Towards making Grid-enabled
schools e-Science usable and re-usable for and with teachers
In Brief
Our experience gained on the recent Ambient Wood, Sense
and e-Science
research projects highlighted the engagement and enthusiasm with which
students embraced active-hands on research in an outdoor setting using
mobile technologies, combined with reflective, analytical and
collaborative activities. These activities were based around data
visualisation and collaboration with remote others through familiar
social communication tools that were brought into the classroom for
educational uses. Although teachers accept these worthwhile
experiences, we and they acknowledge the costs involved: the
time-intensive preparation required to resource and run these
activities and this project seeks to understand further the challenges
faced.
In this two-year project, due to begin January
2007, we will work with teachers and learners - locally, nationally and
globally - to create a usable and reusable toolkit that supports
teachers in creating new, usable learning experiences for themselves
and others in a time-efficient manner. We will research the kinds of
resources required of school ICT and support infrastructures, along
with the added challenges of co-ordinating and collaborating with
remote teachers, learners and scientists.
Our overall guiding objectives are:
- To develop and support new e-Science
communities involving science teachers and their pupils and in so doing
to explore the barriers and usability issues that face the designers of
e-Science systems
- To expose young people, who will necessarily
include the scientists of the future, to the possibilities of e-Science
so that they will see e-Science as a natural way of engaging in
scientific research.
- To increase our understanding of the ways in
which new knowledge is formulated and understood within an educational
context supported by e-Science technology.
Recent activities:
We have compiled a set of resources derived from work on
the project for supporting teachers and learners in creating
participatory science learning sessions, for both formal and informal
learning contexts. Check out the resources here and feel free to contribute your own ideas to this living site.
Invitation to participate in a workshop at AIED
'09, Brighton, UK. How can and should technology be used to enhance the
kinds of learning that are relevant to current and future scientific
practice? How can technology be employed to enable greater public participation
in and engagement with science? For further details see the workshop page.
Collaborating with local gifted and talented
students on Operation Montserrat, March 2009. For more information see here.
We have been running our DIY
Energy sessions
- generating electricity to charge an iPod using sustainable
energy methods - at Brighton Science Festival's White Heat Day
at
Hove Park School, and as part of Science and Engineering Week 2008.
Now also collaborating with primary students at Newick
school, in tandem with the Vesel project at LKL.
See our learners' blog here.
Our workshop at the London
Science Learning Centre was on
24th November 2008. Science teachers and
technicians
participated in this free twilight event, (course LNC08141) and learned about
technologies and planning tools to support innovative
science learning.
Publications
- Wyeth, P., Smith, H., Ng, K.H.,
Fitzpatrick, G., Luckin, R., Walker, K., Good, J., Underwood,
J.
and Benford, S. (2008) Learning Through Treasure Hunting: The Role of
Mobile Devices. To appear at Mobile Learning '08, 11-13
April.
- Smith, H., Ng, K.H., Walker,
K., Underwood, J., Heldt, S., Fitzpatrick, G., Luckin, R., Good, J.,
Wyeth, P. and Benford, S. (2007) Reconstructing an Informal Mobile
Learning Experience with Multiple Data Streams. Proceedings
of
workshop on "Research methods in informal and mobile
learning: How to get the data we really want", WLE
Centre, Institute of Education, London, 14 December 2007.
Available here.
People
Hilary
Smith, Interact Lab;
Dr Geraldine
Fitzpatrick, Interact Lab;
Dr
Judith
Good, Ideas Lab;
Partners
London Knowledge
Lab, UK: Prof Rose Luckin; Josh Underwood;
Kevin Walker
Nottingham University,
UK: Prof Steve Benford; Dr Duncan Rowland
University of
Queensland, Australia: Dr Peta Wyeth
Hove Park School,
and Portslade Community
College, Brighton.
