Category Archives: Cyberlearning

The Cyberlearning Report goes to school

November 27, 2017Cyberlearning, Cyberlearning Report 2017, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

The Cyberlearning report will be going to school! I teach Ed.D. students at Pepperdine University, many of whom are K12 practitioners. When I next teach my class on learning theories, I will share the Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology. Because technology use is so common in K16 classrooms, I like to think with my students about how learning theories can help them use technology in deep ways to support learning. I don’t want technology just to be a substitute for pencil and paper. I love concrete examples and this report shows many new ways technology, grounded in learning theories, can augment or help the learning process. Here’s a little background.

What is Cyberlearning?
“Cyberlearning research is the study of how new technologies, informed by what we know about how people learn, can be used to advance learning in ways that were never before possible.” (from the report p. 6)

So why do we have this report and who created it?
Cyberlearning is a funding area of the National Science Foundation. This program has funded about 270 projects since 2011. From all of these projects, 22 researchers came together to write about exciting new directions and themes found in these 270 projects.

What else should I know about Cyberlearning?
As we’re starting, there’s one more thing I’d like to discuss before diving in to the report — something that teachers who read early versions of the report asked. They wondered if cyberlearning researchers were trying to replace teachers with technology. My answer is a resounding NO! Please know that cyberlearning projects are NOT trying to replace teachers, or other human beings. Often, they are trying to give information to improve the understanding a teacher can have about a situation or support students learning a difficult concept. Technology should not replace a teacher during the learning process. But usually, in classrooms, there’s only one teacher and a lot of students. Many projects are trying to support the teacher and give the teacher more eyes and ears to see what is occurring in parts of the classroom where they can’t be. A teacher may be able to do many things at once, but no teacher can support all of their students at all times.

As an example, let’s think about a virtual learning environment for science inquiry (see INQ-ITS in the report). In the virtual learning environment, students do their work and get instant feedback from the system about how they are doing. The teacher also gets a report from the system that tells how each student is doing. From the report, a teacher can learn who needs what kind of help. Some students would not need help and some would; this kind of information could help a teacher more efficiently target the students who need help. It could also help relieve the teacher of some of the mountain of grading they have as the system is monitoring the work in real time and summarizing it. The virtual environment would support and augment the teacher so that the teacher could have a good understanding of how to help students very quickly (nearly real time) and without creating more work for the teacher.

Right now, in a physical science lab, a teacher has to grade lab projects to understand how students are doing and can’t give feedback to all until the grading is done. If a middle school teacher has 5 labs of 30 students, the time to get all the grading done is significant. If students were in a virtual environment, a teacher could be alerted how each student was doing before the class period was over. If a student was having problems the teacher could give a quick intervention and help students correct their misconceptions.

Despite how helpful a system is, no system should or could replace the teacher. A teacher is irreplaceable and knows so much about how to help each student. Teachers bring the human touch to the student and so many students desperately need a caring adult in their life. In addition, students are not just empty heads to be filled with one-size-fits-all knowledge. Students come with their own interests and desires and a teacher can help inspire a student. We need to be really smart as we think about the future and make sure that technology is used in ways to support a human teacher in the classroom. Ultimately, we want students to be able to work with other people and having a human teacher will help to ensure human interaction. Of course we want technology to help us and we want students to understand technology — how to use it, and how to make it — but human interaction should come first and be placed as a priority. (In addition, in my opinion, a virtual environment shouldn’t replace all laboratory experiences as there are so many things to learn in a physical lab, too. )

Many cyberlearning researchers are trying to envision new technology products and activities that might improve learning. Cyberlearning research is typically exploratory, and as it is designing for the future, it is essential to have practitioners involved in the process. We need the wisdom of practice with all that is learned from working with diverse students with needs, interests, and experiences to create more inclusive designs in cyberlearning. Many projects do involve practitioners, but hearing from even more will improve the project, and give the projects new life and directions. We need to hear what makes sense to practitioners. Some of the best (in my opinion) cyberlearning research adds new thinking about equity, affect and emotion, and learning with the whole body (embodied learning research). We need researchers and practitioners working together to make sure cyberlearning research is useful for a wide variety of students.

I’m going to end this blog post with a hope that you’ll go download the report now and that you’ll come back to think more about it with me. I’d love to hear about how you think technology can help or hinder learning and what you think of the report. I’ll plan to post a few more blog posts about the report and some of what I am planning for my class. I’ve talked about the opening section here. Read up to page 11 and then come back for more. I’ll continue to discuss the report in several future blog posts.

P.S. If you’re teaching graduate students, please comment and let me know if you would take the report to your class, and how you’d use it. I’d love to hear more.

Cyberlearning Community Report: Practical Impact in My Classroom

October 5, 2017Cyberlearning, Cyberlearning Report 2017, Engineering, Written by: Sarah HamptonSarah Hampton

By Sarah Hampton

In my last post, I talked about four reasons we should read the Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology. I really believe that what you learn from the report will make you a more effective educator. Let me give you one concrete example of how the Community Report has already helped improve my teaching by demonstrating the significant value of learning opportunities outside the classroom and how they can be leveraged. (I had the privilege of sneak previewing the report over the summer so I have had a few months to implement what I learned!) Check out this excerpt from the report:

“The central ongoing research question in this work (from the Expressive Construction section) is how to interconnect appealing, playful environments through self-expression to deeper learning goals. The dimension of time is important: how can play result in learning at timescales of minutes, or weeks, or months or years? The dimension of context also needs more investigation: how do unique aspects of homes, museums, playgrounds or classrooms contribute to or block learning? Strengthening our understanding of the social dimension is also critical as these activities often involve complex ecologies of support from peers, parents, and informal and formal educators — and are not as simple as typical teacher-student interactions…This research is demonstrating how important learning can occur through playful experience, often outside of the school setting. Yet what students are learning clearly relates to existing curricular subject matter, such as engineering, and emerging subjects, like data science and computational thinking. Studying learning in playful and constructive settings can lead to new discoveries about when, where, and how children can learn important ideas and these discoveries can guide policy about when, where, and how these important topics are taught.”

In past years, I would plan a unit and then take my students on a field trip only if the exhibit(s) aligned at that time. This fall (after reading the report), the technology teacher and I planned an entire unit around a Smithsonian traveling exhibit called Things Come Apart that is currently housed in the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, a museum near our school. The exhibit consists of dozens of common objects that have been taken apart to reveal their inner workings. We tied this into physical science concepts like electricity, circuitry, and engineering. Before we visited the museum, students reverse engineered their own objects such as mechanical pencils, clocks, calculators, speakers, and flashlights. They also built circuits using PhET simulations, snap circuits, and then batteries, wire, light bulbs, motors, etc.

Student exploring circuits using PhET simulations

After that, we recruited local experts who donated their time, knowledge, and materials so our students could dismantle iPhone 5s phones. When the students later visited the exhibit, they recognized most of the components in the pieces and were able to ask and answer more informed questions because of their classroom work leading to the trip. Reading the report persuaded me that rich, authentic learning is fostered when connections are made between multiple environments, situations, and people, and it made me more intentional about offering opportunities across contexts. I would definitely describe this unit as a richer learning experience for my students than the ways I have approached it in the past.

Student dismantling the iPhone 5s

Going even further, as part of their final assessment, students are creating infographics on five electronic components and how they are used in one of the pieces from the museum exhibit. This was a suggestion from the technology teacher, and I jumped at the idea after reading about the STEM Literacy through Infographics project in the community report. Our students will present their infographics and dismantled objects at our school STEAM Fair in November.

I hope you take the time to read the report, and I hope it impacts your practice as much as it already has mine. I would love to hear your thoughts after you have had a chance to read it! What did you find most interesting? What innovations are you most excited about? Do you think you might look into one of the projects for your classroom? Post in the comments section below!

Cyberlearning Community Report: A Teacher Perspective

October 2, 2017Cyberlearning, Cyberlearning Report 2017, Written by: Sarah HamptonSarah Hampton

By Sarah Hampton

It’s here! It’s finally here! Members of the cyberlearning community have been working for months to bring us a report on their recent research in the Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology. The report brings together key players who “envision, design, and investigate possible futures of learning in the presence of significant innovations.” And when they say significant innovations, they mean significant.

There are new ways to think about learning environments and new ways to use technology that I would have never dreamed about. For example, be sure to check out projects using simulations like RoomQuake in which simulated seismographs in different locations in the room allow students to investigate the earthquake’s effects and locate “roomquake” epicenters within the room. “The students have the social and scientific experience of doing field work, but without ever leaving their classroom.”

Students using RoomQuake

For another example, check out the BeeSim project in which young students enact the behaviors of a bee community as it tries to satisfy the energy needs of its hive using bee puppets equipped with sensors that interact with puppet hives.

BeeSim with younger children

I know you’re insanely busy. Teachers do a year’s worth of work in nine months so I get it. Why should you take the time to read the lengthy report? Here are my top reasons:

1. The report is ultimately for us, the teachers. The entire community that prepared the report wants to support and help us improve what we do for our students. We make these findings valuable when we use them to benefit our schools. All the grant money, all the time, and all the discoveries–we determine their worth. There’s a sign in a grocery store parking lot that says that reusable grocery bags can’t help the environment if they are left in the car. This research can’t help our education system if we leave it on the internet.

2. You can’t read this report without getting excited about the future landscape of education. There is a current of enthusiasm and optimism woven throughout the report along with the explosion of technology and research. At school, sometimes the bureaucratic hoops and water cooler chatter is discouraging, but the information in this report will inspire you!

3. There is an encouraging focus on equity. Specifically, there is focus on:

Engaging at risk learners. I love this! “Through games and other new technologies, we may be able to engage at risk learners and learners who cannot articulate their knowledge sufficiently on traditional assessments and open doors for the measurement of learning from a wider array of diverse learners.” Learn more in the Learning Analytics for Assessment section.
Enabling “learners with disabilities to partake in activities that were previously inaccessible to them.” Learn more in the Multi-modal Analysis section.
Giving students agency and choice. “These projects also shift power relations whereby the voices and interests of underrepresented people (e.g., youth) gain legitimacy in community scale conversations and processes of development; creating and arguing from data produced with geospatial technologies is an emerging techno-civic literacy that young people must learn for influencing change in their communities.” “Youth and adults exercise agency in seeking to change their worlds and express their voices through new forms of inquiry, civic participation, and artistic expression.” Read more in the Expressive Construction section of the report.

4. You will learn about our changing roles as educators. Instead of the keeper of the keys of knowledge, the report casts the teacher as a facilitator, organizer, creative engineer of learning moments, and co-learner/co-contributor in the learning process. In addition, as technology becomes better able to automate some teaching tasks and give just-in-time alerts, we are freed to target struggling learners with specific skills while other learners remain engaged in learning tasks managed by digital learning environments. See Inq-ITS aka Inquiry Intelligent Tutoring System in the Learning Analytics for Assessment section, for example. The relationship between technology and teachers in the classroom can be rewarding as well as challenging. As part of the report states, “One tension is to balance the human and digital sides and support each side in what they do best.” Digital environments can never replace the value of human teachers in the classroom. The key is to optimize the dynamic. The community report offers insight on our changing roles and on how we can maximize the contribution of both people and technology.

In a few days, I am going to share a concrete example of how the report has already helped me improve my teaching. (As a reviewer, I got to read it this summer and get a headstart.) In the meantime, go download the Cyberlearning Community Report! If you’ve gotten a chance to read it, let me know what you think about it and what I’ve said.

Cyberlearning 2017: What’s Next? Making Connections to Shape the Future

March 31, 2017Cyberlearning, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

Every year, CIRCL hosts a meeting for the community–this year it’s April 18 and 19. If you’re not coming, we have a portion of the meeting that gets webcast; we encourage you to sign up and join us virtually. Our keynote speakers will all be webcast and they are:

Jeremy Bailenson: Experience on Demand: The Opportunities (and Costs) of Learning in VR
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: Why Emotions are Integral to Learning: A Neuroscience Perspective
Eileen Scanlon: Technology Enhanced Learning and the Science of Citizen Science
Karthik Ramani: Lowering Barriers to Engagement through Computational Fabrication

At the meeting, Cyberlearning researchers come together to share their work and think about the direction of the field–pretty normal for researchers. But in addition, we are lucky because we also have students, educators, designers, industry experts, and other stakeholders at the meeting–we call these folks the CIRCL of Influence. Among the many things, the CIRCL of Influence helps us think about what is happening in the field, what is needed in practice, and how we can share our findings and ideas with industry and make an impact. Since the beginning of CIRCL, we’ve placed a priority on making sure we have many voices in our community.

One of the things we’ll be doing is thinking about some of NSF’s Big Ideas and how they relate to Cyberlearning. Specifically, we’ll be thinking about:

INCLUDES – Diversity / Broadening Participation (see the INCLUDES video showcase)
Data science for 21st-C STEM
Human-Centered Design
Convergent Research
Media & Computational Literacy
Smart & Connected Communities (see the Primer on SCCL)

Since the meeting hasn’t happened, I can’t tell you about it, but after the meeting I will (and I hope some of our CIRCL of Influence will guest blog here, too)! In the meantime, I will point you to a Storify documenting last year’s meeting, with images and links to videos of last year’s keynote speakers. Take a look to learn about what Cyberlearning meetings are like and what kind of work is happening in Cyberlearning; follow us @CIRCLCenter to keep up to date. Leave us a comment and let us know what looks intriguing and what you’d like to hear more about.

Invention Coach: A Cyberlearning Project

August 18, 2016Cyberlearning, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

Cyberlearning projects are quite varied as we often discuss on this blog. Cyberlearning emphasizes the integration of what we know from research about how people learn with new and yet to be invented technologies to create new learning experiences that were not possible or practical before. You can learn more about Cyberlearning at the CIRCL website. In this post, we share an interview about a project that helps students invent their learning and it helps teachers support students during the process.

What is the big idea of your project?

How do we we help students transfer, in a flexible, adaptive way, what they are learning in school to novel contexts and situations? Our project focuses on transfer of concepts at the intersection of math and science, and one thing that we’ve found to be very successful at promoting this type of transfer is a method we call “invention” (Schwartz et al., 2011).

Invention is an exploratory task where students engage in inventing conceptual ideas through an exploration of data, often contrasting cases. Contrasting cases are examples that have many similarities but a few key differences that relate to deep principles and conceptual ideas. By contrasting the cases, students come to notice features that are important to understanding, but may not be obvious to novice learners.

As students explore the cases, they are asked to “invent” fundamental equations such as those for density or speed. The process of inventing or even attempting to invent equations on their own (even if they fail) prepares students for additional learning. After the invention process, we follow up with expository instruction (i.e., lecture) on a topic important to the concept, such as ratio.

We are currently building the Invention Coach — a system that guides and scaffolds students through the messy and iterative process of Invention. The picture below shows the Invention Coach’s main interface. In this screenshot, a student is working to invent an index of “clown crowdedness,” which is a proxy for density (mass/volume).

How do you use cyberlearning in your work?

Prior classroom studies with paper-based invention activities show that the process of invention is really successful in promoting transfer. The cyberlearning part comes in with the technology we are developing to support the learning. Invention works well for promoting understanding, but students often need one-on-one time with a teacher or facilitator to engage in productive invention. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to give a teacher to each student in a classroom to support the process. Our project is working to create a technology that can reduce the demands on the teacher by providing individualized and timely feedback to students throughout the invention process.

Before building our technology, we wanted to know what a human would naturally do to promote transfer. We started by observing the guidance a human invention coach (a teacher) naturally gives in one-on-one invention tasks with students as the students invent formulas for density and speed. Our initial research showed human invention coaches did help students learn (Chase et al., 2015) and that much of the work the coach did during the task involved asking questions and not giving answers. In fact, the more explanations a coach gave, the lower the transfer test score for the student. One might think that a human coach gave explanations because a student was struggling, and perhaps it was a poorer student to begin with and thus the lower scores aren’t surprising. However, our analysis showed that frequent explanations were not related to how a student was doing on the task, and that those explanations hurt the student’s transfer. It may be that the explanations “cut short” the time the student spends exploring and generating ideas, so the student doesn’t do as well on the transfer task.

Our initial work helped us understand the human expertise we needed to include in the technological Invention Coach. Now we are working to develop that Invention Coach to support all students in the classroom so they can engage in a productive exploration and invention experience.
One of the design challenges we face is that we are essentially developing an intelligent tutoring system to scaffold the solving of ill-defined problems whereas most intelligent tutoring systems focus on well-defined problems (often in algebra) with clear steps to get to the answer. In our ill-defined problems it’s not clear what the goal is nor is it clear exactly what the path is to the goal. Thinking about how technology can scaffold students through that process without overly guiding is one of the critical challenges of our work.

Tell me more about the Invention Coach and what it looks like.

The Invention Coach is an exploratory learning environment that follows a student’s trajectory through an invention task and provides adaptive feedback and scaffolding to help them engage in productive exploration to prepare them to learn from later expository instruction (Marks, Bernett, & Chase, 2016). We have designed the initial prototype (see figure above). The software gives students an invention activity and the students can ask for help, submit their solutions, and get feedback along the way. We’ve created a few different kinds of interactive modules that focus learners on diagnosing their own errors and thinking deeply about these concepts. Some modules focus learners on comparing specially designed contrasting cases. In the literature, there is a lot of research showing the benefits of compare and contrast activities for helping learners focus on the deeper features that novices often overlook.
The image below shows the “feature contrast module” where students are asked to compare the highlighted green “Crazy Clowns Company” bus with the highlighted blue “Bargain Basement Clowns” bus, to help learners realize that space (the bus size) is an important feature of density (e.g. “clown crowdedness”).

If we walked into a classroom, what would it look like to have students using the Invention Coach?

We’re gearing up to do our first classroom study with the Invention Coach in the Fall, but right now, students work individually with the computer. As discussed above, there is a mentor character on screen that guides them through the process and provides hints and feedback (see first figure).

Invention can be pretty frustrating, because it is a very novel task for kids and it’s also an iterative task, where students frequently fail to come up with the right solution. However, in our studies, we often see kids having “Aha!” moments when they come to discover critical pieces of a sensible solution. Or more often, this happens during later expository instruction when they realize the sophistication of the canonical solution. For example, after attempting to invent a ratio-based equation (Density = mass/volume), one student said during the post-lecture on ratio “Oh! Now I finally understand division!”

In the future, we are open to the possibility of students working in collaborative pairs and are currently toying around with ideas for how to do that. David Sears has done some work with Invention and found that it’s much more productive when students work in pairs. In our work, they are paired with a computer-based coach. Supporting students working together may lead to more discussions, argumentation, explanation with a live partner and could be future work.

I’m also interested in developing more teacher-focused technologies that would engender classroom-based discussion around the kinds of mathematical models that kids are inventing and building. I want to understand when those models are effective or ineffective.

Is there more about the project you would like people to know?

People can visit our website to learn more or see our publications or they read about our Cyberlearning award Developing a tutor to guide students as they invent deep principles with contrasting cases.

Further Reading and References
Marks, J., Bernett, D., & Chase, C.C. (2016). The Invention Coach: Integrating data and theory in the design of an exploratory learning environment. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 7(2), 74-92.

Chase, C. C., Marks, J., Bernett, D., Bradley, M., & Aleven, V. (2015, June). Towards the development of the invention coach: A naturalistic study of teacher guidance for an exploratory learning task. In International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (pp. 558-561). Springer International Publishing.

Schwartz, D. L., Chase, C. C., Oppezzo, M. A., & Chin, D. B. (2011). Practicing versus inventing with contrasting cases: The effects of telling first on learning and transfer. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(4), 759-775.

Enter the SHARK Tank…if you dare…

May 6, 2015Cyberlearning, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Mary PattersonMary Patterson

By Mary Patterson

In an effort to continue the researcher- teacher collaboration discussion, Principle Investigators (PIs) got to pitch their research idea to a team of educators at the Cyberlearning 2015 Conference. The educators asked the researchers questions about time constraints, classroom management issues, student privacy concerns, and more. Finally, after much deliberation over the merits of each proposal, the educators chose their favorite proposal for imaginary funding.

So what was learned from this experience?

Researchers had the opportunity to hear how their idea was received and interpreted by the educators and this pointed a few researchers down the iteration path. Others learned how constraints in the classroom, such as how many outlets are available to charge devices, or the varying reading levels found in a classroom, can sometimes be a barrier to a successful Cyberlearning project.

The educators became better informed about some of the trends in Cyberlearning and some of the constraints of researchers such as getting IRB approval, gaining access to schools, and the time it takes to develop a concept, product for testing.

What to do, what to do?

In an article by M. Suzanne Donovan [1] , she states, “To effectively address problems in education, research must be shaped around a problem of practice. Reorienting research and development in this way must overcome three obstacles. First, the incentive system for university researchers must be changed to reward research on problems of practice. Second, the contexts must be created that will allow the complexity of problems of practice to be understood and addressed by interdisciplinary teams of researchers, practitioners, and education designers. And third, meaningful experimentation must become acceptable in school systems in order to develop a better understanding of how to effectively stimulate and support the desired change.”

1 Donovan, M. (2013). Generating Improvement Through Research and Development in Education Systems. Science, 340, 317-317. Retrieved January 1, 2015, from www.sciencemag.org

Teachers and researchers looking to establish partnerships can contact CIRCL at www.circlcenter.org

What do YOU think?
Please send in your comments.

From playpen to playground

August 10, 2014Cyberlearning, Written by: Natalie HarrJudi Fusco

By Natalie Harr

(Blog Post #6)

Digital Playgrounds vs. Virtual Playpens
Marina Umaschi Bers and her students in the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University are examining how technologies might be used to help our youngest learners to learn. The research team uses the analogy of “playgrounds vs. playpens” to help us understand how technology can help engage children in imaginative or exploratory play and the kinds of developmentally appropriate and playful learning opportunities that may not be possible without technology.

Playgrounds are places where children go to play and learn. Children can choose to play tag, climb a slide, rest under a tree, or imagine new games. When you think about the physical design of these spaces, playgrounds naturally support a child’s imagination, playful exploration, social interaction, and motor coordination all within a safe structured environment.

Now, think about how a playground compares to a playpen. In a playpen, the walls limit a child’s movement, exploration, socialization, and ultimately their playful curiosity. Bers and her students are developing technologies that allow learners to imagine, explore, and interact together as they would in a playground setting.

Meet KIWI: Kids Invent With Imagination

KIWI Prototype: Courtesy of DevTech Research Group

As an early childhood educator, I am JUMPING UP and DOWN about KIWI (now commercially known as KIBO)! This simple, easy-to-use robotics kit is purposefully designed for young children (4-7 year olds/preschool-grade 2) and can be seamlessly integrated into early learning environments.

With the pressures for more academic rigor in our schools today, the beauty of KIWI is that it engages children in meaningful, cross-curricular projects that support the development and application of fundamental academic skills that are most critical in the early childhood years — at the same time nurturing their developmental needs for creative play and exploration. By programming the KIWI robot, children playfully learn the logic of sequencing (how order matters), mathematical one-to-one correspondence concepts, and a wealth of pre-literacy skills that are at the core foundation of all early learning.

Check out this video to learn what KIWI is and how it can support
digital “playground” learning in early childhood settings.

Video: Courtesy of the DevTech Research Group

In this video, Marina Umaschi Bers explains why she is interested in creating developmentally appropriate technologies for early learners. She also addresses the purposeful design of KIWI (a KIBO prototype) and how it fosters meaningful learning opportunities for our youngest and most impressionable learners.

Video: By Natalie Harr

KIWI: A “Developmentally Appropriate” Learning Technology

“Developmentally appropriate practice, often shortened to DAP, is an approach to teaching grounded in the research on how young children develop and learn and in what is known about effective early education. Its framework is designed to promote young children’s optimal learning and development.”

-The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

KIWI consists of intuitive, easy-to-connect construction materials that are developmentally appropriate for early learners. Rather than “writing code” or arranging icons on a computer screen, young children physically connect tangible, wooden blocks that represent different computer commands (e.g., go left, shake, turn). Children “read” or make meaning of the words, icons, and colors located on the programmable bricks to decide what behaviors KIWI should do.

Once the blocks are connected in an appropriate sequence from left to right (just like reading), children use the robot’s scanner (similar to a handheld grocery store scanner) to program each command – sequentially one at a time (one-to-one correspondence) – into the CHERP (Creative Hybrid Environment for Robotic Programming) software.
By pressing KIWI’s start button, the robot comes to life and performs the sequence. Be sure to check out KIWI’s FREE curriculumhere.

Video: By Natalie Harr

Bers explains how computer programming is a natural fit in an early childhood curriculum.
Children learn sequencing skills in the context of making a robot!

Design Feature of KIWI

main body of robot

Robotic pieces

Photo: Courtesy of DevTech Research Group

programmable bricks

Photo: Courtesy of the DevTech Research Group

GREEN: “Begin” or start sequence block
ORANGE: “Sing“ or sound blocks (clap, stomp)
PURPLE: “Shake” or action blocks (shake, spin, turn)
RED: “End” or stop sequence block

How It Fosters “DAP”
Developmentally Appropriate Practice

KIWI’s main body is constructed of natural wood for longevity and durability in early childhood settings. Its “shoebox” size enables children to explore its features within small groups or as a whole class.

The body’s plain design encourages children to personalize it with their own artistic creations. Throughout this creative process, kids are experiencing balance and forces and making engineering design decisions as they balance and anchor their creations onto the mobile robot.

The robot’s underbelly is covered with a clear plastic layer revealing its inner mechanisms – provoking curiosity, conversation and wonderment among children and adults alike.

The robotic pieces (sensors, motors, wheels, interlocking blocks) are made of durable, natural wood for easy manipulation by small hands. Their unique sizes and shapes help students to correctly match them with their corresponding slots and prevent choking hazards.

The simple design of KIWI gives children a sense of choice and ownership of their construction, without feeling frustrated or emotionally overwhelmed by too many options.

The child-friendly pieces of KIWI can be compared to their own body parts to understand their functionality: we see with our eyes (light sensor), we hear sounds with our ears (clap sensor), we read words (just like the scanner “reads” the barcode) on each programmable block.

Just like reading words in a story, students see the importance
of left to right directionality to create a sequence of commands.

KIWI’s scanner reads a barcode just like a scanner at a grocery store. Children can easily understand how it works based on their prior knowledge and experiences.

Programmable blocks are vibrantly color-coded and labeled with recognizable words (using uppercase letters for preschoolers) and corresponding icons (supporting pre-literacy skills) to help children successfully build a programmable sequence of commands.

Children can sort (a mathematics skill) the programmable bricks by color to organize and understand the different robotic functions.

Their interlocking design scaffolds correct sequencing (e.g., the “green” begin block can only be attached at the start of the sequence).

The construction process enables learners to be active and develop their fine and gross motor skills.

The KIWI (prototype) in action in early childhood classrooms.

Video: Courtesy of DevTech Research Group

Meet KIBO

KIBO Robotic Kits are now commercially available. Check out KinderLab Robotics Store for more information.

Envisioning the future of education – CYBERLEARNING

July 28, 2014Cyberlearning, Written by: Natalie HarrJudi Fusco

By Natalie Harr

“Cyberlearning is about designing new kinds of applications and technology rich experiences, learning how to use them well to foster and assess learning, making the experiences work for particular disciplines and populations, and putting them in place in the world in ways that make a difference.”

-Center For Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL)

(Blog Post #4)

Merge Ahead

CYBER is a generic prefix that means of, relating to, or characteristic of the culture of computers. A computer is any
programmable, electronic device, that can store, retrieve, and process data (including smartphones, G.P.S. devices, tablets, and laptops). -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

LEARNING is a relatively enduring change in behavior as a result of experience. People can learn alone or with others in collaboration. Learning can be facilitated by learning environments that incorporate
information and communication technologies.
–How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School,The National Academies Press, 2000

The 21st century requires students to develop a
contemporary skill set for our global economy. Rich skills in computation, collaboration, communication, and creativity are highly valued in our modern society. As the world has evolved, so has our understanding of how people learn. In contrast to traditional teaching methods, in cyberlearning projects, students are designing, creating, solving problems, making mistakes, actively reflecting on their experiences, and gaining deeper understanding as they learn essential 21st century skills.

CYBERLEARNING is an exciting, new field of research that merges these two disciplines of study (learning & computing) to design learning technologies —technologies that can help people learn and assess learning. This innovative field uses what scientists have discovered about how people learn and how to foster learning to inform the design of these technologies. These new innovations can potentially transform who, what, when, where, and how we learn.

Learning Sciences

Study of how people learn

Computing

Study of computers & technology, including design and uses

New Field of Science!

How can technology be used to help people learn?

EcoMUVE: A Screenshot of the Pond Module. A Virtual Reality Cyberlearning Technology. Photo Courtesy of the EcoMUVE Development Team

Virtual reality (VR) technology can be used to create computer-simulated environments that can immerse learners into a virtual world. Using computer controls, learners can interact with a virtual environment as if it’s a real setting. Virtual worlds can mimic real places (e.g., a volcano, the digestive system) or imaginary settings (e.g., a planet from another galaxy) for deep exploration. Learners are then free to explore and investigate phenomena that are too big or small, too fast or slow, or too dangerous to otherwise experience in real life.

For Example…

EcoMUVE: Multi User Virtual Environment

EcoMUVE: A demo video of the Pond Module. Courtesy of the EcoMUVE Development Team

EcoMUVE, for example, is a 3-D virtual world designed to immerse middle school students in simulated habitats (a pond or forest module) as part of an inquiry-based ecosystems curriculum.This Multi User Virtual Environment, or MUVE, has the look and feel of a video game, but it is used instead to immerse learners within the complexity of a specific habitat.

In the pond module, learners investigate a virtual pond and its surrounding environment during a two-week period to understand why the fish have died off. They begin by going underwater and examining the life below the pond’s surface. They take virtual measurements of such factors as water temperature, weather conditions, turbidity (water clarity) and pH levels on different virtual days, working together to understand the fundamental components of the virtual ecosystem and identify the causal relationships that influence them.

The EcoMUVE development team, composed of Chris Dede, Professor Tina Grotzer, Dr, Amy Kamarainen, Dr. Shari Metcalf as well as numerous master’s and doctoral students, explains their work below:

“The first module represents a pond ecosystem. Students explore the pond and the surrounding area, even under the water, see realistic organisms in their natural habitats, and collect water, weather, and population data. Students visit the pond over a number of virtual “days,” and eventually make the surprising discovery that, on a day in late summer, many fish in the pond have died. Students are challenged to figure out what happened – they work in teams to collect and analyze data, and gather information to solve the mystery and understand the complex causality of the pond ecosystem.” -The EcoMUVE Development Team

EcoMUVE is released under a FREE license from Harvard University. REGISTER HERE for access to EcoMUVE downloads and curriculum. EcoMUVE is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education.

follow-up research: eco-mobile

Photo Courtesy of EcoMUVE Development Team

The EcoMUVE project team received funding from the National Science Foundation and Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach initiative, for a new follow-up research project called EcoMOBILE. (Ecosystems Mobile Outdoor Blended Immersive Learning Environment). Stay tuned to learn more about this augmented reality (AR) technology in a future post.

Common Misconceptions about Cyberlearning

Cyberlearning is often misunderstood by the general public as “online learning.” This confusion stems from the creation of cyber-related words to help describe our swift changing horizon of technology and its impact on our world. However, these words (eg., a cybercafe, cybersurfing, cyberbullying) often describe online or Internet-based environments, thus limiting our full understanding of “cyber” and its implications.

Another misconception is that using technology will automatically foster learning. As I’ll try to show you, fostering learning with technology is complex (as is fostering learning without technology); it requires not only good technology but also using the technology and facilitating discussion around its use in effective ways.

Cyberlearning has also been misinterpreted as a replacement of teachers within classrooms.

As demonstrated in the video below, cyberlearning requires the expertise of teachers to facilitate and contextualize the rich learning opportunities allotted by these educational technologies. These learning opportunities would otherwise be impossible or impractical without the combined power of teachers and next generation technology.

Produced by Kelly Whalen for KQED Education in conjunction with Northwestern University’s iLab, with support from the National Science Foundation.

CYBERLEARNING: THE EDUCATORS’ CORNER

June 14, 2014Cyberlearning, Written by: Natalie HarrJudi Fusco

By Natalie Harr

Welcome Educators! (Blog Post #1)

My name is Natalie Harr. I want to share how technology has the potential to transform the future of education. Just imagine if you had “next generation” learning technologies (see below) at your disposal…

Computational Tools for Modeling and Animated Storytelling

Augmented Reality for Seeing Invisible Phenomena

Serious Gaming for Understanding Complex Systems

New genres of technology can revolutionize how people learn in any setting…at school, at home, in the park…

EVERYWHERE!

********************************************* Robotic Foreign Language Friends

********************************************* Immersion into Simulated Worlds

The possibilities for teaching and learning are endless!

LET’S “PREVIEW” THE Future

This blog aims to provide educators with a
sneak preview into the next generation
of technologies currently being developed to help people learn. Together, let’s explore these new ways of using technology for education and creatively imagine how these can transform our schools and other learning environments – five, ten, or even twenty years
into the future.

Along the way, we will meet the people behind the innovative research field called
cyberlearning and explore the history of technology & education. And, most importantly, we will use this blog as a platform to ask questions, engage in thought-provoking conversation, and to “dream big” about the implications of this technology for learning, especially in classrooms of the future. I encourage you to open up your mind so we can play with these untapped possibilities!

I am extremely fortunate to be spending this school year as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow serving at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, DC. Here, I have been immersed in a federally-funded, cutting-edge research program that aims to develop the next generation of learning technologies. This NSF-funded program is known as Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies.