Photonic simulator stimulates learning

A virtual photonic simulator was developed to help students to build and communicate through their own optical networks. The effort to develop the simulator started in the computing department at Macquarie University. It proposed a project to engage students in learning about optical communications. A simulation program was developed, allowing students to build a simple communications network and send coded messages through it. The simulator was targeted at junior secondary students and designed to correspond to the school syllabus. Flash was selected as the delivery platform for the simulator as it was hosted online, supported Mac and PCs, and was widely available through a free download. It also offered better graphical rendering in 2D without much computational load. The simulator was made open-ended to create digital resources to support each student's individual processes of scientific inquiry.