Open Air Boston (OAB) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bridge the digital divide so that low-income, under-served populations in the City of Boston have access to digital communications technology and the Internet. The OAB Technology Goes Home (TGH) Program is an 11-year-old, award-winning City initiative that gives under-served residents the opportunity to access the tools and education required for 21st century skills development. The next step in this initiative has been conceptualized as a collaboration with local informal education organizations to design game-like community learning experiences that use mobile technologies to engage students and their parents in scientific reasoning and exploration that will help them learn STEM content and practices and perhaps become interested in STEM careers. This Cyberlearning Capacity-Building Project (CAP) is for the purpose of building the research capacity of this already-strong team so that they have the capacity to develop an approach that is based on the best that the literature has to tell us about how people learn and how people learn with technology and so that they can use their efforts as an infrastructure for carrying out research that will advance what is known about engaging low-income, under-served populations of teens in STEM endeavors in beneficial ways. The team is undertaking three capacity-building sub-goals to help them incorporate state-of-the-art knowledge and findings into their approach: (1) further developing the project team, partnerships, and collaboration activities of the team so that they can successfully achieve those goals; (2) synthesizing the research literature on the use of a social-mobile learning applications to engage students in informal STEM learning; and (3) synthesizing the research literature on engaging under-represented, under-served middle school students and their parents in technology-based collaborative educational activities. Experts on how people learn and how people learn with technology are collaborating with the already-existing team to conceptualize an approach to using mobile devices to engage middle schoolers and their families in STEM exploration and investigation in their community that has foundations in what is known about how people learn and engaging adolescents in science and that has good potential to lead to STEM learning and interest in STEM-related careers.
The Mobile 21 team efforts have led to the following outcomes: Thought Leaders Symposium On 11/16/12, we held a Thought Leaders Symposium at Google offices in Cambridge. The Symposium was watched live on the web via YouTube. We held three panels: Family Engagement: Is it a game changer? Social Mobile Innovation: How does it impact attitudes and interest in STEM? Mobile Learning: Let the games begin? Participants on the panels included: Eric Klopfer (MIT Media Lab), Karen Brennan (Harvard University), Justin Reich (Berkman Center at Harvard), Dan Cogan-Drew (Achievement First Public Charter Schools), Ricarose Roque (MIT Media Lab), Sousan Arafeh (Southern Connecticut State University), and additional educators, technologists, mathematicians, and scientists. The conversations were transcribed and used to inform our project development. Family Charette On 11/17/12, we held a Family Charette in Boston. Several researchers and educators were there to facilitate and/or record the information collected from the group. Parents met separately to discuss their concerns and needs with regard to technology use. Students met separately to discuss learning/games and what they considered interesting and engaging. Families worked together on a game scenario. Researchers and educators kept notes on the process and families gave feedback once the task was complete. All notes and information garnered was used to inform our project development. Team Meetings Members of the Mobile 21 Team met in person or virtually on a weekly basis to discuss and develop our project. We worked collaboratively through on-going writing efforts through Google docs and spreadsheets. Research Activity Researchers on our team, along with other critical friends, reviewed and discussed research literature related to our current efforts. The curated research has been used to inform our work on our project in a variety of areas: Social mobile learning applications and their power to engage students in informal STEM learning Engaging underrepresented, underserved middle school students and their parents in technology based collaborative educational activities Team and Partner Development We have solidified partnerships with Boston College, MIT Media Lab, Yale, Harvard’s School of Education and the Berkman Center, Southern Connecticut State University, Google, Boston Public Schools, City of Boston, BATEC, Boston Science Museum. We sought other learning scientists for our team, though we find most are otherwise engaged, many are interested in serving in the role of advisor for this project. In addition, we added Dr. James Conroy (Yale) to our team. Proposal Development The team engaged in a collaborative process to refine and further develop our proposal for Mobile 21. A proposal was submitted on December 17, 2012. Please also see our webpage: www.techgoeshome.org/mobile21
