Youth EXPO: Youth Exploring the Potential of Virtual Worlds was a proof-of-concept study to determine if an immersive, 3D virtual environment is an effective medium to increase high school students’ understanding of current climate change research and motivate interest in learning more about climatology-related careers. The project was conducted by the Miami Science Museum in partnership with Goddard Institute of Space Sciences and Goddard Space Flight Center, and implemented with high school students in Miami. The overall goal of the project was to develop a prototype cyber resource to promote awareness of climate change and careers in climatology, in support of NASA’s role in helping youth understand how Earth’s global climate system is changing. YouthEXPO explored the extent to which 3D virtual learning experiences can increase high school students’ conceptual understanding of complex scientific issues related to climate change. This was accomplished through the development of a series of virtual exhibits, YouthEXPO Island, and pilot testing of the exhibition with high school students as part of a broader climate change curriculum. Youth EXPO Island is a series of simulations in an immersive, 3D virtual world environment designed to increase high school students’ understanding of current climate change research and motivate interest in learning more about climatology-related careers. Modules include EarthLab, IceLab, VolcanoLab and SpaceLab, four environmental simulations where avatars can analyze the relationship between global temperature change and a variety of climate factors, learn about remote sensing and field sampling techniques, and explore related careers.
The Children’s Museum developed From the Blue Planet to the Red Planet: Exploring Planetary Science to provide opportunities for students in grades 4 through 8, teachers, and families to learn about Mars exploration. The Museum partnered with the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT) on four teacher professional development modules related to aspects of planetary science: soil and plant study, air pressure, robotic exploration, and the comparison of Mars and Earth. Teachers who attended free workshops could bring students to the Museum for classroom and planetarium experiences. The Museum received support from Central Connecticut State University and technical advice from Phoenix Project scientists at JPL. The Museum created a timeline of Mars exploration history with video clips of milestones and an accompanying quiz kiosk. CCAT created virtual Mars drive-through experiences with which visitors could explore the planet. The Travelers ScienceDome Planetarium staff wrote, directed, and animated a full-dome planetarium program about the future study of Mars that was finished in December 2012. For over two years the Museum has sponsored free, monthly Mars Madness programs during which the general public can visit the exhibit, see a Mars-related planetarium program, and test out some of the hands-on activities developed for the school groups. The Museum hoped to reach a diverse audience, especially, those people who might otherwise not afford admission. We have produced four teacher professional development guides with hands-on activities, an exhibit for our facility, a dedicated website, and a planetarium program.
This report is the National Education Technology Plan (NETP) submitted by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to Congress. It presents five goals with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. Each goal addresses one of the five essential components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure, and Productivity. The plan also calls for "grand challenge" research and development initiatives to solve crucial long-term problems that the ED believes should be funded and coordinated at a national level.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
U.S. Department of EducationDaniel AtkinsJohn BennettJohn Seely BrownAneesh ChopraChris DedeBarry FishmanLouis GomezMargaret HoneyYasmin KafaiMaribeth LuftglassRoy PeaJim PellegrinoDavid RoseCandace ThilleBrenda Williams
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
SETAC is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union and emerges out of the need to undertake specific action for the improvement of science education. It regards science education as among the fundamental tools for developing active citizens in the knowledge society. SETAC draws on the cooperation between formal and informal learning institutions, aiming to enhance school science education and active citizenship looking further into the role of science education as a lifelong tool in the knowledge society. On the day of the project’s conclusion, 31 October 2010, after two years of work SETAC contributes the following products and results to the field: 1. “Quality Science Education: Where do we stand? Guidelines for practice from a European experience” This is the concluding manifesto that presents the results of the SETAC work in the form of recommendations for practitioners working in formal and informal science learning institutions; 2. “Teaching and Learning Scientific Literacy and Citizenship in Partnership with Schools and Science Museums” This paper constitutes the theoretical framework of the project and innovative ways of using museums for science education and develop new modes of linking formal and informal learning environments; 3. Tools for teaching and learning in science: misconceptions, authentic questions, motivation. Three specific studies, leading to three specific reports, have been conducted in the context of the project, looking in particular into notions with an important role in science teaching and learning. These are on: Children’s misconceptions; Authentic questions as tool when working in science education; Students’ attitudes and motivation as factors influencing their achievement and participation in science and science-related issues; 4. Activities with schools: SETAC developed a series of prototype education activities which were tested with schools in each country. Among the activities developed between the partners, two have been chosen and are available on-line for practitioners to use and to adapt in their own context. These are: The Energy role game, a role game on Energy invites students to act in different roles, those of the stakeholders of an imaginary community, called to debate and decide upon a certain common problem; MyTest www.museoscienza.org/myTest, which aims to encourage students to engage in researching, reflecting and communicating science-oriented topics; 5. European in-service training course for primary and secondary school teachers across Europe. The training course is designed in such a way as to engage participants in debate and exploration of issues related to science education and active citizenship. The course is open to school teachers, headteachers and teacher trainers from all EU-member and associate countries. Professionals interested can apply for a EU Comenius grant. All the products of the project as well as information about the training course are available at the project website, some of them in more than one languages: www.museoscienza.org/setac
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.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Walter AllanEric KlopferEleanor Steinberg
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).
The project will develop and study the impact of science simulations, referred to as sims, on middle school childrens' understanding of science and the scientific process. The project will investigate: 1) how characteristics of simulation design (e.g., interface design, visual representations, dynamic feedback, and the implicit scaffolding within the simulation) influence engagement and learning and how responses to these design features vary across grade-level and diverse populations; 2) how various models of instructional integration of a simulation affect how students interact with the simulation, what they learn, and their preparation for future learning; 3) how these interactions vary across grade-level and diverse populations; and 4) what critical instructional features, particularly in the type and level of scaffolding, are needed. Working with teachers, the team will select 25 existing sims for study. Teachers and students will be interviewed to test for usability, engagement, interpretation, and learning across content areas. The goal will be to identify successful design alternatives and to formulate generalized design guidelines. In parallel, pull-out and classroom-based studies will investigate a variety of use models and their impact on learning. Ten new simulations will then be developed to test these guidelines. Products will include the 35 sims with related support materials available for free from a website; new technologies to collect real-time data on student use of sims; and guidelines for the development of sims for this age population. The team will also publish research on how students learn from sims.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine PerkinsDaniel SchwartzMichael DubsonNoah Podolefsky
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?".
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine PerkinsMichael DubsonNoah FinkelsteinRobert ParsonCarl Weiman
The ScratchEd project, led by faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professionals at the Education Development Center, is designing, developing, and studying an innovative model for professional development (PD) of teachers who use the Scratch computer programming environment to help their students learn computational thinking. The fundamental hypothesis of the project is that engagement in workshops and on-line activities of the ScratchEd professional development community will enhance teacher knowledge about computational thinking, their practice of design-based instruction, and their students' learning of key computational thinking concepts and habits of mind. The effectiveness of the ScratchEd project is being evaluated by research addressing four specific questions: (1) What are the levels of teacher participation in the various ScratchEd PD offerings and what do teachers think of these experiences? (2) Do teachers who participate in ScratchEd PD activities change their use of Scratch in classroom instruction to create design-based learning opportunities? (3) Do the students of teachers who participate in the ScratchEd PD activities show evidence of developing an understanding of computational thinking concepts and processes? (4) When the research instruments developed for the evaluation are made available for teachers in the Scratch community to use for self-evaluation, how do teachers make use of them? Because both computational thinking and design-based instruction are complex activities, the project research is using a combination of survey, interview, and artifact analysis methods to answer the questions. The ScratchEd professional development and research work will provide important insight into the challenge of helping teachers create productive learning environments for development of computational thinking. Those efforts will also yield a set of evaluation tools that can be integrated into the ScratchEd resources and used by others to study development of computational thinking and design-based instruction.