Connecting science learning across settings can be a challenge. In Science Everywhere, we work with communities to develop science inquiry through family science nights, after-school programs, and classroom implementations using a sociotechnical system. Using cooperative inquiry participatory design techniques, we have worked with our stakeholders to create a social media-type system that can be used on mobile devices and shared with the community on large tangible displays. We hope to further explore how learning and inquiry can connect a community and how technology can facilitate this endeavor.
Discussion from the 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase (19 posts)
Brian Drayton
Researcher
May 14, 2018 | 08:18 a.m.
Nice work!
What are you learning about what parents or "the community" think is science? How do the kids react to any differences that may arise between what they're learning in school, and what their parents or others might be saying in this environment?
- brian
June Ahn
Co-Presenter
May 14, 2018 | 10:17 a.m.
Thanks so much Brian! I think one of the biggest observations we've made are how parents and other adults in the community have started to recognize that all of their children's everyday interests and activities, can be reframed through a lens of science -- what my colleague Dr. Tammy Clegg calls "scientizing" one's world. In that sense, we're observing how people in the community start to see less disconnect between school and out-of-school science, and more that we can think of all of our varied experiences through a science lens. We're hoping that this integration and synthesis can help communities broaden participation and include more local voices in the science learning process.
This is wonderful work, Science Everywhere Team! I enjoyed your video and I can see many similarities between our two projects, especially the aspects of involving families as co-learners and finding ways to make science relevant within the context of daily life. Your mobile app that allows for kids to document and share their science experiences is so cool, as are the badges that participants can award each other. These are goals that my team has for our work and you've done it really well. My question is around participation - how actively do kids and their families participate in these digital spaces? Are they more active during workshops and other facilitated activities, or do they sustain their participation here over time?
Also, in what types of community settings do you feature the interactive displays (speaking as a public librarian, here).
[One other thing: Hi, Dr. Clegg, I am a YX student and recently took your Design Thinking course a few months ago!]
Great work!
Caroline Pitt
Lead Presenter Graduate Research Assistant
May 14, 2018 | 04:57 p.m.
Hi Ashley!
Hopefully Tammy will get a chance to say hi soon. From my experience at the PNW site, families tend to be a bit more active around the displays during activities (like Family Science Night), but there's a certain amount of interaction over time, especially if new content is being posted regularly to attract folks to the displays. The students at the school we work with tend to visit the display during lulls between activities (in class, during after-school programs, etc.)
Currently the displays are located in school and church environments, libraries are also a good option. One of our largest displays is located in the library of the school we work with in the PNW. The school librarian has told us that the kids love seeing their friends on the display!
Thank you for your question and comment!
Caroline Pitt
Lead Presenter Graduate Research Assistant
May 14, 2018 | 03:22 p.m.
Hello everyone!
I hope you are enjoying the video showcase thus far. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding our work, we are happy to answer them.
I would like to thank Lautaro Cabrera for all his work on editing the video and our PIs Tamara Clegg, June Ahn, and Jason Yip for their leadership in this project.
Thank you for watching and engaging!
Daniel Damelin
Facilitator Senior Scientist
May 14, 2018 | 03:48 p.m.
Is the project mostly around creating the social media software and displays or are significant components dedicated to fostering opportunities for "scientizing?" What ways do you encourage students to bring a science lens to their everyday experiences?
Jason Yip
Co-Presenter Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
May 14, 2018 | 03:53 p.m.
Hi Daniel, it's actually both. In order to create "scientizing" opportunities around the entire neighborhood, we had to create our own mobile social app and the public displays. We had considered Facebook, Twitter, Instagram API, but we found through co-design that users wanted to keep these separate from science practices. To encourage students to bring a science lens, we ask for all kinds of postings that they believe relate to science, we put scaffolding questions into the social media prompts, and we have badges that indicate science learning (curiosity, collaboration, investigator, and interesting).
June Ahn
Co-Presenter
May 15, 2018 | 07:41 a.m.
Hi Daniel, that is a great question. A substantial portion of our project is partnering with our local neighborhoods to facilitate and make visible, the variety of out-of-school learning programs in the neighborhood. We also work closely with teachers in the neighborhood public schools to implement our Science Everywhere model and technologies in the classroom. We find that these community and school components, are extremely necessary to provide rich settings for the kids to share about. In our work, we encourage learners to bring a science lens "everywhere" --- when they are in school they see the displays and use the app/displays for formal learning activiites, in community settings like the local church or after school program, they see the displays and interact with parents, neighbors, and other educators, and at home kids might quickly share something they're doing (like watching a basketball game) and post about their observations, wonderings, or connections to other ideas. We've been heartened to see that this kind of thinking through a science lens can be fostered neighborhood-wide, by making it ubiquitous, relevant, and connected to the people that learners care about (the folks in their neighborhood). Our technologies largely amplify and encourage those activities, but the source of the activities (for me) come from the local communities we partner with.
Excellent work. It is exciting to see how your project broadens participation of students integrating communities and extending learning opportunities outside school. Have you had any challenges regarding the adoption of technology in different communities? Have schools adopted the use of technology or your site to generate classroom discussions or activities related to science? Have you been able to assess student engagement or motivation towards STEM as a project outcome?
Jason Yip
Co-Presenter Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
May 15, 2018 | 08:23 p.m.
Have you had any challenges regarding the adoption of technology in different communities? - Yes, it's not easy to adopt social media technologies like this in schools. For instance, some schools lock down the camera on iPads, while other schools may have a "no smartphone" rule in place. These are factors we are exploring.
Have schools adopted the use of technology or your site to generate classroom discussions or activities related to science? - Yes, we've done a couple school implementations of our Science Everywhere technologies. We are focusing on seeing how teachers differ in their usage in comparison to say a church or an afterschool program.
Have you been able to assess student engagement or motivation towards STEM as a project outcome? - Yes, we just had a paper published at Interaction Design and Children looking at funds of knowledge and what resources children use in STEM learning (http://bigyipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...) and how learning moves across settings using social media (http://bigyipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...)
Great presentation, SE team! What I find particularly appreciative of Science Everywhere is the part where the team co-designs the study with youths, in addition to parents and leaders in the community, by taking into account their science-related interests that are personally relevant and engaging.
One question that I would like to raise to the team is, how are you interpreting the term "community" in your study?
Jason Yip
Co-Presenter Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
May 15, 2018 | 08:23 p.m.
We focused on local neighborhoods as communities. So one community was the local school and the surrounding families (Washington), while the other community was a church + school and the surrounding families (Maryland).
Carrie Willis
Facilitator Technology Director and Teacher
May 16, 2018 | 09:39 p.m.
So it is kind of like a science twitter newsfeed for students! I am wondering if any community members have been able to connect with students and help with their learning or exposure to real world science connections. That would be fabulous if that was happening as a result of the community boards.
Jason Yip
Co-Presenter Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
May 17, 2018 | 12:19 a.m.
Hi, if you skim through the findings section of this paper, you'll see examples of the displays helping to connect families, teachers, and students about everyday science practices.
Great work! In your work connecting learning across settings, are you working with informal learning environments such as parks, gardens, zoos, and museums?
June Ahn
Co-Presenter
May 19, 2018 | 02:29 p.m.
Hi Kris. Yes! A huge part of our project has been partnering with informal learning environments. We have not specifically worked with parks, zoos, and museums, but we partner directly with after-school programs (several of which further intersect with other informal learning settings). Our vision for this project is that any and all kinds of informal programs, formal schools, neighborhood groups, and home (families, parents etc.) can all start to be aware of young people's rich learning and coordinate support in more effective ways.
James Diamond
Facilitator Research Scientist
May 20, 2018 | 01:12 p.m.
Hi—thanks for sharing this work! Can you say a bit more about the extent to which you help youth and adults structure their feedback to each other? I guess I'm thinking in terms of accountable talk routines, or questions that you think might help both the creator and the observer/experiencer help one another to think about things like underlying science/engineering principles, or ways to support design methods. On the flip side, I imagine you might be concerned about over-structuring that sort of inquiry and dialogue, lest you make it a chore.
Thanks again for sharing—it looks like a terrific project.
Love the idea of connecting learning between school,s after school, home and community settings. Not so sure how I feel about the term "scientitize".
Jason Yip
Co-Presenter Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
May 21, 2018 | 01:48 p.m.
That's a good reaction to what "scientizing" is.
Scientizing is a term that Tammy Clegg and Janet Kolodner came up with in their Science Education paper to explain how and why people use science inquiry practices in their everyday lives.
Sadly, we think that scientizing is often not the norm of science education in young people’s lives. But it can be an important concept to encourage people to pursue science learning.
We've found in some of the life-relevant learning environments, when young people scientize, they take on new roles in science learning and feel empowered to use science practices to improve their world.
For instance, in our new IDC 2018 paper, we explore how youth share Science Everywhere postings that are not science related; many people might initially even dismiss them as just random postings. However, we found that even random postings can have rationales and contextual relevance to science learning. We would argue these posts are attempts to scientize and trying to make personal connections that help to connect youth knowledge to science practices.
Brian Drayton
Nice work!
What are you learning about what parents or "the community" think is science? How do the kids react to any differences that may arise between what they're learning in school, and what their parents or others might be saying in this environment?
- brian
June Ahn
Thanks so much Brian! I think one of the biggest observations we've made are how parents and other adults in the community have started to recognize that all of their children's everyday interests and activities, can be reframed through a lens of science -- what my colleague Dr. Tammy Clegg calls "scientizing" one's world. In that sense, we're observing how people in the community start to see less disconnect between school and out-of-school science, and more that we can think of all of our varied experiences through a science lens. We're hoping that this integration and synthesis can help communities broaden participation and include more local voices in the science learning process.
Ashley Braun
This is wonderful work, Science Everywhere Team! I enjoyed your video and I can see many similarities between our two projects, especially the aspects of involving families as co-learners and finding ways to make science relevant within the context of daily life. Your mobile app that allows for kids to document and share their science experiences is so cool, as are the badges that participants can award each other. These are goals that my team has for our work and you've done it really well. My question is around participation - how actively do kids and their families participate in these digital spaces? Are they more active during workshops and other facilitated activities, or do they sustain their participation here over time?
Also, in what types of community settings do you feature the interactive displays (speaking as a public librarian, here).
[One other thing: Hi, Dr. Clegg, I am a YX student and recently took your Design Thinking course a few months ago!]
Great work!
Caroline Pitt
Graduate Research Assistant
Hi Ashley!
Hopefully Tammy will get a chance to say hi soon. From my experience at the PNW site, families tend to be a bit more active around the displays during activities (like Family Science Night), but there's a certain amount of interaction over time, especially if new content is being posted regularly to attract folks to the displays. The students at the school we work with tend to visit the display during lulls between activities (in class, during after-school programs, etc.)
Currently the displays are located in school and church environments, libraries are also a good option. One of our largest displays is located in the library of the school we work with in the PNW. The school librarian has told us that the kids love seeing their friends on the display!
Thank you for your question and comment!
Caroline Pitt
Graduate Research Assistant
Hello everyone!
I hope you are enjoying the video showcase thus far. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding our work, we are happy to answer them.
I would like to thank Lautaro Cabrera for all his work on editing the video and our PIs Tamara Clegg, June Ahn, and Jason Yip for their leadership in this project.
Thank you for watching and engaging!
Daniel Damelin
Senior Scientist
Is the project mostly around creating the social media software and displays or are significant components dedicated to fostering opportunities for "scientizing?" What ways do you encourage students to bring a science lens to their everyday experiences?
Jason Yip
Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
Hi Daniel, it's actually both. In order to create "scientizing" opportunities around the entire neighborhood, we had to create our own mobile social app and the public displays. We had considered Facebook, Twitter, Instagram API, but we found through co-design that users wanted to keep these separate from science practices. To encourage students to bring a science lens, we ask for all kinds of postings that they believe relate to science, we put scaffolding questions into the social media prompts, and we have badges that indicate science learning (curiosity, collaboration, investigator, and interesting).
June Ahn
Hi Daniel, that is a great question. A substantial portion of our project is partnering with our local neighborhoods to facilitate and make visible, the variety of out-of-school learning programs in the neighborhood. We also work closely with teachers in the neighborhood public schools to implement our Science Everywhere model and technologies in the classroom. We find that these community and school components, are extremely necessary to provide rich settings for the kids to share about. In our work, we encourage learners to bring a science lens "everywhere" --- when they are in school they see the displays and use the app/displays for formal learning activiites, in community settings like the local church or after school program, they see the displays and interact with parents, neighbors, and other educators, and at home kids might quickly share something they're doing (like watching a basketball game) and post about their observations, wonderings, or connections to other ideas. We've been heartened to see that this kind of thinking through a science lens can be fostered neighborhood-wide, by making it ubiquitous, relevant, and connected to the people that learners care about (the folks in their neighborhood). Our technologies largely amplify and encourage those activities, but the source of the activities (for me) come from the local communities we partner with.
Cristina Pomales-Garcia
Excellent work. It is exciting to see how your project broadens participation of students integrating communities and extending learning opportunities outside school. Have you had any challenges regarding the adoption of technology in different communities? Have schools adopted the use of technology or your site to generate classroom discussions or activities related to science? Have you been able to assess student engagement or motivation towards STEM as a project outcome?
Jason Yip
Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
Have you had any challenges regarding the adoption of technology in different communities? - Yes, it's not easy to adopt social media technologies like this in schools. For instance, some schools lock down the camera on iPads, while other schools may have a "no smartphone" rule in place. These are factors we are exploring.
Have schools adopted the use of technology or your site to generate classroom discussions or activities related to science? - Yes, we've done a couple school implementations of our Science Everywhere technologies. We are focusing on seeing how teachers differ in their usage in comparison to say a church or an afterschool program.
Have you been able to assess student engagement or motivation towards STEM as a project outcome? - Yes, we just had a paper published at Interaction Design and Children looking at funds of knowledge and what resources children use in STEM learning (http://bigyipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...) and how learning moves across settings using social media (http://bigyipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...)
Hannoori Jeong
Great presentation, SE team! What I find particularly appreciative of Science Everywhere is the part where the team co-designs the study with youths, in addition to parents and leaders in the community, by taking into account their science-related interests that are personally relevant and engaging.
One question that I would like to raise to the team is, how are you interpreting the term "community" in your study?
Jason Yip
Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
We focused on local neighborhoods as communities. So one community was the local school and the surrounding families (Washington), while the other community was a church + school and the surrounding families (Maryland).
Carrie Willis
Technology Director and Teacher
So it is kind of like a science twitter newsfeed for students! I am wondering if any community members have been able to connect with students and help with their learning or exposure to real world science connections. That would be fabulous if that was happening as a result of the community boards.
Jason Yip
Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
Hi, if you skim through the findings section of this paper, you'll see examples of the displays helping to connect families, teachers, and students about everyday science practices.
http://bigyipper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01...
Kris Morrissey
Great work! In your work connecting learning across settings, are you working with informal learning environments such as parks, gardens, zoos, and museums?
June Ahn
Hi Kris. Yes! A huge part of our project has been partnering with informal learning environments. We have not specifically worked with parks, zoos, and museums, but we partner directly with after-school programs (several of which further intersect with other informal learning settings). Our vision for this project is that any and all kinds of informal programs, formal schools, neighborhood groups, and home (families, parents etc.) can all start to be aware of young people's rich learning and coordinate support in more effective ways.
James Diamond
Research Scientist
Hi—thanks for sharing this work! Can you say a bit more about the extent to which you help youth and adults structure their feedback to each other? I guess I'm thinking in terms of accountable talk routines, or questions that you think might help both the creator and the observer/experiencer help one another to think about things like underlying science/engineering principles, or ways to support design methods. On the flip side, I imagine you might be concerned about over-structuring that sort of inquiry and dialogue, lest you make it a chore.
Thanks again for sharing—it looks like a terrific project.
Yasmin Kafai
Love the idea of connecting learning between school,s after school, home and community settings. Not so sure how I feel about the term "scientitize".
Jason Yip
Assistant Professor of Digital Youth
That's a good reaction to what "scientizing" is.
Scientizing is a term that Tammy Clegg and Janet Kolodner came up with in their Science Education paper to explain how and why people use science inquiry practices in their everyday lives.
Sadly, we think that scientizing is often not the norm of science education in young people’s lives. But it can be an important concept to encourage people to pursue science learning.
We've found in some of the life-relevant learning environments, when young people scientize, they take on new roles in science learning and feel empowered to use science practices to improve their world.
For instance, in our new IDC 2018 paper, we explore how youth share Science Everywhere postings that are not science related; many people might initially even dismiss them as just random postings. However, we found that even random postings can have rationales and contextual relevance to science learning. We would argue these posts are attempts to scientize and trying to make personal connections that help to connect youth knowledge to science practices.
Further posting is closed as the event has ended.