The executive summary of the Formative Research Report for the project: Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Rural Communities.
This is the formative research report for the project: Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Rural Communities
This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a mobile app to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities, building on the popular PBS KIDS series Work It Out Wombats!
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marisa WolskyJanna KookJessica Andrews
The Children’s Museum will collaborate with six Hartford Public Library branches, three Hartford Family Centers, and the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to provide hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) - based programs to over 1,000 local 3 to 14-year old children and their care givers. Program design and development will include planning for field trips to the museum. All participants will be given age-specific, supplemental STEAM materials to continue their learning activities at home, and families can attend more than one week of library programs, or more than three Saturdays of family center programs. The goal will be to help urban Hartford youths find new pathways toward responsible citizenry and fiscal stability.
This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a series of mobile apps to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities. To support families at home it would also develop a new library model to build librarians' computational thinking content knowledge and self-efficacy so they can support parents' efforts with their children. Computational thinking is a an increasingly critical skill for learning and success in the workforce. It includes the ability to identify problems, brainstorm and generate solutions and processes that can be communicated and followed by computers or humans. There are few projects that introduce computational thinking to young children. Very little research has been done on the ways that parents can facilitate children's engagement in CT skills. And developing a model that trains and supports librarians to become virtual coaches of parents as they engage with their children in CT, will leverage and build the expertise of librarians. The project's target audience includes parents and children living in rural areas where access to CT learning may be very limited. Project partners include the EDC, a major research organization, the American Library Association, and BUILD, a national association that promotes collaborations across library, kindergarten readiness, and public media programming.
The formative research study asks: 1) What supports do parents of preschoolers in rural communities need in order to effectively engage in CT with their children at home? and 2) How can libraries in rural communities support joint CT exploration in family homes? The summative research study asks: 3) how can an intervention that combines media resources, mobile technology, and library supports foster sustained joint parent/child engagement and positive attitudes around CT? Researchers will develop a parent survey, adapting several scales from previously developed instruments that ask parents to report on children's use of CT-related vocabulary and CT-related attitudes and dispositions. Survey scales will assess librarians' attitudes towards CT, as well as their self-efficacy in supporting parents in CT in a virtual environment. During the formative study, EDC will pilot-test survey scales with 30 parents and 6 librarians in rural MS and KY. Analyses will be primarily qualitative and will be geared toward producing rapid feedback for the development team. Quantitative analyses will be used on parent app use, using both time query and back-end data, exploring factors associated with time spent using apps. The summative study will evaluate how the new media resources and mobile technology, in combination with the library virtual implementation model, support families' joint engagement with CT, and positive attitudes around CT. The researchers will recruit 125 low-income families with 4- to 5-year-old children in rural MS and KY to participate in the study. They will randomly assign families within each library to the full intervention condition, including media resources, mobile technology, and library support delivered through the virtual implementation model, or the media and mobile-technology-only condition. This design will allow researchers to understand more fully the additional benefit of library support for rural families' sustained engagement, and conversely, see the comparative impact of a media- and mobile-technology only intervention, given that some families might not be able to access virtual or physical library support.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. This project is co-funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
This Innovations in Development award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This study explored the effect of depth of learning (as measured in hours) on creativity, curiosity, persistence and self-efficacy. We engaged ~900 parents and 900 students across 21 sites in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Alabama, Virginia and the United Arab Emirates, in 5-week (10-hr) Curiosity Machine programs. Iridescent trained partners to implement the programs. Thus, this analysis was also trying to establish a baseline to measure any loss in impact from scaling our programs and moving to a “train-the-trainer” model. We analyzed 769 surveys out of which 126 were paired. On
In 2005, the Vermont Center for the Book (VCB) received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop and implement a program called What's the BIG Idea? to help librarians change their children's story hours to include more mathematics and science content and vocabulary. The project resulted in the creation of a professional development seminar; a Librarian Manual with guidelines, activities and other information; parent kits for families to take home and use to reinforce and extend learning in math and science; and a website filled with ideas, bibliographies, and other
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dawn JaramilloJudy NorthupShelley H. BilligVermont Center for the Book
The Minnesota Children's Museum, in collaboration with the American Library Association will develop a project to engage children ages two through seven years old and their parents in exploring mathematics through hands-on, book-based math activities in libraries and children's museums across the country. The main elements of the project are: 1. A 1200 square foot exhibit at the Minnesota Children's Museum; 2. A traveling exhibit to ten children's museums over a six month period; 3. Five smaller versions of the exhibit will travel to 75 libraries sponsored by the American Library Association. Each library that apply for the exhibit must present a plan in which 50 percent of their exhibit audience will be children and families of the under-represented, lower income groups, and racial and/or ethnic groups. 4. Programs and materials will be designed to provide parents with the means to actively participate in their children's math education. The collaboration of the Minnesota Children's Museum and the American Library Association draws together two organizations whose natural constituencies are parents with young children. Project 1,2,3 is designed to be national in scope and creates multiple formats within which families can enjoy exploring math. Its goals and objectives reflect four messages: start early, math is everywhere, parental involvement and get into books. The project Principal Investigator (PI) Ms. Jeanne W. Vergeront received her Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Science in Child and Family Studies and Environmental Design, respectively from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Currently, she serves as the Vice President, Educational Projects at the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Mother Goose Asks Why? is a program of the Vermont Center for the Book currently being brought to 1200 parents in Vermont. Centered around exemplary children's literature and science activities, the program provides a series of four reading/discussion/activity sessions to parents of preschool children. Through exploration of basic questions such as "What Is It?", "How Many?", and "How Do You Know?", parents gain experience, skills, and confidence to introduce science to their 3-7 year old children. The Vermont Center hopes to expand this program to twelve additional states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Before initiating this expansion, however, the Center needs to address two issues: 1) how to create appropriate strategies for reaching, recruiting, and retaining families in locations that are quite different from Vermont, and 2) how to create an evaluation strategy that will assess parental behavior and attitudinal changes over time. Toward this end, the Center will gather representatives from the participating expansion sites and experts in family outreach to examine local issues and differences, to establish local contacts, and to begin development of effective implementation strategies for the sites. They also will work with The Network, Inc., a national education evaluation and research organization, to produce concrete measurements for parental behavior changes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally AndersonJoan NagyGregory DeFrancis
The Vermont Center for the Book currently reaches over 1,000 parents in Vermont through the informal science education program, Mother Goose Asks "Why?." Through the program, exemplary children's literature and related science activities are brought to parents of preschool children in a series of four reading/discussion/activity sessions. Participants explore such questions as "What Is It?", "How Many", "How Do You Do It?", and "How Does It Grow?" and gain the expertise and confidence to introduce science to their 3-7 year old children. Many of the parents involved are reached through programs such as Head Start, Adult Basic Education, and Parent Centers. In this current project, the Vermont Center for the Book with make the program available to parents in 12 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands by equipping their state libraries and state centers for the book to conduct the program in local libraries and library service outreach sites in housing projects, on Native American reservations and in prisons. The Vermont Center will train library professionals in the content and process of the program and provide technical support as the new sites begin implementation of the program. At the same time, the Vermont Center will create another program, "You Can Count on Mother Goose," that will be based in books and activities through which parents can introduce their preschool children to basic mathematics ideas. Once created and field-tested, this new program will be disseminated to all of the participating sites.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally AndersonJoan NagyGregory DeFrancis
Science from the Start provides informal science learning opportunities for children, mainly those of pre-school age, along with support and information for their parents/carers. Activities use free or low cost materials to facilitate recreation or expansion at home and address a broad range of scientific topics, often linking with wider local, national or international science awareness events to give extra context. Science from the Start has received funding and support from the Lancashire County Council, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Society for the History of Science, the British Pharmacological Society, and STEMnet.