All posts by Pati Ruiz

By Colin Hennessy Elliott & the SchoolWide Labs Team

This post was written by a member of the SchoolWide Labs research team, about their experience during the pandemic and what they learned from middle school science and STEM teachers as part of a larger Research-Practice Partnership between a university and a large school district in the United States. The post was reviewed by practicing Educator CIRCLS members. The purpose of the blog is to help open the door between the worlds of research and practice a bit wider so that we can see the differing perspectives and start a dialogue. We are always looking for more practitioners and researchers who want to join us in this work.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many school communities online last school year in the US. Teachers were charged with accommodating so many needs while holding levels of care and compassion for students and their families. As a multi-year research project aimed at supporting teachers in integrating computational thinking in science and STEM learning, we worked with renewed senses of compassion, creativity, and struggle. We witnessed how students and teachers innovatively developed computationally rich communication using the technologies from our project while teaching and learning remotely. Below we share a few moments from the 2020-21 school year that have helped us learn what it takes to engage middle school students in computational practices (i.e. collaborating on programming a physical system, interpreting data from a sensor) that are personally relevant and community-based. These moments offer lessons on how collaboration and communication are key to learning, regardless of whether the learning takes place in person or remotely.

Who we are

The SchoolWide Labs research team, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder with collaborators at Utah State University, has partnered with Denver Public Schools (DPS) for over five years. We work with middle school science and STEM teachers to co-develop models for teacher learning that support the integration of computational thinking into science and STEM classrooms. The team selected, assembled, and refined a programmable sensor technology with input from teachers on what would be feasible in their classrooms and in collaboration with a local electronics retailer (SparkFun Electronics). This collaboration focused particularly on programmable sensors because they offer opportunities for students to develop deeper relationships with scientific data, as producers rather than just data collectors.¹ This aligns with modern scientific practice where scientists often tinker with computational tools to produce the data they need to answer specific questions.

The Data Sensor Hub (DaSH) is a low cost physical computing system used in the curriculum and professional learning workshops developed by the SchoolWide Labs team. Ensuring the DaSH would be low cost was a priority of the team as an issue of access and equity. The DaSH consists of the BBC Micro:bit, a connection expander called the gator:bit, and an array of sensors that can be attached to the micro:bit and gator:bit with alligator clips (see Figure 1). Students can easily assemble the DaSH themselves to experience the physical connections and hard wiring. Students and teachers can write programs for the DaSH using MakeCode, a block-based programming environment that can be accessed via a web browser, making it easy to use with various computer setups. For students with more programming experience, MakeCode has the option to use python or javascript to program the micro:bits.

Figure 1.The Data Sensor Hub (DaSH). The picture on the left depicts the components of the DaSH used with the Sensor Immersion Unit including the micro:bit, Gator:bit and three sensors (top to bottom: soil moisture sensor, microphone sensor, environmental sensor). The picture on the right shows a teacher and student interacting with the DaSH set up just for the microphone sensor.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, our research team co-designed curricular units with teachers interested in using the DaSH to engage middle school students in scientific inquiry. Currently there are four units available on our website, three that use the DaSH and one that uses a 3-D printer. The Sensor Immersion Unit – the only unit teachers implemented remotely in the 2020-21 school year – has students explore the DaSH in use via a classroom data display, learn basic programming, and create their own displays that collect environmental data (sound, temperature, carbon dioxide levels, or soil moisture) to address a question of their choice. For example, one group of students decided to investigate climate change by measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in their neighborhoods and exploring the impact of plants and trees. The goal is for students to develop ownership of the DaSH as a data collection tool by wiring the hardware and programming the software. In the process, they engage in computational thinking and computationally rich communication when they discuss their use of the DaSH with peers and the teacher.

In the 2020-21 school year most middle schools in Denver Public Schools were remote. Several STEM teachers, with more curricular flexibility, decided to provide DaSHs to students who wanted the responsibility of having them for a period of time. Having the DaSHs in students’ homes offered opportunities to make the barriers between home and school less visible, as students conducted place-based investigations and emergently took on the role of data producers. For example, some students shared temperature data and carbon dioxide levels in and around their homes with the class. In these moments, students emergently took on the role of data producers. Below, we share two examples from observing student and teacher interactions in virtual mediums which helped our research team learn about what is possible using the DaSH. We also developed new supports to help teachers facilitate extended student collaboration and communication when using the DaSH.

Lesson Learned 1: Increasing student collaboration in virtual settings

One middle school STEM teacher, Lauren (a pseudonym), had the opportunity to teach different cohorts of eighth graders in the first two quarters of the 2020-21 school year. A new SchoolWide Labs participant, she was enthusiastic about implementing the Sensor Immersion Unit with her first cohort in the first quarter. She navigated the logistical challenges of getting DaSHs to over half her students along with the pedagogical challenges of adapting the curriculum to a remote setting. After her first implementation, she shared that she was disappointed that her students rarely collaborated or shared their thinking with each other when they were online. We heard from other teachers that they had similar struggles. Before Lauren’s second implementation, we facilitated several professional learning sessions with the aim of supporting teachers to elicit more student collaboration in remote settings. Through our work together, we identified the importance of establishing collaboration norms for students, offering continued opportunities to meet in small groups virtually, and modeling how to make their work visible to each other. In Lauren’s second implementation with new students during next quarter, she intentionally discussed norms and roles for group work in “breakout rooms,” or separate video calls for each group (her school was not using a software that had the breakout room functionality). One of the resulting virtual rooms with three eighth graders during the Sensor Immersion Unit was especially encouraging for both Lauren and our research team. Without their cameras on at any point, the three boys shared their screens (swapping depending on who needed help or wanted to show the others) and coordinated their developing programs (on different screens) in relation to the DaSHs that two students had at home. Their collaboration included checking in to make sure everyone was ready to move on (“Everyone ok?”) and the opportunity to ask for further explanation from others at any point (“hold on, why does my [DaSH]…”). With their visual joint attention on the shared screen, the three successfully navigated an early program challenge using their understanding of the programming environment (MakeCode) and hints embedded in it (developed by the research team).

Lesson Learned 2: Adapting debugging practices to a virtual environment

Many science and STEM teachers new to our projects have struggled with finding confidence in supporting students as they learn to program the DaSH. They specifically worry about knowing how to support students as they debug the systems, which includes finding and resolving potential and existing issues in computer code, hardware (including wiring), or their communication. This worry was further magnified when learning had to happen remotely, even with some students having the physical DaSH systems at home. Common issues teachers encountered in student’s setup were consistent with the bugs that we have identified over the course of the project including: 1) code and wiring do not correspond, 2) problems in the students’ code, 3) the program is not properly downloaded onto the micro:bit, and more.²

Being unable to easily see students’ physical equipment and provide hands-on support made some teachers wary of even attempting to use the SchoolWide Labs curriculum in a remote environment. However, those teachers who were willing to do so made intriguing adaptations to how they supported students in identifying and addressing bugs. These adaptations included: 1) meeting one on one briefly to ask students questions about their progress and asking them to hold up their systems to the camera for a hardware check, 2) holding debugging-specific office hour times during and outside of class time, and 3) having students send their code to teachers to review as formative assessments and debugging checks. Although debugging required more time, patience, and creativity from teachers and students, these activities were generally successful in making the DaSHs work and helping students become more adept users.

Future Directions

As teachers and students have gone back to attending school face-to-face, the lessons learned during remote instruction continue to inform our work and inspire us as a SchoolWide Labs community. As these two examples show, the ingenuity of teachers and students during a tough shift to virtual learning led to new forms of computational thinking, communication, and collaboration. It became more clear that there was a critical need for at least some students to have the physical systems at home to deeply engage in the process of being data producers, which is indicative of the curriculum being so material rich. Yet, simply having the the DaSH in hand did not ensure that students would participate in the kinds of communication important for their engagement in and learning of the targeted science and computational thinking practices. While we continue to explore the complexity of teacher and student interactions with the DaSH, this past summer and fall we have been working with participating teachers (new and returning from last year) to develop a more specific set of norms, which include small group communication norms and roles. Additionally, we have begun to consider other strategies that may support students to learn programming and debugging skills, such as the use of student-created flowcharts to represent their view of the computational decisions of the DaSH. The shift to virtual learning, and now back to face-to-face instruction, has required us to more deeply reflect on the professional learning that best supports teachers in using the DaSH and accompanying curriculum in a variety of instructional settings, with both anticipated and unanticipated constraints. We welcome the opportunity to continue learning with and from our colleagues who are similarly engaged in this type of highly challenging but extremely rewarding endeavor to promote computationally rich and discourse-centered classrooms.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]

More Information

More on SchoolWide Labs work:

Visit our website.
Gendreau Chakarov, A., Biddy, Q., Hennessy Elliott, C., & Recker, M. (2021). The Data Sensor Hub (DaSH): A Physical Computing System to Support Middle School Inquiry Science Instruction. Sensors, 21(18), 6243. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21186243
Biddy, Q., Chakarov, A. G., Bush, J., Hennessy Elliott, C., Jacobs, J., Recker, M., Sumner, T., & Penuel, W. (2021). A Professional Development Model to Integrate Computational Thinking Into Middle School Science Through Codesigned Storylines. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 21(1), 53–96.
Gendreau Chakarov, A., Recker, M., Jacobs, J., Van Horne, K., & Sumner, T. (2019). Designing a Middle School Science Curriculum that Integrates Computational Thinking and Sensor Technology. Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 818–824. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287476

Important references for our work

Hardy, L., Dixon, C., & Hsi, S. (2020). From Data Collectors to Data Producers: Shifting Students’ Relationship to Data. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(1), 104–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2019.1678164

Weintrop, D., Beheshti, E., Horn, M., Orton, K., Jona, K., Trouille, L., & Wilensky, U. (2016). Defining Computational Thinking for Mathematics and Science Classrooms. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 25(1), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-015-9581-5
______________________
¹ See Hardy, Dixon, and Hsi(2020) for more information about data producers and collectors.
² Table 2 in Gendreau Chakarov et al. (2021) has a full list of common DaSH bugs students have encountered across the project.

Humanizing AI Research in Education by Broadening Community Engagement

September 8, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, Event, Guest AuthorPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

Headshot of woman with black hair, a white wall in the background. Author: Aditi Mallavarapu

Learning Sciences and Technology Postdoctoral Researcher at CIRCLS. Her research projects all have the shared goal of collaborating with practitioners to design and build computational and analytical methods and tools to support and improve exploration-based learning. She has worked professionally as a technical consultant where she developed software solutions for healthcare and financial organizations. As an instructor she is involved with underserved communities to pique their interests in Computer Science.

This blog is the second of the three-part shared series, between NEXUS and the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences or CIRCLS. The first post described the synergy between the two communities, and introduced the CIRCLS priority around broadening/inclusion in Learning Analytics/AI in education. In this post, we highlight the concerns and the importance of “broadening” participation in research of AI in education, equally raised by both the communities.

Seven people sit around a table looking and holding up colorful post-it notes. Several women wear a headscarf, two blue and two black. — Photo by Zainul Yasni (@zainulyasni6118)

The “Fate” of AI education research

Education, like many other fields, has been revolutionized in this era of datafication. The omni-present machines, with the so-called “intelligence,” are being used to improve the way we learn and teach through devices and technologies, and connect learners, teachers, and even families across ecologies (classrooms, museums, homes) to manage learning. Some innovations have started to dominate the way we learn and remember, sometimes even remembering for us. The imaginative artificial technologies enacted in Star Trek with communicators, talking virtual assistants, and video chats have become our reality. But this reality has not been equitably rolled out across individuals, schools, or communities.

As AI technologies become intertwined with our daily lives, there are justifiable concerns in society around algorithmic fairness, accountability, trustworthiness and ethics (“FATE”). Research is developing rapidly to ask how can we, as a community, rethink AI-based technological progress to address this inequity? How can we address the concerns around privacy, trust, and bias, that have become prevalent due to the prolific use of data and recording devices in these AI technologies? Progress in defining the nature of the challenges, and ways forward, is being made in both the Learning Analytics and AIED communities, but there remains much to do.

Researchers have suggested addressing these issues, in part, by broadening community engagement. With the recent transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to address these issues has become more urgent.

Addressing the issues by broadening engagement

For over a decade, researchers have been working synergistically across disciplines to address issues around equity, privacy, trust and bias. Some researchers have highlighted, humanizing the issues by engaging all stakeholders, learners, educators, caregivers and domain experts, in contributing to the design of the AI systems. One goal of broadening engagement is to consider the complex dynamics that result from multiple perspectives of the different stakeholders involved in a learning process, while designing the AI system. To fully achieve this, the design process should provide the stakeholders an active and respected role, which is non-trivial. The black box-like opaqueness that many of these AI technologies possess makes it difficult for practitioners to contribute. This should not be an excuse.

One way of providing everyone a platform to voice their opinions is to reduce the opaqueness through enacting and visualizing scenarios, making the design process about the humans involved in conceiving and using the system. Taking such a human-centered approach engages practitioners in conversations around what should be measured, and how that measurement could be used in decisions, with a hopeful view of mitigating at least some unwarranted applications and effects that a researcher alone might not be able to anticipate from where they sit.

Come be a part of the conversation!

We at CIRCLS, have planned the CIRCLS’21 convening for the community with the theme of “Remake Broadening.” Broadening participation for emergent technologies, like AI design, is an important aspect of this initiative. The keynote speakers have vested interests in broadening participation in Computer Science and AI education across different age groups and communities using emergent AI technologies. They have planned to engage the attendees in thinking about “designing for broadening” through “broadening participation in design.”

The community will also be hearing from the researchers at the AI institutes, iSat, AI-ALOE and AIEngage.org (part of the 11 institutes that won the recent NSF “AI institute” competition). This session will highlight how the community of both researchers and practitioners can contribute to and participate in AI research.

We invite SoLAR members to the conversation. Our Expertise Connections sessions (September 13, 4pm Eastern: Equity and Ethics Considerations for AI) and our Strategy sessions (September 14, 3pm Eastern: Remake Broadening) will allow researchers and practitioners alike to survey the emerging landscape and think strategically about how we could remake the envisioned broadening. We’ve designed these sessions to engage participants with the most pressing topics in small group activities — a “low floor and high ceiling” setting for both practitioners and researchers, that encourages the understanding of each others’ perspectives.

We hope this plan will give all attendees the chance to shape the broadening process. Our vision for this convening is a first step to “remake broadening”. With more engagements to follow, we hope to keep the conversation going even after the convening. We hope you’ll join us. You can see details about all the sessions when you register and explore Swapcard for CIRCLS’21.

CIRCLS meet NEXUS! Exploring Learning Analytics, AIED, and Remaking Broadening

August 24, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, Event, Written by: Judi FuscoPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

Paittbrushes with different colors of paint — Image by RhondaK on Unsplash

By Judi Fusco

Let’s think about our research of the future so we can be more inclusive. Who do we involve, where do we do it, what do we research, why do we do this research, and how do we do it?

A nexus is a collection of interconnected ideas, the NEXUS blog from the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) shares practical developments in Learning Analytics with a broad audience. In this first post in a three-part shared series between NEXUS and the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences or CIRCLS, we will consider ways the two communities can synergize. This post is cross posted at both SoLar Nexus on Medium and SoLAR Research.

Who We Are and What We Do

CIRCLS is a National Science Foundation funded hub that works to bring together a community of researchers, practitioners in K12 and informal settings, higher education faculty, technology developers, and graduate students, who are researching, developing, or working with emerging technologies for teaching and learning. Learning Analytics has played and continues to play a prominent and important role in projects with these future oriented technologies.

CIRCLS works to bring researchers together to address common needs, plan for the future, and create broader impact as they work to support personal-, community-, and context-centered needs with emerging technologies for learning. In our work, advancing equity is a core goal. In addition, CIRCLS helps to amplify work on emerging technologies for teaching and learning to policymakers, practitioners, and interested stakeholders. We’ve included a link to a 3-minute video to share more about how CIRCLS works to Build Community to Shape Emerging Technologies.

History and Mission

CIRCLS is a new center with a long history that is grounded with the work done in the Center for Innovative Research on Cyberlearning, which started in 2013. CIRCL supported the Cyberlearning program area at NSF, which preceded the Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL) program. CIRCLS is the new center supporting the RETTL program. First CIRCL, and now CIRCLS, shares reports about work that influenced the field. The projects involve ambitious designs for more equitable learning experiences with emerging technology.

Another characteristic of the projects is how they work to develop learning theories and technologies that are likely to become important to the field within 5-10 years. We see how CIRCLS projects often overlap with the research being done in SOLAR and that there are many members who are active in both communities. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a growing area and Learning Analytics is integral when thinking about AI and how it could augment learning.

In our work to bridge the gap between research and classroom practice, we involve practitioners through Educator CIRCLS and also think about policy needs for emerging technologies, specifically AI. We also have special programming for graduate students and new scholars in our Emerging Scholars expertise exchange. If interested in any of these communities, SoLAR members are welcome to visit our website, read more, and join.

Remaking “Broadening”

When you hear the term “broadening,” (or for our non-US readers from SoLAR, perhaps “inclusion” is more familiar) what do you think? Our upcoming virtual convening will focus on building an understanding of how the field can make stronger progress by examining and remaking “broad.” How can this familiar word become more meaningful and specific, leading to greater intellectual merit and impacts? How can broadening address who we involve in research, where we conduct research, what we research, why we do the research, and how we do research?

The theme “Remake Broadening” challenges our community to learn and engage in innovative ways to make positive changes in education.Through roundtable discussions, breakout sessions, plenaries, and more, we will reflect and consider next steps and recommendations for the field. Our keynote speakers, Nicki Washington and Craig Watkins will offer insights as to how we can further our work to nurture inclusive communities and how we must move forward to “broaden” multiple aspects of the field. Some of the topics the community will explore include:

Learning Analytics and Data Visualization: Broadening our View
AI and Education Policy
Equity and Ethics Considerations for Teaching and Learning with AI
Using the Learning Sciences and Computational Approaches to develop Assessments and Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Towards Equity, Accessibility, & Inclusion

Cynthia D’Angelo, Chad Dorsey, and Tiffany Barnes, the facilitators for the Learning Analytics and Data Visualization: Broadening our View session, describe what they will discuss in their session:

For example, as we think about learning analytics and broadening our view, the production and application of learning analytics has extensive implications for education choices both now and in the future. While learning analytics can be used in many ways to improve learning, we must be aware of the more subtle consequences of its use in order to ensure that they are oriented toward the most positive ends possible. We make many choices and assumptions (sometimes implicitly) at many stages of research, including question selection, data collection, data processing, analysis, and presentation. These choices frequently have equity implications, often in subtle ways.

If this sounds interesting, we hope you’ll register for CIRCLS’21 and join us in thinking about these and other issues.

In our second post, we’ll share more about the sessions focused on bringing learning sciences and computer sciences together as we think about broadening in research on emerging technologies for teaching and learning.

Ambitious Mashups in Out of School Learning with Asset-based Approaches

August 20, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, Out of School Learning, Written by: Merijke CoenraadPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

by Merijke Coenraad

Opportunities for students to learn are all around them. Our students are continuously learning at home and in their communities. As we continue to explore Ambitious Mashups, take a look at projects that have focused on how to provide valuable learning experiences and celebrate the knowledge students gain in out-of-school time. These projects have mainly focused on making, citizen science, and interactive/mobile exhibits. Keep reading to learn about a few ambitious mashups bringing highlighting learning in out-of-school time!

In the Learning in the Making: Leveraging Technologies for Impact project, researchers focused on promoting learning for middle and high school students using maker spaces. Their research found that successful making experiences for students happen at the intersection of the arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship, particularly when students have access to all three disciplines simultaneously. This ambitious project worked with 100-200 maker spaces to mash up informal learning and maker spaces in order to better understand how to support student learning in designing and making activities.

Paper Mechatronics is another making project, this time focusing on using inexpensive materials for students to learn a mashup of topics including programming, electronics, and mechanical design. This project uses making tools like computational devices, craft materials, and fabrication tools in a way that allows kids to build on their knowledge of paper crafts, be creative, and express themselves. See the ambitious projects you could take on at papermech.net.

A third out-of-school learning project, Mobile City Science, mashed up out-of-school learning with asset-based approaches to create a learning experience that celebrated students’ community knowledge while helping them to build technological skills. Students collected data about and mapped their communities using mobile technologies. They identified assets for learning (e.g., libraries), deficits to learning (e.g., no safe routes to school), and learning opportunities (e.g., places to build a community garden). These maps not only provide students with rich learning opportunities, but also can help educators to identify community-based and data-driven learning opportunities for students.

In previous blog posts we have focused on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and interviewed researchers focused on asset-based learning and ways to celebrate the assets that students bring to the classroom. Partnering with their communities and celebrating the knowledge that students bring from learning in these spaces is a great start to making your teaching more culturally responsive and sustaining.What does it look like to mash-up all of this up? Well, it is ambitious, but it is definitely doable!

While this making occurred outside of school, there are still many connections that can be made to your classroom. Not all students have opportunities to participate in out-of-school learning programs, particularly ones that are further from their homes or have a registration cost. Bringing these opportunities into the classroom expands the number of students who get to participate. Even if your students don’t have access to making using the same tools available in makerspaces, how could more simple projects like paper crafts or a physical (rather than technological) mapping project connect to students’ lives outside of school? Where do arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship intersect with your curriculum?

Learning from the CIRCL researchers who engaged in out-of-school time projects, think about:

What learning is supported by making, citizen science, and interactive exhibit technologies? How can that learning be brought into the classroom through novel activities that all of our students can participate in?
Are there maker-spaces near your school? How could you collaborate with them to provide new STEM learning experiences for your students?
Citizen science represents a community of learners of all ages worldwide (and students can participate in many projects at no cost!). How could your students participate and collect science data inside and outside of school? How can what is learned through citizen science projects be capitalized on in your classroom? Check out Zooniverse for projects you can do in your classroom or find local projects on SciStarter or iNaturalist. Need some help getting started? iNaturalist has a teacher guide and a version of the app just for young students!
Many students learn outside of school from their families and communities in addition to organized programs. How can you highlight the learning your students do outside of school, especially for students who are not typically the “focus” in the classroom.
If you become aware of out-of-school opportunities, particularly ones that create low-cost or free opportunities for students, how can you share some out-of-school learning opportunities with all families?

How can you transform these opportunities within your classroom? Tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS and tell us about your innovative technology use and stay tuned for future blogs in this series about CIRCL Ambitious Mashups.

Educator Spotlight: Marni Landry

August 5, 2021Educator Spotlight, EducatorCIRCLS, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Sarah HamptonPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

Who is Marni Landry?

Some of us at Educator CIRCLS recently had the pleasure of talking to educator Marni Landry. Marni has been the K-12 STEM Outreach Manager at Grand Canyon University for about three and half years where she spends her time coordinating STEM professional development for teachers and amazing summer camps like GenCyber cybersecurity, with partner Cori Araza for students and teachers. Before coming to GCU, Marni taught high school science for 16 years. She wrote the STEM Integrated curriculum for, and taught in the Center for Research, Engineering, Science, and Technology program on the Paradise Valley High School campus.

Outside the classroom, Marni has been a leader in the teaching community. She served on the Paradise Valley Technology Committee, designing and delivering technology PD to staff and delivering biotechnology PD as a BioRad fellow. She has also presented STEM PD for the National and Arizona Science Teachers Association (ASTA) and has served as their committee chair. In addition, she partners with MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement), HOSA-Future Health Professionals, and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

Marni’s passion for teaching and learning was evident throughout our conversation, so it was no surprise to learn that her passion and impact have been widely recognized by various organizations. Marni is a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Math Teaching, a Nobel Top 10 Teacher of the Year, AZ High School Science Teacher of the Year, Arizona Tech Council Teacher of the Year, IEEE Pre-College Teacher of the Year, Arizona Bioindustry Association Educator of the Year, and a Fellow of the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms.

What’s one thing you really care about getting right as an educator?
Even though she’s been out of the classroom for a few years, Marni definitely maintains the heart of a teacher and still works through that lens. When asked what she really cares about getting right as an educator, she said, “Getting people to love learning and getting people who say ‘I can’t’ to say ‘I will.’ Learning is not a task. It’s an adventure! I want them to say, ‘Yeah, this is hard, but that’s the fun part!’”

What are you most proud of in your career?
When asked what she’s most proud of in her career, Marni first pointed to her students’ successes. She said that she has been fortunate to build relationships with so many students and to still be part of many of their lives. “Seeing their success is what I’m most proud of. Other people may not always have seen what I saw in them, but I fought tooth and nail for them. So to see them succeed is what makes me most proud.”

Marni also pointed to a proud personal moment–winning the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. She took away something profound from that experience in addition to the recognition. “I didn’t think I was PAEMST material, but my mentor was convinced that I was. I didn’t even think I could go through the application process, but my mentor said I could do it and that she would help.” Marni realized her mentor’s investment in her had a trickle down effect on her students. “They might not think they’re the right material, but I believe they are. They might not think they can accomplish certain things, but I think they can and I can help.”

What are some of your favorite educational technologies?
You can tell Marni frequently uses tech tools because she had several favorites in her back pocket. Here are a few she mentioned:

Data Nuggets
Labxchange
Jamboard
Whiteboard.chat (this was a new one to us and it looks great!)
Classroomscreen
Poll Everywhere
Slido
Mentimeter

You can check out Marni’s Tech Tools Wakelet and GCU’s “Educator Tip of the Day” YouTube channel for more tech tools, tech tips, and general professional development, too!

What is your ideal vision for how the learning sciences and/or educational technologies could shape teaching and learning in the future?
Marni had some great thoughts surrounding the ideal partnership between the learning sciences, technologies, and education. She pointed out that teachers have to overcome several obstacles before they can meaningfully incorporate technology and research into their teaching practices. For one, she said teachers don’t have time to try out several new technologies and get comfortable with them. “Before teachers can use technologies wisely, they have to have time and permission to use them messily. With the demands teachers face, there’s no chance for trying; there’s no chance for messy.” She also talked about the challenges of using educational research to create standardized policies. “The perfect research-based method, strategy, tool, etc. isn’t going to work for everybody. In an ideal world, educators would be valued and given the freedom to motivate their students in the way their students need to be motivated–and that might look different from classroom to classroom. We need the system to come to terms with that.”

Takeaway
We have several great takeaways from our conversation with Marni. One thing we appreciate most is that she highly values the quantitative aspects of the STEM fields she champions, and she equally values the qualitative aspects of being human and of teaching as a human endeavor. While she respects data, her students are more than numbers to her. They are names and faces and personalities and individuals. As the 2021-2022 school year starts, I hope we’re all inspired to be an educator like that.

Contact Info
You can connect with Marni via email at marni.landry@gcu.edu, through GCU’s Outreach program at CayonPD.com, or on social media @marni_landry

Reflections on the AI and Learning Environments Webinar: Things to Consider When Making Purchasing and/or Adoption Decisions for AI Tools

July 29, 2021AI in Education, EducatorCIRCLS, Written by: Sarah HamptonPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

By Sarah Hampton

On April 21, I was able to participate in something really exciting! I joined some amazing researchers and former teachers in the Educators, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Learning webinar on Learning Environments facilitated by James Lester. The webinar was designed to help practitioners, AI researchers, and developers share their perspectives on how artificial intelligence can be used in the classroom. As you may know, I am a middle and secondary math teacher. My fellow panelists included:

Diane W. Doersch, Technical Project Director, Digital Promise
Cindy Hmelo Silver, Learning and Technology Researcher, Indiana University
Kylie Peppler and Emily Schindler, Learning and Technology Researchers, University of California, Irvine

The webinar focused on how AI can enhance learning environments. It started with James who discussed the advancements in educational AIs during his 25 years of work in the field, the significant benefit they can provide, and the current demand for AI in educational settings. In other words, this is a hot topic in education right now!

Next, Diane Doersch shared her thoughts on AI in education, drawing from her experiences as a former classroom teacher, a Director of Technology for a large school district, and Chief Technology and Information Officer. She called for optimism yet caution and thoughtful vetting processes before incorporating AI in classrooms. She also stressed how important it is for school decision makers to know and understand what artificial intelligence is and the impacts that it has in order to properly vet products.

In this initial post, I want to camp out on Diane’s thoughts; we’ll discuss Cindy Hmelo-Silver and Kylie Peppler and Emily Schindler’s work in later posts. At Educator CIRCLS, we’ve really been digging into artificial intelligence so we can participate in the important conversation happening right now around how AI can be used in classrooms, and, perhaps more importantly, when AI should and shouldn’t be used in classrooms. We want to offer our educator perspectives to the communities developing, researching, and creating policy around AI in education. Furthermore, we want you to understand artificial intelligence so you can offer your unique perspectives and advocate for your students, too. Our friends at Digital Promise recently posted Artificial Intelligence 101: Covering the Basics for Educators. It’s a great introduction to AI and has points to ponder for veteran AI folks, too.

I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting since the webinar. I’ve specifically been thinking about things to consider when making purchasing and/or adoption decisions for AI products. Diane and I offered some suggestions during the webinar (timestamp 39:55), and I have added more below. You will notice some common themes from AI 101 and from this school procurement guide by Edtech Equity. I hope these can be useful resources for you and your school decision makers as you’re sure to see more and more AI products coming your way!

Is it safe? Is it secure? Is it ethical?

How is the company funded? Do they sell the data they collected? How is the data safeguarded?
What was the training data for the AI like? Was it sufficient in volume and diversity? Has it had adversarial training?
What was the fitness model like when training the AI? What was the goal and how was fitness measured?
What are the consequences if the AI fails? How does it fail?

Does it align with the mission of the district/school?

Does it promote the kind of district/school culture you want?
Does it create a significantly better learning experience that you couldn’t gain otherwise? Will it lead to substantial time saving or learning gains or meaningful learning experiences? Is it more than a wow factor?
Does it promote the kind of assessments and standards you want to grow toward, or does it increase performance on your current assessments and standards?

Is it classroom/teacher friendly?

Was it developed in collaboration with teachers? If not, it might work really well in the lab but may not extend to the complexity of a real classroom.
Has it been tested in a classroom context similar to your own?
Can the teacher override the AI if necessary?
Does the tool free up the teacher to do what the teacher does best? You don’t want to offload what humans do best onto a machine. You want to maximize what machines do best and what people do best.
Does the tool have a thoughtful approach to classroom management?
Does the tool have a simple but thoughtful teacher dashboard?
Will implementing the tool require teachers to change their pedagogy? If so, what supports, training, and time will be offered to make that shift successful?
Does it promote the kind of classroom culture/activities you want? For example, does it help with collaboration, critical thinking, engaging all students, etc.?

What do you think? Did I leave something out? Feel free to tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS with any comments or suggestions! Stay tuned for future posts unpacking important topics from the webinar and sign up for the CIRCLS newsletter to stay updated on emerging technologies for teaching and learning. I’ll leave you with a question Diane posed, “If AI is the solution, then what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?”

Related

We also have resources from the other webinars in this series and additional posts on AI.

Why practitioners’ voices matter in research on emerging technologies for teaching and learning

July 20, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, Written by: Kip GlazerPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

by Kip Glazer
This is the second of four posts from a practitioner’s perspective that were inspired by the theme of the CIRCLS’21 convening of remaking “broadening.” Educator CIRCLS aims to bridge research with classroom practice and broaden the community of people involved in CIRCLS. Learn more about the upcoming convening and register (starting August 13, 2021).

In my previous post, I gave a background on some experiences I have had as a practitioner. I also began to share some differences I see between researchers and practitioners. I called upon my educator colleagues to recognize the fact that we are professionals who have expertise to contribute to the field of education. I start this post with questions that educators constantly ask ourselves as we look at any materials or tools. Educators are constantly thinking about how curriculum, materials, and technologies will work with our students. Many practitioners are very good representatives of different communities because we care deeply about the success of our students. (Of course, we do hope you’ll also talk to students, but if you can’t, we are often excellent advocates and understand them well.) Here are a few questions:

How would this look in my classroom with my students?
What would this do for my students?
How would this be beneficial for my community that I serve, value, and love?
What resources will I need to be able to fully implement this?
How would I know this is actually working for my students?
Based on the profile of my students and community, what modifications and alterations could/should I make?
If any modification or alteration happens, what am I giving up? What will I gain? How will that impact the effectiveness?

Because these are the questions we educators constantly ask as we look at any materials or tools that we are thinking about using with our students, we are good at answering these questions to devise solutions every single day for our students. When a researcher is developing something for a classroom, they too should be able to answer these questions, but they can’t because they don’t know our students. In addition, there are more questions that practitioners would ask depending on the situation. For instance, they might ask how a tool can serve students with disabilities or how long it will take someone to become proficient at using that tool.

Let me be clear. I am not arguing that a researcher must have answers to the above questions. I am saying they should have educators actively participating in the process every step of the way as they develop future technologies for teaching and learning because ultimately we educators are the interpreters, translators, and the ones who have to implement the 30,000-foot level theories. Discussing these questions could be a starting point to create better partnerships with practitioners who can make research come to life in a meaningful way.

The theme of this conference is to remake “broadening” in research on emerging technologies for teaching and learning. It is no surprise that the word broadening is in quotes given what has happened in recent years regarding critical issues around gender and racial divisions in this country. As an Asian-American female immigrant who has had a few personal and professional experiences on this, few extremely painful, I would whole-heartedly support our collective effort on addressing such issues whenever possible in all situations. However, I would caution that we don’t use the term “broadening” to imply that the field is occupied by one group that needs to allow the others to join in because our teaching and learning community already belongs to all of us!

Having said that, I am thrilled to see the preceding verb remake. Because the time to look at teaching and learning beyond the narrow perspective of division such as researcher versus practitioner is now. I challenge all of us to think about what it means to remake such a notion as we convene. After all, if a bird sings in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it really sing? If a great piece of technology is developed, but no one receives any benefit from it because the user experience was so horrible, did it really work? If an amazing research finding on teaching and learning never sees the light of day because it failed to fit practitioners’ needs or work in classrooms broadly, did the research really matter?

If you are interested in joining, please fill out this form.

How to Have a Good Convening

July 15, 2021EducatorCIRCLSPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

Educator CIRCLS hosted a virtual orientation on Thursday, July 15th focused on How to have a good (virtual) convening. Take a look at the slides and please reach out for the recording.

Attending the CIRCLS ‘21 Convening will give you the opportunity to learn about emerging technology for learning and think about what that might look like in your classroom or school context!

Please let us know your thoughts by tweeting @EducatorCIRCLS and sign up for the CIRCLS newsletter to stay updated on emerging technologies for teaching and learning.

Starting a Conversation between Practitioners and Researchers: A Practitioner’s Point of View

July 7, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, Written by: Kip GlazerPati Ruiz

Return to Educator CIRCLS.

by Kip Glazer

This is the first of four posts from a practitioner’s perspective that were inspired by the theme of the CIRCLS’21 convening of remaking “broadening.” Educator CIRCLS aims to bridge research with classroom practice and broaden the community of people involved in CIRCLS. Learn more about the upcoming convening and register (starting August 13, 2021).

When I was a classroom teacher, I attended a number of professional development (PD) workshops and conferences on teaching and learning. If you are a practitioner (a.k.a. a classroom teacher) in the field of education, you know that there are some PD sessions that try to share research findings and implications for the classroom that are simply awful. I am sad to say that I have attended my fair share of those over the past two decades.

One PD session in particular started me questioning. I was a teacher working with students who were learning to speak English. I attended a session on second language learning and the presenter had a Ph.D. in language development from a prestigious university and was supposed to be an expert in supporting language learners. I am a second language learner myself, having moved from South Korea to the United States at the age of 23. I was so excited to attend the workshop. I was thrilled to be given the responsibility of helping my students who needed help in gaining language skills. I attentively listened to her presentation, trying to gain any information that I could use to help my students.

While listening to her presentation, however, I realized that her research primarily focused on Spanish-speaking students. So I raised my hand and asked, “What if a student doesn’t speak Spanish? What strategies would you suggest we use? Do we need to modify anything? For example, what if they spoke Tagalog or Ilocano? How about Hmong? What about Mandarin?”

Soon I found myself debating with an “expert” in the field whose research seemed less than useful for the teachers who were sitting in the PD session. You see, I was teaching a group of students who spoke Hmong, Mandarin, and Russian. A few of them also spoke Spanish, but my Instructional Assistant spoke Spanish so they were getting support from another adult in the room. What I really needed were the strategies that I could use for all my students, not just the Spanish-speaking students, which was implied in the title of the workshop that said, “Proven Strategies that Support English Language Learners.” When I told the presenter that the strategies that she shared may not work for my students, she replied, “Teachers who have not had much exposure to good research may never learn to appreciate the true value of good research. Perhaps you should consider reading about things and learning more.”

I must say that I was young and a bit hot-headed at the time. I did question her expertise openly and vociferously in a group setting. Come to think of it, I might have sounded rather rude and even confrontational towards the presenter. So I believe that I probably deserved that chastisement from that particular presenter. But over the years, similar treatment of being dismissed as a professional in my field propelled me to eventually getting my doctorate in Learning Technologies so that no one could easily dismiss the expertise that I know I possess as an educator.

If you are an educator, how many times have you attended a workshop that didn’t address your specific needs or concerns? For that workshop I described earlier, I found out later that many of my colleagues had similar questions too, but they did not ask the questions like I did. They told me that they learned to just listen and nod since many researchers never seem to understand the challenges of teaching real students in real life. Some said that they didn’t want to get shut down like I was. Few advised me never to ask questions like that, especially in front of an administrator for fear of being labeled as a “rebellious” teacher. They shared that they felt some researchers do not make the best presenters because they don’t seem to value practitioners’ lived experiences. Many of these teachers were highly-skilled, highly-educated professionals who accepted their fate of being treated as interlopers in the very profession that they devoted their lives to.

One difference between educators and researchers may be because of how we have been socialized, or it could be our personalities. I’ll give an example. As a principal who often evaluates and supports teachers, I am often flabbergasted and saddened by the attitude of my fellow educators who look at their professional expertise from a “less-than” perspective. In the State of California, one needs a Master’s Degree to become a teacher. Yet many teachers are often reluctant to declare themselves to be the experts as classroom teachers. Contrast this to higher educational institutions who will hire a Ph.D. who has never even been a classroom teacher to train other teachers and call them an expert.

I know a 28-year old Ph.D. with research focused on gaming. She was hired as a professor in a teacher training program where she is in charge of training junior high and high school teachers. She has expertise in gaming that is valuable in the field of education, but I wonder about the depth of pedagogical or curricular strategies she could share with the teacher candidates. She has read about the issues, but can not know them from an authentic lived perspective since she hasn’t been in the classroom. What if she has to train future school administrators? What then? Can she anticipate and support how a state testing requirement, a board policy, public perception, student attitudes, or even limited wifi-access might derail a teacher’s good intention to fully use any game in the classroom to improve literacy and numeracy? Are we really setting her and her students (aka future teachers) up for success in doing the important job of educating our students?

As we come together to think about remaking broadening, I would like us to consider our differences and to value those differences as important. As an educator and now a school leader, I have seen so much promising research that could be useful for our students that does not yield any positive benefits for real students in real classrooms because researchers don’t connect the importance of the work in a way that makes sense to practitioners.

What an expert dreams up, no matter how good, will not make any impact unless the practitioners embrace it and use it for their students. In my opinion, the journey to making a true and relevant impact in the lives of our students begins with more connections between researchers and practitioners. In the next post, I’ll share more about how practitioners think about their students and discuss why practitioners’ voices matter in research on emerging technologies for teaching and learning.

The Practitioner Orientation for the CIRCLS’21 Convening

July 6, 2021EducatorCIRCLS, EventPati Ruiz

The event is over, please contact us if you’d like to watch the recording.

WHEN: Thursday July 15 from 1-2 PM ET.
TOPIC OF DISCUSSION: How educators can prepare for, engage in, and contribute to CIRCLS’21: Remake “Broadening” in Research on on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning

This event is free and open to all educators.

People working around a conference table