Junior Simulation Insight

The complete Primary Science modelling toolkit

Junior Simulation Insight makes it easy for everyone – especially people without a background in mathematics or programming – to design and build their own models, as well as explore, investigate and modify models made by others.

Modelling means 'A simplification of reality intended to promote understanding’.

For hundreds of years, scientists from Leonardo Da Vinci to Stephen Hawking have created models to help better understand the patterns and processes in the world around them. Junior Simulation Insight helps learners build and explore their own models, and learn powerful new scientific ideas in the process.

What can it do?

While it can be useful to experiment with pre-built models (like Sim City), a deeper educational nderstanding comes through building your own models and manipulating models whose underlying structure is both visible and accessible for modification.

• Computer Simulations can represent real or imaginary situations, and can allow learners to explore options and investigate patterns and rules.

• Junior Simulation Insight cuts across traditional subject boundaries, helping illuminate the connections between science, mathematics and many other subject areas.

• Junior Simulation Insight is ideal for building 'minimal models for an idea', where as much detail is stripped away as possible and things are boiled down to only the most relevant parts.

How can it be used in the classroom?

Creating scientific models is at the heart of science and for too long the primary classroom has been locked out of participating in this key activity. In a simulation model, you describe the underlying mechanisms and then let them run over time to see what happens.

Junior Simulation Insight allows users to create model rules by identifying the relationships between variables using language like 'depends upon', 'is the sum of', 'is the difference between', 'increases as', 'decreases as', 'increases in the same ratio as' and 'varies in proportion to'.

The rules of the model can also be shown as a full sentence, a short rule or as a formula. This makes it easy to adapt, extend or modify an existing simulation, and it is possible to switch between these different representations to see the relationships between names and their mathematical abbreviation.

Junior Simulation Insight provides a collection of on screen switches, buttons, sliders, dials, charts and shapes to place on the screen and use to vary the inputs of your simulation.

When you have created your model, it is easy to add artwork to make your model visually 'come alive'.

Using the scene window, it is possible to display a visual representation of a model in the same way that Junior Control Insight displays a visual representation of a control system using animation and sound.

Junior Simulation Insight has full charting and graphing capability, so you can capture, measure and investigate the behaviour of any model.

Teaching and Learning Guide

Junior Simulation Insight comes with a high quality teaching and learning guide, giving you everything you need to get the best out of using the software in your classroom with your pupils.

Primary Models Pack

Junior Simulation Insight comes with a good selection of pre-built animated models, ready to investigate and explore in the primary classroom, including:

Growing Plants; The Water Cycle; Friction – Pulling A Sledge; Keeping Warm; Space – Satellites and Orbits; Keeping Healthy; Simple Electric Circuits; Foxes and Rabbits – predator/prey and more..

Download a demo version of the software, which contains four example files:

• Bulbs in Series (from the Circuits series)
• Looking at Weight (from the Forces series)
• Examining Thermal Insulation
• The Relationship between Predator and Prey: Foxes and Rabbits

The example files can be used to collect data and to look at the way in which each simulation model has been built. But you will not be able to save out your data or print from the demo.