Flexibility in macro-scripts for computer-supported collaborative learning
In the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), scripts are designed to support collaboration among distant learners or co-present learners whose interactions are (at least partially) mediated by a computer. The rationale of scripts is to structure collaborative learning processes in order to trigger group interactions that may be rare in free collaboration. Fixing the degree of coercion is a delicate design choice: too rigid scripts would spoil the richness of collaborative in
Contextualizing Discussions in Distance Learning Systems
In distance learning systems, communication tools are rarely integrated into learning activities, which does not encourage their use. The main goal of our work is to mitigate this lack of integration. Our aim is to bring the discussion activities closer to the learning activities, i.e. to situations to which the discussions must ideally relate to in order to promote learning between students. Thus, we suggest two models of forum which are contextual and based on a structuring of discussions resp
Internet Scout Project
The Understanding the Universe Web site is part of Discovery.com's excellent educational resource DiscoverySchool.com site and is a joint effort with the American Museum of Natural History. This attractive site contains three major sections. The It's Awesome page has a time line of the universe that links to the Universe in One Year page -- a great way of learning the difficult concept of geologic time by showing that, if the history of the universe was compressed into one year, modern humans wo
Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe
Making the History of 1989 materials were developed because teachers and their students have little access to vivid historical documents in English that convey the epochal events of 1989. Project materials utilize recent advances in our understanding of how historical learning takes place, including complex interaction with sources, recursive reading, and skills used by historians.
The site has three key features: a substantial collection of high quality primary sources; a set of multimedia int
Internet Scout Project
Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit organization founded by the grassroots Virginia Organizing Project (VOP) in 2002 to help increase public understanding of emerging scientific links between environmental exposure and human health, tracks a broad range of relevant information on this well-designed and useful website. The In the News section of the homepage lists breaking news stories from the world press about environmental health and is updated daily. The New Science area offers paragra
Internet Scout Project
Engaging in social issues in today's society requires an understanding of numerical data, statistics, and mathematical assumptions that underlie discussions about the federal budget, the spread of disease and other issues. However, the mathematics and the social issues are often considered in isolation and leave many Americans "ill-prepared to make informed decisions." The Thinking with Data Project is a new initiative of the National Science Foundation, SRI International, Kent State University
What is Remix Culture
This resource is a playlist containing pointers to many other resources. This playlist is dedicated to understanding exactly what is meant by "Remix" and "Remix Culture. It goes through to first define and explain the terms and the phenonmenon, then to explain the implications of them, and finally give useful and interesting examples.
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science: Session 2. Classifying Living Things
How can we make sense of the living world? During this session, a systematic approach to biological classification is introduced as a starting point for understanding the nature of the remarkable diversity of life on Earth.,This segment deals with the "other" organisms that do not easily fall into the plant or animal category. 7 year olds talk about a third ring to the Venn diagram and that bacteria would be an "other".
LaCOLLA: Middleware for Self-Sufficient Online Collaboration
The LaCOLLA middleware makes it possible for collaborators to interact using their own resources and not depend on a centralized regime. By contributing their own resources, group members can organize and communicate using a federated peer-to-peer model. Utilizing LaCOLLA middleware, the group can function regardless of whether a member removes resources and despite network or node failures or disconnection. This capacity for self-organization, together with location transparency, lets applicati
Internet Scout Project
The Environmental Chemistry group at Harvard University created this website to promote its research in the understanding and quantification of chemistry of surfaces in environmental chemical systems. Users can learn about the group's many projects that deal with the shared topic: "What controls the formation and reactivity of a surface?" Researchers can find out about the group's seminars held at Harvard and can download many of the related publications. The website publicizes the efforts and b
Neurohistology 1 from the course General Human Anatomy
General Human Anatomy - Fall 2006. The functional anatomy of the human body as revealed by gross and microscopic examination.
Concord.org Five Lessons: A Taste of the Future, Today
This issue of @Concord features five ready-to-use “Lessons” that illustrate how interactive models and tools can fit into real classrooms today. Each of these lessons addresses important content that can be found in all the standards and frameworks, and does it by giving students tools with which to explore and interact. The lessons illustrate how sophisticated math and science content can be taught earlier and how generative the resulting understanding can be.
Foundations and opportunities for an interdisciplinary science of learning
In this chapter, we argue that the learning sciences are poised for a "decade of synergy." We focus on several key traditions of theory and research with the potential for mutually influencing one another in ways that can transform how we think about the science of learning, as well as how future educators and scientists are trained.
I Don’t Believe My Eyes!
Students develop their understanding of the effects of invisible air pollutants with a rubber band air test, a bean plant experiment and by exploring engineering roles related to air pollution. In an associated literacy activity, students develop visual literacy and write photograph captions. They learn how images are manipulated for a powerful effect and how a photograph can make the invisible (such as pollutants) visible. Note: You may want to set up the activities for Air Pollution unit, Less
Supporting CSCL with Automatic Corpus Analysis Technology
Process analyses are becoming more and more standard in research on computer-supported
collaborative learning. This paper presents the rational as well as results of an evaluation of a tool called TagHelper, designed for streamlining the process of multi-dimensional analysis of the collaborative learning process. In comparison with a hand-coded corpus coded with a 7 dimensional coding scheme, TagHelper is able to achieve an acceptable level of agreement (Cohen's Kappa of .7 or more) along 6 out
Narratives and their significance for childrens communication about their world
In this article I will give a description and a definition of narrative through historical review. This forms a background to my other purpose, to describe and discuss the importance of using storytelling as a tool for meaning making for the individual. In this text I will also raise the significance of stories as a tool for society to mediate culturally important messages to the individual and thereby shed light upon the dialectics between the individual and the collective.,part of Kaleidoscope
Computer-Supported Collaborative Video Analysis
Video can serve as a powerful medium for analyzing interactions involved in learning activities, for capturing records of teaching for uses in professional development, and for learners to construct or interact with videos expressively, but there have been many barriers to its collaborative uses. The DIVER Project is tackling core problems in advancing computer-supported collaborative video analysis. DIVER establishes a unique video platform for users to control a “virtual camera window” on
The CoVis Project: Building a Large-Scale Science Education Testbed
This paper describes the construction and research program of the Learning Through Collaborative Visualization (CoVis) Project. a testbed for exploring science education reform with telecommunications technology. The CoVis testbed is contrasted with other forms of cducational research in an "ecolo~yo f paradigms." which argues that testbeds are in fact a new setting for research with different requirements and challenges for the researcher. Two extended examples of telecommunications research ar
The Energy of Light
In this introduction to light energy, students learn about reflection and refraction as they learn that light travels in wave form. Through hands-on activities, they see how prisms, magnifying glasses and polarized lenses work. They also gain an understanding of the colors of the rainbow as the visible spectrum, each color corresponding to a different wavelength.
Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education
The study will provide a set of recommendations for the JISC, institutions, and teachers on the effective use of Web 2.0 technologies for sharing content for teaching and learning. This will be achieved by desk research building on JISC funded and other work already undertaken, and widespread consultation across the community through an online workshop. The desk research will look at both existing practice and institutional policies which can facilitate or inhibit the use of Web 2.0 technologie
