Speaker
Description
The widespread availability of Internet access—especially from educational institutions—and the increasing use of Internet-enabled devices by students have shifted educational tools from computer-based applications to full-fledged web platforms. These platforms use a client-server architecture to deliver installation-free, familiar interfaces through standard web browsers. In such systems, clients connect to servers programmed by experts that can leverage advanced tools, including databases, sophisticated libraries, artificial intelligence, and learning analytics.
We introduce two such educational tools designed for teaching physics. The first tool, WebEJS, is an Internet-based client-server version of the award-winning Easy JavaScript Simulations (EJS) modeling and authoring platform. EJS plays a pivotal role in the OpenSourcePhysics collection hosted by the ComPADRE digital library, offering hundreds of ready-to-use simulations covering high-school and college-level physics. These simulations can be easily adopted and modified by physics instructors with minimal programming expertise. With WebEJS, the need for a dedicated computer lab is eliminated, as students can now use everyday Internet devices like tablets both in the classroom and at home.
The transition to a client-server architecture also opens new avenues for educators and researchers. It allows for the integration of advanced features such as personalized pages tailored to a student’s progress, learning analytics, and even AI-guided instruction. Although these capabilities have not yet been implemented, the platform’s flexible design, and this presentation, invite education technologists to incorporate them.
The second tool originates from an ongoing research project aimed at providing nuclear fusion scientists with easy access to vast, remote data repositories alongside robust analysis and visualization tools in a client-server framework. In this context, researchers can combine standard routines and libraries with their own specialized code to analyze and visualize data from fusion reactor discharges. The IODA (Input-Output Data Analysis) platform enables users to graphically construct directed graphs of algorithmic elements. Each element, representing a specific algorithm that processes inputs to produce outputs, is selected from a curated list provided by experts. Users can configure these elements and connect them appropriately, allowing the server to execute the entire graph through dedicated computational nodes and return the results in HTML format. This setup facilitates controlled database access, the execution of multi-language algorithms, and the use of specialized hardware in a streamlined fashion.
In this talk, we detail the key implementation decisions, demonstrate the execution of these web tools, and invite teachers and researchers to collaborate on exploring their potential educational and scientific applications.