Successful peer-to-peer practices in informal science learning (ISL) are often not well defined, but further investigation has the potential to help uncover how to motivate and scaffold children's joint learning in science and engineering. Team Hamster!, a PBS KIDS interactive digital series that helps youth think creatively and use engineering skills to solve problems with everyday tools, will be used to achieve the goals of this project.
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
In recent years, transmedia has come into the spotlight among those creating and using media and technology for children. We believe that transmedia has the potential to be a valuable tool for expanded learning that addresses some of the challenges facing children growing up in the digital age. Produced by the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, this paper provides a much-needed guidebook to transmedia in the lives of children age 5-11 and its applications to storytelling, play, and learning. Building off of a review of the existing popular and scholarly literature
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Becky Herr-StephensonMeryl AlperErin Reilly
This assessment serves as the summative assessment of the IMLS-funded project at KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum: Natural History Mystery: Immersing families in a problem-solving game using museum collections. The assessment employs a mixed methods approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative data are collected. More specifically, quantitative data are generated from surveys that are administered to participants at the beginning and end of the game and analyzed by using descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, standard deviation, and histogram) and paired sample t-test
The University of Kansas Natural History Museum, in collaboration with the University of California Museum of Paleontology, will develop, test, and deploy an immersive educational game on the topic of evolution and common ancestry. The museum will frame the game with a narrative that involves tracing the origin of a zoonotic disease (infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans or from humans to animals). Played on the museum floor, the escape room-inspired game will explore innovative formats for museum learning and engagement. It is being designed for families with children ages 7 to 12, and by visiting groups of schoolchildren in grades 3 to 5.
AHA! Island is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking (CT) concepts and practices. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted an impact study with 108 English-speaking families (4- to 5-year-old children and their families) to test the promise of this CT learning intervention.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marisa WolskyHeather LavigneJessica AndrewsAshley Lewis-PresserLeslie CuellarRegan VidiksisCamille Ferguson
The project team is developing a prototype of Thinking Time, a tablet-based app and game for early learners (ages 3- to 6-years-old) that provides cognitive training games based on neuropsychological research. Game play will be self-guided and adaptive, and will support the development of working memory, attention and impulse control, and flexibility. The goal is to promote academic readiness by scaffolding cognitive skills during the early years of heightened brain plasticity. In the Phase I pilot research, the project team will examine whether the software prototype functions as planned, if teachers are able to integrate it within the classroom environment, and whether children are engaged with the prototype.
Purpose: This project will develop and test Kiko's Thinking Time, a series of game apps designed to strengthen children's cognitive skills related to executive functioning and reasoning. A principle objective of preschool is to prepare children for later success in school. Most programs focus on activities to support children's social and emotional development, and to strengthen pre-reading and mathematics competencies. Fewer programs explicitly focus on fostering children's executive function and reasoning skills—even though research in the cognitive sciences demonstrates these skills also provide a foundation for school-readiness.
Project Activities: During Phase I (completed in 2014), the team developed six prototype games and a teacher portal to track student progress. At the end of Phase I, results from a pilot study with 55 kindergarten students and 5 teachers demonstrated that the games operated as intended. Results indicated that students were engaged based on duration of game play, and that teachers were able to review game data for each child. In Phase II, the team will develop 15 more games and will further refine and enhance the functionality of the teacher portal. After development is complete, a pilot study will assess the feasibility and usability, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the games for promoting students' executive functioning and reasoning. The researchers will collect data from 200 students in 10 preschool classrooms over 2 months. Half of the students in each class will be randomly assigned to use Kiko's Thinking Time while the other half will play an art-focused gaming app. Analyses will compare pre-and-post scores on measures of student's executive functioning and reasoning.
Product: Kiko's Thinking Time will be an app with 25 games, each based on tasks shown to have cognitive benefits in lab research. Each game will be designed to isolate and train skills related to executive functioning, such as: working memory, reasoning, inhibition, selective attention, cognitive flexibility, and spatial skills. Game play will be self-guided and adaptive, as the software will adjust in difficulty based on student responses. The app will work on tablets, smartphones, as well desktops. In addition, a companion website will allow teachers to track student performance and to obtain educational material around executive function and cognitive development.
With this Phase I funding, the project team will develop and test a prototype of the Toddler App and Cane which is intended to improve functional and adaptive school readiness skills for toddlers with visual impairments. The prototype will include a wearable hardware-based cane that wraps around a child's waist and provides tactile and audio cues to facilitate walking, a curriculum with game activities and walking routes, and an app that provides updates to special education practitioners and parents on their children's progress. In a pilot study with 10 toddlers with visual impairments, and their teachers and parents, the researchers will examine whether the prototype functions as planned, whether toddlers are engaged while using the prototype, and if teachers and parents believe the fully developed intervention will lead to increases in independence and school readiness.