Interacting with Technology Lecture 4: Children and Technology (Case Studies) Dr Dawn Woodgate

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Interacting with TechnologyLecture 4
Children and Technology (Case Studies)Dr Dawn
Woodgate
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Summary of Lecture

• Intention to show progress of one research
  stream from the SENSE project (mentioned by Danae
  in Lecture 3) to the present time.
• Review of eScience in Education.
• Mobile (Phone)s in Schools.
• PARTICIPATE Schools project.

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The SENSE Project and Beyond

• SENSE
• Hands on approach to learning science.
• Used specialised sensors and software to allow
  children to collect and visualise their own
  scientific data.
• Appropriated Participatory Design (PD) methods in
  the development of these technologies.

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SENSE Project (continued.)

• Children in 2 schools, in Nottingham and Sussex.
• Children used mobile carbon monoxide sensors to
  measure pollution levels in local environment,
  and used software tools to analyse their data and
  to share with others.
• Began to explore how emerging networking
  technologies (eScience tools) could enhance
  science education, by supporting collaboration
  between different schools and with scientists.

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Summary of Results

• Results of video analysis and teacher
  interviews suggested that the context-inclusive
  approach taken was important for three reasons
• It allowed individuals to reflect upon method as
  part of data collection.
• Secondly, it provides an aide-memoire to groups
  who have collected data together, in interpreting
  results.
• Thirdly, it allows new participants who have
  carried out similar activities, to understand new
  perspectives on both their own, and others data.

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eScience in Education A Review (Woodgate and
StantonFraser 2005)

• Funding from JISC as follow up to the SENSE
  project.
• Context Perceived loss of interest in science
  amongst the young, fears about the implications
  of this for the economy in the future (White
  Paper 2000).
• Remit to provide an overview, or snapshot, of
  the emerging field of eScience in the context of
  education as it stood at that time and to
  consider some of its implications.

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What is eScience?

• We found
• It was in itself an emerging field.
• There was no one, universally agreed definition
  of eScience, even amongst practitioners.

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A Definition

• Professor Sir John Taylor, Director General of
  the UK Research Councils
• science increasingly done through distributed
  global collaborations enabled by the Internet,
  using very large data collections, terascale
  computing resources and high performance
  visualisation".

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An Analogy

• The computational grid The idea is to provide
  a reliable, easy-to-access source of computing
  power and/or data on demand through the use of
  computer networks, corresponding to the way that
  the national electrical grid works to provide
  consumers with a reliable electricity supply.

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How Does This Apply to Education?

• No previous attempt to define what eScience might
  mean in the context of education.
• Our definition The use of ICT in education,
  to enable local and remote communication and
  collaboration on scientific topics and with
  scientific data.

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We Found

• There were very few examples that fitted within
  this definition, though a wider range that
  partially fitted.
• Internationally, the work of Roy Pea and his
  colleagues is important, as they were providing
  educational eScience activities to schools with
  the technologies available in the early 1990s.

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eScience in the UK

• Few examples at that time, mainly small scale.
• However, BBC Springwatch campaign also fitted
  within our criteria, forming an important early
  link between eScience and the idea of user-
  generated content people contributing their
  own (broadcast in this case) content rather than
  merely being passive consumers of
  professionally-produced media.
• Important pre-cursor to the PARTICIPATE project.

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Next Steps Mobile (Phone)s in Schools Project

• Further funding was secured from JISC, to form
  partnerships with potential collaborators in
  industry and the media, and come up with ideas
  for a much larger scale eScience based research
  project.
• Mobile (Phone)s in Schools was a pilot study
  carried out under this funding stream, to begin
  to extend the development of mobile technologies
  (including software for phones) for use in school
  science lessons.

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Activities

• Collaboration between Bath (Psychology) and
  Nottingham (Computer Science) researchers.
• Also assistance from Science Scope, a Bath based
  company that makes science education equipment.
• Aims
• Investigate attitudes of schools and teachers to
  mobile technologies via teacher consultation.
• Participatory design exercises with a class of
  Year 9 school students.

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Participatory Design (PD)

• (PD) has its origins in the 1970s in Scandinavia,
  when it came to be used in the design of new
  technologies in the workplace (Bjerknes et al
  1987).
• More recently, PD methodologies have been adapted
  for use with children, for example by Druin et al
  (1999, 2001), Scaife et al (1997).

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Our Challenges

• UK school curriculum not very flexible.
• Most PD work with children done with small
  numbers of hand picked pupils in a controlled,
  lab situation, over a large number of extended
  sessions. In this case a class of 30 (approx)
  lively Year 9 students (13-14 years old), in
  school.
• Limited time - 6 x 1 hour sessions.
• Need to keep the sessions fast moving and
  interesting, and be very organised!

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Session 1

• Introduction to the project, brainstorm of ideas
  What can be sensed in the local environment?

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Type of Pollution Where is it? When does it happen? How does it get there?
CARBON MONOXIDE - fumes In town, near main roads e.g. High Street, Gloucester Road, garages, near the quarry, in built-up areas, around the shops, supermarket Rush hour 8.30am 5.30pm, all the time, during traffic jams Cars, lorries, trains, commuters, quarry deliveries, public transport
CARBON MONOXIDE - smoking Pubs, especially around High Street Evenings People
LEAD POLLUTION Along main roads Rush hour 8.30am 5.30pm, all the time, during traffic jams Cars, lorries, trains, commuters, quarry deliveries, public transport
NOISE - cars In town, near main roads e.g. High Street, near school, in built-up areas Rush hour 8.30am 5.30pm, during traffic jams Cars, people
NOISE - children Near school To and from school, rush hour- 8.30am 5.30pm Children, parents
NOISE - people Pubs and restaurants To and from school, rush hour- 8.30am 5.30pm People
NOISE - drunk people Pubs and restaurants Evenings People
NOISE - houses In around houses, in built up areas People, cars
LIGHT High Street All year round, at night Town people, street lamps, house lights
RADIATION Oldbury Power Station, hospital, school All year round, most of the time Owners, radioactive tubes, radiation waves
HEAT
VANDALISM People
LITTER Near the stream, Mundy playing fields, North Road, All year round Town people
TOXIC WASTE / CHEMICAL River Severn All year round Owners
COLOUR
HEAT
IDEAS FROM SESSION 1-14/11/05
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Session 2

• Demonstration of sensors by ScienceScope
• Light levels measured within school grounds
• Demonstration of how data can be displayed

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Session 3

• Introduction to phones, Bluetooth challenge
• Introduction to low-tech prototyping
• Group work Discussed ideas, produced prototypes
  of sensors, presented ideas to class

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Session 4

• Gave some feedback on some of the childrens
  ideas.
• First high-tech prototype.
• Mobile phone connects to Science Scope Logbook
  datalogger via Bluetooth.
• Piloted temperature, light and velocity sensors.
• The children thought this would be good for fixed
  sensors, but didnt like the idea of carrying all
  this equipment around for mobile sensing Whats
  the point of having the phone when you still need
  the other stuff?

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Session 5

• Further feedback on first prototype, ideas
  gathering for second iteration.
• Interface design session.

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Session 6

• Introduced second iteration of the sound sensor
  a stand-alone sound sensor which used the mobile
  phones microphone.

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Activities

• Children hypothesized whereabouts in the school
  and grounds it would be more (or less) noisy.
• Groups went to different parts of the school and
  grounds to collect data on phones.
• Each group took pictures / video of the context
  of their data.
• Then came back into class, data downloaded to a
  PC, then displayed as Excel graphs
• Further feedback from pupils.

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Key Findings

• Schools and teachers
• Virtually all UK secondary school children have
  mobile phones.
• School have prohibitive policies on mobile
  phones.
• Despite this, there was less resistance among
  teachers than we had thought, and seemed to be
  indicated by the literature.
• Children
• The sessions were quick and dirty, only 1 hour
  (lesson time) available for each.
• Due to time constraints not all tasks were
  completed.
• HOWEVER,
• The activities were engaging. Even disaffected
  students were enthusiastic.
• This technique (alongside other methods such as
  ethnographic studies, laboratory studies) is
  useful for
• Generating a lot of ideas quickly.
• Rigorous testing of prototypes in the situation
  in which they will be used.

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Also

• Produced two working prototypes.
• Fed directly into the PARTICIPATE project.
• Children are quite capable of dealing with pilot
  technologies. If it is explained, they accept
  that things sometimes dont work as expected.
  They give good feedback!

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PARTICIPATE

• Much larger scale project, over 3m funding from
  EPSRC / Technology Strategy Board over 3 years.
• Partners are Universities of Bath (Psychology)
  and Nottingham (Computer Science), BBC, BT,
  Microsoft Research, Science Scope, Blast Theory.
• Aims different for different partners some are
  very technical, but generally to raise awareness
  of environmental issues among targeted user
  groups, and to explore issues around user
  generated content. Baths specific additional
  aims are to study how children and teachers
  collaborate both co-located within the same
  school, and remotely, between different schools,
  and what happens when activities roll out to
  multiple schools.
• 3 streams of work, which are to be integrated
  this year schools, community, gaming.
• Brings together themes from previous studies the
  local environment and own experiences as a
  motivator to engage with science, participatory
  design, collecting own data using sensors,
  importance of context, user generated content
  etc.
• www.participateonline.co.uk

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PARTICIPATE Schools 1

• Stage 1 Trial, we worked intensively with 2
  schools over a 3 week period. Students collected
  data on environmental parameters on their
  journeys between home and school, using phone
  sound sensors as before, but this time with
  connectivity to GPS to give location information,
  and Science Scope dataloggers to collect other
  data (CO, temp etc).

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PARTICIPATE Stage 1 Trial continued.

• Intention to visualize data from phones as trails
  in Google Earth, and data from Science Scope kit
  as ordinary graphs.
• Phone software in very early prototype stage, and
  there were some connectivity problems. However,
  we were able to obtain some early visualizations.

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An Early Google Earth Visualization
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Other Activities

• Children discussed their data in class with peers
  and teachers.
• 60 Second Scientist, children made short films
  about the activities, and what they had learned.

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Early Findings

• Indications that even fairly bland self-collected
  data are engaging for children.
• Google Earth visualizations wow factor in
  class.
• 60 Second Scientist was more than merely a fun
  activity for children it was an effective
  reflection tool, encouraging them to think back
  to what they had done, discuss their experiences
  and look for new information.

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Later School Trials

• As we rolled out to additional schools, it became
  impossible to provide the same amount of support
  in school.
• BBC commissioned a website to which member
  schools would have login access.
• This enables students and teachers to share data
  and work online.
• Stage 2 Trial, around 13 schools were involved at
  various levels of engagement.
• Also carried out a trial as part of the World
  Scout Jamboree held in the UK in 2007.

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Website Demo
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Currently

• Around 20 member schools, widely dispersed.
• Activities presented as Missions on the
  website. Some use specialised technology, others
  only require what would normally be available in
  a school.
• Collaborations with teachers in developing
  Missions for schools.
• Moving towards an integrated trial schools
  providing some seed content for a national
  campaign based on environmental Missions to
  take place later this year.

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Examples of Schools Content

• Posters
• 60 Sec movies
• Data trails current visualizations. JData3D
  software integrates sensor data, GPS data and
  photographs saves as a time and location
  stamped KMZ file to visualize in Google Earth.
• Also an XML file to visualize sensor and GPS data
  only in Google Maps.

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Google Earth Visualizations demo
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Next / Final Stages

• Missions will be available via multiple
  platforms, IPTV, Web and mobile phone.
• Based on Nottinghams Equip 2 system
• Looking towards some level of integration between
  Equip 2 and the Participate Schools website.
  However, due to concerns about data protection,
  child safety etc, the extent of such integration
  is still under discussion.

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Some Observations

• The activities we are piloting seem to make
  children think beyond the activities themselves,
  about the scientific process itself.
• Integrating technology into subject teaching is
  still not easy, due to factors such the
  organisation of IT facilities in schools.
• Some early evidence that too much contextual
  information can inhibit discussion, and thus
  perhaps affect learning and retention. May
  require different types of studies to properly
  investigate this.

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References

• Bjerknes, G., Ehn, P., and Kyng, M. (1987)
  Computers and Democracy a Scandinavian
  challenge. Aldershot Avebury, c1987.
• Druin, A. (1999) Cooperative Inquiry
  Developing New Technologies for Children with
  Children Proc. CHI 99, ACM 1999, Pittsburgh,
  PA, USA., pp. 592-599.
• Gordin, D., Polman, J., Pea, R. D. (1994). The
  Climate Visualizer Sense-making through
  scientific visualization. Journal of Science
  Education and Technology, 3, 203-226.
• Gordin, D.N. Pea, R.D. (1995). Prospects for
  scientific visualization as an educational
  technology. The Journal of Learning Sciences 4
  (3) pp. 249-279.
• Gordin, D.N., Edelson, D. Pea, R.D. (1995). The
  Greenhouse Effect Visualizer A tool for the
  science classroom. Proceedings of the Fourth
  American Meteorological Society Education
  Symposium.
• Kanjo, E., Benford, S. Paxton, M., Chamberlain,
  A. Woodgate, D. and Stanton Fraser, D. (2007)
  'MobGeoSen Facilitating Personal GeoSensor Data
  Collection and Visualization using Mobile Phones'
  , Personal Ubiquitous Computing Journal, Springer
  ISSN 1617-4909 (Print) 1617-4917

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References

• Office of Science and Technology (2000)
  Excellence and Innovation A Science and
  Innovation Policy for the 21st Century.
  http//www.ost.gov.uk/enterprise/dtiwhite
• Pea, R.D. (2002). Learning Science through
  Collaborative Visualizatin over the Internet.
  Nobel Symposium (NS 120), Virtual Museums and
  Public Understanding of Science and Culture. May
  26-29 2002, Stockholm, Sweden.
• http//nobelprize.org/nobel/nobel-foundation/sympo
  sia/interdisciplinary/ns120/lectures/pea.pdf
• Scaife, M., Rogers, Y., Aldrich, F. and Davies,
  M. (1997) Designing For or Designing With?
  Informant Design for Interactive Learning
  Environments. Proc. CHI 97, ACM, Atlanta, GA,
  USA, 22-27 March 1997, pp. 343-350.
• Woodgate, D., Stanton Fraser, D. Kanjo, E.,
  Paxton M. and Benford, S. (2007) Mobile (Phone)s
  in Schools Reflections on an Exercise in
  Participatory Design with Children in the Wild
  Techniques and Methodologies for Studying
  Technology Use 'In The Wild' The Tenth European
  Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
  (ECSCW), 2007.ECSCW 2007, Limerick 25 September
  2007.
• http//www.cityware.org.uk/index.php?optioncom
  _contenttaskviewid86Itemid48

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References

• Woodgate, D. and StantonFraser, D. (2006) )
  eScience, Science Education and Technology
  Integration in the Classroom Some Practical
  Considerations. Proc. workshop e-Science in and
  Beyond the Classroom Usability, Practicability
  and Sensability. At eScience 2006 2nd IEEE
  International Conference on eScience and Grid
  Computing 2-4 December 2006, Amsterdam, NL.
• Woodgate, D. and Stanton Fraser, D. (2005) Review
  of eScience in Education (review report
  commissioned by JISC). http//www.jisc.ac.uk/uploa
  ded_documents/ACF2B4.pdf