This paper examines the benefits and obstacles to young people's open-ended and unrestricted access to technological environments. While children and youth are frequently seen as threatened or threatening in this realm, their playful engagements suggest that they are self-possessed social actors, able to negotiate most of its challenges effectively. Whether it is proprietary software, the business practices of some technology providers, or the separation of play, work, and learning in most classrooms, the spatial-temporality of young people's access to and use of technology is often configured
This article reviews how the relationship between computer games and learning has been conceptualized in policy and academic literature, and proposes a methodology for exploring learning with games that focuses on how games are enacted in social interactions. Drawing on Sutton-Smith's description of the rhetorics of play, it argues that the educational value of games has often been defined in terms of remedying the failures of the education system. This, however, ascribes to games a specific ontology in a popular culture that is defined in terms of its opposition to school culture. By
This research explores how to support collaborative learning practices when science museum visitors employ their own personal mobile devices as Opportunistic User Interfaces (O-UIs) to manipulate a simulation-based museum exhibit. The sophisticated graphical capabilities of modern mobile devices have the potential to distract visitors, a phenomenon known as the heads-down effect. To study the impact of O-UI design on collaboration, a highly-dynamic "complex" O-UI was contrasted against more simplistic, "remote-control" OUI design, in the context of a cancer-treatment simulation. As expected
This report focuses on the use of games as resources to support the educational aims, objectives, and planned outcomes of teachers who understand that games are an important medium in contemporary culture and young people's experiences. The report provides an assessment of game-based learning in UK schools. It is intended to test out the hype and enthusiasm for using games in education and to identify a sensible rationale and practical strategies for teachers to try out games in the classroom.
The Media MashUp project is funded by the IMLS (Grant LG-07-08-0113 ) to build capacity at libraries for computer-based programs for youth that help build 21st Century literacy skills. Twenty first Century literacy skills include interactive engagement with technology, collaboration and team problem solving, taking initiative and managing time and the use of higher level processing skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org/). This project uses the Scratch programming platform (http://scratch.mit.edu/) developed at MIT to help foster youth's 21st Century literacy skills. The professional audience
Maine is a rural state with unequal access to computers and information technology. To remedy this, the Maine laptop program supplies iBooks to every seventh and eighth grade student in the state. The goal of EcoScienceWorks is to build on this program and develop, test and disseminate a middle school curriculum featuring computer modeling, simple programming and analysis of GIS data coupled with hands-on field experiences in ecology. The project will develop software, EcoBeaker: Maine Explorer, to stimulate student exploration of information technology by introducing teachers and students to simple computer modeling, applications of simulations in teaching and in science, and GIS data manipulation. This is a three-year, comprehensive project for 25 seventh and eighth grade teachers and their students. Teachers will receive 120 contact hours per year through workshops, summer sessions and classroom visits from environmental scientists. The teachers' classes will field test the EcoScienceWorks curriculum each year. The field tested project will be distributed throughout the Maine laptop program impacting 150 science teachers and 17,000 middle school students. EcoScienceWorks will provide middle school students with an understanding of how IT skills and tools can be used to identify, investigate and model possible solutions to scientific problems. EcoScienceWorks aligns with state and national science learning standards and integrates into the existing middle school ecology curriculum. An outcome of this project will be the spread of a field tested IT curriculum and EcoBeaker: Maine Explorer throughout Maine, with adapted curriculum and software available nationally.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Walter AllanEric KlopferEleanor Steinberg
This planning effort, a collaboration of teams at the University of Maryland, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Sciencenter of Ithaca, deals with the development and testing of a unique methodology for educating youth in computer programming. Through a mobile robot that is cleverly disguised as a small animal, participants will learn to manipulate the system by physically moving it as well as setting variables via electronic buttons thereby learning programming and design. The eventual use of this system and methodology is in museum exhibits so preliminary survey data will be gathered from various venues that presently use less capable devices. Iterative testing will be done at the Sciencenter in its exhibits.
The Cryptoclub: Cryptography and Mathematics Afterschool and Online is a five-year project designed to introduce middle school students across the country to cryptography and mathematics. Project partners include the Young Peoples Project (YPP), the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and Eduweb, an award-winning educational software design and development firm. The intended impacts on youth are to improve knowledge and interest in cryptography, increase skills in mathematics, and improve attitudes towards mathematics. The secondary audience is leaders in afterschool programs who will gain an increased awareness of cryptography as a tool for teaching mathematics and adopt the program for use in their afterschool programs. Project deliverables include online activities, online cryptography adventure games, interactive offline games, a leader\'s manual, and training workshops for afterschool leaders. The project materials will be developed in collaboration with YPP staff and pilot tested in Year 3 at local afterschool programs and YPP sites in Chicago in addition to four national sites. Field testing and dissemination occurs in Year 4 at both local sites in Chicago and national locations such as afterschool programs, science centers, and community programs. Six 3-day training workshops will be provided (2 per year in Years 3-5) to train afterschool leaders. It is anticipated that this project will reach up to 11,000 youth, including underserved youth in urban settings, and 275 professional staff. Strategic impact resulting from this project includes increased awareness of cryptography as a STEM topic with connections to mathematics as well a greater understanding of effective strategies for integrating and supporting web-based and offline activities within informal learning settings. The Cryptoclub project has the potential to have a transformative impact on youth and their understanding of cryptography and may serve as a national model for partnerships between afterschool and mentoring programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Janet BeissingerSusan GoldmanDaria TsoupikovaBonnine Saunders
This planning effort, a collaboration of teams at the University of Maryland, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Sciencenter of Ithaca, deals with the development and testing of a unique methodology for educating youth in computer programming. Through a mobile robot that is cleverly disguised as a small animal, participants will learn to manipulate the system by physically moving it as well as setting variables via electronic buttons thereby learning programming and design. The eventual use of this system and methodology is in museum exhibits so preliminary survey data will be gathered from various venues that presently use less capable devices. Iterative testing will be done at the Sciencenter in its exhibits.
This is a proposal for a 3 year, $1,297,456 project to be conducted as collaboration among 5 higher education institutions and one school system across the country, with St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA serving as the lead institution (other collaborators are from Colorado School of Mines, Ithaca College, Santa Clara University, Duke University, and Virginia Beach School System). The primary goal is to attract and retain students in computer science, especially women and underrepresented minorities (including two EPSCoR states). To this end, the project will use Alice, a software program that utilizes 3-D visualization methods, as a medium to create a high-level of interest in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling among high school students, hence to build understanding of object-based programming. Such an IT focus on media and animation is aligned with national computer science standards. The project will build a network of college and high school faculty, who will offer workshops and provide continuing support during the academic year. In each site, pairs of teachers from each participating school (total = 90) will learn with university faculty via a 3-week summer program in which an introduction to using Alice for teaching will be followed by teacher development of materials for students that will then be used to teach high school students. An experimental start at one site will be followed by implementation at four additional sites and culminated with revised implementation at the sixth site (1-4-1 design).
TERC Inc. will conduct a one-year proof of concept study that includes the design, development, and research of two prototype science activities for the virtual Blue Mars Science Center located on the Blue Mars 2150 platform developed by Virtual Space Entertainment. Blue Mars is a science fiction-themed virtual world set on Mars far in the future and will be rendered in High Definition, an important incremental step in the development of highly realistic virtual worlds. It is in this virtual world context that the proposed learning activities and research are to be conducted. TERC's research will examine the challenges of learning in virtual environments and which types of tools and interactions can encourage and support collaboration, the results of which will advance both informal and formal learning in virtual worlds. Avatar tracking data, participant observations, interviews, and surveys will be used to study participants. The project has the potential to advance areas of computational visualization systems and cognitive science and will afford an array of learning opportunities using real time data. Millions of visitors to the Blue Mars world will be able to share in an unprecedented range of virtual activities and experiences. It is anticipated that the research will inform the future development of even more advanced immersive interactivity, such as avatar-based models and computationally-oriented interactivity. The study will serve as a basis for both further development of the Blue Mars Science Center and the advancement of research on science learning in virtual worlds. The investigators are interested in continuing to expand as the scientific community evolves in the virtual world. The online world has the potential to become a powerful attractor for the general public to engage in science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jodi Asbell-ClarkeTeon EdwardsRichard Childers
The Physics and Chemistry Education Technology (PhET) Project is developing an extensive suite of online, highly-interactive simulations, with supporting materials and activities for improving both the teaching and learning of physics and chemistry. There are currently over 70 simulations and over 250 associated activities available for use from the PhET website (http://phet.colorado.edu). These web-based resources are impacting large number of students. Per year, there are currently over 4 million PhET simulations run online and thousands of full website downloads for offline use of the simulations. The goal is that this widespread use of PhET's research-based tools and resources will improve the education of students in physics and chemistry at colleges and high schools throughout the U.S. and around the world. This PhET project combines a unique set of features. First, the simulation designs and goals are based on educational research. Second, using a team of professional programmers, disciplinary experts, and education research specialists enables the development of simulations involving technically-sophisticated software, graphics, and interfaces that are highly effective. Third, the simulations embody the predictive visual models of expert scientists, allowing many interesting advanced concepts to become widely accessible and revealing their relevance to the real world. And finally, the project is actively involved in research to better understand how the design and use of simulations impacts their effectiveness - e.g. investigating questions such as "How can these new technologies promote student understanding of complex scientific phenomena?" and "What factors inhibit or enhance their use and effectiveness?".
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine PerkinsMichael DubsonNoah FinkelsteinRobert ParsonCarl Weiman