LETS GO
Ubiquitous and mobile multimedia technologies enable the opportunity to interact in new ways with the physical world as they allow allocating computational power and interaction away from the limitations of desktop computers. From this perspective, learners are given the opportunity to explore the physical world and interact with it in new ways, as well as the physical world can be augmented through digital technologies. K-12 learning and education stand to benefit substantially by new designs for open learning environments that incorporate these technologies and collaborative activity designs for advancing knowledge building using inquiry and reflection cycles. We frame our vision of “open inquiry” as the opportunity to catalyze and sustain global learning using mobile science collaboratories that provide open software tools and resources, and participation frameworks for learner project collaboration, mobile media and data capture, analysis, reflection and publishing. In the LET´s GO project, Stanford and Växjö university faculty in learning sciences and computer science will develop, implement and research a new paradigm for fostering high school student learning in teams for environmental science. We will productively integrate geo-location sensing, multimedia communication, information visualization and Web 2.0 mashup technologies, to create science learning collaboratories using interdisciplinary co-design methodologies with teachers, learners, teachers-to-be, technology developers, domain experts, and learning scientists.
Why does it matter
We claim that science learning collaboratories are powerful tools to be used for the design of a new kind of environment for experimenting real-life phenomena for learning about environmental science. Our argument is that this type of learning environment supports learners in exploring and experimenting with multiple representations of the causal interactions and functional relationships that are typical in science learning, thus promoting a deeper understanding of the domain under exploration.
