The Becta research project on Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 has five pr... more The Becta research project on Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 has five primary objectives:
This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry ... more This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry learning. nQuire provides teacher support for authoring, orchestrating and monitoring inquiries as well as student support for carrying out, configuring and reviewing inquiries. nQuire allows inquiries to be scripted and configured in various ways, so that personally relevant, rather than off-the-shelf inquiries, can be created and used by teachers and students. nQuire incorporates an approach to specifying learning flow that provides flexible access to current inquiry activities without precluding access to other activities for review and orientation. Dependencies between activities are automatically handled, ensuring decisions made by the student or teacher are propagated through the inquiry. nQuire can be used to support inquiry activities across individual, group and class levels at different parts of the inquiry and offers a flexible, web-based approach that can incorporate different devices (smart phone, netbook, PC) and does not rely on constant connectivity.
This paper explores the value of employing multiple modalities to facilitate science learning wit... more This paper explores the value of employing multiple modalities to facilitate science learning with technology. In particular, it is argued that when multiple modalities are employed, learners construct strong relations between physical movement and visual representations of motion. Body interactions with visual representations, enabled by interactive technologies, can encourage rhythmic cycles of engagement and reflection. A study was carried out to investigate how students interpret distance-time and velocity time graphs created through hand movement. It explored the dynamic coupling between their body movements and graphs, and their subsequent interpretation and production of graphs on paper. The results show that physical manipulation of kinematics graphs has a significantly greater effect on students' ability to relate graphs to movement than observing the graphs being produced by someone else.
Abstract Our hands-on workshop convenes educational designers and learning technology architects ... more Abstract Our hands-on workshop convenes educational designers and learning technology architects to author inquiry learning activities and user experiences. Participants will use a scenario editor to design classroom and field activities based on pedagogical approaches such as personal inquiry. Designs will be implemented using modeling tools, mobile devices and inquiry management tools provided by the organizers. Participants will gain insight into new pedagogical and technological approaches for inquiry learning and discuss ...
This paper describes a study that investigates the use of a multimodal technology in a learning t... more This paper describes a study that investigates the use of a multimodal technology in a learning task. In relation to the recent interest in learning as a multimodal experience, the use of a technology to acquire and visualize data while in a learning task in real time is argued to be beneficial and enjoyable for pupils. A study is described which investigates whether using the learner's own movements or viewing someone else's movements produces different outcomes when learning about kinematics graphs.
The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop tech... more The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop technology between formal and informal settings. It presents a trial of the technology and learning across a school classroom, sports hall, and library. The main aim of the study was to incorporate inquiry learning activities within an extended school science environment in order to investigate opportunities for technological mediations and to extract initial recommendations for the design of mobile technology to link inquiry learning across ...
This paper will draw on research work, currently being undertaken as part of the Personal Inquiry... more This paper will draw on research work, currently being undertaken as part of the Personal Inquiry (PI) project to explore how evidence-based inquiry learning can be supported and resourced. The PI project aims to understand how personal and mobile technologies can be designed and deployed to make the processes of evidence-based scientific inquiry personally relevant and readily accessible to young people (aged 11-15 years). It also aims to support the continuity of science learning between classrooms and non-formal settings. ...
An inquiry-led investigation with technology was designed and implemented, aiming to enhance our ... more An inquiry-led investigation with technology was designed and implemented, aiming to enhance our understanding of how inquiry learning takes place within a personal, socio-cultural and institutional context. Children used personal technologies across contexts, to plan and collect evidence, analyse and share their work. These technologies are boundary objects, connecting students' experiences across the classroom, out-of-class activities, a fieldtrip and the home, and enabling students to carry out inquiry activities autonomously. The science teacher aimed to maintain a sense of continuity across contexts by utilising specific management strategies: interchanging between highlighting and constraining technology use, ensuring that all students know what they need to do in and out of class, communicating interdependencies among groups and by translating group data to an overview of the whole class data. These strategies are identified as prerequisites for any successful inquiry learning experience to take place.
The aim of this project was to identify and review the tools, methods and frameworks used to eval... more The aim of this project was to identify and review the tools, methods and frameworks used to evaluate technology supported or enhanced physical learning spaces. A key objective was to develop the sector knowledgebase on innovation and emerging practice in the evaluation of learning spaces, identifying innovative methods and approaches beyond traditional post-occupancy evaluations and surveys that have dominated this area to date. The intention was that the frameworks and guidelines discovered or developed from this study could inform all stages of the process of implementing a technology supported physical learning space. The study was primarily targeted at the UK higher education sector and the further education sector where appropriate, and ran from September 2008 to March 2009.
This report presents findings that are relevant to a leadership and policy audience drawing upon ... more This report presents findings that are relevant to a leadership and policy audience drawing upon a broad selection of Capital work. In the first year of this work, we carried out a research-based investigation into the conditions of innovation and implementation of technology-based innovation in Education. This work helped identify claims about the widespread adoption of technologies to support learning and also blockages to the process of adoption.
We often hear competing media and research claims such as these about the educational value of ne... more We often hear competing media and research claims such as these about the educational value of new technologies. But often it is not clear how, or indeed if, these technologies are supporting learning. And, importantly, there is often little attention to the challenges of trying to introduce these technologies successfully into an educational context.
Assessing is described in the framework in terms of an interpersonal dialogue with the learner, i... more Assessing is described in the framework in terms of an interpersonal dialogue with the learner, in order to provide timely and high quality feedback on some activity. However, to understand the uptake of assessment tools that employ new technology, it is important to understand the context of current assessment practice. In particular, to appreciate the many situations where assessing the learner is used to evaluate both the teacher and institution as well as provide a summative record of the learner‟ s ability and determine access to further
The Becta research project on Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 has five pr... more The Becta research project on Web 2.0 technologies for learning at Key Stages 3 and 4 has five primary objectives:
This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry ... more This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry learning. nQuire provides teacher support for authoring, orchestrating and monitoring inquiries as well as student support for carrying out, configuring and reviewing inquiries. nQuire allows inquiries to be scripted and configured in various ways, so that personally relevant, rather than off-the-shelf inquiries, can be created and used by teachers and students. nQuire incorporates an approach to specifying learning flow that provides flexible access to current inquiry activities without precluding access to other activities for review and orientation. Dependencies between activities are automatically handled, ensuring decisions made by the student or teacher are propagated through the inquiry. nQuire can be used to support inquiry activities across individual, group and class levels at different parts of the inquiry and offers a flexible, web-based approach that can incorporate different devices (smart phone, netbook, PC) and does not rely on constant connectivity.
This paper explores the value of employing multiple modalities to facilitate science learning wit... more This paper explores the value of employing multiple modalities to facilitate science learning with technology. In particular, it is argued that when multiple modalities are employed, learners construct strong relations between physical movement and visual representations of motion. Body interactions with visual representations, enabled by interactive technologies, can encourage rhythmic cycles of engagement and reflection. A study was carried out to investigate how students interpret distance-time and velocity time graphs created through hand movement. It explored the dynamic coupling between their body movements and graphs, and their subsequent interpretation and production of graphs on paper. The results show that physical manipulation of kinematics graphs has a significantly greater effect on students' ability to relate graphs to movement than observing the graphs being produced by someone else.
Abstract Our hands-on workshop convenes educational designers and learning technology architects ... more Abstract Our hands-on workshop convenes educational designers and learning technology architects to author inquiry learning activities and user experiences. Participants will use a scenario editor to design classroom and field activities based on pedagogical approaches such as personal inquiry. Designs will be implemented using modeling tools, mobile devices and inquiry management tools provided by the organizers. Participants will gain insight into new pedagogical and technological approaches for inquiry learning and discuss ...
This paper describes a study that investigates the use of a multimodal technology in a learning t... more This paper describes a study that investigates the use of a multimodal technology in a learning task. In relation to the recent interest in learning as a multimodal experience, the use of a technology to acquire and visualize data while in a learning task in real time is argued to be beneficial and enjoyable for pupils. A study is described which investigates whether using the learner's own movements or viewing someone else's movements produces different outcomes when learning about kinematics graphs.
The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop tech... more The paper describes a project to support personal inquiry learning with handheld and desktop technology between formal and informal settings. It presents a trial of the technology and learning across a school classroom, sports hall, and library. The main aim of the study was to incorporate inquiry learning activities within an extended school science environment in order to investigate opportunities for technological mediations and to extract initial recommendations for the design of mobile technology to link inquiry learning across ...
This paper will draw on research work, currently being undertaken as part of the Personal Inquiry... more This paper will draw on research work, currently being undertaken as part of the Personal Inquiry (PI) project to explore how evidence-based inquiry learning can be supported and resourced. The PI project aims to understand how personal and mobile technologies can be designed and deployed to make the processes of evidence-based scientific inquiry personally relevant and readily accessible to young people (aged 11-15 years). It also aims to support the continuity of science learning between classrooms and non-formal settings. ...
An inquiry-led investigation with technology was designed and implemented, aiming to enhance our ... more An inquiry-led investigation with technology was designed and implemented, aiming to enhance our understanding of how inquiry learning takes place within a personal, socio-cultural and institutional context. Children used personal technologies across contexts, to plan and collect evidence, analyse and share their work. These technologies are boundary objects, connecting students' experiences across the classroom, out-of-class activities, a fieldtrip and the home, and enabling students to carry out inquiry activities autonomously. The science teacher aimed to maintain a sense of continuity across contexts by utilising specific management strategies: interchanging between highlighting and constraining technology use, ensuring that all students know what they need to do in and out of class, communicating interdependencies among groups and by translating group data to an overview of the whole class data. These strategies are identified as prerequisites for any successful inquiry learning experience to take place.
The aim of this project was to identify and review the tools, methods and frameworks used to eval... more The aim of this project was to identify and review the tools, methods and frameworks used to evaluate technology supported or enhanced physical learning spaces. A key objective was to develop the sector knowledgebase on innovation and emerging practice in the evaluation of learning spaces, identifying innovative methods and approaches beyond traditional post-occupancy evaluations and surveys that have dominated this area to date. The intention was that the frameworks and guidelines discovered or developed from this study could inform all stages of the process of implementing a technology supported physical learning space. The study was primarily targeted at the UK higher education sector and the further education sector where appropriate, and ran from September 2008 to March 2009.
This report presents findings that are relevant to a leadership and policy audience drawing upon ... more This report presents findings that are relevant to a leadership and policy audience drawing upon a broad selection of Capital work. In the first year of this work, we carried out a research-based investigation into the conditions of innovation and implementation of technology-based innovation in Education. This work helped identify claims about the widespread adoption of technologies to support learning and also blockages to the process of adoption.
We often hear competing media and research claims such as these about the educational value of ne... more We often hear competing media and research claims such as these about the educational value of new technologies. But often it is not clear how, or indeed if, these technologies are supporting learning. And, importantly, there is often little attention to the challenges of trying to introduce these technologies successfully into an educational context.
Assessing is described in the framework in terms of an interpersonal dialogue with the learner, i... more Assessing is described in the framework in terms of an interpersonal dialogue with the learner, in order to provide timely and high quality feedback on some activity. However, to understand the uptake of assessment tools that employ new technology, it is important to understand the context of current assessment practice. In particular, to appreciate the many situations where assessing the learner is used to evaluate both the teacher and institution as well as provide a summative record of the learner‟ s ability and determine access to further
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