Physicalization in education

Introduction[edit | edit source]

Physicalization, also called physical visualization has interesting potential in education. We may distinguish two main lines of interest:

• to demonstrate a principle or emphasize structure in data
• to have students create visualizations so that they engage in learning processes.

We can distinguish several technical types of visualizations

• Fixed passive models, e.g. a molecule or a solar system or an artistic representation of data
• Dynamic models (mechanical or electronic)
• Token-based models (e.g. assembled Lego pieces)