Using New Media to Promote Cognitive Change and Academic Achievement
All of the above projects share a focus on the meditational means and social structuring of activity needed to understand/promote learning and development. Studies in this cluster of projects focus on teaching/learning, development-enhancing education where the participants are physically separated from each other by great distances. Thus, use of inexpensive means of collaborating closely in teaching and research combined with social organization of instruction has naturally captured our attention, especially at the level of higher education. Projecting Expertise to Promote Conceptual Development in Informal Learning Environments . A major shortcoming of multiple attempts by NSF and other national level organizations to create useful science activities for use in informal afterschool setting such as youth clubs is that the implementers of the activity understand the associated concepts to shallowly to make them intellectually stimulating to children. In this work we team with colleagues from Tufts University (Science Education) and the University of Colorado (Physics) seeking to understand how cheap internet video combined with cutting edge programming environments designed for children, can induce deep conceptual change in 8 year olds. This work has succeed in creating an existence proof of such practices and is currently expanding its activities. (Researchers: University of Colorado, Boulder: Noah Finkelstein, Laurel Mayhew; Tufts University: Brian Gravel, Chris Rogers, William Church; UCSD: Michael Cole, Robert Lecusay)