RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
AHA! Island is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. This research is intended to examine the extent to which the prototyped media and activity sets support the project’s learning goals. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted a small formative study with 16 English-speaking families (children and their caregivers) to test out these media and activity set prototypes. During the in-person video
The Richmond Public Library will create The Richmond Digital Health Literacy Project to provide low-income residents with tools and skills needed to access online information to improve their health. Participants will learn how to gain access to digital reference materials, e-books, mobile library offerings, and other resources. The project will bring together groups of participants around the topic of health information to develop customized online health curricula, provide training to 180 low-income residents in digital health literacy, and supply free broadband and wireless antennae to public computer centers. These activities will enable participants to develop skills and access relevant digital content to improve the health and the overall quality of life of Richmond residents.
The purposes of the STUDIO 3D evaluation were to collect information about the impact upon student learning as a result of participating in the STUDIO 3D Project, as well as to elicit information for program improvement. Areas of inquiry include recruiting and retention, impact on project participants, tracking student impacts, and the project as a whole.
The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help in envisioning the next generation of learning technologies and advancing what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Development and Implementation (DIP) Projects build on proof-of-concept work that showed the possibilities of the proposed new type of learning technology, and project teams build and refine a minimally-viable example of their proposed innovation that allows them to understand how such technology should be designed and used in the future and answer questions about how people learn with technology. Although for years researchers have believed technology could afford anytime-anywhere learning, we still don't understand how learners behave differently across contexts, such as home, school, and in the community, and how to get youth to identify as learners across those contexts. This proposal aims to use mobile devices and strategically placed shared kiosks to 'scientize' youth in two low-income communities. Through strategic partnerships with community organizations, educators, and families, the innovation is to get primary and middle-school students engaging in scientific inquiry in the context of their neighborhoods. Research will help determine how the technology can best be deployed, but also answer important questions about how communities can provide support to help kids think like scientists and identify with science. This project will design and implement ubiquitous technology tools that include mobile social media and tangible, community displays (collectively called ScienceKit) that are deeply embedded into two urban neighborhoods, and demonstrate how such ubiquitous technologies and related cyberlearning strategies are vital to improve information flow and coordination across a neighborhood ecosystem, in order to create environments where children can connect their science learning across contexts and time (e.g. scientizing). A program called ScienceEverywhere comprised of partnerships between tightly connected neighborhood organizations with mentors, teachers, parents, and researchers will help learners develop scientifically literate practices both in and out of school, and will demonstrate students' learning to their communities. Research will consist of mixed methods studies of use of the tools, including iterative design-based research, ethnography, and the use of participant observers from the community; these will be triangulated with usage logs of the technologies and content analysis of microblogs by the learners on their identities and interests. Discourse analysis of interviews with focal learners will orient the qualitative work on identity development, and analysis using activity theory will inform the influences of the social practices and sociotechnical systems on learner trajectories. Formative evaluation will help shed light on if and how the sociotechnical system promotes STEM literacy and STEM identity development.
A youth media program called Youthscapes not only helps participants combat negative stereotypes of urban teens, but also gives them a sense of group solidarity that enables them to function as responsible media producers when they venture out into the community.
This article describes the Multimedia Arts Education Program (MAEP), an ongoing, intensive after school computer-mediated art technology program begun in 1996 by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) in Tucson, Arizona. This five-semester program targets at-risk middle school youth from disadvantaged families. Students worked with professional artist/teachers, learning to do computer graphics and publishing, language arts and word processing, computer animation and video production.
Both scholarly literature and popular media often depict predominantly negative and one-dimensional images of boys, especially African-American boys. Predictions of these boys’ anticipated difficulties in school and adulthood are equally prevalent. This paper reports qualitative research that features case studies of nine urban boys of color, aged nine to eleven, who participated in an afterschool program where they learned to create digital multimedia texts. Drawing on an analysis of the children’s patterns of participation, their multimodal products, and their social and intellectual growth
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Glynda HullNora KenneyStacy MarpleAli Forsman-Schneider
The authors present an exploratory study of Black middle school boys who play digital games. The study was conducted through observations and interviews with Black American middle school boys about digital games as an informal learning experience. The first goal of the study is to understand the cultural context that Black students from economically disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods bring to playing digital games. The second goal of the study is to examine how this cultural context affects the learning opportunities with games. Third, the authors examine how differences in game play are
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Betsy James DiSalvoKevin CrowleyRoy Norwood
You can use CyberTracker on a Smartphone or handheld computer to record any type of observation. CyberTracker, which requires no programming skills, allows you to customize a series of screens for your own data collection needs. Our vision is to enable you to be part of a worldwide environmental monitoring network. Our mission is to help you improve environmental monitoring by increasing the efficiency of data gathering and to improve observer reliability.
WGBH will develop, produce, and distribute Wonders of the Modern World, a project that examines the science and technology behind the building of five international landmarks -- the Golden Gate Bridge, the Aswan Dam, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Toronto Skydome, and the English Channel Tunnel connecting Great Britain and France. Wonders of the Modern World is an integrated, synergistic project that combines a nationally-broadcast, prime time television series with print, interactive components, and on-line products for home and school. The goals of the project are to educate the public about concepts in physical science, technology, and engineering and to engage youth and adults in a diverse range of science and technology activities using various media ranging from on-line telecommunications to print. The specific components of the project include: o A prime time PBS television series consisting of five one-hour programs that will be hosted by David Macaulay, author of numerous popular books on technology such as How Things Work, Cathedral, Castle, and Pyramid, o A World Wide Web site where users can conduct interactive science and technology activities, o Print guides to help with on-line activities, o Family-oriented video vignettes with experiments in structural design, o Activity kits that include the materials needed for conducting family-based science experiments, o Curriculum-based school videos, o Student/teacher guides that will help interpret the series for classroom use, and o A CD-ROM. WGBH has formed alliances with four national organizations that will undertake a major effort to engage members of underserved and low-income communities in the series and the ancillary activities. These organizations are The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, The Community Technology Centers Network, The Public Library Association, and The American Architectural Foundation. The PI and Project Director will be Paula Apsell, Executive Producer for NOV A and Head of the WGBH Science Unit. Larry Klein, Head of Production Group, Inc., will be the Series Executive Producer and Co-PI. Beth Kirsch of WGBH will serve as Director of Educational Print and Outreach, and Mark Olshaker will be series editor and scriptwriter. Ted Sicker, Executive Producer for Interactive Projects/New Media at WGBH Educational Foundation will direct the development and deployment of the on-line components of the project. Barbara Flagg will conduct formative evaluation and Irene Goodman will conduct summative evaluation.
Public Radio International (PRI) is developing and producing a three-year technology initiative in the internationally distributed news and information radio series, "The World." The series is co-produced by PRI, the BBC World Service, and WGBH/Boston. PRI will establish a Technology Desk and assign a reporter full-time to covering technology. In addition, "The World" will benefit from the full resources of the BBC Science Unit. Technology reports will be produced in several radio formats including: At least 26 direct news reports annually (approximately four minutes each); Technology updates in daily newscasts (approximately 52 minutes per year); A weekly Lab Report highlighting emerging technologies (approximately three minutes each); Three monthly in-depth features (Approximately five minutes each); Two major annual in-depth series of five installments each (approximately six minutes each). This emphasis on the latest technology developments will provide listeners with up-to-date information about important developments in such areas as nanotechnology and micro-electrical machines, quantum cryptography and genetic manipulation of agricultural products. In depth reports would cover topics such as the Human Genome Project and the influence of technology on archaeology. PRI will work with the Exploratorium in San Francisco to design and produce outreach components for the project. A web resource will be developed to extend and deepen technology covered in broadcasts over the radio. It will include further information about topics, directions for conducting experiments, transcripts of technology reports and bibliographies of additional resources. PRI and the Exploratorium also will implement a three-year pilot project to involve children from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in the creation of online broadcasts (webcasts) on technology-related themes. This element of the project will determine whether programming derived from a news program and produced by children for children is an effective production model and whether the model is appropriate for replication.