| Project | One Sky, Many Voices |
| Contact | Nancy Songer |
| songer@umich.edu | |
| URL | http://www.onesky.umich.edu/ |
| Project description | We design inquiry-based curricula and media tools for the study of environmental science themes in schools and informal settings. We currently offer 3-4 four or eight week programs per academic year: Hurricanes; Kids as Global Scientists; Shared Air (with Concord Consortium); Water Conservation (with GREEN). The learning artifacts emphasize inquiry skills (e.g. students collect real-time data and try to understand weather patterns), higher order thinking (e.g. prediction making and peer critiques), communication, and personalization of scientific events. The media tools include Internet savvy CD-ROMs that integrate real time imagery from the Internet into interactive models, animations, and activities; VCR tapes; WWW-messageboards; on-line newspapers; and additional Internet links. |
| Theoretical background | Our curricula are built around inquiry-based activities (making predictions, collect, graph and interpret patterns in weather data) that can help students develop both rich science content understandings and scientific thinking skills. However, the curricula are flexible so that they can be adopted by teachers with different levels of science content and pedagogical expertise, and adjusted to the needs of different learning settings and audiences. We are interested in issues of social cognition and knowledge construction, student collaboration and distributed expertise, higher order thinking and student engagement in inquiry. Our learning approach has been informed by research on inquiry-based science learning with the use of technological tools, including the work of a Ann Brown, the Project Based Science group at Michigan, Bob Tinker and Roy Pea, the work of M. Linn on knowledge integration, and the work of M. Scardamalia and C. Bereiter on knowledge building. |
| Challenges | Understand students’ use of and learning from representations and visualization tools when they are involved in complex inquiry-based tasks in the classroom context. Examine how the tools we provide support students’ engagement in inquiry-based activities and the development of scientific inquiry skills. Understand the role of communication tools (messageboard) for student collaboration and science learning. Develop accountability tools to provide rich descriptions of the value and challenges of our programs, particularly related to use/amount of technology, student and teacher learning, role changes, and beliefs about science and technology. Develop a model of school-wise technology that is rich but also available for wide audiences and learning contexts. |
| Partnership | We would benefit most from expertise in assessment of student learning using visualizations. |