Collaborators on the project include Professor Elliot Soloway from the University of Michigan who is developing digital libraries and "scaffolding software" as well as interfacing Newton hand-held computers to measure temperature and calculate water quality. Keith Wheeler, another collaborator, is executive director of the Global Rivers Environmental Education Network, and will develop water quality measurement activities for the technology the project will develop. Dr. Wayne Grant, another collaborator has studied students using wireless computer networking as they investigate the Costa Rico rain forest. Dr. Robert Tinker, president of the Concord Consortium, is the project director.
The Science Learning in Context project will vastly expand the range of situations in which students can learn science, mathematics, and technology by providing flexible tools that help them extract data and meaning in the complex, real world. The project will bring a full range of computer and networking tools outside the lab for explorations of rich, natural settings (the field, classroom, school, neighborhood, town and city) where students are expected to develop understandings and investigative strategies that will last a lifetime.
The project will use portable probes and client-server based wireless networking-advanced technologies already beginning to make their appearance and certain to be inexpensive, powerful, and widely available in five to ten years. The technology will make it possible for students to make digital journal observations, gather a range of kinds of data, consolidate data from others, reflect on the data, link findings with background information and data, develop models based on these data, and communicate with others. Used with intelligent prompting, scaffolding, various data representations, and data exchange forms at their fingertips, far more student reflection and analysis in the field is expected. This should result in deeper learning, better use of time, and the possibility of additional cycles of observations and analysis.
In order to test the educational potential of this technology, the project staff will develop a series of innovative units that employ the technology to support new ways to teach about scientific measurement, modeling, mapping, and investigations. The project will test new instructional strategies using this technology that will help students develop holistic models of the natural, built, and social environment.
Using this approach, the researchers expect student inquiry to be more efficient, student investigations will be more expert, the resulting knowledge will be less inert, and many new topics will be amenable to student investigation. In addition, students should become more acquainted with their vocational choices. These results will have important implications on the practicality of widespread use of extended student investigations, equity, home study, and the school-to-work transition.
The broader implications of this work is related to the anticipated widespread use of hand-held computers in education. For many students, these will be the first truly personal computers that they master and make their own. We feel that the implications for teaching and learning of this technology, when it becomes ubiquitous, will be enormous. This project will contribute to making this happen by exploring some of the more advanced kinds of educational applications of hand-held computers.
Collaborators' Corner (password necessary) Project Information for Collaborators, Researchers and Official Test Sites.
For further information, please contact:
Kathryn Costello
37 Thoreau Street
Concord, MA 01742
Phone: (508) 369-4367
E-mail: kathy@concord.org