E-LAB PLATFORM: PROMOTING STUDENTS INTEREST IN SCIENCE Sérgio C. Leal 1,2 , João Paulo Leal 1,3 , Horácio Fernandes 4 1 Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, FCUL, Lisboa, Portugal 2 Escola Secundária/3 Padre António Vieira, Lisboa, Portugal 3 Unidade de Ciências Químicas e Radiofarmaceuticas, ITN, Sacavém, Portugal 4 Departamento de Física, IST, Lisboa, Portugal E-mail: sergioleal20@gmail.com , jpleal@itn.pt , hf@ipfn.ist.utl.pt Abstract Nowadays students show lack of motivation when learning science, for instance Physics and Chemistry, which is accentuated through their academic path. This fact is obvious when we see children asking a lot of questions in the first years of age, a behavior which disappears over time. The situation mentioned above suggests, among other factors, a classic approach and a missing contextualization of the scientific concepts [1]. The present academic approach will promote e-learning as a normal part of the practice over time, complementing traditional methods and students will expect e-tools and experimental work to be available to enhance and support their learning. e-lab platform is a resource that has all the aspects referred earlier. Keywords - Physics, chemistry, science education, school, teaching/learning process. 1 INTRODUCTION Teaching nowadays is, as always, a challenge. In order to keep students motivated and worried about scientific questions that appear in everyday’s situations, teachers need to change pedagogical methods in classrooms. Science is inherently experimental, and students can gain a better feel for the subject, and perhaps greater insight into its principles, if they are active participants in scientific discovery. However, for many reasons, it is not always possible for students to perform experiments themselves. This paper focus in a platform called e-lab with high potentiality in collect real data of several experiments, which can be used, anywhere and anytime, if we have an Internet connection, a player like VLC media player or QuickTime player and Java Web Start. The use of technologies and experimental work seems to be a positive option to make students active in their process of studying science [1,2], like Physics and Chemistry, which e-lab platform provide. 2 OBJECTIVES The essential objective of this study is to propose an e-learning resource to invert students’ lack of motivation, and to increase their interest and motivation in scientific areas such as Physics and Chemistry. To achieve such goal two channels are essentially used: technologies and experimental work. To implement that, it is important to have virtual laboratories like e-lab, which helps teachers to perform some experiments that are impossible to do at school either because the lack of material or by safety precautions, for example. The goal of this laboratory is give access to teachers and their students to a laboratory where is possible to collect data at real time, thereby increasing the traditional methods of analytic and numerical studies. This laboratory also gives the possibility to perform experiments that need expensive material, or to perform experiments without the concern about safety precautions.