The Design of Learning Environments BY: Rachel Rose Ulgado University of California, Irvine Anthropology, Informatics Mentors Professor Gillian Hayes Meg Cramer Martin Hommer

 Many elementary school classrooms make use of reflection as a means of reinforcing student learning  “Think, Pair, Share”  This is used frequently in the elementary school classroom setting TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM PRACTICES

CLASSROOM SETUPS

CURRENT CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY

 In what ways can newer, upcoming technologies be integrated into the classroom?  How can teachers use technology to teach their students more effectively and efficiently?  Specifically, we are interested in how technology can be used for capturing student thinking as well as reflection. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 Interviewing teachers, asking questions about classroom routine, protocol, and current uses of technology.  Observing teaching in classrooms  Workshop #1: Brainstorming and storyboarding activities; collecting data about teacher-parent communication and student reflection PRELIMINARY WORK (BEFORE I STARTED SURF-IT)

 Workshop #2: Teacher acting activity  Goal: to observe how elementary school teachers visualize interaction between students and the tablet device.  Workshop #3: User-Interface guidelines  Goal: to come up with a set of design guidelines for our application.  Workshop #4: Access  Goal: to determine what types of access students, teachers, and parents need to student work. RECENT WORK

WORKSHOP SETUPS

 Looking at academic articles on related research and work.  Putting together an annotated bibliography.  Transcribing and coding observation notes and interviews  Helping with user interface design of the tablet RECENT WORK (CONTINUED)

USER INTERFACE & SYSTEM DESIGN Google App Engine & Android A web interface for creating prompts and pushing them to student devices Students can log in and then create a composition to complete the prompt The main interface will be like a canvas, with the added feature of having drag-able components

A composition is made up of several types of movable elements/components:  Video Recordings  Audio Recordings  Photographs  Comments/Annotations  Sketches The student’s composition

 The workshops helped us come up with a set of design guidelines to explain what the application should support.  Help capture student thinking, and make captured student thinking available to others through sharing  Provide a means for students to have meaningful arrangement & concept mapping  Structuring group formation  Provide a way for students to access past work (and storage for that purpose) DESIGN GUIDELINES

 Concept Validation  One-on-one concept validation sessions with elementary school teachers to determine the usability of the application based on our design guidelines  Checking to see how teachers might find the application to be a valuable tool for structuring lessons and how they could use it for engaging students in reflection WHERE WE ARE NOW

My research experience here has taught me:  How mobile devices such as tablets can be used for improving teacher instruction and student learning My overall experience at SURF-IT has taught me:  How to prioritize the multiple tasks assigned to me  What it’s like to work within a graduate school setting  How I might apply the skills I’ve gathered in future work PERSONAL REFLECTION

Any questions? THE END