Oficina Desafio, Challenge Workshop, is a project of UNICAMP Exploratory Science Museum – the Science Center of the State University of Campinas (Brazil). It is an outreach project, consisting of a fully - equipped mobile workshop constructed on a truck, which visits schools and gives the students open solution real problems challenging them to “design, construct and operate a device” capable of solving the challenge. Analysis of the evaluation forms answered by school students reveals that participants of the challenges perceive it as a “learning opportunity”, in the sense they identify
Designers have been moving increasingly closer to the future users of what they design and the next new thing in the changing landscape of design research has become co-designing with your users. But co-designing is actually not new at all, having taken distinctly different paths in the US and in Europe. The evolution in design research from a user-centered approach to co-designing is changing the roles of the designer, the researcher and the person formerly known as the “user”. The implications of this shift for the education of designers and researchers are enormous. The evolution in design
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth SandersPieter Jan Stappers
The Science and Technology Museum from Catalunya (mNACTEC) has developed a virtual exhibition from the documents and objects used for the exhibition "Experimental Physics Laboratory of the Mentor Alsina". The main objective of the virtual exhibition is complementary to the current exhibition. Provide information, list of objects and operating proposal that could be difficult to develop in an exhibition in which dominates the environmental sense. The virtual exhibition offers information on all objects of the early twentieth century that form the collection of laboratory and interactive
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joan MunozSantiago VallmitjanaJaume ValentinesStefano D'Argenio
While we should celebrate our success at evolving many vital aspects of the human-technology interactive experience, we question the scope of this progress. Step back with us for a moment. What really matters? Everyday life spans a wide range of emotions and experiences -- from improving productivity and efficiency to promoting wonderment and daydreaming. But our research and designs do not reflect this important life balance. The research we undertake and the applications we build employ technology primarily for improving tasks and solving problems. Our claim is that our successful future
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric PaulosTom JenkinsAugust JokiParul Vora
This paper suggests new strategies for introducing students to robotics technologies and concepts, and argues for the importance of providing multiple entry points into robotics. In particular, the paper describes four strategies that have been successful in engaging a broad range of learners: (1) focusing on themes, not just challenges; (2) combining art and engineering; (3) encouraging storytelling; (4) organizing exhibitions, rather than competitions. The paper describes a new technology, called the PicoCricket, that supports these strategies by enabling young people to design and program
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Natalie RuskMitchel ResnickRobbie BergMargaret Pezalla-Granlund
Multimodal technologies are creating new experiential opportunities for exploring, tinkering, learning and interacting in the virtual world. Once combined with sensorial objects and open-ended activities in the physical world, they introduce a new genre of interactive environments called ThinkeringSpace. ThinkeringSpace is a hybrid system - made of networked and remotely accessible physical environments - that seeks to bring school-age children together to collaborate face-to-face and tinker with things, both physical and virtual, reflect upon what they do and discover, and elaborate their
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Heloisa MouraDale FahnstromGreg PrygrockiT.J. McLeish
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
Bio Med Tech: Engineering for Your Health was a 2,750 square foot exhibition at the Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC) that dealt with issues related to biomedical technology. Partially funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Awards program (NIH/SEPA), the project was developed through a partnership between GLSC and Case Western Reserve University. The SEPA grant also funded a variety of programming activities, including informal Exploration Cart activities in the exhibition, presentations in the exhibition's theater space, and teacher training
Liberty Science Center (LSC) received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to develop, install and evaluate a 12,800-square foot, two-story permanent exhibition about skyscrapers. Skyscraper! is meant to showcase the architectural design and engineering, physics, and urban-related environmental science of skyscrapers. The Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), a Maryland-based research and evaluation organization that focuses on lifelong learning in informal or free-choice settings, was contracted to conduct the summative exhibition evaluation. The purpose of the summative evaluation
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kerry BronnenkantLiberty Science CenterClaudia Figueiredo
Using the pre-college suite of surveys you can determine whether specific activities met your objectives and use this information to improve activities and make evaluation decisions. Specifically, the instruments assess the following topics: Course-taking plans for high school, whether participant intends to study science, engineering, or computer, what participant knows about what engineers, scientists, or computer scientists do, what factors (if any) about being an engineer, scientist, or computer scientist appeal to participant, events or persons that influenced participants' study plans
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Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity of Missouri
LAESE is designed to identify longitudinal changes in the self-efficacy of undergraduate students studying engineering. (see AWE Self-Efficacy Literature Overview and Information on Self-Efficacy). LAESE can be used with any students studying engineering. A High School instrument, based on LAESE, was developed and tested by the Female Recruits Explore Engineering (FREE) Project.
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Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity of Missouri