Perceptions of pre-service teachers about a Science Lab developed in OpenSim

With the integration of technology in the educational area, use of virtual learning environments has allowed the adoption of new practices and forms of learning. Areas like Science has an interesting field of research involving the use of Virtual worlds, being possible to integrate virtual tasks with the practical work carried out in the real world, providing features such as immersion, interactivity, virtual reality, collaboration and visualization of phenomena through animated 3D objects. This article presents a virtual world composed of three laboratories for teaching Science in elementary education, whose objective is to demonstrate how it can assist educators in the process of teaching, mixing activities of the real and virtual world. OpenSim was used for the development of the virtual world, which has several types of educational content in the format of videos, slides, texts, questions and 3D simulations of practical experiments. These prototype were tested and validated by pre-service teachers of Science in a federal institution, with the objective of evaluate the benefits and difficulty involving this approach and the resources available in this environment. The results demonstrated a wide acceptance and satisfaction in using this virtual world, showing that the users felt motivated to use in their pedagogical practice and believe that it can assist students in their learning process.