There has been little work done on the early experiences of children looking at plant exhibits in botanical gardens. This project, a parallel study to one carried out in zoos, sought to establish what the groups talked about and whether there were differences in content when adults were present and between single sex and mixed groups. The conversations were collected during primary school visits to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, England, whilst the groups looked at plant specimens. Transcripts of the conversations were analysed using a systemic network. The results show that children talked
Classroom tasks should develop a spirit of inquiry and a sense of delight in discovery that will become part of the individual's learning style. Yet in the traditional elementary classroom, the use of worksheets, lectures and basal reading tasks to the exclusion of hands-on, participatory opportunities fails to encourage a child's construction of knowledge. By setting up a problem to be solved, demanding interaction, producing effects from direct actions and allowing variations of approach, cognitive development in children is enhanced. Hands-On Children's Museums encourage contextually
The article discusses the significance of student's participation in a wireless, handheld field trip in the U.S. It is a program that comprises of a mix of podcasts, student multimedia creation, Web research and interviewing, designed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The innovation is vital to students' learning because it will allow them to interact with museum exhibits in a guided yet exploratory way and to increase both the amount of time students spend at exhibits and the depth of engagement with each exhibit. It revealed that in a museum setting, the technology can be used to
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Aliece WellerJohn BickarPaul McGuiness
The school field trip constitutes an important demographic market for museums. Field trips enlist the energies of teachers and students, schools and museums, and ought to be used to the best of their potential. There is evidence from the literature and from practitioners that museums often struggle to understand the needs of teachers, who make the key decisions in field trip planning and implementation. Museum personnel ponder how to design their programs to serve educational and pedagogical needs most effectively, and how to market the value of their institutions to teachers. This paper
When children encounter museum exhibits, they find rich opportunities for action, perception, learning, and other forms of cognition. Can we see systematic organization in the children’s behavior, and by extension, their cognition? What would count as evidence of this organization? Based on an account of cognition as embodied, situated, and culturally mediated, this research illustrates how some cognition can be directly observed, manifested through interactions among modalities, people and objects in a distributed cognitive system. This field study uses micro- and macro-analyses of behavioral
Much of the work done in the field of tangible interaction has focused on creating tools for learning; however, in many cases, little evidence has been provided that tangible interfaces offer educational benefits compared to more conventional interaction techniques. In this paper, we present a study comparing the use of a tangible and a graphical interface as part of an interactive computer programming and robotics exhibit that we designed for the Boston Museum of Science. In this study, we have collected observations of 260 museum visitors and conducted interviews with 13 family groups. Our
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael HornErin SoloveyR. Jordan CrouserRobert Jacob
In this paper we describe the design and initial evaluation of a tangible computer programming exhibit for children on display at the Boston Museum of Science. We also discuss five design considerations for tangible interfaces in science museums that guided our development and evaluation. In doing so, we propose the notion of passive tangible interfaces. Passive tangibles serve as a way to address practical issues involving tangible interaction in public settings and as a design strategy to promote reflective thinking. Results from our evaluation indicate that passive tangibles can preserve
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael HornErin SoloveyRobert Jacob
Parents and children are rapidly adopting mobile technologies, yet designs for mobile devices that serve a communication function to connect parents to children's out-of-school time activities are limited. As a result, our team designed the Digital Postcard Maker so that children attending summer camps can create digital photographs to send home to their parents. These digital postcards help to connect children's home life with out-of-school learning experiences and also support 21st Century Skills' media literacy practices. The research design included two iterations of a design-based
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Heather ZimmermanChristopher GamratSimon Hooper
The article provides information for the development of a partnership between traditional science classrooms and Informal Science Institutions (ISIs). Topics include popular forms of ISIs, such as zoos, libraries, and government agencies, guidance for choosing an ISI to partner with, and implementing ISI resources in the classroom. Suggestions for steps to take before, during, and after arranging a school field trip to an ISI are also provided.
The article provides information regarding a community service-learning project concerning the Boulder Creek stream performed by a fifth grade class in Donnelly, Idaho. Topics include the participation of students from the University of Idaho McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), the development of the IdaH2O Master Water Stewards citizen science project, and the involvement of the community in the student-led restoration project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jennifer SchonKarla EitelDeirdre BingamanBrant MillerRebecca Rittenberg
Educational makerspaces (EM) and maker education (ME) have the potential to revolutionize the way we approach teaching and learning. The maker movement in education is built upon the foundation of constructionism, which is the philosophy of hands-on learning through building things. Constructionism, in turn, is the application of constructivist learning principles to a hands-on learning environment. Thus maker education is a branch of constructivist philosophy that views learning as a highly personal endeavor requiring the student, rather than the teacher, to initiate the learning process. In
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TEAM MEMBERS:
R. Steven KurtiDebby KurtiLaura Fleming