NATURAL SCIENCE EDUCATION IN THE TIME OF VIRTUAL WORLDS

Implementation of ICT to the process of instruction does not mean eliminating real school experiments from school laboratory practice. Real living environment makes us face more and more items of virtual environment, worlds, mediated by infinite possibilities of computer networks. The mediated perception through virtual images has become an important cognitive channel for pupils. Real information from the existing reality is steadily replaced by virtual information. Is the remote (by computer network mediated) and virtual (by computer simulated) experiment able to meet requirements of the best school laboratory practice? How to blend an effective and meaningful application of real, indirect and simulative observation, measuring and experimenting according to didactic principles?