| |
About the workshop
e-Science and Grid applications have the potential to engage the
wider community in scientific inquiry and debate (e.g.
The Nature Mapping Program,
Climate Prediction)
and to transform the learning process by enabling active participation
in distributed global collaborations through access to data,
communication and computing resources as Grid services. e-Science as
it is currently framed is often first thought of in relation to fully
qualified scientists engaging in scientific work beyond the walls of
the laboratory. A critical yet often neglected element of the
e-Science agenda is the educational system where young people are
first exposed to science and from where they choose their future
career options.
Science in and across schools can also be enabled by e-Science
infrastructures to facilitate schools e-Science beyond the boundaries
of the school fence (see
Woodgate
& Stanton Fraser, 2005 for a review). We are only at the
beginning of understanding the possibilities for schools e-Science and
this workshop will create an opportunity to bring together researchers
and practitioners to share experiences to date and to advance this as
an e-Science agenda. In this workshop we will address issues in the
following conference topics:
- e-Science & Grid applications in school science
- Collaborative Technology and Environments
- Sensor Networks and e-Science
- Virtual Instruments and Data Access Management
- Virtual e-Science Organizations
We intend to bring together researchers and practitioners from a
variety of disciplines with the goal to identify and discuss issues
related to the design, implementation, use and evaluation of e-Science
and Grid infrastructures in educational contexts.
Aims and Scope
This workshop addresses the practical issues involved in bringing
e-Science into the classroom, and extending its use beyond, into other
formal and informal learning contexts. We aim to provide a forum for
researchers from the areas of e-Science and educational research to
exchange experience and research ideas on developing and using
e-Science applications for learning. e-Science in education is an
important aspect of familiarising tomorrow's scientists with
innovative and challenging work concepts, such as collaborative,
distributed science work, to achieve an end much bigger than the sum
of its parts. Issues of student engagement, interest and shared
knowledge are at the centre of this work, as are issues of how
teachers develop the skills and experiences to integrate e-Science
into their curriculum and teaching practices. However, e-Science in
world-wide school contexts brings its own challenges, such as the
ethics of data access, storage and sharing; unfamiliar IT set-ups to
integrate with; co-ordination with outside experts e.g. domain
experts; and data exchange in rapid and usable formats e.g. Nkambou et
al (2005), Benford et al (2003), Smith
et al (2005), Stanton-Fraser
et al (2005). This workshop seeks to explore these issues
through presentations, interactive software demonstrations and
discussion of participants' experiences in this area.
Topics of Interest
Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
- Content and resources: e-Science as a vehicle to explore
curriculum learning
- Teaching and learning: specific requirements of schools, teachers
and learners for engaging with e-Science within school contexts
- Support system requirements for ICT support staff and teachers
- e-Science in the community - a natural extension to schools
e-Science?
Participation
Potential participants are invited to submit
via
the conference website a maximum 4 page position paper
describing their research in this area. In their submissions,
participants should identify the workshop themes addressed (or their
relevance to the workshop if suggesting a new theme). To encourage
interactive discussion we propose to limit the workshop to 12
participants. Depending on the number of participants and the key
theme categories presented by accepted papers, the workshop will be
conducted as consecutive working sections including: short
presentations, discussions based around technologies or project video
clips, interactive scenario exploration, reflection and discussion
around the key themes, and concluding with a summary of the
implications for designers, learners and educators and outstanding
research challenges.
About the organisers
The HCT group at Sussex and the London Knowledge Lab have conducted
research into the application of e-Science in educational contexts and
the use of local and remote sensors, remote collaboration and data
visualisation in co-laboratories with school children and teachers in
a number of recent projects - see the
e-Science
and SENSE
projects. We also have a new project which will further investigate
the technological, support and usability requirements secondary level
teachers have to capitalise on e-Science for their curriculum goals.
We aim to share this knowledge, building discussions around
participants' experiences of working with teachers and learners in
educational contexts, and learning from interactive discussions with
workshop participants.
Program committee members
- Hilary Smith - University of Sussex
- Josh Underwood - University of Sussex
- Dr. Geraldine Fitzpatrick - University of Sussex
- Prof. Rose Luckin - University of London
- Dr. Dawn Woodgate - University of Bath
- Dr. Silvia Gabrielli - University of Udine
- Dr. Peta Wyeth - University of Queensland
Other programme committee members to be confirmed.
References
- Benford, S., Crout, N., Crowe, J. Egglestone, S., Foster, M.,
Greenhalgh, C., Hampshire, A., Hayes-Gill, B., Humble, J., Irune,
A., Laybourn-Parry, J., Palethorpe, B., Reid, T. and Sumner, M.
(2003) e-Science from the Antarctic to the GRID, Proceedings of the
2nd UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2003
- Nkambou, R., Gouarderes, G. and Woolf, B. (2005) Toward Learning
Grid Infrastructures: An Overview of Research on Grid Learning
Services. Applied Artificial Intelligence, Vol 19 (9-10), pp 811-824
- Smith, H., Luckin, R., Fitzpatrick, G., Avramides, K. and
Underwood, J. (2005) Technology
at work to mediate collaborative scientific enquiry in the field.
In proceedings of AIED 2005, Amsterdam, 18 - 22 July, pp 603-610.
- Stanton Fraser, D., Smith, H., Tallyn, E., Kirk, D., Benford, S.,
Rowland, D., Paxton, M., Price, S. and Fitzpatrick, G. (2005)
The SENSE project: a
context-inclusive approach to studying environmental science
within and across schools. In proceedings of CSCL 2005,
Taipei, Taiwan May 30 - June 4, pp 155-159
- Woodgate, D. and Stanton Fraser, D. (2005)
Science
and Education 2005: A review. Report produced for JISC,
October 2005.
|
