The document summarizes a research study that examined how participation in a game design program called Globaloria could help mitigate the effects of the digital divide among diverse students. The intervention involved middle and high school students learning game design skills through guided discovery. Results suggested the program increased students' school computer use, especially in schools where parents had lower education levels. It also increased students' advanced computer activities, reducing differences based on self-reported grades. The discussion notes how such programs could help lower-income students achieve greater equity and give students new contexts to flourish in school.
At GLS 9.0, Michael Levine presented an overview of the Games and Learning Publishing Council, a project of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more about the GLPC at http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/
At GLS 9.0, Michael Levine presented an overview of the Games and Learning Publishing Council, a project of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Learn more about the GLPC at http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/
Schools around the country are starting to blend online learning into their instructional design as a means of personalizing students’ learning experiences. But with the myriad options for structuring the combination of online and face-to-face learning, teachers and administrators are faced with tough decisions on how to best implement technology for their students. In this webinar, our guests will explore the different blended-learning models that schools are using to support math instruction. They’ll discuss national trends emerging around blended-learning math programs, as well as take an up-close look at the challenges and successes one school has experienced with the blended math model.
A New Day for Informal Learning Lessons from Research and Practice
Presentation by Michael H. Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the LEGO Ideas Conference on April 14, 2015.
Inquiry and Resource Use Strategies that Emerge Among Middle Schoolersin a G...Rebecca Reynolds
This study reports upon students’ strategies for inquiry and resource use in a program of game design learning. The study highlights the need for understanding the relationship between project-based learning creative tasks involving student design of an artifact, and, the inquiry strategies that can best support these tasks. Findings offer pragmatic insights on design of information literacy scaffolds, and theory on guided discovery-based learning.
UT-Austin Guest Lecture, ""Patterns and Outcomes of Youth Engagement in Colla...Rebecca Reynolds
Reports results of a program of game design learning in which information resource uses by students to solve programming challenges are explored. Students in MS and HS take a game design class daily, for credit and a grade for a full year and use a learning management system stocked with information resources to support their programming and game design. Results highlight types of inquiry they conduct, which strategies were more and less successful, and how their resource uses appear to connect to their learning outcomes. The results are discussed in relation to the overall landscape of educational technologies, considering the issue of structure.
Schools around the country are starting to blend online learning into their instructional design as a means of personalizing students’ learning experiences. But with the myriad options for structuring the combination of online and face-to-face learning, teachers and administrators are faced with tough decisions on how to best implement technology for their students. In this webinar, our guests will explore the different blended-learning models that schools are using to support math instruction. They’ll discuss national trends emerging around blended-learning math programs, as well as take an up-close look at the challenges and successes one school has experienced with the blended math model.
A New Day for Informal Learning Lessons from Research and Practice
Presentation by Michael H. Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the LEGO Ideas Conference on April 14, 2015.
Inquiry and Resource Use Strategies that Emerge Among Middle Schoolersin a G...Rebecca Reynolds
This study reports upon students’ strategies for inquiry and resource use in a program of game design learning. The study highlights the need for understanding the relationship between project-based learning creative tasks involving student design of an artifact, and, the inquiry strategies that can best support these tasks. Findings offer pragmatic insights on design of information literacy scaffolds, and theory on guided discovery-based learning.
UT-Austin Guest Lecture, ""Patterns and Outcomes of Youth Engagement in Colla...Rebecca Reynolds
Reports results of a program of game design learning in which information resource uses by students to solve programming challenges are explored. Students in MS and HS take a game design class daily, for credit and a grade for a full year and use a learning management system stocked with information resources to support their programming and game design. Results highlight types of inquiry they conduct, which strategies were more and less successful, and how their resource uses appear to connect to their learning outcomes. The results are discussed in relation to the overall landscape of educational technologies, considering the issue of structure.
ALA 2015 Invited Research Talk: Youth Collaborative Information Practices Dur...Rebecca Reynolds
This presentation was delivered as part of an ALA Conference 2015 special research session, "Out of the Library School and Into the School Library," sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The session featured presentations of research findings stemming from the work of recent Early Career Development Grant awardees.
Challenges in Defining, Designing, and Measuring “Digital Literacy” Developm...Rebecca Reynolds
This presentation discusses scholarly definitions for the research construct “digital literacy,” identifies limitations in conceptualizations to-date, fand presents a proposed framework of Six Contemporary Learning Abilities (or 6-CLAs: Create, Manage, Publish, Socialize, Research, Surf). This explicated framework offers a more structured definition based on student-centered social constructivist learning theory. The article then presents an empirical investigation of digital literacy development, drawing on the framework, and its proposed approach for operationalizing technology activities (whether as research constructs or instructional activities). The empirical analysis is situated in the context of an innovative educational program implementation of game design based learning for middle and high school students offered in a U.S. state, in the 2011/2012 school year. The study explores how student engagement in activities representing the 6-CLA dimensions factor, inter-correlate, change from pre- to post-program, and bring about student transfer of that engagement, from school to home environments. Findings reveal that the dimensions proposed hang together well, students change in their engagement as a result of the intervention across multiple dimensions in both school and home contexts, and at-school engagement in the dimensions contributes to at-home engagement in them (in various ways as reported). The study offers support for the proposed framework, provides some evidence of digital divide effects for the intervention, presents questions for further inquiry, and offers a conceptual and research design stake in the ground for other researchers interested in the digital literacy construct.
This Top Ten List is a digest of key findings from the Speak Up 2007 Student Surveys. For more information about the Speak Up National Research Project, data findings from our parent, teacher and administrator surveys, and information about our upcoming release of our Speak Up 2008 data findings, visit us at www.tomorrow.org.
Too Much Screen Time: Fake News or Real Parental Concern?Julie Evans
Education leaders are perplexed by parents’ views on technology use: parents worry about too much screen time but say digital learning is important. This session will unpack current research on parents’ views and provide K-12 leaders with insights to address screen time concerns with effective messaging and real data.
Keynote taking about the importance of emotional and social learning, and digital competence as key comptences in the future where AI among other emerging technologies might shape our skills' set.
New Research: Digital Tools and Personalized Learning, Today and TomorrowDreamBox Learning
Digital tools are transforming learning and teaching, and Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up National Research Project surveys provide insights into how these tools are being used, 21st century skills and STEM instruction in classrooms today. Attend this web seminar to hear from Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, who will share recent survey findings and discuss what the future of personalized, blending learning is expected to look like. She will be joined by a curriculum administrator who led his district’s transition to a blended learning model—a 12-school pilot with a new “Centers Approach.”
Topics will include:
The student vision for digitally-rich, personalized learning
How administrators are leveraging technology solutions to decrease costs
How technology is being used to personalize learning across the U.S.
Julie Evans
CEO
Project Tomorrow
Alec Iogman
Elementary Math Curriculum Associate
Stamford Public Schools (Conn.)
Joe Trahan
Curriculum Designer
DreamBox Learning
Who will benefit:
Superintendents, curriculum directors, technology directors, principals and others involved with personalized or blended learning. Anyone may attend.
AERA 2013 Conference Presentation: Digital Divide and Globaloria
1. How Sustained
Engagement
in Game Design and
Social Media Use
Among Diverse Students
Can Mitigate Effects of
the Digital Divide
2013 AERA Conference
Rebecca Reynolds, Assistant Professor
Rutgers University
Ming Ming Chiu, Professor
SUNY-Buffalo
2. Digital Participation in a Democracy
• Important social, political, cultural, economic activity is occurring in online
environments and participation in digital culture is becoming necessary to
democracy (Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal; Jenkins, 2009, Hobbs, 2010;
Horrigan, 2011).
• Inequalities in technology access may result in knowledge gaps, educational
opportunity barriers and disparities in groups’ socio-economic potential, all
of which run counter to fulfillment of democratic goals and ideals
(Bonfadelli, 2002).
3. Research Questions
How can we cultivate such digital literacy in young
people to bring about a more equitable society?
Broadly:
• To what extent does middle school and high school students’ participation
and engagement in a guided discovery-based program of game design
learning mitigate the effects of some of the known socio-economic
predictors of the digital divide?
• To what extent are known predictors of digital literacy in cross-sectional
research maintained, reduced, or washed out entirely as predictors after
students engage in program?
4. Intervention
Globaloria:
• Introduces students to online tools, resources, information, communities both
inside and outside of the e-learning environment
• Designed to cultivate students’ digital fluency, perhaps meeting Papacharissi &
Easton’s interesting definition
• Affords opportunity, tools, and environment to explore, discover, play with
ideas, possibilities
• Also allows students to practice what it means to influence the design of
games, rules, systems, mechanisms
• Conscious conceptualization of field, and influence over its rules, as
powerful actors
5. INTERVENTION: Guided discovery-based game design program
and curriculum offered by the WorldWide Workshop. MS, HS
teachers and students gain experience and expertise in a range of
agentive digital practices.
7. Domains of Learning and Expertise
• Game Example
• Constructionist digital literacy (skills needed in knowledge economy =>
6-CLAs)
• Computational thinking through game design in Flash and programming in
Actionscript
• Core curricular subject matter:
o When game subjects are linked to core curriculum and students deepen
knowledge about topic through online research and design
• STEM career interests: Technology & Engineering; Computer Science
• Motivation, Affect, Attitudes, Life Choices, New Possibilities and Horizons
8. Globaloria Game Design Program Learning Objectives:
Cultivate the Six Contemporary Learning Abilities (6CLAs)
Developing games in a social e-learning system cultivates participatory
practices that simulate productive engagement in today’s digital cultures
and knowledge-based economy
10. Results, Home Computer Use
• Before the game design activity, students whose
parents had one level of schooling above the mean
showed 6% greater home computer use than students
whose parents had the mean level of schooling.
• After the game activity however, there was no
significant difference with respect to parent education
11. Results, School Computer Use
• Students averaged 26% greater school computer use
after the game design activity than before it.
• Further, findings indicate that school-level parent
education influences outcomes.
• Imagine two schools, one whose students’ parents have
more schooling and one whose students’ parents have less
schooling. After Globaloria, school computer use increases
substantially in both schools, but more so in schools in
which students’ parents have less schooling.
• These variables accounted for 18% of the variance in
students’ school computer use.
12. Results, Basic Computer Activities
• Students whose self-reported grades were one letter
grade above the mean averaged 2% fewer computer
activities after the game design activity than before it.
• Self-reported grades accounted for 1% of the variance
in students’ basic computer activities.
13. Results, Advanced Computer Activities
• Students averaged 14% more advanced computer
activities after the game design activity than before it.
• Before the game design activity, student who reported
grades one letter grade above the mean averaged 17%
more advanced computer activities than students who
reported grades at the mean.
• After the game design activity however, the advanced
computer activities did not differ significantly among
students with different self-reported grades
14. Discussion
• Students from schools with lower levels of parent
education (SES proxy) may stand to gain; programs like this
may aid in allowing lower income students to catch up /
achieve greater equity among more affluent peers
• May also give students who underperform in traditional school
contexts a new activity in which they can flourish in the school
environment (geeking out club)
• Longer-term research may indicate that Globaloria affords
students with life experiences that influence their habitus,
cultural capital, understanding and practice in fields
• Vision of life and livelihood possibilities
This presentation reports on work being done in the context of . . . .
In addition to the amazing impact we have seen over the past few years researching and evaluating the Globaloria program we…We are in unique position of having everything we do be rooted in years of academic research and real-world practice. In the 1980s and 1990s, while at Harvard and the MIT Media Lab, Idit really founded the concept that children learn best by designing – when they are programming computers instead of computers programming them. Ground breaking research with children in Bronx, showing how software designing could change their relationship to education and their engage them in learning in a way that had not been seen before