suitable for highly gifted students. Some of the works are suitable for additional development; it is possible to formulate the task of individual research work.