Envisioning the future through non-traditional design
Last month I had a chance to run a workshop I designed as part of the Radical Design Series entitled: Malleable Designs - Using Play-Doh to Design the Future, in conjunction with the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) and the University of Toronto.
EvoRoom v.2
Ok, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. It should really read “EvoRoom: The Prequel“ or something to that effect. Let me explain. The second implementation of EvoRoom was actually designed for the biodiversity unit, which comes before the evolution unit in the Ontario Grade 11 Biology curriculum. We’ll be running something very similar to what was described in an earlier EvoRoom post in the new year to complement the evolution unit.
on "science 2.0," international collaborations, and teamwork
I'm not sure what would constitute "science 2.0", officially, but somehow I feel like we have been getting a real taste of it during these past few months.
CSCL 2011 - Great talks and Dim Sum from across the Pacific
Sorry this one took a bit – between the jet lag and all of us here trying to get three (!!!) projects off the ground and running for the end of September things have been a little hectic over here as of late.
EvoRoom v.1
On June 30, 2011, one week after school let out for the summer, eight highly motivated and intelligent high school students returned to their high school to give us some feedback on our first-ever iteration of our immersive simulation in the smart classroom.
Interaction Design and Children, 2011
Ann Arbor, Michigan: June 20-23
In late June, three members of the Encore lab had the opportunity to attend the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC), 2011, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the University of Michigan. The central venue for the conference was the Michigan League, an elegant and historic building, located on campus. The single-stream schedule included paper, poster, and interactive demonstration sessions.
Recipe for a Nutritious Educoder Ontario Workshop
Ingredients
- 24 educational technology researchers and technologists from Norway, the UK, the US, and Canada
- lakeside cottage accommodations
- laptops, tablets, and other research-oriented technological toys devices
- 2 to 3 carloads of food, beverages, and supplies
- nightly fireside chats accompanied by intermittent fireworks
- a healthy dose of cooking and cleaning chores for everyone
- passion for technology and technology-enhanced learning
- collaborative spirit
Let the fun begin!
What happens when you combine eleven grade six students, one master teacher, an embedded phenomena simulation called HelioRoom (Moher et al., 2005; Moher, 2008), five Motorola Xoom tablets with a custom built app that enable students to share their observations and theories with their peers and teacher on an shared display? We began investigating this question earlier this week, when we ran two preliminary trials in an effort to determine if our lab could design and build an
Questions about Knowledge Community Spaces
"Community knowledge space is typically absent from classrooms, making it hard for students’ ideas to be objectified, shared, examined, improved, synthesized, and used as 'thinking devices' "(Zhang et al., 2009, p 6). How can teachers create community knowledge spaces that inform their practices and guide student learning?
AERA 2010 - Looking back on Louisiana
Our lab just came back from AERA 2011 in New Orleans, LA and after taking a bit of time to mentally unpack all the great presentations and talks I attended I thought now would be a good time to share a few of my thoughts.
AERA is a massive conference (over 13000 people attended last year and this year was at least as big) so catching everything was an impossibility – so if anyone caught any other particularly interesting talks feel free to add them in the comments.
Interactive Multitouch Scenario
This is a short video prototype the kinds of interactions we
envision taking place in a fully interactive smart classroom.
This video shows a teacher launching an activity using a
multi-touch table, which then displays the activity content on the large format
displays throughout the classroom.
Canada China workshop: Toward a Global Research Community
On Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, a group of us from Canada (Jim Slotta, Jim Hewitt, Cheryl Madeira and Naxin Zhao from OISE, Liz Charles from Dawson College, and Alyssa Wise from Simon Fraser) gathered together in Huizhou, CHina, with a dozen or more scholars from China (see draft of Conference Guide) as well as a small audience of local participants (postgraduate students from South China Normal, etc) to present our work on education and technology.
