Seeing the unseen learner: designing and using social media to recognize children's science dispositions in action

Using augmented reality to support observations about trees during summer camp

“…When taken with similar mobile computing efforts in other contexts [1,7,15], our work suggests that AR-inspired apps customized to specific settings can support young learners' observational practices in situ. A contribution of our efforts is to offer an approach to designing localized programming for summer camps, which attends to the informal learning experience.…”

“…Given our focus on creating learning experiences that engage children in observations in a nature camp program, we rely on technologies that (a) enable us to digitally augment the environment without the need for internet connection, as both cellular and internet access were unavailable within the forest setting of our study and (b) support observations of the natural world unobstructed by a design that focuses learners' attention too heavily on the device. Others have designed technologies to support observations, photo documentation, annotation, and science inquiry for museum and afterschool settings [1,4,16]; however, given our focus on outdoor settings, we needed technology tools that could function without an internet connection on tablet devices and that were customized to one-hour programs held on a wilderness trail of the Appalachian habitat. Accordingly, we chose to develop an ARenhanced app that allows layering of digital information within the forest setting as seen through the tablet's camera.…”

"It helped me do my science."

“…(text). The ability for children to personally express themselves in multiple situations using integrated media informs our understanding of what they choose to notice and attend to at any given moment [1].…”

“…Our case study describes the evolution of two SM apps for children, Scientific INQuiry (SINQ) [2] into ScienceKit [1]. We detail our motivations for using SM tools in science inquiry learning and the design decisions we made transitioning from a text-based interface (SINQ) to one that supported multimodal interactions (ScienceKit).…”

The social media instructional design model: a new tool for designing instruction using social media

“…A corpus of empirical research examining the effect of social media use on learning outcomes within instructional contexts does not yet exist, but studies on the usage of social media by educators and students are beginning to emerge (Ahn et al, 2014). In a meta-analysis of educational technology, researchers found that across the 15 types of technologies reviewed-from classroom response systems, to interactive whiteboards, and to virtual worlds-all have "primarily promising effects" on learning across content areas (Lemke et al, 2009, p. 7).…”