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Glacial Ridge Monitoring Project
The Center for Early Education
At one time, it may have seemed a little odd to let students at J.A. Hughes
Elementary carry tablet computers into the mud. Today, it happens all the time.
The
Glacial Ridge Monitoring Project brings mobile computing into the
classroom — and takes it out in the field — where students take scientific
measurements to study changes in established prairie and wetland sites over
time, publishing the results in multimedia-rich reports. The project’s roots go
back to August of 2001, when the Nature Conservancy purchased 24,270 acres of
land ten miles south of J.A. Hughes Elementary School in Red Lake Falls,
Minnesota, setting the stage for the largest prairie and wetland restoration
project in U.S. history. The
Glacial Ridge Monitoring Project employs mobile technology to allow
4th, 5th, and 6th grade students to leave the school grounds, get out into
nature, and study how environmental policy changes can restore and protect an
ecosystem.
The project has now become an integral part of the Hughes curriculum, taking
a cross-curricular approach that provides students of diverse backgrounds an
opportunity to understand slow changes over time. As they monitor the
restoration of prairie and wetland sites for changes in plant, animal and insect
species and measure wetland growth on designated sites four times each year,
students see firsthand the subtle shifts that take place in established, complex
ecosystems. The
HP EdTech Innovator Award will allow the Glacial Ridge Monitoring
Project to expand to include seventh and eighth grade science, math, and
multimedia students who were involved with
Glacial Ridge as 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. Students will extend their
use of multimedia technology for individual and collaborative writing;
communication skill building; and creating, publishing and networking
presentations for audiences inside and outside the classrooms.
Links related to the project
- Hughes Elementary School was contacted by the George
Lucas Foundations to film the students’ experiences at
Glacial Ridge. The website,
www.edutopia.org/wetland-ecology-technology-video,
features fourth through sixth grade students from J.A.
Hughes Elementary School in Learning Landscape:
Kids Monitor Terrain with Technology.
-
www.Nature.org/Minnesota features Hughes students as the
next generation of conservationists.
Leapfrogging Mathematics in the Early Start Program
California State University, Monterey Bay
At California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), high school teachers and
students will attend four weeks of boot camp during the summer — mathematics
boot camp, that is.
Leapfrogging Mathematics is an intensive program that partners high
school math teachers with CSUMB faculty to use tablet PCs with new pedagogical
and classroom management strategies to address the needs of remedial math
students. The project’s goals are to reduce the percentage of incoming freshmen
who require remedial math from 60% to under 40%; to work with high school
teachers to invigorate their courses and engage students in mathematics; to
provide an opportunity for high school math teachers to collaborate with college
professors in curriculum development and pedagogy; and to document its
approaches such that it may be replicated across the 23-campus CSU system and
then nationally, so that higher education institutions nationwide can better
meet the needs of struggling and under-achieving learners.
Leapfrogging Mathematics is a new program, but it builds upon
CSUMB’s ongoing experience and successes in courses using tablet PC technology.
Since 2003, working in partnership with HP, CSUMB has spearheaded the use of
this technology in innovative ways across the curriculum. One consistently
effective and expanding program has been remedial math, which serves 500
economically and educationally disadvantaged students each year. Since the fall
of 2007, the students’ passing rate in the CSUMB two-semester math remediation
courses has been over 90%, as compared to the national pass rate of just under
50%. Thanks to the
HP EdTech Innovator Award, Leapfrogging Mathematics will
include a revised curriculum integrating tablet PCs, new approaches to classroom
management, and collaborative learning activities facilitated by the tablet
technology.
Links related to the project
Educational Robotics and Learning by Design
Omar Dengo Foundation
Educational Robotics and Learning by Design establishes rich learning
environments where at-risk children and youth in Costa Rica can study robotics
and other digital technologies. Students are given a safe and welcoming place to
learn and to participate in leisure activities, and in some cases even to
receive a hot meal. Through hands-on activities that allow students to design,
program, and build working robotic machines, the program feeds the human need to
be creative and engages students in active learning. The program promotes
communication, collaboration, creativity, and problem solving, all fundamental
tools for both academic and personal success.
With the HP EdTech Innovator Award, the Omar Dengo Foundation will
extend the program to some of the country’s most vulnerable and underprivileged
communities in an effort to provide an alternate and safe learning environment
for at-risk children and youth and promote their active participation within
their community. Three additional educational robotics laboratories will be
established in underserved communities, attempting to break the cycle of poverty
through an innovative scientific-technological learning model meant to motivate
participants’ desire to learn and better prepare them for their personal and
professional futures.
Tech Savvy Future Scientists & Engineers
Our Lady of the Annunciation Catholic School
Five years ago, Our Lady of the Annunciation Catholic School offered its first
science lab lessons: two parents assisted a homeroom teacher in leading a couple
of labs. Based on the enthusiastic response of the students, the program grew,
and in 2007 a classroom was set aside as a science lab where parent volunteers
provided about thirty labs for six classrooms. A year ago, that science lab was
staffed by a full-time science teacher who offered 250 different labs to 200
students in grades three to six. Student test scores in science have risen 3%
over the past year.
The HP EdTech Innovator Award will allow the school to add tablet
PCs and LanSchool software to the science classroom’s SMARTboard and other
equipment. Students will use the new technology to communicate with their peers
around the world, collaborate on extended projects with thematic tie-ins across
the curriculum, create multimedia lab write-ups, perform online research and
fieldwork, participate in games-based science learning, and become familiar with
some of the tools and technologies used by engineers and scientists. The grant
will help create opportunities for social interaction around science activities,
ensuring the early exposure to science that may lead to future careers in
science and engineering.
e-Education in Physics: A powerful learning environment for 21st
century teaching and learning
University of the Free State
The extended Bachelor’s of Science (B.Sc.) curriculum at the University of the
Free State in South Africa serves a large proportion of students who come to
campus underprepared to pursue a course of study in the sciences. Faced with
challenges stemming from attendance at previously disadvantaged schools,
including language difficulties, outdated learning strategies, teacher-centered
approaches, gender issues, and limited exposure to technology, over 90% of
enrolling students have likely been exposed to inadequate science teaching at
the school level. The extended B.Sc. program was established to accommodate
students who do not meet the entrance requirements for the B.Sc. degree, yet who
have expressed interest in the sciences. The course serves as a bridge for
successful students to progress towards obtaining a B.Sc. degree.
e-Education in Physics focuses on effective learning principles to
support and enhance physics instruction. Tablet PCs are used in collaboration
with data logging software, a personal response system, the Internet, and other
applications to create an environment very different from that experienced by
students in the past — resulting in a new approach to addressing students’
learning issues. Over five hundred students enrolled in 2009-10 and 2010-11.
Those who have completed evaluations of the program rated it very highly in
terms of content, learning resources, teaching and learning, and assessment,
with an especially high rating conferred for technologies used in the classroom.
The HP EdTech Innovator Award will allow the program to expand its
offerings by augmenting the equipment used and introducing an innovative reading
program to support second language students in acquiring language skills to
handle course content by replacing the text of a general reading program with
relevant physics content.
Technology-enhanced Active Learning in the Chemistry Curriculum
Virginia Wesleyan College
At Virginia Wesleyan College, a transformation has been taking place in the
chemistry curriculum. Over the last eight years, courses have changed to more
closely mirror the way scientists work, giving students the opportunity to focus
on inquiry-based experiments and become more actively involved in the learning
process. In the next step of the process, and with the equipment provided by the
HP EdTech Innovator Award, classrooms will transition from active learning
spaces to interactive environments equipped with technology to support
collaboration, interaction between student groups, greater transparency of
student work for instructors, and more immediate feedback for students. In the
laboratory, students will use collaborative mobile technology for the
acquisition, processing, sharing, and comparative analysis of data.
Using tablet PCs to compare and analyze data in real time with immediate
instructor feedback, students will sharpen their evaluation and analytical
skills. Instructors will be able to pose more interesting research questions
with a greater emphasis on experimental design and data analysis than is
possible in traditional verification experiments. In the new, interactive
learning environments that will be made possible with this award, students will
be able to collaborate more closely during active learning exercises in the
classroom and to record, share, and analyze data more readily in the labs.
Student groups will be able to compare their results at the end of a session,
increasing their confidence and deepening understanding. The technology will
also allow students to access visualizations of chemical structures and
manipulate them onscreen, giving them a more thorough grasp of the complex
structural features of compounds, especially large biomolecules — often
difficult for students to visualize unaided.
Deepam-Educating, empowering and lighting lives
Chennai Deepam Society
In Chennai, India, nearly 240 economically disadvantaged children in grades 5-8
are losing their fear of technology and learning to regard computers as engaging
tools for creativity and empowerment. The all-volunteer staff of the Chennai
Deepam Society visit the children, taking along portable computers that they use
to introduce four sets of practical skills, including computers and Internet
usage; English and communication skills; current and social affairs awareness;
and interpersonal development. Using a mentorship model, the volunteers work
with the students over a series of weekly sessions, developing those skill sets
and opening new doors to help the children understand, identify, and access
opportunities for themselves in the future.
Deepam strives to light the spark in the students’ minds and sustain their
curiosity for life. As the students progress through the sessions, there is a
visible change in their attitude towards technology and computers, moving from
fear and anxiety to excitement and confidence. Students typically learn to type
on a computer, understand its basic parts, and get comfortable with Paint,
Office tools, Internet applications, web search, email and chat. With the aid of
computers, they also learn English and read about current happenings around the
world.
The HP EdTech Innovator Award will enable Deepam to identify more
low-income-group communities in Chennai to expand this highly scalable program.
The initial deployment, a summer pilot program, was replicated at six other
centers across the city within a few months. Each Deepam center is a ‘bridge’
between the lesser-privileged children and their community, and the Deepam
resources.
Links related to the project
MTi Malton Technology Initiative Proposal
Ascension of Our Lord Seconary School
In a district challenged by poverty and crime and characterized by some of the
lowest standardized test scores in math, teachers in middle and secondary
schools collaborate to ease the transition from grade 8 to grade 9 and give
students hands-on experiences with innovative technologies. Using technology
previously provided by the
HP Innovations in Education Grant, the Ascension of Our Lord Secondary
School procured HP Mini-note computers for classroom use. Students share the
available Mini-notes, while teachers use tablet PCs and interactive whiteboards
to plan curriculum, deliver lessons, and create collaborative experiences for
math and science students. After a single year, the preliminary results are
impressive: student scores in math and science have increased by 6% and 8%
respectively, and the number of disciplinary student referrals to the office
from math and science classes has decreased.
The HP EdTech Innovator Award will enable the project to expand,
acquiring enough Mini-note computers for each student to use his or own in class
without needing to share. Additionally, new tablet PCs will be used in
conjunction with the Mini-notes, allowing the students to take advantage of
DyKnow software, interactive whiteboards, and more. Most of Ascension of Our
Lord Secondary School’s 800 students do not have access to such tools at home,
so the project also provides them with tools to grow and compete in a digital
world.
Links related to the project
Building of E-classroom and E-Portfolios for Higher Secondary
Business Students for Social Entrepreneurship
Galaxy Education System
In Gujarat, India, 11th- and 12th-grade students of business and management
are reaching out to underprivileged youth who work as child laborers,
teaching them basic literacy. Meanwhile, the business students are raising
money through social entrepreneurship ventures, developing their own
electronic portfolios that showcase their creativity, collaborating closely
with one another and with their teachers, and developing their information
and communication technologies (ICT) skills. These students are in touch
with their teachers around the clock through their e-classrooms, presenting
all work via e-portfolios. Over the past three years, the program has
resulted in demonstrated improvement in ICT skill development for the
business students, as well as a higher literacy rate among the child
laborers. It has also helped teachers to integrate technology into the
classrooms.
Money raised by the business students — Rs. 200,000, or almost $1,800 in US
dollars, to date — is donated to the schools attended by the child laborers,
where the business students also volunteer as teachers. They have furnished
makeshift schools with blackboards, small libraries, and other supplies, and
sponsored trainings for teachers. The
HP EdTech Innovator Award will enable the business students to
introduce technology skills to the children once a basic level of literacy is
achieved, while further developing their own ICT expertise.
Links related to the project:
Fractal Multimídia - The Factory of Learning Objects
Colégio Estadual Embaixador José Bonifácio
At a secondary school in Brazil, students are creating, marketing, and
distributing game-based learning objects to their peers — as well as to the
teachers in the school. Students in the
Fractal Multimídia - The Factory of Learning Objects project run a
simulated multimedia company, but the content they create is quite real.
Students, teachers, counselors, principals, and other stakeholders take part in
a social network that encourages the community to download, test, critique,
special-order, and even remix the materials developed by the students in the
project. The structure of the collective mirrors that of an actual company: for
each project, students are divided into teams that include game designers,
graphic artists, sound artists, programmers and advertisers. In 2009, the
students produced more than 30 learning objects in a variety of disciplines.
The project’s main goals, besides supporting the social network of the school
community, are to sustain a simulated multimedia company run by students; to
help those students understand the importance of collaborative work; to grow a
database of custom learning objects usable by the school community; and to
provide an opportunity for students to develop programming skills. Initially
developed on two computers with 512 Mb of RAM that share eight terminals, the
project will use the
HP EdTech Innovator Award to expand their computer lab, increase
production of learning objects, and allow for further professional development
of the students, possibly including the founding of a real business to market
the students’ work to a wider audience.
Links related to the project
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