Digital Media

In this structured poster session, a set of projects will present and discuss resources, models, and tools (RMTs) designed to support upper elementary teachers to implement an array of curricular and instructional interventions reflecting diverse disciplinary concepts and practices embodied in NGSS. The session aims to provide a forum for exploring diverse approaches to improving science in 3^rd-5^th-grade classrooms and engage in discussion about how these ideas can advance systemic efforts to support quality science instruction and student learning. 

In this interactive panel symposium, presenters will draw from a set of active DR K-12 projects to explore a diverse array of resources, models, and tools (RMTs) designed to operationalize varying perspectives on scientific modeling in elementary, middle, and secondary classrooms across disciplinary domains.

The goal of this session is to assist other project teams in the design and testing of game-based mathematics products. The session includes a discussion of recently completed randomized control trials of the Math Snacks games. Participants leave with concrete ideas on designing and testing e-learning products designed for classroom use with a focus on middle school concepts.

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and project partners are developing an online course for high school science teachers. The purpose of the course is to help teachers understand key energy concepts in alternative energy contexts. The course includes three interactive learning experiences (interactives) that use life cycle data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Research has shown that curriculum-based professional development for teachers is a key component in the effective implementation of innovative, researched-based science curricula. Scaling up to a broad-based national market, however, is logistically constrained and limited by the traditional face-to-face professional development model. A key factor in a districts’ decision-making process affecting the adoption of a research-based curricula is their ability to provide the necessary on-going and timely professional development.

Digital, large-scale scientific data have become broadly available in recent decades, and analyzing data, identifying patterns, and extracting useful information have become gateway skills to full participation in the 21st century workforce. Yet, pre-college classrooms are falling short in preparing students for this world and are missing opportunities to harness the power of Big Data to engage students in scientific learning. To address this issue, scientists, educators, and researchers at Education Development Center, Inc.

The three panelists in this session are in the last one or two years of their game-based learning projects, and all have done extensive work in supporting use of their games in classroom learning. As their work has progressed, each has discovered valuable ways to support teachers as well as encountered surprises in what teachers wanted (and didn’t want), and now recognize things they wished they had learned in the beginning of their projects. Session participants leave with recommendations they can use in their current projects, including:

As educators, you may be skilled at identifying a really good educational product. You can review an educational game and, based on observation and testing (or your own developed intuition), you can know if it is effective and engaging. The more difficult task includes learning how to develop a multimedia product—reviewing early prototypes of a game or animation, and changing it many times so that it meets the learning goals while also engaging potential students. This process often involves dumping many unsuccessful attempts as well as starting over.