INCORPORATING TECHNOLOGY INTO K-12 OUTREACH: LESSONS LEARNED FROM AN AUGMENTED REALITY SANDBOX

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Voice ◽  
◽  
Thomas Howe ◽  
Heather L. Petcovic
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Rick Hess ◽  
Pedro Noguera

In 2020, Rick Hess and Pedro Noguera engaged in a long-running correspondence that tackled many of the biggest questions in education — including topics like school choice, equity and diversity, testing, privatization, the achievement gap, social and emotional learning, and civics. They sought to unpack their disagreements, better understand one another’s perspectives, and seek places of agreement or points of common understanding. Their correspondence appears in their book, A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K-12 Education (Teachers College Press, 2021). In this article, they reflect on the exercise, what they learned from it, and what lessons it might offer to educators, education leaders, researchers, and policy makers.


Author(s):  
Elisabeth McGrath ◽  
Susan Lowes ◽  
Mercedes McKay ◽  
Jason Sayres ◽  
Peiyi Lin

The underwater environment presents novel challenges that can facilitate unique learning experiences for students engaged in robotics programs. Although the number of underwater educational robotics programs is small by comparison to other forms of K-12 robotics initiatives, several do exist, which have varying learning goals, implementation approaches, and tools. This chapter describes an underwater robotics program using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® components and related materials for middle and high school students. The program, known as WaterBotics™, has undergone an extensive, four-year research and development phase and curriculum redesign effort. This chapter describes the theoretical framework of the curriculum design, the components and resources available in the challenge-based curriculum, and lessons learned about teacher practices and their relationship to student learning outcomes in physical science, Information Technology skills, engineering design, and engineering career interest. “Core elements of success” of the program and curricular adaptations are described in the context of a scale-up initiative that is adapting the curriculum for use in informal education settings.


Author(s):  
Patrick O’Shea ◽  
Rebecca Mitchell ◽  
Catherine Johnston ◽  
Chris Dede

Utilizing GPS-enabled handheld computing units, we have developed and studied Augmented Reality (AR) curricula to help middle-school students learn literacy and math. In AR, students move around an outdoor physical environment, interacting with virtual characters and artifacts on their handheld computer. These “invisible” objects and characters provide clues to help solve a mystery, guiding the students through a process of inquiry and evidence-building. The first AR curriculum we developed, Alien Contact!, is based on a scenario where aliens have crash landed near the students’ middle school. Students, working in teams, learn math and literacy skills in the course of determining why the aliens have come to earth. This study describes the design heuristics used during the initial development and deployment of Alien Contact!, the results of two formative evaluations of this curriculum, and the impact these findings have had on revising our design heuristics for a subsequent AR curriculum about beached whales, called Gray Anatomy.


Author(s):  
Linda R. Lisowski ◽  
Claudia C. Twiford ◽  
Joseph A. Lisowski ◽  
Quintin Q. Davis ◽  
Rebecca F. Kirtley

Public schools need to address issues of 21st century literacy, which go beyond reading and mathematics to include teamwork and technological proficiency. The authors have worked collaboratively to develop K-20 technology partnerships that provide 21st century learning to benefit all stakeholders. In this chapter, the authors discuss three of these partnerships and the benefits and barriers associated with them. Lessons learned included the need for: 1) immediately available technological and pedagogical support; 2) formalized roles and responsibilities between K-12 and university partners; 3) personnel who can take over a role or responsibility in emergencies; and 4) opportunities to plan ahead together. The authors hope that their lessons learned can inform other K-20 collaborations as they develop innovative 21st century partnerships through the use of technology.


Author(s):  
Marybeth Green ◽  
Linda Challoo ◽  
Mehrube Mehrubeoglu

The potential of augmented reality (AR) as a transformational tool has long been touted in academic circles. However, in order for AR to attain this goal, we must seriously examine previous research to determine if we are on the right path. This study examined 87 AR research studies situated in K-12 environments to determine what grade levels were involved, where the research being done was what content areas were involved, what kinds of triggers were used, and what learning environments were created through the use of AR. This research found that the majority of studies were situated in elementary contexts in science and math. Diverse learning environments were found including inquiry, problem-based learning, visualization, and gamification. Based on these findings, suggestions were made for future research including more research on students creating AR experiences, broadening the grade levels and content areas that are involved, and aiming future AR projects at the transformational level of the SAMR model.


Author(s):  
Patrick O'Shea ◽  
Daniel Curry-Corcoran

This paper describes the process and results of a project to incorporate Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and pedagogical approaches into a Virginian elementary school and a corresponding process to train a group of Australian teachers to develop AR experiences for their own educational settings. The process involved training a group of 5th grade teachers in Newport News Virginia and a corresponding group of k-12 teachers in Queensland, Australia on the design and production of narrative-based AR games in order to give them the skills to build their own AR games. This chapter focuses on describing the training process, the pedagogical approach, and an exploration of the practical issues that arose from these projects (e.g. policy and fiscal issues that dictated the choice of technology). The discussion of the results from this effort demonstrates the promise of the approach, and shows the potential for educational practices.


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