research

We will present the Village e-Science for Life project results in a seminar on Science, technology and innovation for poverty reduction, organised by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, and EPSRC. The VeSeL kit, including solar-powered laptop, GPRS modem, and handheld sensors, along with free and open-source blogging and other software tools, has shown some degree of success in the villages in rural Kenya we've worked with. Project details here. Further details about the event here.

In the last 5 years, the United Kingdom has seen new technologies rapidly enter classrooms, feeding a new generation of children who grow up surrounded by technology--so-called digital natives.

Article by Angela Saini in which I get a mention, but even cooler is the stuff at Durham and Leicester she writes about.

Museum educators recognise the power of handling objects and tactile learning, but of course handling sessions must be supervised lest the objects go home with someone.

But why shouldn't they? A great site for handling objects is the shop, and this has been reinforced to me recently on three separate occasions.

Some notes from

Wise, A., T.M. Duffy and P. Padmanabhan. How and why to use a common referent to connect learners with diverse local practices. Educational Technology Jul-Aug 2008, 3-11.

Simply belonging to the same field or having shared interest is not enough - shared practice means coordination of language, tools, ideas. So everyone in the online community may be teachers, but their individual (local) practice will vary widely.

Engagement is higher when learners share experience(s). Such shared practice is a critical reference point for understanding what others are saying.

I conducted a workshop, and gave a keynote lecture at the Danish Museums Association conference in Nyborg. Participants in the workshop can login at left with their mobile number to retrieve trails they created.

Workshop
Connections – technology-enhanced learning and the physical museum space

In this workshop, participants will experiment with using mobile digital technologies to bridge physical and digital exhibition spaces. The focus is not on technical aspects, rather on how to design and structure activities which utilize technologies to emphasize learning and meaning making. In addition, the workshop will emphasize a two-way exchange of information between gallery and web site, with visitor-generated content regarded as important as information delivered by the museum.

I've thus far steered clear of agents, avatars and so-called artificial intelligence. However, check out Silvia. Go to About and click on the face to see a video demo. If you've got about 15 minutes, you'll at least be rewarded with Leslie's hilarious Schwarzenegger impersonation.

Although Silvia appears to have scripted answers to questions (particularly about herself and about sci fi movies, reflecting the interests of her creator), the really impressive thing about Silvia is that it is language-independent. And, presumably, can listen and learn from conversations - though this is not apparent from the demo, in which she generally only answers, not asks, questions. Stay tuned...

Posted here. Barely transcribed from a very noisy Cafe Nero. He talks about motes, trails, microservers, feral robots, Snout, ZigBee, and other aspects of sensor networks, as they relate to learning.

This report now available here; I wrote the intro.

... exploring the convergence of mobile, inquiry and collaborative learning. I presented a paper: A method for creating collaborative mobile learning trails. The workshop is described further here.

is now posted, in which the LKL prof. talks about her background and current projects. These follow several themes - scaffolding learners, affective issues, and moving away from screens and schools. Watch out for the part when the kids beat up the cute cuddly toy. I conducted this interview back in Sept. 2006.